tv reviews
Barney Harsent

The 1965 film The Heroes of Telemark, documenting the Allies' mission to stop the Nazis from going nuclear, is to historical accuracy what David Starkey is to tact. Or common decency. The Saboteurs however, a Norwegian/Danish/British TV co-production, seems to be keener to explore the truth behind the mission. Or at least as much of it as is known.

Marina Vaizey

The hook for Alan Yentob's portrait of the 86-year-old architect Frank Gehry was the initiation and progress of an enormous new building in a rough portside area of Sydney, the Dr Chau Chak Wing Building for the business school of the University of Technology. It opened after nearly two years of construction, on time and on budget, last autumn. To commission it, the dean of the school, Ron Green, simply rang Gehry up, and Gehry replied with just four words: "I’m up for it." 

Adam Sweeting

Last year's debut series of True Detective starred Matthew McConaughey and Woody Harrelson in a fascinating slice of metaphysical Southern Gothic. That's all gone now though, because this time, writer Nic Pizzolatto has shunted the action out to the West Coast, to a small fictional city in the shadow of Los Angeles called Vinci. Apparently Pizzolatto based it on real-life Vernon, California, a city infamous for its history of endemic corruption.

Jasper Rees

Drama is all about secrets revealed, discoveries unfurled. Black Work was straight into that territory from the first scene. A man and a woman sat in a car, taking the solace from each other that they couldn’t find at home. As ever in such a scenario, you promptly wondered if or when they’d be caught in the act. This was especially so given that the woman was played by Sheridan Smith, who starred in just such an adultery drama not that long ago.

Adam Sweeting

Verdi's La Traviata has become one of the best-loved and most-performed works in the operatic repertoire, but this is no thanks to sections of the English press.

Barney Harsent

Sunday afternoon at Glastonbury is an odd time. For some it means carrying on carrying on, trying to wring the very last drops out of the weekend and putting off the inevitable, stomach-churning lurch that will signal a nosedive into a colossal comedown. For others, it’s simply a day to be a bit more sensible: after all there’s a long drive tomorrow… Whichever, there seems to be a clamour for the familiar, something to cling to while you take the edge off with more booze or think about A-road alternatives to avoid congestion.

Jasper Rees

The young casualty of genius fires imaginations and fills coffers. Last year Dylan Thomas’s centenary was vastly celebrated. The Amy Winehouse industry is still shifting units. The spell cast by Sylvia Plath seems not to diminish. A Janis Joplin biopic project is staggering through the law courts. And then there are Jim Morrison, Kurt Cobain, Jimi Hendrix, old Uncle Tom Cobbleigh and all the sundry other singers and poets who, by accident or design, cut themselves down in their prime.

Adam Sweeting

New sci-fi series aren't exactly a dime a dozen on British TV, awash as it usually is with serial killers, cops and costume dramas, so the fact that Humans not only exists but is also bold and fresh-looking triggers instant brownie points. It doubtless helps that it's a collaboration between Channel 4 and America's AMC, home of Mad Men and The Walking Dead. It pitches us into a contemporary London which looks superficially unchanged, but has been rendered utterly alien by the new boom in synthetic humans, or "synths".

Marina Vaizey

This was the story of a remarkable man, Henry Cecil, a genius with horses and 10 times Champion Trainer. He was felled by tabloid scandal but rose again to train one of the greatest racehorses in history, Frankel. This wholly absorbing programme was not a tale of everyday folk, but of horse racing, told through its human and equine characters, looking into a rarefied bubble inhabited by some of the richest and most powerful people in the world – and the finest thoroughbreds of the animal variety.  

Barney Harsent

When TFI Friday first assaulted our screens (nearly) 20 years ago, things were very different. An untucked checked shirt passed for sartorial elegance, magazines sold in big numbers and, within their pages, women were routinely objectified, but ironically and in front of a paper-thin façade of equality.