fri 26/09/2025

tv

Being Blacker, BBC Two review - absorbing film about family, culture and society

Jasper Rees

They don’t commission many television documentaries like Being Blacker (BBC Two) any more. That is not unconnected to the fact that Molly Dineen downed her camera a decade ago.

Read more...

Below the Surface, BBC Four review - terror in Copenhagen

Adam Sweeting

Read Adam Sweeting's review of the Below the Surface Finale

Read more...

Civilisations, episode 2, BBC Two review - Mary Beard on the cultural offensive

Tom Birchenough

The sheer ambition of the BBC’s new Civilisations is becoming apparent.

Read more...

Collateral, series finale, BBC Two - Carey Mulligan hares to the finish

Jasper Rees

In a revelatory interview for the Royal Court’s playwright’s podcast series, David Hare admits to a thin skin. In his adversarial worldview, to take issue with him is – his word – to denounce him. He’s quite a denouncer himself, of course.

Read more...

Tones, Drones and Arpeggios: The Magic of Minimalism, BBC Four - brilliant appraisal

Matthew Wright

By most measures, minimalism is the most successful movement in 20th-century music, certainly orchestral music.

Read more...

Civilisations, BBC Two review - no shocks from Schama

Marina Vaizey

Lord Clark –  “of Civilisation”, as he was nicknamed, not necessarily affectionately – presented the 13 episodes of the eponymous series commissioned by David Attenborough for BBC Two in 1969; it was subtitled “A Personal View”, and encompassed only Western Europe (from which even Spain was excluded).

Read more...

Save Me, Sky Atlantic review - it's grim down south

Adam Sweeting

Workrate of the Week award goes to Lennie James, who not only stars in this new six-part drama but wrote and executive-produced it as well. James (who starred in the first series of Line of Duty, and has hit it big in The Walking Dead) plays the central character Nelly Rowe, a wily chancer living on a Deptford council estate who suddenly finds his chequered past catching up with him.

Read more...

Marcella, Series 2, ITV review - more twisted tales of detection

Adam Sweeting

Marcella’s writer Hans Rosenfeldt was the creator of Scandi classic TV drama The Bridge, the one that made detectives with emotional disorders the flavour du jour, but you do have to wonder what kind of police force would continue to employ DS Marcella Backland (Anna Friel).

Read more...

Working with Weinstein, Channel 4 review - portrait of a predator

Saskia Baron

While this well-crafted documentary chose to open with footage of the stars and glitz of the American awards ceremonies, the focus of Working with Weinstein (Channel 4) was almost entirely on Harvey Weinstein’s involvement over more than 30 years in...

Read more...

Mum, BBC Two, series 2 review - Lesley Manville is a discreet delight

Jasper Rees

This week brings a tale of two comedies. Both half-hour sitcoms are about widowed mothers with grown-up sons still at home. Each woman has an unattached admirer. Both shows star fine comic actresses who learned much of their craft in the films of Mike Leigh. And the new series started two days apart. On BBC One was Hold the Sunset.

Read more...

Pages

 

latest in today

'We are bowled over!' Thank you for your messages... ...
Lacrima, Barbican review - riveting, lucid examination of th...

So often the focus – in the coverage of a royal wedding – is the story of the woman wearing the bridal dress. While every...

Joanna Pocock: Greyhound review - on the road again

Joanna Pocock’s second full-length book, Greyhound, tells the story of a single journey made and remade. In 2006, after the death of her...

Entertaining Mr Sloane, Young Vic review - funny, flawed but...

Playwright Joe Orton was a merry prankster. His main work – such as Loot (1965) and What the Butler Saw...

Helleur-Simcock, Hallé, Wong, Bridgewater Hall, Manchester r...

Rachel Helleur-Simcock’s first appearance with the Hallé after appointment as leader of its cello section was auspicious – she became the soloist...

Mariah Carey is still 'Here for It All' after an e...

One of the great moments of Private Eye magazine’s fustiness in recent years was putting Mariah Carey in Pseud’s Corner, for the quote about how...

Tosca, Royal Opera review - Ailyn Pérez steps in as the most...

Forget Anna Netrebko, if you ever gave the Russian Scarpia’s former cultural ambassador much thought (theartsdesk wouldn’t). It should be...

iD-Reloaded, Cirque Éloize, Marlowe Theatre, Canterbury revi...

It was the absence of performing animals that defined it in the 1980s, but contemporary...

Bacchae, National Theatre review - cheeky, uneven version of...

The word "after" can be elastic when a modern writer is inspired by a classic. Nima Taleghani here stretches it to breaking point, although, to be...