TV
Kieron Tyler
Steve Buscemi says he’s “from the country of Brooklyn”. In the wake of Boardwalk Empire he could have said the empire of Brooklyn. Although the family history disinterred was genuinely strange, this first entry in the new series of Who Do You Think You Are? USA was no emotional roller coaster, mostly because of Buscemi’s low-key affability.At times, he looked surprised to be the subject of the programme. Yeah, he’s the cadaverous, snaggle-toothed, weasel-faced Buscemi we love. But look at those dark-rimmed eyes. Bush baby big, they’re made for surprise. He was taken aback by what the Read more ...
fisun.guner
For dull reasons to do with a dodgy digital box and a very old analogue telly, I can’t tune in to BBC Four during live transmissions, so I either catch up on iPlayer, or (lucky me as a journalist) get to see programmes early. But I’m very glad I can get it at all, for when the BBC cuts come to pass and its premier arts channel starts broadcasting archive-only material, as it proposes to do, then I think I might just stop watching telly altogether.This is because everything, but everything, that the BBC stands for is encapsulated by BBC Four’s original programming. And in the visual arts it Read more ...
Thomas H. Green
So Fresh Meat approaches the conclusion of season one and, against my expectations, I’ve become a devoted fan. When it was announced that Peep Show creators Jesse Armstrong and Sam Bain were launching a new sitcom, based around a Manchester student household, it sounded promising; perhaps a postmodern update on The Young Ones was in the offing. Peep Show fans were expecting a riot of sordid humour and cruel jokes of embarrassment. We had those in spades. What we weren’t expecting were such wonderfully written and acted character studies.You grew to really care about perky try-too-hard Welsh Read more ...
Jasper Rees
Garrow’s Law, which returned last night for a third series, would seem to be entirely about the foreign country that is Georgian England. One of its progenitors is Tony Marchant who, give or take the odd adaptation of Dickens or Dostoevsky, has spent his packed writing life in the modern day. But they don’t seem to make his kind of searing contemporary drama any more, the type that hunts for the root cause of moral failure in individuals and society. So in order to hold a mirror up to his audience, he has turned to the 1700s. Profitably.The shrewdness of Garrow’s Law is that it has a foot in Read more ...
josh.spero
Coming as it did over this Armistice weekend, when the soldiers who have died for us are foremost in our thoughts, last night's Art for Heroes: A Culture Show Special was a salutary reminder that soldier-victims are not just those who are killed or sustain terrible physical injuries but also those with psychological wounds which can't be stitched together. It went beyond, however, an exploration of Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder into how art therapy is helping some of these veterans process and express and salve their aggression and anxiety.The programme began with footage from a century of Read more ...
Veronica Lee
Those of us who regarded The Office as a work of comic genius (not a word I use lightly) will, I'm afraid, take some convincing about Stephen Merchant and Ricky Gervais's latest offering. Keen fans who have followed the duo's every move since that landmark sitcom will feel they know every last trope on display in Life's Too Short, from its mockumentary setting and unPC subject matter to dark comedy and celebrity guest spots.All those and more are present in the spoof documentary written and directed by Merchant and Gervais, in which they also appear. It's about Warwick Davis (played by Read more ...
Adam Sweeting
Marking Pearl Jam's two decades together, long-time fan and ex-Rolling Stone writer Cameron Crowe has assembled the two-hour documentary Pearl Jam Twenty, due for an airing on BBC Four this Friday (11 November). It's a project which he's had in mind for years, and the effort which has gone into it is obvious from the amazing range and variety of footage, most of it previously unseen. Every phase of the band's career, and even pre-career, is covered, going back to their roots in mid-Eighties Seattle before anybody had heard of "grunge".There's fascinating material capturing the brilliant but Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
“It’s very deep, very private and full of love,” said Art Garfunkel of his relationship with Paul Simon. So private that for this examination of their swansong 1970 album Bridge Over Troubled Water the pair were interviewed apart, despite both being credited as executive producers. Whatever the nature of the love, 40-plus years on, bridges weren’t being built.Paul Simon didn’t seem too enthusiastic about revisiting his past. One of the few times a smile flashed across his face was when he recalled the journey he used to make to buy records by The Everly Brothers. Discussing the Read more ...
Adam Sweeting
In TV's seasonal rush of Spooks, Downton etc, we must also hail the sterling (if gruesome) work going on at the FX channel. Alongside series two of The Walking Dead, they've thrown in the additional delights of gory French cop thriller Braquo and, last night, we saw the debut of the weird and scary American Horror Story.You'll like Braquo if you were enamoured of stuff like Training Day or The Shield, while it's less multilayered but even more visceral than Spiral (or Engrenages), its stable mate at French network Canal+. It's about a thuggish squad of Paris-based detectives who live in their Read more ...
Jasper Rees
Apart from voting, there is only one duty the United Kingdom asks of its residents: if, or less likely when, it comes, to answer the summons to sit and listen to evidence in a criminal court and, with 11 other randomly selected individuals, reach a collective decision about the guilt or innocence of the accused. Trial by jury is rightly held to be one of the more unimpeachable achievements of civilised society.The jurors being emblematically the nice guys in this national success story, they are also the colourless guys. Which is why legal dramas – and there have been perhaps a dozen of them Read more ...
Adam Sweeting
And so the eventful second series surged to a close with a bumper 90-minute edition - or at least it was in a 90-minute slot, generously padded with the commercials battling to scramble aboard the great ship Downton - and we were still left dangling in Mary and Matthew's will-they-won't-they neverland. The show's resemblance to a gargantuan soap which has been telescoped into a handful of Greatest Hits episodes was never greater.Mary is supposed to be marrying the hard and cynical newspaper tycoon Sir Richard Carlisle (a dish served cold by Iain Glen, [pictured below]), who has charmingly Read more ...
Jasper Rees
A few years ago something curious happened to Tom Hollander. He grew up. As a brilliant young actor he won the Sunday Times Ian Charleson Award for a series of stage performances whose governing tone was mercurial energy. But as he moved into film, the sense was of an actor who was more eager to be noticed than believed. In the past few years, however, he has found a vulnerable side, as a hapless government minister in In The Loop and most recently as a minister of the church, the Reverend Adam Smallbone. This week sees Rev’s second coming.A thoroughly engaging sitcom, it stars Hollander as Read more ...