mon 25/08/2025

tv

Jonas Kaufmann: Tenor for the Ages, BBC Four review - a musical megastar with sword and shortbread

Jessica Duchen

Now we know who sent Jonas Kaufmann the Union Jack boxer shorts for the Last Night of the Proms. Whether the sender’s identity is the bigger surprise, or the hint of ambiguity over whether the "Greatest Tenor in the World" had previously heard of one of Britain’s favourite baritones – well, you decide. And no, we don’t learn who threw the knickers at him from the arena.

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Lucy Worsley's Nights at the Opera, BBC Two review - there's anti-elitism, and there's infantilism

Jasper Rees

The first thing to say about Lucy Worsley’s Nights at the Opera (BBC Two) is that it is laser-aimed at those who have not enjoyed many nights at the opera. Enjoyed in the sense of attended; also, probably, in the sense of enjoyed.

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Russia 1917: Countdown to Revolution, BBC Two review - words stronger than pictures 100 years on

Jasper Rees

It’s getting to that time of the century. A hundred years ago to the month, if not quite the day, the Winter Palace was stormed, and the Russian Revolution came to pass.

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Snowfall, BBC Two review - blizzard hits South Central

Adam Sweeting

An American TV show about drugs and drug dealers? How frightfully novel. At least The Deuce (showing now on Sky Atlantic) is about pornography instead.

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Black Lake, Series Finale, BBC Four review – Nordic noir comes to an unsatisfying end

Barney Harsent

Beware – here be spoilers, though if you can make them out through the blizzard of cliché that engulfed the last double-bill of this thunderingly underwhelming Nordic noir then you’re already ahead of me.

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Nile Rodgers: How to Make It in the Music Business, BBC Four review - good times had by all

Jasper Rees

One New Year’s Eve in the 1970s, hot young session musicians Nile Rodgers and Bernard Edwards were assured by Grace Jones that they could penetrate the inner sanctum of Studio 54 by dropping her name at the door. A doorman thought otherwise and invited them to "fuck off".

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Basquiat: Rage to Riches review, BBC Two – death rides an equine skeleton

Marina Vaizey

An irresistible tragedy: young man of Haitian and Puerto Rican descent, from Brooklyn, multilingual, brilliantly precocious, who left his middle class home to turn to street life in Manhattan, metamorphosing into a mesmerising graffiti artist. SAMO© was his response to "how are you?" Same old shit...

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Doctor Foster, Series 2 finale, BBC One review - revenge is a dish best not served twice

Jasper Rees

The second helping of Doctor Foster (BBC One) looked for a long time as if it would taste exactly like the first. Another plate of hell hath no fury, please, with extra bile on the side.

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The Last Post, BBC One review - sundown on the Empire

Adam Sweeting

Peter Moffat, author of Silk and The Village, has turned his sights on the last days of Empire for his latest series. Specifically, Moffat has mined his own memories of growing up in a British Army family in Aden in the 1960s, where his father was in the Military Police.

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Billion Dollar Deals That Changed Your World, BBC Two review - Big Pharma gets a diagnosis: it’s sick

Barney Harsent

“What if the way people understand the world is wrong? What if it isn’t politicians that shape the way people live their day-to-day lives, but secret business deals?” This is the question at the heart – and at the start – of Jacques Peretti’s new three-part documentary series. 

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