England
mark.kidel
On Sunday night, you can hear Martin Amis sound off about Englishness. An advance selection of extracts from the interview were published in the Radio Times on Tuesday. The reaction from the press was instantaneous: Amis is always good copy. The writer’s reflections – out of the context of the film, which none of the journalists appeared to have seen – excited a series of predictable responses, constrained by the ideological straightjacket of both right and left – and, no doubt, the patriotic sensitivities of this island nation. The surprising thing is that, although the film will be Read more ...
Adam Sweeting
Thirty years ago this month, the National Coal Board announced the closure of 20 pits that were deemed "uneconomic", a decision which would incur the loss of 20,000 jobs. Arthur Scargill, president of the National Union of Mineworkers, responded by calling a strike that would become the longest industrial dispute in British history. It was also probably the most bitter, as the recollections of the former miners and their wives assembled for this documentary painfully demonstrated.Even with its furry low-definition quality, the 1980s news footage of the striking miners and their clashes with Read more ...
Tim Cumming
Ealing Studios was known for comedy, but when it released Dead of Night in 1945, it unleashed on movie-goers the classic template of portmanteau horror for decades to come. The film comprises six tales – five supernatural stories and a framing narrative in which architect Walter Craig (Mervyn Jones) arrives at a country house, only to find he recognises not only the house and its rooms but everyone in it, as figures from half-remembered nightmares that slowly, inexorably come to life as each one embarks on a tale of the uncanny.This nightmarish, circular framing device is part of what gives Read more ...
Andy Plaice
In its infancy back in 1997, Jonathan Creek felt fresh and inventive, with clever little swipes at the entertainment industry and a new take on crime drama: not who or why, but more of a howdunnit. Its star Alan Davies, he of the duffel coat and the tumbling hair, was rather good at narrowing his eyes and staring into space while we let our hot chocolate go cold waiting to discover not only who carried out one of those incredibly theatrical murders, but to see its baffling mechanism unpicked.And now he’s back for series five, doing rather nicely in marketing and with his days as a deviser of Read more ...
edward.seckerson
Vasily Petrenko used his baton like a piratical rapier to galvanise the London Philharmonic violins in their flourishes of derring-do at the start of Berlioz’s Overture Le Corsaire. And the brilliance was in the quicksilver contrasts, the lightness and wit of inflection which lent a piquancy to the panache of this great concert opener. The arrival of the main theme - tantalisingly delayed - was almost balletic in its vivacity and even the final trumpet-led assault suggested a Byronic hero as French as he was feral. One of Petrenko’s great strengths as a conductor lies with the sharpness of Read more ...
David Nice
Showboys will be boys – gym-bunny sailors, in this instance – as well as sisters, cousins, aunts, captain’s daughters and bumboat women. We know the ropes by now for Sasha Regan’s all-male Gilbert and Sullivan: a loving attempt to recreate, she says, the innocence of musical theatre in same-sex schools (mine, for which I played Sir Joseph Porter with a supporting army or navy of recorders, two cellos and piano, was mixed).This time, the naval high jinks allow Regan to evoke a kind of Privates on Parade scenario, the show-without-the-show set below deck on a World War Two battleship – or so we Read more ...
Andy Plaice
Mothers and their sons provided the framework for the latest story involving DCI Alan Banks, the character on whom ITV is pinning its hopes to fill the vacancy of the nation’s favourite detective now that Frost and Morse are no more. Peter Robinson’s series of novels has been enjoyed for more than 25 years, selling millions in the UK and translated into more than 20 languages, but it took until 2010 to reach our television screens with Stephen Tompkinson in the starring role.In "Wednesday’s Child", based on his 1992 book and the first of six episodes in series three, the focus was on a rough Read more ...
Adam Sweeting
World War One overkill - if you'll pardon the expression - is a clear and present danger as the centenary commemorations gather pace, but this investigation of the roles of the interlinked royal families of Europe in the onrush of hostilities was as good a chunk of TV history as I can remember. Informative and detailed but always keeping an eye on the bigger picture, it made me, at any rate, start to think about the road to 1914 in a different light.The pivotal figure was Queen Victoria, whose influence we could see reaching far beyond the immense era named after her and onwards into the Read more ...
Adam Sweeting
They've had Ray Winstone all over Sky this Christmas, gamely plugging this new dramatisation of J Meade Falkner's rumbustious crowd-pleaser, Moonfleet. Ray's theme is that we urgently need more quality drama with broad appeal on TV and shouldn't keep relying on worn-out cliches about drug dealers and murderers. His character in Moonfleet, smuggler and pub landlord Elzevir Block, is from the hard-but-fair school, prepared to fight it out with the men from the Revenue but also capable of unbending loyalty and protective, fatherly feelings towards the orphaned John Trenchard.Winstone is the best Read more ...
Sebastian Scotney
A rare thing indeed. A British singer/pianist duo has had the patience, and also been given the opportunities over a number of years, to own and to inhabit a thoroughly individual and intelligent interpretation of Schubert's Winterreise.Tenor James Gilchrist and pianist Anna Tilbrook were in recital at Temple Church last night as part of the Temple Winter Festival, their performance also broadcast live on BBC Radio 3. They were at their best when giving a reminder of quite how much beauty, balance, subtlety and variety there is in the songs of Schubert's winter journey. Comparing last night's Read more ...
Andy Plaice
There’s a wonderful moment in Bruce Reynolds’s autobiography when he describes what became of his mate, a fellow train robber who had fled to Canada but was hunted down by the enigmatic Tommy Butler. Four and a half years after the Great Train Robbery in which crooks made off with £2.6million, Detective Chief Superintendent Butler had come to arrest Charlie Wilson and was knocking on his door."You look well, Charlie," said Butler. To which the fugitive replied: "And you, Guv. Cup of tea?" The detective was determined to find his man and, 50 years later, it’s a feeling shared by writer Chris Read more ...
Adam Sweeting
The disappearance of Lord “Lucky” Lucan in 1974 remains one of the most teasing enigmas of recent-ish history. Following the collapse of his marriage and a bitter battle with his wife Veronica for custody of their three children, the gambling addict Lucan is presumed to have battered the children’s nanny to death, attacked his wife, then fled the country by boat from Newhaven. Elvis-like sightings of the disgraced peer have poured in from around the world ever since.This TV version of the story (it concludes next week), adapted by Jeff Pope from John Pearson’s book The Gamblers, uses the Read more ...