sat 21/09/2024

tv

Shetland, Series 5, BBC One review - uneven start to new season

Adam Sweeting

And so back to the windswept landscapes of the Shetland archipelago, where stoical DI Jimmy Perez is still keeping the bad guys at bay while continuing to cope with life as an ageing widower. You do wonder, though, how he sustains his commitment to the job in a territory offering such a restricted career ladder.

Read more...

Endeavour, Series 6, ITV review - reassuringly accomplished return of the brainy copper

Adam Sweeting

The end of series five of Endeavour found PC George Fancy shot dead, Cowley police station closed and the old crew dispersed. With Led Zeppelin on the soundtrack (it’s 1969), the sixth series opened minus WPC Trewlove, but with Fred Thursday demoted and shunted off to Castle Gate police station.

Read more...

David Bowie: Finding Fame, BBC Two review - the most touching instalment of Francis Whately's trilogy

howard Male

Even the most ardent Bowie fan might dismissively sum up their idol's pre-fame years with just these three words: The Laughing Gnome.

Read more...

Safe Harbour, Series Finale, BBC Four review - too much message, not enough drama

Adam Sweeting

Picture this. You’re sailing in the Timor Sea with family and friends on your luxurious yacht, hoiking the occasional plump fish out of the ocean to provide a ready meal washed down with Aussie plonk, when you suddenly chance across a decrepit, broken-down fishing boat crammed with mostly Iraqi refugees. What do you do?

Read more...

Das Boot, Sky Atlantic review - menacing drama on land and sea

Adam Sweeting

Wolfgang Petersen’s film Das Boot is now nearly 40 years old, but in this new TV sequel time has moved forward a mere nine months from the original story, into the autumn of 1942.

Read more...

Don McCullin: Looking for England, BBC Four review - a hard look at home

Marina Vaizey

A picture is worth more than a thousand words, never more so than with the photographs of Don McCullin. The octogenarian photographer’s black-and-white imagery made the Sunday Times colour supplement the talk of international media in the 1970s.

Read more...

Les Misérables, BBC One, series finale review - more moving than revealing

Jasper Rees

It took the best part of six episodes, but we got there in the end: the reason David Oyelowo accepted the confusingly underwritten part of Inspector Javert in BBC One’s adaptation of Les Misérables was finally revealed.

Read more...

Camping, Sky Atlantic, review - Lena Dunham's tentative British export

Jasper Rees

When British sitcoms head west anything can happen. For every success – The Office had a happy second life with Steve Carell – there are half a dozen others that got lost in translation, including Coupling, Getting On, Gavin and Stacey, The It Crowd and The Vicar of Dibley.

Read more...

The Last Survivors, BBC Two review - living on

Marina Vaizey

When they were children the interviewees in this film – the last survivors – were taken away in incomprehensible circumstances, on their way to be murdered for who they were, in Germany and places further east.

Read more...

Imagine... James Graham, BBC One review - deft analysis of a working life

Rachel Halliburton

How does an unassuming 36-year-old with a terrifyingly sensible haircut and a mildly flamboyant taste in jumpers become the political playwright par excellence of his generation?

Read more...

Pages

 

latest in today

A Very Royal Scandal, Prime Video review - a fairly sound re...

Why do production companies think the world needs yet another reconstituted TV drama involving famous people in infamous situations? Newspapers...

The law's sick voyeurism - director Cédric Kahn on...

The trial of the left-wing intellectual Pierre Goldman, who was charged in April 1970 with four armed robberies, one of which led to the death of...

Album: Katy Perry - 143

Life can be unfair, and Katy Perry can’t be alone in finding herself having to take the rough with the smooth. Still, anyone would have thought...

Nightsleeper, BBC One review - strangers on a runaway train

“Let the train take the strain”, as the old advertising slogan urged us. The train in this...

Notes from Sheepland review - her farm is her canvas

Orla Barry laughed when she was advised to take up sheep farming, and not just because she had no experience. “Orla with the sheep eyes,” she...

The Substance review - Demi Moore as an ageing Hollywood cel...

If you like a body-horror movie to retain a semblance of logic in its plot line, then The Substance – grotesque, gory and finally...

Moby, O2 review - ebullient night of rave'n'rock...

Sometimes a gig suddenly and completely elevates. Such is the case tonight when Moby, on his first UK tour in 12 years, plays “Extreme Ways”, his...

Strange Darling review - love really hurts

“Are you a serial killer?” asks a woman sitting in a pick up truck with a man she just met at a bar. The neon sign from the motel...

The Goldman Case review - blistering French political drama

It’s a bold move to give a UK cinema release to this fierce courtroom drama about a French left-wing intellectual who was assassinated in1979....

Zoë Coombs Marr, Soho Theatre review - stock checks and spre...

You have to admire the ambition of a show called Every Single Thing in My Whole Entire Life, the latest from Zoe Coombs Marr, which she...