tv
Line of Duty, BBC One, series 5 finale review - big highs and BiggeloeMonday, 06 May 2019
The porn was a bit disappointing, was it not? Dear old Ted, no longer romantically active, admitted to being a user. The Superintendent Hastings fanclub sighed for sorrow to witness him toss away his status as an essentially decent heartthrob for the Saga generation. Sorry for your loss, ladies. It was also disappointing because the high-risk act of wiping his laptop turned out to have such a bathetic explanation. Read more... |
My Extreme Drugs Diary, Channel 5 review - the tedium of taking heroinFriday, 03 May 2019
Jacob has just managed to shoot up. No easy matter because his veins are, he says, non-usable, and are like those of an 80-year-old man. He’s in his twenties and has been on heroin for six years. Unusually, he works full time, has a car and a flat – blood-spattered ones. When the heroin kicks in he doesn’t feel stoned but as if he could “work on some graphic design or art work”. Read more... |
The Widow, Series Finale, ITV review - Congolese drama parts company with realityWednesday, 01 May 2019
Are brothers Harry and Jack Williams mounting a takeover bid for British TV? They’ve written (among other dramas) The Missing, Liar and Baptiste, and they produced Fleabag. However, judging by their co-writing efforts on The Widow (ITV) they’re spreading themselves thin. Read more... |
Bake Off: The Professionals, Channel 4 review - farcical but funWednesday, 01 May 2019
TV cooking shows are mostly a pain in the butt. Masterchef, featuring the thuggish Gregg Wallace and John Torode along with India Fisher’s excruciatingly arch voiceover, is enough to provoke a massed hunger strike. The BBC’s Great British Bake Off may have featured national treasure Mary Berry, but her Miss Marple-ish charm was undermined by the ostentatiously pointless Mel and Sue. Read more... |
Game of Thrones, Sky Atlantic review - The Battle of WinterfellTuesday, 30 April 2019
It’s been a memorable few days for audiences – big-screen and small – who happily invest years of their lives in epic storytelling. With the dust still settling on Avengers: Endgame, the final season of Game of Thrones has reached its mid-point with one of the most extraordinary episodes in its impressive history. Read more... |
Run for Your Life, ITV review - giving the nation's youth a sporting chanceWednesday, 24 April 2019
With the knife crime epidemic seemingly raging out of control, and the government at its clueless worst as it stumbles around hoping for a quick fix, here was a look at a possible solution. Read more... |
Looking for Rembrandt, BBC Four review - painter's biog is a mini-masterpieceWednesday, 24 April 2019
This final episode of BBC Four's Looking for Rembrandt, exploring the life and work of the Netherlands’ greatest painter, was a mini-masterpiece in itself. We rejoined the story in the mid-1650s, when Rembrandt found that his days of popular acclaim and patronage by heads of state and the nobility were behind him... Read more... |
Climate Change: The Facts, BBC One review - how much reality can humankind bear?Friday, 19 April 2019
Peer down the glassy dark and you’ll see them. White bubbles trapped in the frozen lake which appear to be rising to the surface. Look through the permafrost this way and you’re seeing into the past: as the ice melts, gas which was captured and stored tens of thousands of years ago when woolly mammoths and sabre-toothed cats stalked Alaska is released into the atmosphere. Each slick of melt water is another decade returning to the rivers. Read more... |
Chimerica, Channel 4 review - fake news, true dramaThursday, 18 April 2019
Chimerica is a stage-to-screen adaptation that has certainly kept up with the times. Read more... |
Trust Me, Series 2, BBC One review - hospital killer chillerWednesday, 17 April 2019
Great, a new drama not by the Williams brothers. Instead it’s Dan Sefton’s second iteration of his medical thriller Trust Me, last seen in 2017 starring Jody Whittaker. Read more... |
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