tue 04/11/2025

tv

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...

Offended by Irvine Welsh, Sky Arts review - are we seeing the end of free speech?

Adam Sweeting

Do we have a right not be offended? It's a question that’s growing bigger and uglier, thanks to the censorious “cancel culture” which has become such a disfiguring aspect of social media.

Read more...

Small Axe: Mangrove, BBC One review - explosive start to five films about racial injustice

Demetrios Matheou

With the Black Lives Matter movement spurred this year by another wave of police brutality against African Americans, Steve McQueen’s blisteringly powerful, viscerally topical drama reminds us of the UK’s own torrid r

Read more...

The Crown, Season 4, Netflix review - royalty rocked by personal and political turbulence

Adam Sweeting

Pre-release excitement about the fourth coming of The Crown (Netflix) has centred on Emma Corrin’s portrayal of Princess Diana, still big box-office 23 years after her death.

Read more...

David Crosby: Remember My Name, Sky Arts review - a rock icon looks in the mirror

Liz Thomson

Rock documentaries are so often disappointing, the result less a portrait than a whitewash.

Read more...

Pages

 

latest in today

'We are bowled over!' Thank you for your messages... ...
Macbeth, RSC, Stratford review - Glaswegian gangs and ghouli...

It’s hard to pinpoint exactly what’s so very different about Belfast and Glasgow, both of which I have visited in the last few...

Sananda Maitreya, Town Hall, Birmingham review - 80s megasta...

During a false start to “Billy Don’t Fall”, on Sunday night at Birmingham’s iconic Town Hall, Sananda Maitreya took the opportunity to address the...

First Person: Kerem Hasan on the transformative experience o...

There is a scene in the second act of Jake Heggie and Terrence McNally’s Dead Man Walking in which the man condemned to death, Joseph De...

Mr Scorsese, Apple TV review - perfectly pitched documentary...

This five-parter by Rebecca Miller is essential viewing for any...

Madama Butterfly, Irish National Opera review - visual and v...

Emotional truth backed up by musical sophistication is what saves Puccini’s drama about a geisha deserted by an American officer from mawkishness...

Hallé John Adams festival, Bridgewater Hall / RNCM, Manchest...

Am I dreaming? Did I really see a living composer of...

'Vicious Delicious' is a tasty, burlesque-rockin...

Three of last year’s finest singles were by Luvcat, a classy-but-naughty Eartha Kitt-style bad girl steeped in burlesque-rock’n’roll spirit. In...

theartsdesk at Wexford Festival Opera 2025 - two strong prod...

A drawback of choosing relatively or very obscure operas, as they've been mostly doing in Wexford Festival since 1951, is that the audiences...

Bach's B minor Mass, Irish Baroque Orchestra, Whelan, C...

The greatest procession of mass movements ever composed merits the best line-up of soloists, both vocal and instrumental, as well as the perfect...