Netflix
Owen Richards
It sometimes feels like an age between Stranger Things seasons. Blame Netflix. The binge-watching trend that it helped solidify means that most people consume all eight hours of content in a single weekend. It comes and goes in a flash. But don’t let that fool you into thinking it’s a disposable snack, the TV equivalent of those famous Eggo pancakes. Stranger Things 3 is blockbuster television, full of the laughs, jumps and exaggerated nostalgia that made it such a hit in 2016.After a mixed-bag second season, creators The Duffer Brothers have returned to their winning formula. Gone are the Read more ...
Tim Cumming
As Martin Scorsese’s new feature film, Rolling Thunder Revue: A Bob Dylan Story, hits Netflix and cinemas, and a new 14 CD boxed set enters the official Bootleg Series, theartsdesk talks exclusively to Scarlet Rivera, the violinist on Desire and the Rolling Thunder Revue tours of 1975 and 1976, about her experiences of encountering, recording and touring with Dylan.I wrote to Scarlet Rivera via her website, expecting only the outside chance of a reply, because few who have worked and spent time with Dylan tend to open up about their experiences in public. I stressed my interest in the Read more ...
Jasper Rees
It helps to be of a certain vintage to appreciate the first impact of Tales of the City. Armistead Maupin’s column, begun in the San Francisco Chronicle in 1978 as a frank and joyous portrayal of gay culture, became a series of half a dozen cult novels. These started appearing in the UK from the mid-1980s. It was a British broadcaster, Channel 4, which began the project of adapting them as dramas in 1993, joined for the second series by Showtime who did the third on their own in 2001.The next three novels, which culminated in the departure from San Francisco of its female protagonist Mary Ann Read more ...
Adam Sweeting
Flying boldly against the #MeToo grain, Triple Frontier is a rather old-fashioned story of male buddyhood and the disappointments of encroaching middle age. The protagonists are five Special Forces veterans, brought together by private security specialist Santiago Garcia (Oscar Isaac) to raid the jungle lair of a South American drug warlord. Strangely, things don’t go according to plan.An underlying theme of the piece is the bum deal that military vets get when their service years are over. “They take your best 20 years and then they spit you out,” grunts Tom “Redfly” Davis (Ben Affleck), Read more ...
Jasper Rees
The limitless goodwill generated by The Office earned Ricky Gervais the right to do and say as he pleased. Thus, hosting the Golden Globes, he was toweringly rude to Hollywood royalty. In Extras he gleefully portrayed celebrities as vain and ghastly. In The Invention of Lying he explored the logical consequence of a world in which people say what they really think. Add to that the brisk frankness of his stand-up shows, in which he insulted the religious and derided the overweight. Speaking the truth was his self-styled superpower.His misanthropy arrives at a logical terminus in After Life ( Read more ...
Adam Sweeting
Read theartsdesk review of Call My Agent!, Series 4Apparently it took some time before the cream of the French acting profession could be persuaded to take part in a TV drama that shed a sardonic light on the relationship between actors and their agents – or maybe it was their agents who harboured reservations – but once the ball started rolling there was no stopping them. Some of the guest stars in Call My Agent won’t be too familiar to non-French viewers, but in the first two series we saw Nathalie Baye and her daughter Laura Smet, Audrey Fleurot (of Spiral fame), 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 ...
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 ...
Adam Sweeting
Destiny is all. The first two series of The Last Kingdom debuted on BBC Two, but for series three it has been fully embraced by Netflix. Global domination surely looms, since these latest exploits of Uhtred, the warrior who was born a Saxon but raised by Vikings, find the show hitting new peaks of throat-slitting, skull-crushing action and intense personal drama.Mostly penned by lead writer Stephen Butchard from Bernard Cornwell’s Saxon Stories, the action again takes us to a bleak and chilled ninth-century England (it’s shot in Hungary). It’s a land of mud, snow and woodland seemingly in the Read more ...
Owen Richards
It’s an event that only comes around once a generation: a new Matt Groening TV series. The Simpsons is rightly regarded as one of the greatest shows ever made. It changed the face of American television, and 10 years later was followed Futurama, a series that may lack the cross-demographic appeal of its predecessor, but consistently produced satirical masterpieces. Now, with a vastly changed viewing landscape, Groening makes the jump to streaming giants Netflix with his new show Disenchantment. The question is, can lightning strike thrice?On first appearances, probably not. Disenchantment is Read more ...
Adam Sweeting
Mild controversy hovers over the new film by Alex Garland, the novelist-turned-screenwriter-turned-director. Garland’s 2015 directing debut, Ex Machina, was a slow-burning hit which found favour with critics and film festival juries. This follow-up, then, should have been Garland’s giant bound into the big (or at least bigger) time, but instead, after a disappointing theatrical debut in the States, it’s now bypassing cinemas and streaming on Netflix for the rest of the world.However, dark rumours of a science fiction masterpiece cruelly abused by a timorous Paramount Studios, who apparently Read more ...
Owen Richards
There’s a storm heading to La Belle, the small forgotten town in the heart of the American West. As black clouds flash above the prairie, the injured body of Roy Goode (Jack O’Connell) falls at the door of widowed rancher Alice Fletcher (Michelle Dockery). After adding one more wound to his collection, she takes in the stranger and helps him heal. Alice isn’t the only widow; everyone in town carries the weight of loss. Sheriff McNue is one of the only men not killed in a mining accident, but he passes like a ghost through the town, mourning his wife and failing sight. With news that Read more ...