Early on in Michael Samuels’ unremittingly sombre film about Winnie Mandela, the star-crossed heroine made the observation that being married to Nelson meant you were also married to “the struggle”, and would inevitably end up in Nelson’s shadow. So it proved. Even as she went to meet Nelson (David Harewood) as he was finally released after 27 years in jail, Winnie (Sophie Okonedo) was advised to learn from the example of Prince Philip and the way he walks dutifully one step behind the Queen.
tv reviews
gerard.gilbert
Are we British turning French, shrugging our shoulders at political sex scandals? Or did Major and Prescott finally made the idea of the pants-down MP seem so grotesquely mundane that we have had no option but to laugh and concentrate on their second homes instead? Either way, for a good old-fashioned sex scandal these days you need to travel to America, where politicians still espouse (a word, ironically, from the same Latin root as “spouse”) family values to fundamentalist voters.
Jasper Rees
Only Fools and Horses, whose last new episode was broadcast to the traditionally bloated Christmas audience in 2003, has enjoyed several kinds of afterlife. It lives on lexically, in the form of the Peckhamspeak inherited by its viewers – “cushty” and “luvly jubbly”, “plonker” and “dipstick”. It is also frequently exhumed in clips packages and on repeat channels. Then came the spin-off sitcom The Green Green Grass, a fifth series of which is said to be in the pipeline.
Adam Sweeting
Another day, another plot to destabilise the planet. Early scenes in the eighth series of 24 show us a mellow, semi-retired agent Jack Bauer (Kiefer Sutherland) playing grandad to his daughter Kim's child, and planning to return with them from New York to LA to re-establish his family ties. With his career in the Counter Terrorist Unit (CTU) behind him, Jack is thinking of taking up an offer of some private security work.
Veronica Lee
“New programme, new set, new city,” said Kirsty Wark by way of introduction to the BBC’s new flagship culture programme, The Review Show. It replaces Newsnight Review and goes out after the current affairs programme that spawned it, but now in its own discrete slot. The offspring has left London and moved to the BBC’s fabulous waterfront studios in Glasgow, has brightly coloured seats for its guests and even gets to stay up late: The Review Show lasts 45 minutes, as opposed to half an hour when it was part of Newsnight.
Adam Sweeting
I’ve never been quite sure whether Brian Eno is a musician, or somebody for whom music happens to be the end product of a chain of cognitive processes. Certainly it was music that powered him to prominence, either as the inventor of ambient music, a performer with Roxy Music, or as a collaborator with artists ranging from rock gods U2 and David Bowie to composers Harold Budd and Philip Glass.
Adam Sweeting
Born out of the spurious Radio 4 phone-in show Down The Line, created by Fast Show veterans Paul Whitehouse and Charlie Higson, Bellamy’s People takes bogus broadcaster Gary Bellamy out on the road and in front of the cameras to meet his public. On Radio 4 (before being unmasked as a spoof), Bellamy was bombarded with angry listeners decrying his sexism, racism and all-round witless stupidity.
gerard.gilbert
Monty Don’s Fork to Fork is probably my desert island gardening book, while Don’s weekly articles in the Observer magazine are still sorely missed years after they last appeared. He is a marvellous writer, poetic and evangelical - although I’ve never been as enamoured of him as a TV presenter. The same goes for Don’s friend, Nigel Slater, whom I prefer in print than on television. I find their authorial voices more beguiling than their broadcasting ones.
Jasper Rees
It started ten years ago with The Second World War in Colour, continued with The First World War in Colour and Britain at War in Colour. You didn’t half get the picture. In series after absorbing series, the foreign country that is the monochrome past came closer. Colour footage flushed some pink into its cheeks. Grey flowered into khaki. Now here comes another war effort. Shooting the War tells the story of 1939-1945 from the bottom up. In part one, entitled “Men”, Tommy and Jerry laid down their weapons to wield cine cameras at the elbow of history.
Adam Sweeting
Naturally it would be impossible to reach an objective verdict on what is the worst programme ever shown on television, but it is at least safe to say that Popstar To Operastar is determined not to get left behind in the race to the bottom. This could also be said of some of its contestants, whose unfamiliarity with the concept of "singing" seemed surprising in people who perform music for a living, albeit of the non-operatic kind.