tue 19/03/2024

reality TV

Extract: TV by Susan Bordo

"Television and I grew up together." As a baby boomer born in 1947, Susan Bordo is roughly the same age as our beloved gogglebox, which began life as a broad box with a ten-inch screen, chunky and clunky and encased in wood. With the rapid changes...

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theartsdesk Q&A: Sally Anne Gross and Dr George Musgrave, authors of 'Can Music Make You Sick?'

Today is World Mental Health Day and of course that means an awful lot of hugs and homilies, thoughts and prayers, deep-breathing exercises and it’s-good-to-talk platitudes from people speaking from positions of immense privilege – ranging from the...

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A Country Life for Half the Price, Channel 5 review - Essex couple Sam and Lucy become rural entrepreneurs

The “relocation in search of a new life” theme has become a dependable TV staple, from A New Life in the Sun to Relocation, Relocation and Ben Fogle’s New Lives in the Wild, but this Channel 5 series by Kate Humble has been more entertaining than...

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The Trip to Greece, Series Finale, Sky 1 review - bittersweet swansong for the cantankerous comrades

Could this mock-mythic journey, emulating the trek homewards to Ithaca of Homer’s hero Odysseus, really be the final series of The Trip (Sky 1)? Or will Steve Coogan and Rob Brydon see sense, and realise that they’ll never have as many free lunches...

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Five Guys a Week, Channel 4 review - lemming-like contestants make spectacles of themselves

Channel 4 loves to walk the line between the compulsive and the repulsive, and this new dating show, complete with fake-salacious title, is a peerless specimen. The set-up is simple – one woman asks five guys who are “looking for love” to move in...

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Denis and Katya, Music Theatre Wales / Uproar, Rafferty review - disturbing the untroubled monotony of South Wales music

Once upon a time writing an opera was first and foremost a question of choosing a good story. But times move on, and today – as Nicholas Till reminds us in a fascinating programme note for Philip Venables’s and Ted Huffman’s new chamber opera – the...

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theartsdesk Q&A: Director Sir Jonathan Miller

Doctor, writer, sculptor, curator, comedian, presenter and director, Sir Jonathan Miller (1934-2019) was one of the mighty cultural and intellectual omnivores of our age. To those of a musical or theatrical bent, however, Miller was above all one of...

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Ant Middleton and Liam Payne: Straight Talking, Sky 1 review - when the commando met the pop star

“What is wrong with us? What are we doing here?” Liam Payne asked the camera, as we neared the end of his jaunt round picturesque Namibia with his quizmaster Ant Middleton. The short answer would be “it’s for the publicity, you idiot,” but of course...

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The Great British Bake Off, Series 10 finale, Channel 4 review - bittersweet end to a divisive series

And that’s a wrap: last night concluded 10 years of The Great British Bake Off. This show is the nation’s TV equivalent of comfort food. In the past, it has stuck to a well-worn recipe — the result was fun to fight over but easy to love.This series...

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The British Tribe Next Door, Channel 4 review - risible culture-clash farrago

What’s the most ridiculous programme that Channel 4 has ever made? Sex Box? The Execution of Gary Glitter? Extreme Celebrity Detox? Whatever, The British Tribe Next Door is up there vying for supremacy.The Moffatt family, from Bishop Auckland, have...

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CD: James Arthur - You

It’s an easy joke to suggest that James Arthur needs an editor. By this point, the 31-year-old singer is almost as famous for his lyrical mis-steps and ill-advised use of Twitter as his 2012 The X Factor victory. You, his third album, seems to have...

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The Great British Bake Off, Episode 7, Channel 4 review - bakers hampered by pointless celebrities

What’s extraordinary about Bake Off is not just the staggering complexity of the cooking challenges, but the amount of technical shenanigans that go into turning it into a finished programme (actually, spoiler-averse Channel 4 had teasingly left the...

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