wed 25/06/2025

tv

Small Axe: Education, BBC One review - domestic drama concludes groundbreaking film series with quiet power

Thomas H Green

The fifth and final film in the Small Axe series is titled Education.

Read more...

Tin Star: Liverpool, Sky Atlantic review - massed mayhem on Merseyside

Adam Sweeting

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 soap

Adam Sweeting

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 life

David Nice

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 story

Adam Sweeting

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 revealed

Adam Sweeting

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 Logan

Adam Sweeting

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 whodunnit

aleks Sierz

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 dies

Tim Cumming

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...

The Good Lord Bird, Sky Atlantic review - picaresque account of the myth of John Brown

Adam Sweeting

On the face of it, this new Sky Atlantic series sounded as though it might be a grave and sombre slice of American history, telling the story of the anti-slavery crusader John Brown and how his raid on Harpers Ferry, Virginia helped push America into the Civil War.

Read more...

Pages

 

latest in today

'We are bowled over!' Thank you for your messages... ...
Brad Mehldau Trio, St George's Bristol review - exquisi...

There's something luminous about the Brad Mehldau Trio. The music they create with such joy shines with a special clarity, in which ever-changing...

Ian Leslie: John and Paul - A Love Story in Songs review - h...

Do we need any more Beatles books? The answer is: that’s the wrong question. What we need is more Beatles books that are worth reading. As the...

Album: BC Camplight - A Sober Conversation

A Sober Conversation is the work of a master songwriter, one who knows how to achieve their goals. As the album’s nine tracks pour from...

Schubertiade 3 at the Ragged Music Festival, Mile End review...

Aldeburgh offered strong competition for the three evenings of Schubert at the discreetly restored Ragged School Museum, but I knew I had to...

Showmanism, Hampstead Theatre review - lip-synced investigat...

I think my problem is that when I should have been listening in school assemblies or RE lessons, I had the Tom Tom Club’s joyous “...

Immersive Night Music Show, Makita, Londinium Ensemble, Worl...

To mark this year’s summer solstice, a small audience gathered at London’s newest concert venue, the World Heart Beat Embassy Gardens, a small and...

theartsdesk on Vinyl 91: Sex Pistols, Pink Floyd, Tropical F...

VINYL OF THE MONTH

Frank From Blue Velvet I Am Frank (Property of the Lost) + Column258...

Kieran Hodgson, Soho Theatre review - a love affair soured b...

Kieran Hodgson is known to television viewers from Two Doors Down and to online fans for his spoofs of TV dramas; but comedy...