mon 07/07/2025

tv

Home From Home, BBC One review - Johnny Vegas as everyman hero

Veronica Lee

Home From Home, written by newcomers Chris Fewtrell and Simon Crowther, first saw life as a pilot in the BBC’s Landmark Sitcom Season in 2016, the channel's search for new and original content for its schedules. Well, new it may be, but original it ain’t – yet don’t let that put you off. It’s a decent enough run-through of several sitcom tropes, with Johnny Vegas as its everyman hero.

Read more...

True Horror, Channel 4 review - a Ronseal approach to ghost stories

Owen Richards

As if the real world wasn’t scary enough... Ghost stories are en vogue at the moment, and after the BBC’s hit-and-miss Requiem, Channel 4 brings True Horror to the small screen – a collection of "real" ghost stories, told by witness interviews and dramatised with a decent budget.

Read more...

Occupied, series 2, Sky Atlantic review - political conflicts looking all too actual

Mark Sanderson

Eight months have passed since the Russians invaded Norway in the first season of Jo Nesbo’s neo-Cold War thriller. Real-life events have only made Occupied seem more relevant.

Read more...

Stephen: The Murder That Changed A Nation, BBC One review - ‘He was a cool guy and everybody loved him’

Katherine Waters

When doctors told Doreen Lawrence her son had died she thought, "That’s not true." Spending time with his body in the hospital, aside from a cut on his cheek, it seemed to her he was sleeping. The death of a child will always be strange, and in the aftermath Neville, his father and her husband, even wondered if he might have been struck by the Biblical curse of the loss of his first-born.

Read more...

The Queen's Green Planet, ITV review - right royal arboreals

Marina Vaizey

QCC isn’t the name of a new football club, nor some higher qualification for those toiling at the Bar, but stands for "Queen’s Commonwealth Canopy". Had you heard of it? On the eve of the Commonwealth conference, along came Jane Treays's gently hilarious, and finally rather tender film to fill in the gaps. 

Read more...

Lifeline, Channel 4 review - Spanish sci-fi drama on speed

Jasper Rees

It is with some trepidation that the globe-trotting viewer embarks on a new drama from Spain. Last year in BBC Four stole the best part of 20 hours of some lives with its split-series transmission of the maddening I Know Who You Are.

Read more...

Law and Order, BBC Four review - not a fair cop

Jasper Rees

In the late 1970s the British establishment sustained a bloody nose. Roland Huntford published his debunking of Captain Scott and Anthony Blunt was outed as the Fourth Man, while the Old Etonian Liberal party leader Jeremy Thorpe was tried for conspiracy to murder.

Read more...

Boy George and Culture Club: From Karma to Calamity, BBC Four

Barney Harsent

The title signalled what was coming so clearly, it may as well have been called When Bands End Badly: the two camps, the arguments and sniping and the eventual collapse of Culture Club’s US and UK tour to promote an album of new material. It’s hardly a surprise though – this is a band that, history shows, would have benefitted from the visible presence of an armed UN peacekeeping force.

Read more...

Below the Surface, Series Finale, BBC Four review - tense and twisty to the bitter end

Adam Sweeting

In the previous couple of episodes, some light began to seep into the subterranean gloom of the Copenhagen kidnappers, or at any rate onto their identities and motivations.

Read more...

The City and the City, BBC Two review - detection in four dimensions

Adam Sweeting

It’s difficult to grasp in your imagination, never mind filming it and putting it on TV. In China Miéville’s source novel, dramatised here by Tony Grisoni, the twin cities of Besźel and Ul Quoma exist side by side, and in some areas even overlap. However, citizens of either city are forbidden to see each other and must learn to “unsee” people, buildings or objects from the opposing one.

Read more...

Pages

 

latest in today

'We are bowled over!' Thank you for your messages... ...
Music Reissues Weekly: Motörhead - The Manticore Tapes

Manticore was owned by Emerson, Lake and Palmer and their manager. The organisation provided the name for the band’s label. Apart from ELP and its...

Kiefer / Van Gogh, Royal Academy review - a pairing of oppos...

When he was a callow youth of 18, German artist Anselm Keifer got a travel grant to follow in the footsteps of his idol, Vincent van Gogh. Some...

Siglo de Oro, Wigmore Hall review - electronic Lamentations...

Siglo de Oro are a vocal ensemble who specialise in older music – and especially neglected older music – but they have also...

Album: Barry Can't Swim - Loner

Despite being Mercury nominated, Bazza’s hardly a household name. Nevertheless, his debut album ...

Jenny Saville: The Anatomy of Painting, National Portrait Ga...

When in the 1990s, Jenny Saville’s peers shunned painting in...

Hot Milk review - a mother of a problem

Rebecca Lenkiewicz’s Hot Milk, adapted from Deborah Levy’s 2016 Man Booker shortlistee, has been described as a "psychological drama"....

Glastonbury Festival 2025: Five Somerset summer days of musi...

MONDAY 30th JUNE 2025

“I think you’d better drive,” says Finetime, his face sallow, skull-sockets underscored by...

Tom Raworth: Cancer review - truthfulness

I recently heard a BBC Radio 4 presenter use the troubling phrase: "Not everyone agreed on the reality of that." Once the domain of Andre Breton’s...