sat 05/07/2025

tv

Arena: Everything is Connected - George Eliot's Life, BBC Four review - innovative film brings the Victorian novelist into the present

India Lewis

Gillian Wearing’s Arena documentary Everything is Connected (BBC Four) is a quietly innovative biography of an author whose works still resonate with their readers and the country within which she wrote.

Read more...

The Fall of the Berlin Wall with John Simpson, BBC Four review – the future we’ve left behind

Tom Baily

John Simpson remains the BBC’s longest serving foreign correspondent. Here, he returns to the biggest moment of his career. This personalised retelling of the collapse of the Berlin wall encompasses fond remembrance, factual detail and the confidence of retrospective analysis. And, the big BUT question is addressed: where are we now?

Read more...

Dublin Murders, Series Finale, BBC One review - eerie detective drama grips tightly

Adam Sweeting

You wouldn’t expect a drama called Dublin Murders (BBC One) to be a laugh a minute, but the cumulative anguish, menace and torment of this eight-parter made it almost unbearable, even if viewers were thrown a tiny scrap of hope in the final frames.

Read more...

Rich Hall's Red Menace, BBC Four review - laconic comic referees the Free World versus Communism

Adam Sweeting

Who won the Cold War? Nobody, according to comedian Rich Hall in this 90-minute film for BBC Four. His theory is that after the symbolic fall of the Berlin Wall 30 years ago, Russia and America merely “flipped ideologies”.

Read more...

Rick Stein's Secret France, BBC Two review - is the travelling chef's palate growing jaded?

Jill Chuah Masters

Another year, another cookbook. Rick Stein is back for his next round of food travels and this time, we’re going to France. “For the French, food isn’t part of life, it is life itself,” says Stein, as his Porsche zips through the French countryside.

Read more...

His Dark Materials, BBC One review - generic TV fantasy with ready-made twists

David Nice

The good news is that television's serial slow burn will allow for a lot more original Pullman to make its way to screen than was possible in the one and only instalment of the intended film trilogy, The Golden Compass. Its virtues were many, despite drastic late alterations, and in terms of casting and cinematography, this version doesn't look set to outstrip it.

Read more...

Get Rich Or Try Dying: Music’s Mega Legacies, BBC Four review – inside the RIP business

Tom Baily

Half a billion dollars is what the top five most lucrative estates of deceased musicians earned last year. The figure represents the cunning work of a few people to turn “legacy” into its own immortal industry. To watch a program on this theme is to peek through the keyhole of a locked cabinet. How does the “RIP business” work? How much – so goes another question – are we really allowed to see?

Read more...

The Great British Bake Off, Series 10 finale, Channel 4 review - bittersweet end to a divisive series

Jill Chuah Masters

And that’s a wrap: last night concluded 10 years of The Great British Bake Off. This show is the nation’s TV equivalent of comfort food. In the past, it has stuck to a well-worn recipe — the result was fun to fight over but easy to love.

Read more...

Guilt, BBC Two review - dark Scottish comedy starring Mark Bonnar and Jamie Sives

Markie Robson-Scott

“He was dying slowly. We just made it quick.” This is sharp-faced, menacing Max (Mark Bonnar: Catastrophe, Unforgotten, Line of Duty) to his sensitive brother Jake (Jamie Sives: Chernobyl, Game of Thrones, The James Plays). Jake is driving Max’s car on their way back from a wedding in Fife – Max is beside him, swigging champagne - and accidentally runs into and kills an old man in an Edinburgh suburb.

Read more...

Love and Hate Crime, BBC One review - Abel Cedeno was a killer, but was he also a victim?

Adam Sweeting

This series examines murders in the USA “with elements of love and passion as well as prejudice”, and the second season opened (on BBC One) with "Killing in the Classroom", the story of the fatal stabbing of New York school student Matthew McCree by bisexual teenager Abel Cedeno.

Read more...

Pages

 

latest in today

'We are bowled over!' Thank you for your messages... ...
Classical CDs: Bells, birdsong and braggadocio

 

Thomas Adès, Oliver Leith, William Marsey:...

Siglo de Oro, Wigmore Hall review - electronic Lamentations...

Siglo de Oro are a vocal ensemble who specialise in older music – and especially neglected older music – but they have also...

Jenny Saville: The Anatomy of Painting, National Portrait Ga...

When in the 1990s, Jenny Saville’s peers shunned painting in...

Hot Milk review - a mother of a problem

Rebecca Lenkiewicz’s Hot Milk, adapted from Deborah Levy’s 2016 Man Booker shortlistee, has been described as a "psychological drama"....

Glastonbury Festival 2025: Five Somerset summer days of musi...

MONDAY 30th JUNE 2025

“I think you’d better drive,” says Finetime, his face sallow, skull-sockets underscored by...

Tom Raworth: Cancer review - truthfulness

I recently heard a BBC Radio 4 presenter use the troubling phrase: "Not everyone agreed on the reality of that." Once the domain of Andre Breton’s...

Hill, Sky Documentaries review - how Damon Hill battled his...

Some world champion racing drivers make it look effortless, but it was never that way for Damon Hill. His path to the championship he won in 1996...

Album: Barry Can't Swim - Loner

Despite being Mercury nominated, Bazza’s hardly a household name. Nevertheless, his debut album ...

Album: Kesha - .

“I’m, like, pop star when I have to pop star, and then I’m...