TV
Adam Sweeting
It’s crazy, but could it possibly work? Writer Nida Manzoor (a veteran of Doctor Who and BBC Three’s sitcom Enterprice) grew up in a Muslim family, but that didn’t stop her being a fan of punk rock, Blackadder and This Is Spinal Tap. She also writes songs, so creating a sitcom about the female Muslim punk band Lady Parts wasn’t quite such a stretch as it might seem.Her smartest trick here, though, is to have used the device of the band to cast a wry and hilarious eye over not just Muslim life but common preconceptions of it, and its complicated interactions with the secular West (it’s not all Read more ...
Matt Wolf
An attractive and likeable cast remains the principal drawing card of Trying, the Apple TV+ romcom centred around the efforts of a 30something couple to adopt a child. Following on from the first season aired last spring, Andy Wolton's creation gives pride of place to a terrific assemblage of actors, who carry the day even when the piece itself seems to tread faintly overfamiliar ground.You feel, for instance, as if you've already heard the sort of badinage that bonds Nikki (Esther Smith) and Jason (Rafe Spall), the affectionately sparring duo who may debate the age your shoulders drop (not Read more ...
Adam Sweeting
Many a director might have considered that televising Colson Whitehead’s novel The Underground Railroad was impossible, but Barry Jenkins, Oscar-winning director of Moonlight, has proved it can be done. His 10-part series for Amazon Prime is a remarkable achievement in its authorial depth and cinematic scope. The only cloud on its undoubtedly award-winning horizon is the fact that large chunks of it are almost too horrific to watch. The cast found some of the material so disturbing that Jenkins had a mental health counsellor on set.Traumatised responses were probably inevitable, given that Read more ...
Adam Sweeting
Ancient Rome has always been a popular playground for film and TV, whether it’s Ben Hur, Gladiator or the 2005 TV series Rome. This Italian-made series for Sky Atlantic was shot at the renowned Cinecittà Studios in Rome, where Visconti, Leone, Scorsese and Bertolucci have all worked, but sadly none of that old-time movie magic has rubbed off on it.We are transported back to 40BC or thereabouts, and it’s the aftermath of the assassination of Julius Caesar. Caesar’s son Gaius (Tom Glynn-Carey, pictured below) and Marcus Antonius (Liam Garrigan) are revolting, and also planning a power grab. Read more ...
Adam Sweeting
The issue of public inquiries into the conduct of the military is in the headlines again, with a current focus on Northern Ireland, but at the centre of screenwriter Robert Jones’s Danny Boy was the attempt to find British soldiers guilty of war crimes in Iraq. The Battle of Danny Boy (it was the name of an Army checkpoint) took place on 14 May 2004, when a British patrol was ambushed by fighters of the so-called Mahdi Army.After allegations were made that British troops had murdered 20 Iraqi prisoners and tortured others, the Al-Sweady Public Inquiry was set up to investigate. One of the Read more ...
Matt Wolf
Nancy Mitford's 1945 literary sensation looks poised to be the TV talking point of the season, assuming the first episode of The Pursuit of Love sustains its utterly infectious energy through two hours still to come. Adapted and directed by the actress Emily Mortimer, who has given herself a plum supporting role as an errant mother known as "the Bolter", the between-the-war three-parter is off to a galloping and giddy start, as if taking its cue from the breathless Linda (Lily James) at its ever-pulsating heart. The course of true love may not run smooth, to co-opt a line from a Read more ...
David Nice
“You have to be careful you’re not judging the piece,” cautioned a pearl-necklaced Nicholas Daniel, great oboist and winner of the 1980 BBC Young Musician (of the Year, as it then was). Yet while the work, Japanese composer and marimba virtuoso Keiko Abe’s Prism Concerto for the instrument she's done so much to pioneer, was infinitely the most fascinating of the evening’s three, so too was the performance by 17-year-old Fang Zhang. Sometimes flash can win over more interior qualities, but this unpredictable tour de force had everything.What a long time it took, though, to get to the musical Read more ...
Adam Sweeting
WARNING - CONTAINS SPOILERSHalf the fun of this series of Line of Duty has been the crescendo of conspiracy theories surrounding it, fuelled by the way creator Jed Mercurio has skilfully kept tapping into the LoD mythology built up over the preceding five seasons. Craig Parkinson, aka the evil Dot Cottan from earlier series, has been hosting the Obsessed With… Line of Duty podcast, exploring secrets, theories and myths surrounding the show.With the air dripping with fear and paranoia, almost everyone has been fingered as being the potential Napoleon of Crime known as the Fourth Man (or woman Read more ...
Adam Sweeting
Welcome to Commonworld, in the year 2143. It’s been built above the ruins of the old world, and the opening sequence of Sky One’s new interstellar thriller showed us the crumbling remains of Tower Bridge and St Paul’s Cathedral mouldering beneath glittering futuristic super-scrapers and sweeping skyways. Thanks to rising water levels, London has become an island.It looks good, and while there’s nothing here that’s going to out-imagine Blade Runner or the new generation of Star Treks, it’s only fairly recently that you’d find such advanced CGI in a TV show. Whizzing through this exciting Read more ...
Adam Sweeting
Alfred Hitchcock’s 1954 thriller Rear Window has spawned its fair share of copycats, including Disturbia and Brian de Palma’s Femme Fatale. For ITV’s new five-night mystery Viewpoint, screenwriter Ed Whitmore (Silent Witness, Manhunt etc) puts another spin on the Master of Suspense’s voyeuristic original with his story of missing Manchester schoolteacher Gemma Hillman and the murky shenanigans which unravel in the wake of her disappearance.When investigators decide that Gemma’s partner Greg Sullivan (Fehinti Balogun) is a good bet as prime suspect, on account of his history of violence and Read more ...
Line of Duty, Series 6, Episode 6, BBC One review - the pace accelerates for AC-12's final countdown
Adam Sweeting
As the finishing line begins to materialise through the haze of fear, suspicion and zany acronyms, the pace of this sixth series of Line of Duty (BBC One) has hotted up appreciably. In earlier episodes, there sometimes seemed to be a lack of intensity, and even the fabled interview scenes didn’t always grip like they used to. Maybe filming under Covid conditions had something to do with it.But times are changing. Last week’s episode 5 unleashed the stunning revelation that Joanna Davidson shared a DNA match with evil (though deceased) criminal kingpin Tommy Hunter. This week, in an interview Read more ...
Tom Birchenough
It has been a hard coming for this RSC Winter’s Tale. Erica Whyman’s production was cancelled by the virus days before its premiere last spring, with plans to stage it in the autumn frustrated by the second lockdown. This broadcast version, retaining that original cast in full, is the first time that a RSC production has gone first to screen, scheduled as part of the BBC's Lights Up season.Needs must, perhaps, and what a frustrating on-again, off-again process it must have been, but there’s little sign of any resulting radical disruption – in a play that itself revolves around radical Read more ...