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Barneys, Books and Bust Ups, BBC Four review - the Booker Prize at 50Tuesday, 16 October 2018
You had to keep your eyes skinned. Was that Iris Murdoch or AS Byatt, Kingsley Amis or John Banville, Margaret Atwood or Val McDermid – maybe, even, Joanna Lumley? Tables as far as the eye can see, dressed with white tablecloths and crowded with wine glasses. Read more... |
Press, BBC One, series finale review - scarcely credible but highly entertainingThursday, 11 October 2018
It’s difficult to tell whether Press (BBC One) came to praise newspapers or to bury them. The slugfest between preachy liberal do-goodery and mucky market-led skulduggery ended in a score draw, with the main protagonists living to fight another day and speak to their ever more polarised silos. Any sensible viewer might have concluded that the plot was stark-raving amphetamine-enriched baloney. Read more... |
The Bisexual, Channel 4 review - joyless comedy dramaThursday, 11 October 2018
Write about what you know, every nascent novelist is told. Read more... |
Wanderlust, BBC One, series finale review - you can't have your cake and eat itWednesday, 10 October 2018
So Wanderlust (BBC One) has ceased wandering and its angsty parade of characters have left a sentence unfinished for the last time. In the end, where were we, compared to where we’ve been? The final episode opened with Joy, like King Alfred, burning the pancakes. Seemingly her boats had suffered the same fate, atomised under the centrifugal forces of love and lust, but also a mass break-out of grief... Read more... |
Doctor Who, The Woman Who Fell to Earth, BBC One review - a captivating debut from Jodie WhittakerMonday, 08 October 2018
Re-casting a beloved character always carries a measure of risk. Solo: A Star Wars Story relied on the willingness of fans to buy in to Alden Ehrenreich as a younger incarnation of Harrison Ford: the film bombed (you know, in Star Wars terms, since it barely made $400 million). Read more... |
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... |
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