ITV
Adam Sweeting
Fantastic! A new drama series in which the hero isn't a detective. Instead, William Travers (James Purefoy) is a criminal barrister who (after some sort of traumatic, nervous-breakdown-provoking experience we don't know much about yet) has moved from the pressure cooker of the London legal industry to the ostensibly more laid-back environs of Ipswich. He used to specialise in murder cases, but now he swears he's given them up.Purefoy makes rather a good barrister. He radiates middle-class solidity and a sense that he really would like to do the right thing by his clients, while commanding the Read more ...
howard.male
We all enjoy the moment when the detective loses his rag and lunges across the desk to grab the suspect by the lapels, but such scenes are in short supply in this new female crime-fighters series. Instead, the interrogative approach of “the new Cagney & Lacey” as it’s been called, is more slowly, slowly catchy monkey, but that doesn’t make it any less satisfying. Scott & Bailey was co-created by former detective inspector Diane Taylor, which is presumably why it seems to provide a more grounded, realistic look at the world of the Manchester murder squad.But whereas realism in the Read more ...
graeme.thomson
David Frost and Richard Nixon. Melvyn Bragg and Dennis Potter. Parky and Ali. The list of seminal TV interviews is a relatively short one, and it's not about to get any longer. Alan Titchmarsh’s hopelessly mismatched bout with Prince Philip saw the Queen’s "liege man of life and limb" endure not so much a meaty grilling as an obsequious basting in Titchmarsh’s uniquely bland brand of conversational oil.The royals are enjoying a distinct upswing at the moment, what with Wills and Kate's nuptials and last week’s trip to Ireland. On 10 June, Prince Philip of Greece and Denmark (“Philippos – Read more ...
Adam Sweeting
Crikey, no gongs whatsoever for ITV1's Downton Abbey, but you can't grumble about Sherlock lifting the Best Drama Series award at last night's Baftas. Steven Moffat and Mark Gatiss's ingenious update of Conan Doyle for BBC One was one of 2010's telly highlights, and you might have thought it would have earned the Leading Actor award for Benedict Cumberbatch. But no, that one went not to Cumberbatch, nor to Matt Smith for Doctor Who (BBC One) nor Jim Broadbent for Any Human Heart (Channel 4), but to Daniel Rigby (pictured below) for his portrayal of Eric Morecambe in BBC Two's Eric and Ernie. Read more ...
Adam Sweeting
America has been very good to Hugh Laurie. His starring role as Dr Gregory House has shot him to the top of the earnings tree in US television, while comprehensively demolishing existing preconceptions of him as the blissfully idiotic Bertie Wooster, or the half-witted Prince Regent in Blackadder the Third. You might even say that with House, Laurie finally got the chance to play Blackadder.It's a mutual transatlantic love affair, and Laurie's triumph as the manipulative medic has given him a platform from which to record an album of his adored blues and New Orleans music, Let Them Talk. In Read more ...
Adam Sweeting
The story of the Pitmen Painters, a group of Northumbrian miners who decided to study art appreciation in their spare time and developed into a group of untrained but powerfully expressive artists, has been documented in a book by William Feaver and a play by Lee Hall. Robson Green's particular interest in the story stems from the fact that he's a miner's son, brought up in Dudley, a few miles south of the pitmen's hometown of Ashington.Green may be a successful actor, but he's no art critic - "I would actually think, why is he showing us this?" he said, confronted with a slide of Read more ...
Adam Sweeting
ITV1 really, really loves that succulent two-hour slot in the middle of Sunday evening, and anything that goes in there has the legacy of Morse, Lewis, Frost, Miss Marple et al to live up to. The latest cunning plan for Detective Sunday is to recruit the rather excellent Brenda Blethyn to play DCI Vera Stanhope in adaptations of Ann Cleeves's novels, set in the author's native North-East.In fact, with the lineage of TV detectives now long enough to stretch to the moon and back several times, choice of location is becoming critical as a means of telling them apart. Vera is well served by its Read more ...
Adam Sweeting
The flying Twitter fragments said more about The Wedding than the battalions of experts, "palace insiders", historians and friends ever could (couldn't somebody have put a bag over Simon "infinite loop" Schama's head and had him bundled away from the BBC studio in the boot of a car?) Everybody seemed to adore Kate's dress. Some suggested that princesses Eugenie and Beatrice were in drag. "The Royal Family is BACK", tweeted Piers Morgan. "#proudtobeenglish" added former England cricket captain Michael Vaughan. "Harry's thinking, how did I not end up in a carriage with Pippa Middleton?" Read more ...
howard.male
I made the mistake of catching up with the darkly sumptuous The Crimson Petal and the White just before knuckling down to review this new two-part drama, and it was like moving from fine vintage wine to warm supermarket-brand lager. To begin with, I couldn’t dissociate Ashley Jensen from her perky but dim character in Extras, so the moment she found herself confronted with a game-show-from-hell scenario of committing a murder in return for five million quid, I expected Ricky Gervais to pop up in the next scene, giving her wisecrack-littered advice on what to do next.But unfortunately she was Read more ...
Graham Fuller
Seven works are collected on this sampler of the formidably prolific Plater’s television writing - a soupçon from a broth that is rich, flavoursome, and usually satisfying. Though omitting anything from The Stars Look Down, The Good Companions, Get Lost! and Selwyn Froggitt, among other series he wrote for ITV, the set fully demonstrates Plater’s affinity for the common man, his sensitive approach to the class struggle, and his taste for cryptic humour.
A Jarrow-born Humbersider, Plater (1935-2010) is considered a Northern dramatist, but the earliest play contained here, Brotherly Love Read more ...
Adam Sweeting
So Monroe reached the end of series one, and I still couldn't read what its tone was supposed to be. Some artsdesk readers have expressed enthusiasm for the theme tune, but I find its jogging Celtic jauntiness symptomatic of Monroe's wider problems. Obviously you can't expect too much from a bit of title music, but surely it should give you a clue as to whether the show is a hard-hitting drama about life and death or a sitcom?Quips and badinage abound when Monroe (James Nesbitt) and his team are in action, and staff and patients alike are lucky to survive the barrage of one-liners Read more ...
theartsdesk
There is an intriguing heresy planted several paragraphs down in Adam’s review of Lewis, which resumed last night on ITV. “It’s the relationship between Lewis and Hathaway that makes the thing worth watching. In fact, it sometimes seems more interesting than the slightly ponderous master-and-servant routine Lewis used to go through with Morse.”
Can this really be so? Or maybe Adam has given voice to a suspicion millions of viewers have secretly nursed for a while. What do you think? On our Facebook page we have posted a question: “Is the partnership between Lewis and Hathaway actually more Read more ...