tv
The Battle of Britain, Channel 5 review - 80th anniversary of the RAF's finest hourWednesday, 08 July 2020
The notion of massed aircraft dogfighting over southern England seems inconceivable now, but the Battle of Britain in the summer of 1940 was all too horribly real for its participants. Read more... |
Being Beethoven, BBC Four review – from grubby kid to grumpy geniusTuesday, 07 July 2020
Documentaries like this one make me sentimental for a time, until about 25 years ago, when classical music was a more or less weekly presence on terrestrial TV. Read more... |
The Kemps: All True, BBC Two review - more self-promotion than self-mockeryMonday, 06 July 2020
The spoof “rockumentary” always sounds like a great idea, but it’s hard to pull off. Largely this is because rock stars are so divorced from reality that an element of self-parody is already built in, albeit unwittingly (“everybody’s so different, I haven’t changed” as Joe Walsh deadpanned in "Life's Been Good"). Read more... |
Penny Dreadful: City of Angels, Sky Atlantic review - the good, the bad and the unspeakableThursday, 02 July 2020
American history of the 1930s and ‘40s suddenly seems to be all the rage on TV, cropping up in the reborn Perry Mason, Das Boot and now this new incarnation of Penny Dreadful (Sky Atlantic). The original was a blowsy Gothic mash-up of Dracula, Frankenstein, Jekyll & Hyde and anything vaguely related that could be made to fit. Read more... |
Storyville: Welcome to Chechnya, BBC Four review - trauma, tension and resistanceThursday, 02 July 2020
David France’s revelatory film may have been subtitled “The Gay Purge”, but from the start it was clear this wasn’t just another documentary from Russia charting the increasing pressure faced by that country’s queer community. Read more... |
Das Boot, Series 2 Finale, Sky Atlantic review - deeper and darkerWednesday, 01 July 2020
The second series of Das Boot (Sky Atlantic) began strongly, and by the time we reached this last pair of episodes it was almost too agonising to watch. Read more... |
The Hidden Wilds of the Motorway, BBC Four review - mysteries and marvels of the M25Wednesday, 01 July 2020
The nightmarishness of the M25 motorway is well known, especially if you get stuck on the Heathrow section on a wet Sunday night, but as she perambulated around the motorway’s circumference for this idiosyncratic BBC Four documentary, naturalist Helen Macdonald showed us how skilfully nature deals with man-made monstrosities. Read more... |
My Brilliant Friend, Season 2: The Story of a New Name, Sky Atlantic review – a troubling friendship deepensTuesday, 30 June 2020
In her surprisingly self-revealing collection of essays and interviews Frantumaglia (Neapolitan dialect word for a disquieting jumble of ideas), the writer who calls herself Elena Ferrante often ponders the metamorphosis from novel to film. Read more... |
Alan Bennett's Talking Heads, BBC One review - still lives run deepWednesday, 24 June 2020
The eyes have it in Alan Bennett's Talking Heads, which is in no way to discount this venerable writer's gift for words. Read more... |
The Choir: Singing for Britain, BBC Two review - the pandemic versus the power of songWednesday, 24 June 2020
Singing in a choir can be terrific therapy for anxiety, depression or loneliness, but one of the cruellest effects of the coronavirus is the way it has restricted normal human interaction. Read more... |
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Album: Ded Hyatt - Glossy
This record keeps you guessing. It starts off with “Hybrid Romance”, an ambient piece that’s very pretty but has swooping glassy synths that crack...
Ludwig, BBC One review - entertaining spin on the brainy det...
The latest incarnation of David Mitchell, TV actor, looks at first sight much like the familar one from Peep Show and Back...
Ellen DeGeneres, Netflix Special review - no mea culpa and f...
Hard to imagine it now, but just a few years ago Ellen DeGeneres was one of America’s biggest daytime TV stars; her chatshow The Ellen...
The Hardacres, Channel 5 review - a fishy tale of upward mob...
Set in Yorkshire in the 1890s, and based on the novels...
Juno and the Paycock, Gielgud Theatre review - a shockingly...
"Captain" Jack Boyle is a fantasist, a mythmaker, a storyteller. He relishes an audience – usually his sidekick, Joxer. There is a theatricality...
Hardenberger, BBC Philharmonic, Storgårds, Bridgewater Hall,...
Two splendid pieces of orchestral virtuosity began and finished the second Saturday concert by the BBC Philharmonic under John Storgårds at the...
Angry and Young, Almeida Theatre review - vigorous and illum...
Why should we not look back in anger? With the Oasis reunion tour in the news recently, the title of John Osborne’s seminal kitchen-sink drama –...