sat 28/06/2025

tv

Melvyn Bragg on TV, BBC Two review – too many talking heads, too little action

Adam Sweeting

Presumably it seemed like a good idea at the time.

Read more...

Sudan: The Last of the Rhinos, BBC Two review - requiem for disappearing wildlife

Adam Sweeting

“The northern white rhinos are just a symbol of what we do to the natural world,” as one of the contributors to this haunting documentary put it.

Read more...

Who Should We Let In? Ian Hislop on the First Great Immigration Row, review – how history repeats itself

Barney Harsent

Immigration…immigration… immigration… that’s what we need! Not the words of record-breaking, tap-dancing trumpeter Roy Castle, rather it’s the gist of a Times leader from 1853 (admittedly, fairly heavily paraphrased).

Read more...

Chance, Universal review – Hugh Laurie is reborn as a film-noir shrink

Adam Sweeting

Hugh Laurie, in his new role of forensic neuropsychiatrist Eldon Chance, tells us that he works with those who are “mutilated by life”, and we soon see that Chance himself falls into that category. He’s in the midst of a divorce, he only sees his daughter Nicole at weekends, and his work seems to fill him with a kind of morbid weariness.

Read more...

Ripper Street, BBC Two, Series 5 review – apocalypse looms in Victorian Whitechapel

Adam Sweeting

There has always been an air of incipient doom hovering over Ripper Street, since the show is more of a laboratory of lost souls than a mere detective drama.

Read more...

Murdered For Being Different, BBC Three review - unbearable but unmissable

Jasper Rees

Heaven alone knows we've pressing anxieties enough to preoccupy us, but if you have the emotional bandwidth to accommodate more, the iPlayer can oblige. Available now on BBC Three is the latest in what now becomes a trilogy of heartrending dramas with Murdered in the title.

Read more...

Riviera, Sky Atlantic review - codswallop on the Côte d'Azur

Mark Sanderson

W Somerset Maugham, who knew a thing or two about the dark side, summed up the Riviera as “a sunny place for shady people”. On the evidence of this first episodeRiviera is a funny place for shitty people.

Read more...

Fearless, ITV review - Helen McCrory lights up dense conspiracy thriller

Jasper Rees

Emma Banville is almost too good to be true: a human rights lawyer who houses Syrian refugees, wins the most hopeless cases of wrongful conviction, won’t be bullied by anyone – coppers, prison wardens, the system. OK she smokes, presumably for the stress, and pints of lager don’t sit quite right in her hand. And she’s trying to adopt a child with, somewhat implausibly, John Bishop.

Read more...

The Loch, ITV review - hokum shrouded in Scotch mist

Mark Sanderson

There’s something nasty in Loch Ness – a corpse tied to a curling stone – but, this being tellyland, the real monsters lurk on its shores. The Loch aspires to be a Scottish Broadchurch – Braidkirk? – but, alas, is nothing of the sort.

Read more...

Poldark, Series 3, BBC One review - tempestuous passions and pantomime villains ride again

Adam Sweeting

Is it always the same bit of Cornish clifftop they gallop along in Poldark? Anyway here it was again, raising the curtain on the third series.

Read more...

Pages

 

latest in today

'We are bowled over!' Thank you for your messages... ...
Intimate Apparel, Donmar Warehouse review - stirring story o...

The corset is an unlikely star of the latest Lynn Nottage play to arrive at the...

Hercules, Theatre Royal Drury Lane review - new Disney stage...

Many years ago, reviewing pantomime for the first time, I recall looking around in the stalls. My brain was saying, “This is...

Alfred Brendel 1931-2025 - a personal tribute

Alfred Brendel’s death earlier this month came as a shock, but it wasn’t unexpected. His health had gradually deteriorated over the last year or...

Chicken Town review - sluggish rural comedy with few laughs...

Fans of the character comedian Graham Fellows will possibly turn up for this British film starring the man who created the punk parody...

Album: Lorde - Virgin

Lorde’s trajectory is continually fascinating. From the minimalist, sparse electropop of Pure Heroine to the similar but more grandiose...

Aldeburgh Festival, Weekend 2 review - nine premieres, three...

Actually it was a Thursday evening to Saturday experience, but what riches in seven concerts. The only Britten I heard was one of the S...

F1: The Movie review - Brad Pitt rolls back the years as mav...

As producer Jerry Bruckheimer cautioned a preview audience, “Remember, this is not a documentary. It’s a movie.” Bruckheimer teamed up with...

Bleak landscapes and banjos: composer Bernard Hughes discus...

Composer Bernard Hughes first met director Richard Bracewell when working on the film Bill, a 2015 Horrible Histories take on...