tv
Upstart Crow: Lockdown Christmas 1603, BBC Two review – plaguey beaks and bubonidiotsTuesday, 22 December 2020
If you’ve loved every episode of Ben Elton’s Shakespeare and Co comedy, you’ll know what to expect – but you’ll have to swallow bittersweet pills from only two of the excellent ensemble who’ve given us such comfort and joyous rapid-fire delivery of wordsmithery over three series (and on the London stage, as it was... Read more...
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Small Axe: Education, BBC One review - domestic drama concludes groundbreaking film series with quiet powerMonday, 14 December 2020
The fifth and final film in the Small Axe series is titled Education. Read more... |
Tin Star: Liverpool, Sky Atlantic review - massed mayhem on MerseysideFriday, 11 December 2020
Breaking away from the outlandish shenanigans in Little Big Bear in the Canadian wilds of its first two series, this third outing for Tin Star brings Jack Worth (Tim Roth), wife Angela (Genevieve O’Reilly) and daughter Anna (Abigail Lawrie) back across the Atlantic to Liverpool to confront dirty secrets they’ve... Read more... |
Coronation Street: 60 Unforgettable Years, ITV review - inside story of the world's longest-running TV soapTuesday, 08 December 2020
The seductively breathy Joanna Lumley supplied the voice-over for this hugely entertaining romp through the history of Coronation Street, celebrating “the Diamond Jubilee of the world’s longest-running soap.” Yet wasn’t the uber-posh Lumley, scion of the British Raj, a discordant choice for this long-running saga of Mancunian... Read more... |
Small Axe: Alex Wheatle, BBC One review - elliptical telling of a writer's troubled early lifeMonday, 07 December 2020
Anyone who expects traditional narrative in Steve McQueen’s five Small Axe films about the black experience in the London of the 1970s and 80s will be disappointed. Read more... |
The Dambusters, Channel 5 review - yet another telling of the Bouncing Bomb storyFriday, 04 December 2020
The story of the raid on dams in Germany's Ruhr Valley by the RAF’s 617 Squadron in May 1943 has become a subject of perennial fascination as well as a potent national myth. Read more... |
The Undoing, Series Finale, Sky Atlantic review - bluff and double-bluff as the truth is revealedTuesday, 01 December 2020
Throughout its preceding five episodes, The Undoing (Sky Atlantic) has skilfully, if a little shamelessly, kept the fickle finger of suspicion in perpetual motion. Read more... |
Small Axe: Red, White and Blue, BBC One review - sobering real-life story of police officer Leroy LoganMonday, 30 November 2020
The third film in Steve McQueen’s Small Axe quintet (BBC One) took for its subject the real-life story of Leroy Logan, the Islington-born son of Jamaican parents who joined the Metropolitan Police in the early Eighties. Read more... |
What a Carve Up!, Barn Theatre online review – ingenious whodunnitMonday, 30 November 2020
Classical murder mysteries end with a neat solution — and with the arrest of the perpetrator. Postmodern murder mysteries play games with the genre, turning it upside down and inside out. This film adaptation of What a Carve Up!, Jonathan Coe’s 1994 bestselling novel, is a postmodern crime story — and then some. Read more... |
Arena - Fela Kuti: Father of Afrobeat, BBC Two review - the music that never diesSunday, 22 November 2020
There have been Felabrations, stage musicals, bands featuring his sons Seun and Femi that have continued the legacy. There has been the slew of re-releases from his massive catalogue, and a number of films, including Alex Gibney’s Finding Fela, and the 1982 classic, Music is the Weapon. In his afterlife, the legendary Fela Kuti and his music feels more alive than ever. Read more... |
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It all started on 09/09/09. That memorable date, September 9 2009, marked the debut of theartsdesk.com.
It followed some...
The Lord of the Rings: The War of the Rohirrim review - a mi...
Lauded by Auden, detested by Edmund Wilson, the Tolkien sagas have divided many from childhood onwards: for kids, they’re not quite pulpy enough...
Jesus & Mary Chain, O2 Institute, Birmingham – Reid Brot...
The Jesus and Mary Chain may have been around for some 40 years (albeit on and off), but the Reid brothers clearly have no intention of setting up...
Album: Ajukaja & Mart Avi - Death of Music
Death of Music was created in Estonia. Despite the English lyrics, directness is absent. Take the title track. “Drop the music” exhorts...
The Producers, Menier Chocolate Factory review - liberating...
There is something deliciously perfect about the timing of The Producers’ arrival at the Menier Chocolate Factory. In these...
La rondine, LSO, Pappano, Barbican review - sumptuous orches...
There are no battlement leaps or murderous vows, no pistols or daggers, not so much as a slight cough disturbs the serene plot of La rondine...
A Midsummer Night's Dream, RSC, Barbican review - visua...
Hermia is a headbutting punk with a tartan fetish, Oberon looks like Adam Ant and Lysander appears to have stumbled out of a Madness video. Yet...
L’étoile, RNCM, Manchester review - lavish and cheerful absu...
Emmanuel Chabrier’s L’étoile is not exactly a French farce, but it comes from a post-Offenbach era (1877 saw its premiere) when cheerful...
Black Doves, Netflix review - Keira Knightley and Ben Whisha...
It’s rare to spot Keira Knightley in a TV series, and it’s no doubt a sign of changing times that she’s starring in this six-part spies-and-guns...