tv
Television 2010: Looking AheadFriday, 25 December 2009
After every bubble comes a bust, and if I had shares in the reality television boom that came to define TV in the Noughties, I’d be on the phone to my broker right now. 2010 won’t be the first Big Brother-free year since the last century, because first we have some celebrities debasing themselves in January, and a last bunch of wannabes having their three months of Heat magazine cover stories over the summer, but the world-dominating Endemol juggernaut has had the good grace... Read more...
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My Job Directing CranfordFriday, 18 December 2009
When Cranford was first shown in 2007 on a Sunday night and then repeated the following weekend, those first two showings got over 10 million people watching each week. You obviously pay attention to that. And because the first series wasn’t a straight adaptation of a finished book but based on a set of short stories by... Read more... |
Interview: Anne-Marie Duff plays Margot FonteynFriday, 27 November 2009
Anne-Marie Duff doesn't really resemble Margot Fonteyn. Blonde, fresh-faced and blue-eyed, she has nothing of the exotic, olive, Latin complexion that Fonteyn inherited from her Brazilian grandfather. And she never learned ballet, even if, with her long, lean frame and elegant swan neck, she looks more like a dancer than the rather more compact Peggy Hookham of Reigate (as Fonteyn started out in life). Read more... |
Cast Offs: a comedy drama about disabilityFriday, 20 November 2009
Channel 4 put six disabled people on a desert island for three months to see if they can fend for themselves. That’s the startling premise of Cast Offs - a new drama co-written by Alex Bulmer, Tony Roche and Jack Thorne. Does team writing really work? And can you get laughs out of such sensitive material. theartsdesk invited the three writers to interview one another. Read more... |
United Kingdom! Radical TV Drama, BFI SouthbankTuesday, 03 November 2009
Nostalgists often hark back to a “golden age” of TV drama, referring to the likes of ITV’s Brideshead Revisited, or the BBC’s I Claudius or The Forsyte Saga. This week on the South Bank, the BFI launches a season which examines a lost age of a different kind, that of the radical TV dramatists who scorched across British screens from the mid-Sixties, through the Seventies and the Margaret Thatcher era, and finally into the ambiguous world of New Labour. |
Into the Storm: creating ChurchillMonday, 02 November 2009
A few years ago he was voted the greatest Briton in a national television poll. Among his many books is A History of the English-Speaking Peoples. He went to Harrow, for goodness’ sake. And he is always played by English actors. Always. You name them: Robert Hardy, Simon Ward, Julian Fellowes, Albert Finney. So where, of all the unlikely places, did they look for an actor to follow in those footsteps for a new BBC/HBO drama depicting Churchill’s leadership in the Second World War?... Read more... |
Julia McKenzie's MarpleSaturday, 12 September 2009
Miss Marple is frequently described as “a little old lady”, but for all that she casts a giant shadow. Just ask any new actress invited to portray this most beloved of characters. When you play the spinster sleuth, you have massive shoes to fill. That has certainly been Julia McKenzie’s experience.
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Julia McKenzie's Miss MarpleSaturday, 12 September 2009
Miss Marple is frequently described as “a little old lady”, but for all that she casts a giant shadow. Just ask any new actress invited to portray this most beloved of characters. When you play the spinster sleuth, you have massive shoes to fill. That has certainly been Julia McKenzie’s experience Read more... |
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