TV drama
The Good Fight review - 'flawless writing and acting'Friday, 28 April 2017
If Robert King and Michelle King, creators of The Good Wife, took the Joss Whedon line on sequels – “They are inevitably awful” – then we would not have The Good Fight (More4) gracing our screens. But, thankfully, this sequel (actually, more a spin-... Read more... |
Little Boy Blue review – 'the sum of all fears'Tuesday, 25 April 2017
Turning the real-life murder of an 11-year-old boy into a four-part TV drama carries obvious risks (might it be exploitative, sick or in bad taste, for instance?), but judging by this opening episode of Little Boy Blue (ITV), screenwriter Jeff... Read more... |
Broadchurch review - the final reckoningTuesday, 18 April 2017
“Take your pick. Who shall we talk to first?” DI Alec Hardy (David Tennant) and DS Miller (Olivia Colman) had their three prime suspects waiting for them in custody. The fact that none of them proved to be the guilty party was what was wrong not... Read more... |
Homeland review - 'worryingly prescient'Monday, 17 April 2017
It was a long time coming, but Homeland’s sixth series at last awoke from its early-season slumbers to put on a late surge over the closing episodes. For a while, it had seemed that the story was barely advancing at all, as the screen was self-... Read more... |
Maigret's Night at the Crossroads review - 'more straight faces from Rowan Atkinson'Monday, 17 April 2017
We’re three films into Rowan Atkinson’s tenure as Inspector Maigret and so far he’s barely twitched a facial muscle. Gone are the eye bulges and nostril flares, the rubbery pouts. There’s sometimes a hint of a frown, the odd twinge in a wrinkle... Read more... |
Guerrilla review – 'it takes itself fantastically seriously'Friday, 14 April 2017
Devised and written by John Ridley, the Oscar-winning writer of 12 Years a Slave, Guerrilla (Sky Atlantic) takes us back to London, 1971. The story is set among a group of black activists agitating against racism and police brutality, and the city... Read more... |
Vera, Series 7, review - 'brilliant Blethyn stuck in bog-standard drama'Monday, 10 April 2017
Sunshine, sex and oodles of style: Vera (ITV) has no truck with any of them and is therefore unusual among Sunday evening dramas. There’s no escaping its mission to prove it’s grimy up north.The Blanket Mire, the fourth and final mystery of this... Read more... |
The Last Kingdom - 'one of the very best things on television'Friday, 07 April 2017
The first series of The Last Kingdom in 2015 kicked off with a blockbuster episode which managed to encompass savage violence, dynastic rivalry and a speedy tour of the state of Britain in the ninth century, while allowing the central protagonist,... Read more... |
Decline and Fall review - 'a riotously successful adaptation'Saturday, 01 April 2017
Like many first novels, Evelyn Waugh’s Decline and Fall has a strong whiff of autobiography. It is a revenge comedy in which Waugh – like Kingsley Amis after him in Lucky Jim – transmutes his miserable experiences of teaching in Wales into savage... Read more... |
Harlots review - 'fun quasi-feminist costume romp'Tuesday, 28 March 2017
We like to think of Georgian England as a wellspring of elegance: the Chippendale chair and the Wedgwood teapot, the landscaped vista and the neoclassical townhouse. But, as subversively embodied in the mock heroic couplet, the seemly Age of Reason... Read more... |
Line of Duty, Series 4 review – 'the tension rocketed to brain-jangling red alert'Monday, 27 March 2017
Now promoted to the exhilarating landscapes of BBC One as a reward for previous good behaviour, Line of Duty set off at a scorching pace into the murky shadowland where crime, punishment, ambition and corruption mingle treacherously. Stretching back... Read more... |
Big Little Lies, Sky AtlanticTuesday, 14 March 2017
It happened in Monterey, but we’re not entirely sure what yet. Adapted from the novel by Australian writer Liane Moriarty, with the action transplanted from a small town in Oz to the splendid oceanside scenery of Monterey, California, Big Little... Read more... |
