tv
Blue Planet II, BBC One review - just how fragile?Monday, 11 December 2017
The eel is dying. Its body flits through a series of complicated knots which become increasingly grotesque torques. Immersed in a pool of brine — concentrated salt water five times denser than seawater — it is succumbing to toxic shock. As biomatter on the sea floor of the Gulf of Mexico decomposes, brine and methane are produced, and where these saline pockets collect, nothing grows. Read more...
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The Crown, Series 2, Netflix review - all our yesterdays, cunningly rewrittenFriday, 08 December 2017
Beneath the creamy overlay of gowns, crystal chandeliers, palaces, uniformed flunkies and a sumptuous (albeit CGI-enhanced) Royal Yacht, a steely pulse of realpolitik fuels The Crown, returning to Netflix for its much-anticipated second series. Read more... |
Howards End finale, BBC One review - who isn't going to miss the Schlegel sisters?Monday, 04 December 2017
How good was Howards End (BBC One)? Practically flawless. Read more... |
Imagine... Rachel Whiteread: Ghosts in the Room, BBC Two review - making memories solidSunday, 03 December 2017
Eureka! A programme about a woman artist that doesn’t define her as a wife and mother first and an artist second. Read more... |
The Farthest: Voyager's Interstellar Journey, BBC Four review - awe-inspiring and life-affirming space odysseyFriday, 01 December 2017
Long before Barack Obama spoke about the audacity of hope, the Voyager mission left the Earth driven by something else: the audacity of curiosity. What do the outer planets look like? What are they comprised of? And what’s beyond that? Read more... |
Witnesses: A Frozen Death, BBC Four review - plummeting temperatures in the Pas de CalaisSunday, 26 November 2017
A thankless task, perhaps, to find oneself following in the footsteps of the berserk Spanish melodrama I Know Who You Are (theartsdesk passim). Read more... |
Joe Orton Laid Bare, BBC Two review - charming look at theatre's irresistible upstartSunday, 26 November 2017
Laid Bare – it has a lurid implication which is all too suitable for Joe Orton’s work. During a time where the straight-laced British struggled to ease into sexual liberation, Orton stretched acceptability to its very limits. Salacious acts had been going on behind closed doors long before the Sixties, but everyone hid behind a modest front. Read more... |
Godless, Netflix review – a proper wild west rideThursday, 23 November 2017
There’s a storm heading to La Belle, the small forgotten town in the heart of the American West. As black clouds flash above the prairie, the injured body of Roy Goode (Jack O’Connell) falls at the door of widowed rancher Alice Fletcher (Michelle Dockery). After adding one more wound to his collection, she takes in the stranger and helps him heal. Read more... |
I Know Who You Are, series 2 finale, BBC Four review - Spanish drama literally took no prisonersSunday, 19 November 2017
So, if you’re reading this you probably trudged all the weary way to the very end of I Know Who You Are. Or you didn’t but still want to find out what the hell happened. After 20-plus hours of twisting, turning, overblown drama, long-service medals are in order for all who flopped over the line. Read more... |
Love, Lies & Records, BBC One review - Ashley Jensen too good to be trueFriday, 17 November 2017
Love, Lies & Records (BBC One) is one of those bathetic titles that are very Yorkshire. See also Last Tango in Halifax, which didn’t do badly. Sleepless in Settle is surely in development. Read more... |
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