mon 20/10/2025

tv

Duran Duran: There's Something You Should Know / A Night In, BBC Four, review - chaps on film

Jasper Rees

Forty years on. You could have got attractive odds on Duran Duran still being here when, on a yacht carving the seas off Antigua, a cream-suited Simon Le Bon mimed “Rio” astride an unapologetically phallic bowsprit. “A ripple in a stagnant pool,” sniffed the NME upon first catching them live.

Read more...

Reporting Trump's First Year: the Fourth Estate, BBC Two review - all hands on deck at the Gray Lady

Adam Sweeting

The cataclysm of Donald Trump’s election was like a second 9/11 for the East Coast elite (and not just them, obviously). It was a world turned upside down, the centre couldn’t hold, and, worst of all, why did nobody see it coming?

Read more...

Natural World: The Super Squirrels, BBC Two review - silliness and facts

Katherine Waters

Squirrels are a breed as diverse as they are ubiquitous: they inhabit environments as extreme as desert and tundra, and all the lush greenery, rainforest and urban jungle imaginable between. So bless the producers of The Super Squirrels who humorously avoid a straight-down-the-line profile of the nearly 300 species around the world and instead showcase their not inconsiderable abilities through a series of gleeful reality TV piss-takes.

Read more...

Julius Caesar, BBC Four review - electrifying TV launch of all-women Shakespeare trilogy

David Nice

Who would have thought, when Phyllida Lloyd's Donmar Julius Caesar opened to justified fanfare, that two more Shakespeare masterpieces would be sustained no less powerfully within the women's-prison context over the following years?

Read more...

Panorama: Putin's Russia with David Dimbleby, BBC One review - jolly football weather

Tom Birchenough

There was a lovely moment at the beginning of this Panorama where David Dimbleby was chatting to a schoolgirl – not just any schoolgirl actually, because she came from a family of 10 children, which surely makes her a bit out of the ordinary, even in...

Read more...

Get Shorty, Sky Atlantic review - Elmore Leonard meets Tarantino

Mark Sanderson

Emma Daly (Carolyn Dodd) tells her estranged husband Miles (Chris O’Dowd): “There is always an angle, a shakedown.” Of course there is: Davey Holmes’s Get Shorty is “partly based on” the Elmore Leonard novel of the same name (“inspired by” would be more accurate).

Read more...

Hidden, BBC Four review - a death in Snowdonia

Adam Sweeting

Nordic shmordic. Why travel to Scandinavia to get your dark, disturbing mysteries when you can find them in Wales? You even get subtitles for an extra frisson of otherness.

Read more...

Our Girl, Series 4, BBC One review - 2 Section versus Boko Haram

Adam Sweeting

I’ve never been in the Army, but I can’t imagine anybody involved with the making of Our Girl (BBC One) has either.

Read more...

Line of Separation, All 4, review - handsome if soapy epic

Jasper Rees

You don’t see a lot of German drama imported to British television. France, Italy, Scandinavia, yes. But the biggest country in Europe is less of a player. The great exception – and it really was great - was Deutschland 83, a thrilling hit when shown on Channel 4.

Read more...

Africa: A Journey Into Music, BBC Four review - too little, too late?

Peter Culshaw

BBC Four is the TV music equivalent of those oldsters music mags like Q and Mojo. Have there been five, or is it six, documentaries about Queen on the channel?

Read more...

Pages

 

latest in today

'We are bowled over!' Thank you for your messages... ...
Bryony Kimmings, Soho Walthamstow review - captivating tale...

Bryony Kimmings’ new show - her first in five years – was created to celebrate the opening of Soho Walthamstow, the previously...

La bohème, Opera North review - still young at 32

Phyllida Lloyd’s production of La Bohème for Opera North is...

Shibe, LSO, Adès, Barbican review - gaudy and glorious new m...

Many orchestral concerts leaven two or three established classics with something new or unusual. The LSO reversed that formula...

Frankenstein review - the Prometheus of the charnel house

Guillermo del Toro strains every sinew to bring his dream film to life, steeping it in religious symbolism and the history of art, cannily...

Solar Eyes, Hare & Hounds, Birmingham review - local lad...

Their new album may have been born out of a deep dive into Quentin Tarantino’s cinematic reimagining of the post-Manson killings’ atmosphere of...

The Free Association launch review - strong start for improv...

It’s always good to welcome the opening of a new arts venue, and sadly it doesn’t happen too often in the current economic climate. But...

The Lemonheads' 'Love Chant' is a fine return...

The Lemonheads were one of the original punk-pop outfits and have been an on-off going concern for 40 years. However, singer, guitarist,...

Anja Mittermüller, Richard Fu, Wigmore Hall review - a glori...

Helping to build the careers of superb young singers is what Wigmore Hall has done for decades: I still remember Olaf Bär’s debut in the hall...

Music Reissues Weekly: Evie Sands - I Can’t Let Go

Over 1965 to 1968 Brooklyn's Evie Sands issued a string of singles with classic top sides. Amongst them were “Take Me For a Little While,” “I Can'...