thu 25/09/2025

tv

The Chef's Brigade, BBC Two review - you're in the army now

Adam Sweeting

While a spot of home cooking can be a relaxing experience with a nice meal at the end of it, signing up to this culinary campaign with Michelin-starred mega-chef Jason Atherton is like being sent off to join the Foreign Legion.

Read more...

Manifest, Sky 1 review - late arrival causes cosmic upheaval

Adam Sweeting

It’s been nearly a decade since the sixth and final series of Lost, JJ Abrams’s baffling odyssey of time-travelling air crash survivors, but judging by Manifest, its influence still hovers over TV-land.

Read more...

Who Do You Think You Are? - Naomie Harris, BBC One review - shocks old and new

Veronica Lee

This episode of the celebrity genealogy show began with footage of Naomie Harris at Ian Fleming's former home in Jamaica, where she was helping launch Bond 25 (to be released next year), in which she is playing Moneypenny for the third time.

Read more...

Cindy Sherman: #untitled, BBC Four review - portrait of an enigma

Tom Baily

Cindy Sherman predicted the selfie, so goes the claim. From our current standpoint, it is all too easy to analyse her many hundreds of photographic self-portraits made since the late 1970s as cultural forebears of the digital medium.

Read more...

Keeping Faith, Series 2, BBC One review - family misfortunes

Adam Sweeting

It was a year ago that BBC One scored a smash hit with the first series of Keeping Faith, but as series two opens 18 months have passed since Faith Howells’s husband Evan (Bradley Freegard) disappeared and triggered a traumatic chain reaction of events.

Read more...

I Am Nicola, Channel 4 review - not really love, actually

Adam Sweeting

It’s a bold idea by director Dominic Savage, to create three improvised dramas for Channel 4 depicting women confronting different forms of crisis. To make it work he needed brave and powerful performers, and this first one starred Vicky McClure (the remaining two will feature Samantha Morton and Gemma Chan).

Read more...

The Day We Walked on the Moon, ITV review - it was 50 years ago to the day

Adam Sweeting

It was on 16 July 1969 that Apollo 11 lifted off from Florida en route for the Moon, and exactly 50 years later, as we nervously anticipate the dawn of commercial flights into space, the event resonates louder than ever. Here, Professor Brian Cox called it “the greatest achievement in the history of civilisation.” According to veteran broadcaster Sir Trevor McDonald, it was “the most magnificent thing that ever happened.”

Read more...

Inside the Social Network: Facebook's Difficult Year, BBC Two review - how big can it get?

Adam Sweeting

Not everybody is on Facebook, yet. So far, Mark Zuckerberg’s social media monolith has only managed to scrape together about 2.3 billion users, roughly one-third of the planet. But as this fascinating documentary revealed, Facebook’s plans are huge and its ambitions boundless.

Read more...

8 Days: To the Moon and Back, BBC Two review - intimate peek at life in lunar capsule

Tom Baily

The Apollo 11 mission remains the most celebrated journey humanity has ever made. It produced some of our most iconic images, as well as the greatest speech gaffe, and a documentary of epic scale could be made that focused solely on the influence it has had on our popular culture.

Read more...

Charles I: Downfall of a King, BBC Four review - beheaded monarch upstaged by exotic presenter

Adam Sweeting

“I want to discover how our government could fall apart and the country become bitterly divided in just a few weeks,” historian Lisa Hilton announced at the start of her BBC Four account of the traumatic demise of Charles I.

Read more...

Pages

 

latest in today

'We are bowled over!' Thank you for your messages... ...
Tosca, Royal Opera review - Ailyn Pérez steps in as the most...

Forget Anna Netrebko, if you ever gave the Russian Scarpia’s former cultural ambassador much thought (theartsdesk wouldn’t). It should be...

iD-Reloaded, Cirque Éloize, Marlowe Theatre, Canterbury revi...

It was the absence of performing animals that defined it in the 1980s, but contemporary...

Bacchae, National Theatre review - cheeky, uneven version of...

The word "after" can be elastic when a modern writer is inspired by a classic. Nima Taleghani here stretches it to breaking point, although, to be...

Album: Solar Eyes - Live Freaky! Die Freaky!

Solar Eyes are an indie dance two-piece from Birmingham’s Hall Green. With a sound that binds together psychedelic guitars, foot stomping beats...

Slow Horses, Series 5, Apple TV+ review - terror, trauma and...

Fifth time around, Slow Horses continues to show the rest of the field a clean pair of heels. Or hooves. The adventures of Jackson Lamb (...

The Harder They Come, Stratford East review - still packs a...

The impact of great art is physical as much as it is psychological. I recall the first time I saw Perry Henzell’s 1972 film,...

Kohout, Spence, Braun, Manchester Camerata, Huth, RNCM, Manc...

The Royal Northern College of Music was in celebratory mood last night for the opening of its new season, in a joint promotion with Manchester...

Album: Night Tapes - portals//polarities

“Helix” is the ninth track on portals//polarities. With this dramatic, acid house-leaning slab of shoegazing-infused...