tv
The Cry, BBC One review - every parent's nightmareMonday, 01 October 2018
Following the runaway success of Bodyguard, Jed Mercurio is no doubt popping more champagne and saying “follow that”. Stepping up to BBC One’s Sunday 9pm slot is The Cry, which transports us from suicide bombs and political intrigue and instead immerses us in the emotional plight of new mother Joanna (Jenna Coleman) and her partner Alistair (Ewen Leslie). Read more... |
Queen of the World, ITV review - born to run and runWednesday, 26 September 2018
Awesome numbers: over a million miles, the equivalent of 42 times around the globe, have been traversed by Her Majesty the Queen, enabling visits over the past seven decades or so to 117 different countries. No one has reigned longer nor travelled further. Read more... |
Bodyguard, BBC One, series finale review - gripping entertainment of the highest calibreMonday, 24 September 2018
And breathe. Bodyguard – not, as even some careless BBC broadcasters keep calling it, "The Bodyguard" – careered to a conclusion as if hurtling around a booby-trapped assault course. Read more... |
A Discovery of Witches, episode 2, Sky 1 review - when the sorceress met the vampireSaturday, 22 September 2018
Witches, vampires and magicke of all descriptions continue to be big box office, so Sky 1’s new dramatisation of the first book of Deborah Harkness’s All Souls Trilogy should be finding a ready-made audience. Read more... |
Strangers, episode 2, ITV review - conspiracy theories multiplyTuesday, 18 September 2018
You might consider it odd that a man whose wife spends half the year in Hong Kong without him hasn’t managed to get around to catching a plane from Heathrow to visit her in the Far East, but that is the case with Jonah Mulray, the stressed-out protagonist of Strangers. Jonah’s excuse for his marital negligence is that he’s “scared of flying”. Read more... |
Killing Eve, BBC One review - the dying gameSunday, 16 September 2018
It may be a sign of the times that the two lead performances in Killing Eve are female, with Jodie Comer fizzing hyperactively as shape-shifting assassin Villanelle and Sandra Oh (from Grey’s Anatomy) as British intelligence officer Eve Polastri (pictured below). Yet simultaneously, the show has a comic campness and air of fantasy that feels Sixties-like, reminiscent of such timewarp delights as The Avengers or Modesty Blaise. Read more... |
Classic Albums: Amy Winehouse - Back to Black, BBC Four review - suffering turned into songSaturday, 15 September 2018
Formats are second nature to TV: the BBC and Eagle Rock’s Classic Albums will run and run. Like all formats, there’s always the risk that the medium becomes the message, and content suffers under the weight of form. Read more... |
Black Earth Rising, BBC Two review - Blick's new blockbusterTuesday, 11 September 2018
As writer and director, Hugo Blick has brought us two of the twistiest dramas in recent-ish memory (The Shadow Line and The Honourable Woman). Read more... |
Wanderlust, BBC One review - an unflinching look at stale sexWednesday, 05 September 2018
What signals the end of a relationship? The loss of attraction? Infidelity? Or is it, as Wanderlust explores, something more innocuous? Read more... |
Vanity Fair, ITV review - seductions of social climbingMonday, 03 September 2018
Emcee Michael Palin, as William Makepeace Thackeray himself, introduces us to the show: “Yes, this is Vanity Fair; not a moral place certainly; nor a merry one, though very noisy.” All his major characters – or “puppets” – are riding a fairground carousel. They – and very soon, we – are having a great time. Read more... |
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