tv
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... |
Peaky Blinders, series 4, BBC Two review - new threats, same thrillsThursday, 16 November 2017
BBC Two’s flagship crime drama Peaky Blinders returns for another guilty dose of slo-mo walking, flying sparks and anachronistic soundtracks. Read more... |
Motherland / Detectorists review - comedy classics go at their own paceThursday, 16 November 2017
As Motherland settles down into its first series proper after last year’s pilot, it still seems to be going at a fair gallop. Read more... |
Storyville: Toffs, Queers and Traitors, BBC Four review - the spy who was a scampTuesday, 14 November 2017
“There is something odd, I suppose, about anyone who betrays their country.” It’s an excellent opening line, particularly when delivered in director George Carey’s nicely querulous narrative voice, for Toffs, Queers and Traitors (BBC Four). Read more... |
Howards End, BBC One review - EM Forster adaptation is finding its footingMonday, 13 November 2017
Can it really be a quarter-century since that finest of all Merchant-Ivory film adaptations, Howards End, was first released? Read more... |
Trump: An American Dream/Angry, White and American, Channel 4 review - a timely look at Trump and the causes of TrumpFriday, 10 November 2017
There are, as I’m sure many of you are aware, four key stages of political change. Denial, anger, acceptance and, finally, documentary film-making. Read more... |
The A Word, Series 2, BBC One review - is it turning into 'Emmerdale' with a twist of autism?Wednesday, 08 November 2017
At its weakest The A Word is just Emmerdale with a twist of autism, especially when the drama swivels away from the little boy to focus on adult infidelities, a grumpy patriarch, sibling rivalries and comedy Poles wisecracking in subtitles. 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...
Mission: Impossible - The Final Reckoning review - can this...
Whether it is or isn’t the final Mission: Impossible film, there’s a distinct fin-de-siècle feel about this eighth instalment, and not...
Code of Silence, ITVX review - inventively presented reality...
In the guided tour of Britain’s cathedral cities that is the primetime TV...
Pixies, O2 Academy, Birmingham review – indie veterans pack...
Pixies might just be the ultimate Radio 6 Dad band. They’ve been around (on-and-off) for around 40 years; they’ve got a fine back catalogue of...
Album: Sports Team - Boys These Days
How do you solve a problem like Sports Team? Taking them at face value, they’re a living metaphor for the slow music biz relegation of the working...
Pygmalion, Early Opera Company, Curnyn, Middle Temple Hall r...
With French baroque opera all but banished from the UK’s major...
Album: Stereolab - Instant Holograms on Metal Film
Stereolab always walked a knife edge between deadly serious and dead silly. Their sound was constructed around the sort of reference points –...
The Fifth Step, Soho Place review - wickedly funny two-hande...
The plays of David Ireland have a tendency to build to an explosion, after long stretches of caustic dialogue and very funny banter....
Josefowicz, LSO, Mälkki, Barbican review - two old favourite...
Every now and then a concert programme comes along that fits like a bespoke suit, and this one could have been specially designed for me. Two...
Mr Swallow: Show Pony, Richmond Theatre review - magic trick...
Nick Mohammed invented his Mr Swallow character – camp, lisping, with an inflated ego and the mistaken belief that he has creative...