Reviews
theartsdesk
While the Academy Awards is still searching for a host, theartsdesk's relatively controversy-free 2018 means we're ready for our end of year tributes. Superhero saturation reached breaking point, with Warner's Aquaman, Fox's Deadpool 2 and Sony's Venom all desperately trying to keep up with Disney's three(!) Marvel releases (and that's not including several animated releases). It might feel like this cinematic war will last for infinity, but away from the multiplexes were some of the most affecting and gorgeous films in recent memory. Here our team picks their highlights from both blockbuster Read more ...
Veronica Lee
The highlight of 2018 for me was the return of two mighty sets of talents – Flight of the Conchords and The League of Gentlemen – and it was heartwarming to see that they had lost none of their sharpness, wit or love of performing in front of a live audience. In stand-up, while a lot of established comics were again producing the goods, one newcomer, a young Irishwoman, stood out. We lost some comedy legends this year, too – Ken Dodd, Barry Elliott of the Chuckle Brothers and Jim Bowen, who had all had a career resurgence as a new generation had discovered their work, are now, to borrow Dodd' Read more ...
theartsdesk
Bruce Springsteen once sang about there being "57 channels and nothin' on". Those were the days. Now we have so much to watch (including Netflix's Springsteen on Broadway) that all the world's remaining elephants couldn't remember them all.But stress not. Theartsdesk's critics have bent themselve to the herculean task of sifting the annals of 2018 to find the most nutritious nuggets and the most noxious no-hopers. Among these, you may even find the odd specimen of that supposedly defunct species, the "appointment to view" programme. Oddly, despite what the media gurus like to tell us, viewers Read more ...
Jasper Rees
Sarah Phelps’s annual reboot of a canonical murder mystery by Agatha Christie has rapidly established itself as a Christmas staple of TV drama. And Then There Were None, The Witness for the Prosecution and Ordeal by Innocence (which was postponed to Easter) are now followed by The ABC Murders (BBC One), which feels like the biggest creative challenge Phelps has yet faced in her rebranding project. Previously she has skirted clear of Christie’s iconic detectives but could not dodge them indefinitely. Here she has taken on the task of stripping the fussy layers of gloss off the overpainted Read more ...
Veronica Lee
After the heart-breaking ending to the third series earlier this year, which covered the death of William Shakespeare's young son, Hamnet, it was back to the comedy for this seasonal special. But there was no jarring handbrake turn for writer Ben Elton who, like his hero the Bard, has form in melding tragedy and comedy to great effect. Rather he used that storyline to make a narratively sound segue from loss to laughter; in A Crow Christmas Carol the Shakespeares, feeling unable to celebrate the season at their home in Stratford-upon-Avon, decide to spend the holiday at Will's lodgings Read more ...
Adam Sweeting
When Jayne Torvill and Christopher Dean won their ice skating gold medal at the Sarajevo Winter Olympics in 1984, notching up an all-time record score which included 12 perfect sixes, it looked like a real-life fairytale. The Nottingham-born duo had dragged themselves up from their working-class origins and day jobs – Torvill in an insurance office and Dean in the police force – and seared themselves into history and a delirious nation’s affections with their innovative dance to Ravel’s Boléro.Happily, this biographical film (it admitted that it was “a fictionalised account of true events”) Read more ...
Sebastian Scotney
In 2017, the BBC Wales team with director Rhodri Huw filmed a Christmas show in the old 1888 Coal Exchange in Cardiff, now a hotel. Tom Jones and Beverley Knight’s Gospel Christmas was an exciting and upbeat show, which ended in an electrifying “Born in Bethlehem”. Knight was jumping around as if she’d had springs fitted, the radio mic on her back somehow staying attached to her.This year, they returned to the same building and went jazz with Merry Christmas Baby - with Gregory Porter & Friends. Instead of the hwyl and the energy, this year’s Welsh seasoning, liberally applied, was Read more ...
Adam Sweeting
Fired by the spirit of the MR James ghost stories which used to be a Christmas staple on the BBC, Mark Gatiss conceived this amusing bonne bouche as both a seasonal chiller and a nod to the ghost of broadcasting past. In passing, he also managed to shoehorn in a survey of changes in social and sexual mores which have occurred over the last 40 years.His vehicle for this was the venerable thespian Aubrey Judd, host of the long-running radio show The Dead Room when he's not picking up TV bit-parts as "dementia man 2". As he described it himself, in his fulsome and fruity and r-rolling baritone Read more ...
David Nice
If you're seeking ideas for new playlists and diverse suggestions for reading - and when better to look than at this time of year? - then beware: you may be overwhelmed by the infectious enthusiasms of Ed Vulliamy, hyper-journalist, witness-bearer, true Mensch and member of the first band to spit in public (as far as he can tell). Anyone who in a single paragraph can convincingly yoke together Thomas Mann's Adrian Leverkühn, the blues of both Robert Johnson and Blind Willie Johnson, and Bob Marley is clearly a seer as well as an eclectic true original. Elsewhere, Dylan is connected to Dvořák Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
“…all four [Beatles] worked tirelessly together in the studio, they carved out a sound and a ‘feel’ for each song. On the many tapes that have been carefully preserved from the sessions there is extraordinary inspiration – mixed with plenty of love and laughter. Admittedly, The Beatles incessant work ethic wore down the studio staff. Balance engineer Geoff Emerick left the project after recording nine songs…”Giles Martin’s introduction to the book included with the Super Deluxe Edition box set reissue of The Beatles Anniversary Edition – the untitled double album dubbed ‘The White Album Read more ...
Adam Sweeting
The author of the original Watership Down novel, Richard Adams, used to insist that it was “just a story about rabbits”, but its eco-friendly theme and warnings about the destruction of the natural environment were impossible to miss. In the 46 years since Adams wrote it, these concerns have become vastly more pressing, and his depiction of displaced rabbits wandering the earth in search of a new home could hardly be more topical. Thus, this new BBC/Netflix adaptation is aptly timed.The 1978 film version, voiced by the likes of John Hurt, Richard Briers and Ralph Richardson, was a giant hit Read more ...
Boyd Tonkin
In the recital world, so it sometimes seems, no good deed ever goes unpunished. Like Ian Bostridge (another singer who tries to reinvigorate an often rigid format), Alice Coote often has to fend off brickbats whenever she inject the drama of new ideas into the hallowed rituals of the concert hall. In comparison with her bolder experiments, the “songs of life, loss and love” she performed with pianist Christian Blackshaw at the Wigmore Hall looked at first glance like a fairly conventional – if not especially cheerful – package of pre-Christmas treats.Starting with Brahms’s late Four Serious Read more ...