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Her Majesty's Prison: Aylesbury, ITV

Jasper Rees Tuesday, 19 February 2013

Television is a regular prison visitor. You can’t keep Louis Theroux out of the grimmest Stateside penitentiaries, the drama departments drop in now and then for a stretch inside – most recently in Prisoner’s Wives. And then there’s ITV. A couple of years ago it reported from Wormwood Scrubs to find out how the prison system was coping in Brown’s Britain. It wasn’t the prettiest sight.

Comment

Complicit, Channel 4

Adam Sweeting Monday, 18 February 2013

It was the moment when we learned that Sergeant Nick Brody really had been converted into an Islamist agent that the spring went out of Homeland's step. Complicit doesn't make the same mistake. Skilfully spun out over its movie-length span, it's a probing examination of the ambiguities and uncertainties that bedevil intelligence work. It won't make you sleep any easier at night.

Vegas, Sky Atlantic

Adam Sweeting Friday, 15 February 2013

Not a bad idea for a series, even if it is a tiny bit Boardwalk Empire Goes to Nevada. In short: whoosh back to the early Sixties and poke about in the wild and lawless underbelly of Las Vegas, a city awash with debauchery and corruption and under the thumb of the Mob. Better still, the show was created by Nicholas Pilleggi, screenwriter for Martin Scorsese's gangster flicks Goodfellas and Casino.

The Sound and the Fury, BBC Four

Peter Culshaw Tuesday, 12 February 2013

As Julian Lloyd Webber combatively suggests of certain strands of 20^th-century music: “Let’s make a noise no one likes.

Black Mirror, Series Two, Channel 4

Jasper Rees Tuesday, 12 February 2013

Is Charlie Brooker a bit of a soppy old traditionalist at heart? In Black Mirror, our tuned-in, switched-on, networked-up society sits for its portrait. It’s never a pretty sight. Brooker’s vision of the near future, or the alternative present, is Swiftian in its modest savagery. There was a surprise in last night’s second-series opener - with Brooker, there always is – and on this occasion it was to do with the nature of the comedy. There wasn't any.

Lewis, The Final Episode, ITV

Adam Sweeting Tuesday, 12 February 2013

I wonder if ITV ever imagined this Inspector Morse spin-off would last seven series? The opening pair of episodes in this valedictory season of Lewis still clocked over eight million viewers, though the numbers have subsided a bit since. Future one-off specials have not been ruled out.

Comment

Spiral: State of Terror, Series 4, BBC Four

Kieron Tyler Sunday, 10 February 2013

A lot has happened since uncompromising French cop drama Spiral was last on our TV screens in May 2011. More of continental Europe has arrived. Attention has shifted northwards to Denmark for The Killing and Borgen. Sweden’s Wallander and Sebastian Bergman were never far. The Bridge closed the gap between both countries.

When Albums Ruled the World, BBC Four

Adam Sweeting Saturday, 09 February 2013

The BBC has suddenly noticed that there used to be these really brilliant things called "albums", and now they're going out of style and out of date. Hence they're holding an Albums Season in all media (Danny Baker's Great Album Showdown, Steve Wright's Album Factoids, Johnny Walker's Long Players and many, many more).

Nashville, More4

Lisa-Marie Ferla Friday, 08 February 2013

Usually that “similarity to persons living or dead is purely coincidental” note at the end of a broadcast is a mere formality - but I can’t have been the only person to react with a start when a trio of shady record company execs referred to Juliette Barnes, Hayden Panettiere’s perky blonde future of country music, as “the number one crossover artist in the country”.

Dancing on the Edge, BBC Two

Jasper Rees Tuesday, 05 February 2013

There is a sequence – quite a long sequence – in the first episode of Dancing on the Edge in which the main characters are all guests on a train. The passengers are curious to know their destination, only it turns out there isn’t one. This is a pleasure trip with no particular place to go. An hour and a half into Stephen Poliakoff’s latest portrait of English manners and mores, boy do you know how they feel.