tv
The Great British Bake Off, Episode 7, Channel 4 review - bakers hampered by pointless celebritiesWednesday, 09 October 2019
What’s extraordinary about Bake Off is not just the staggering complexity of the cooking challenges, but the amount of technical shenanigans that go into turning it into a finished programme (actually, spoiler-averse Channel 4 had teasingly left the ending off my preview version of this week’s show, but... Read more... |
Catherine the Great, Sky Atlantic review - a glorious role for Helen Mirren only gets betterFriday, 04 October 2019
“I want something Russian…” It’s with such a cry that Helen Mirren, bored by the bizarrely transgressive masked ball that comes at the close of the first episode of Catherine the Great, gets the dancing going: nothing from the imported fashions of Europe will do for her, and the music duly strikes up, a soupily romantic melody on violin, the quintessence, you might think, of mythic "Russianness”. Read more... |
The Capture, Episode 5, BBC One review - the man who knew too muchWednesday, 02 October 2019
Five episodes ago, BBC One's The Capture set off at a cracking pace with the apparent abduction and murder of barrister Hannah Roberts by army lance-corporal Shaun Emery. Read more... |
Snackmasters, Channel 4 review - superchefs take the clone-a-KitKat challengeWednesday, 02 October 2019
The themes of food and cookery have already been boiled until the bottom of the saucepan melted, but TV commissioning editors can’t stop searching for new twists in the formula. Read more... |
World on Fire, BBC One review - more melodrama than dramaMonday, 30 September 2019
For his new drama series for BBC One, writer Peter Bowker (The A Word, Monroe etc) has taken as his canvas no less than a panorama of Europe in 1939, just as World War Two is breaking out. Read more... |
My Life is Murder, Alibi review - whimsical tales of detection from Down UnderWednesday, 25 September 2019
Lucy Lawless achieved cult status in the Nineties fantasy classic Xena: Warrior Princess, and later became a regular in such disparate creations as Battlestar Galactica and Parks and Recreation. In My Life is Murder, she joins the ever-expanding ranks of TV ‘tecs as Melbourne-based investigator Alexa Crowe. Read more... |
Saving Lives at Sea, BBC Two review - derring-do on the ocean wave with the RNLIWednesday, 25 September 2019
Learning support officer. Student. Chip shop owner. Mobile caterer. Gym owner. These were the day jobs of some of the volunteers featured in this week’s portfolio of tales on BBC Two from the Royal National Lifeboat Institution, who would all doubtless deny that they do anything heroic. For the people they rescue, they most certainly do. Read more... |
The $50m Art Swindle, BBC Two review - ramblin' gamblin' man comes home to roostTuesday, 24 September 2019
“It’s nice to make money – lots of money,” said Michel Cohen, former high-flying New York art dealer turned debtor, jailbird and fugitive. He made oodles of the stuff and then lost it all, leaving a string of wealthy art collectors and galleries to lick their wounds over the colossal debts he never repaid. Read more... |
The Cameron Years, BBC One review - quite interesting but a bit boringFriday, 20 September 2019
David Cameron has been a recluse since the fateful days of June 2016 when the referendum on EU membership didn’t go quite the way he’d hoped. He’s probably been living through a private purgatory. “I think I will think about this forever,” he murmured to the camera in this first instalment of BBC One’s two-part doc. Read more... |
City on a Hill, Sky Atlantic review - power, corruption and larceny in 1990s BostonThursday, 19 September 2019
Connoisseurs of gnarly Boston-based crime sagas like The Town, The Departed and Black Mass will quickly find themselves at home in this sleaze-ridden new show, made by Showtime and brought to us by Sky Atlantic. Read more... |
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