tue 10/06/2025

tv

This Town, BBC One review - lurid melodrama in Eighties Brummieland

Adam Sweeting

Industrious screenwriter Steven Knight has brought us (among many other things) Peaky Blinders, SAS: Rogue Heroes and even Who Wants To Be a Millionaire?, but This Town may not be remembered as one of his finest hours. Here, we find Knight revisiting his Midlands background for a story that begins in 1981, during Margaret Thatcher’s first term as Prime Minister.

Read more...

Passenger, ITV review - who are they trying to kid?

Adam Sweeting

The screenwriting debut of actor Andrew Buchan, Passenger ends up resembling a bunch of ingredients looking for a cake.

Read more...

3 Body Problem, Netflix review - life, the universe and everything (and a bit more)

Adam Sweeting

From Game of Thrones producers David Benioff and DB Weiss, in cahoots with Alexander Woo, 3 Body Problem is Netflix’s daring attempt to dramatise Liu Cixin’s novel The Three-Body Problem. A mind-bending sci-fi epic spanning multiple decades, while also reaching centuries into the past and future, it can scarcely be faulted for lack of ambition, but sometimes there's just too much going on to digest properly.

Read more...

Manhunt, Apple TV+ review - all the President's men

Adam Sweeting

President Abraham Lincoln was assassinated on 14 April 1865, five days after General Robert E Lee’s surrender at Appomatox signalled the end of the American Civil War. The ensuing chase to catch his killer, John Wilkes Booth, is the basis of Manhunt (based on James L Swanson’s book).

Read more...

The Gentlemen, Netflix review - Guy Ritchie's further adventures in Geezerworld

Adam Sweeting

Welcome back to Guy Ritchie’s Geezerworld, familiar from such slices of lurid villainhood as Lock, Stock…, RocknRolla and The Gentlemen (the movie). The Gentlemen (the TV series) takes some cues from the similarly-named big-screen event from 2019, but becomes its own distinctive self as it unwinds across eight episodes.

Read more...

Oscars 2024: politics aplenty but few surprises as 'Oppenheimer' dominates

Matt Wolf

Oppenheimer as expected dominated the 96th Academy Awards, winning seven trophies whilst runner-up Poor Things took four prizes, including Emma Stone in the hotly contested category of best actress.

Read more...

Prisoner, BBC Four review - jailhouse rocked by drugs, violence and racism

Adam Sweeting

The notion of prison as a pressure cooker of human behaviour and emotions is hardly a new one, but it can provide formidable fuel for drama. It does so here in this ferociously gripping Danish series, which hails from the same production company as The Killing and The Bridge.

Read more...

Drive to Survive, Season 6, Netflix review - F1 documentary overtaken by events

Adam Sweeting

When the first season of Drive to Survive launched on Netflix in 2019, it was greeted with suspicion by some in the Formula One paddock. But with its sixth season now up on Netflix, just ahead of next weekend’s 2024 season-opening race in Bahrain, the show can congratulate itself for having helped to bring about a revolution within Formula One.

Read more...

The Way, BBC One review - steeltown blues

Adam Sweeting

This three-part drama arrives trailing clouds of big-byline glory. Michael Sheen directed and produced it (as well as making fleeting appearances on screen), James Graham wrote it and documentary-maker Adam Curtis co-produced it.

Read more...

Kin, Series 2, BBC One review - when crime dynasties collide

Adam Sweeting

The end of the first series of Kin found Dublin’s Kinsella crime family ridding themselves of bloodsucking drug baron Eamon Cunningham, but this was not an unalloyed blessing. As this second series opens, the Kinsellas are having to make new arrangements with the Batuks, the Turkish family who are the source of all the local drug supplies.

Read more...

Pages

 

latest in today

Help to give theartsdesk a future!

It all started on 09/09/09. That memorable date, September 9 2009, marked the debut of theartsdesk.com.

It followed some...

Saul, Glyndebourne review - playful, visually ravishing desc...

This thrilling production of Saul takes Handel’s dramatisation of the Bible’s first Book of Samuel and paints it in...

theartsdesk at the Dublin International Chamber Music Festiv...

If, like me, chamber music isn’t your most frequent home, there are bound to be revelations of what for many are known masterpieces. Mine in...

Album: Marina - Princess of Power

Marina Diamandis is a proper pop star, brilliantly full-on...

The Gold, Series 2, BBC One review - back on the trail of th...

The first series of The Gold in 2023 was received rapturously, though apparently it only told one half of the story of the 1983 Brink’s-...

Eva Quartet, St Cyprian's review - polyphonic bliss

Eva Quartet are four outstanding Bulgarian voices of polyphonic purity and depth, drawn from the legendary choir Le Mystere des Voix Bulgares, who...

Album: Mary Chapin Carpenter - Personal History

In those seemingly long-ago times of loneliness and lockdown, artists around the world invited us into their kitchens and living rooms as they...

Così fan tutte, Nevill Holt Festival/Opera North review - re...

Marianne Moore once famously defined poems as “imaginary gardens with real toads in them”. Operas also fill, or anyway should fill, their...

Music Reissues Weekly: Gather In The Mushrooms

“Forest and the Shore” by Keith Christmas is remarkable. In his essay for Gather In The Mushrooms, compiler, author and Saint Etienne...