TV
Adam Sweeting
Days before the Cambodian capital Phnom Penh fell to the Khmer Rouge in 1975, orphaned baby Li-Da was flown out of the country, and was eventually adopted by Prue Leith and her husband Rayne. Leith’s culinary star was rising rapidly, and her husband was a successful writer and businessman. Their Cotswolds home became a fairytale setting in which their adopted daughter could make a fresh start.In this fascinating film (for Channel 4) about her trip back to Cambodia with her daughter, Leith admitted that she never felt much curiosity about Li-Da’s family and her Cambodian background, and never Read more ...
Jill Chuah Masters
Watching Run, HBO’s newest seven-part series, feels like off-the-rails escapism: it’s a fast-paced thriller about dropping everything, chasing intimacy and courting danger. It’s a vicarious adventure centred on a woman who has spent too long stuck at home. Run has hit our screens at the best possible time.The series starts in a parking lot. Ruby Richardson (Merritt Wever) — the thriller’s presumed heroine — is a yoga-going, 4WD-driving suburban mum. Might not sound thrilling, but the atmosphere is there: from the opening shot the air is thick with tension. Ruby ends a call with her husband Read more ...
Markie Robson-Scott
Instant spoiler alert: she’s not dead. But do we care? Prepare for the plumbing of new psychological depths from showrunner Suzanne Heathcote, previously story editor, appropriately enough, on Fear the Walking Dead, but that may not be enough to keep series 3 from veering into slightly dull and serviceable territory, judging by the first three episodes. Murderous clowns at a kids’ party, for example, have surely been done to death.At the end of series 2, Eve Polastri (Sandra Oh) was, if you remember, shot and apparently killed by Villanelle (Jodie Comer) in a Roman ruin after Eve rejected her Read more ...
Liz Thomson
Interviewed in isolation last week by Hollywood Reporter, music mogul Clive Davis revealed that he’s using his time “either by listening to the newest singles that make the charts or by watching hit music videos. First to be aware of them and then to keep my ears as current as they can be.”Just turned 88 and sequestered in Palm Springs, Davis was missing his family. He’d been due at the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame induction ceremony and then at New York University’s Tisch School of Arts, where he himself was to be honoured. Both events were of course cancelled but he needs to be “prepared Read more ...
Adam Sweeting
She's not quite a household name yet, but Leeds-born Gemma Whelan is heading speedily in that direction. Having started out as a standup comedian, winning the Funny Women Variety Award in 2010, Whelan began notching up film and TV roles, en route to making a significant breakthrough by being cast as Yara Greyjoy in HBO's Game of Thrones. As GoT aficionados will need no reminding, that meant she was the Lady of the Iron Islands and Lady Reaper of Pyke, and last surviving child of Balon Greyjoy. More than that though, Whelan was a regular in BBC Two's cod-Shakespearean comedy Upstart Crow, and Read more ...
Markie Robson-Scott
“Crying never solves anything. Be strong.” An admonishment from a stern grandmother haunts this low key first feature film by Alan Yang (Parks and Recreation, Master of None), loosely based on his father’s 1950s immigrant experience of leaving Taiwan and coming to New York City (his father does the voice-over in the film) and on Yang’s own recent trip to Taiwan with his father.No tigers in evidence here, kings, tails or otherwise. It’s a gentle, elegiac Asian-American story of lost love and emotional repression, told, in Mandarin and English, from the perspective of a disappointed middle-aged Read more ...
Adam Sweeting
Creating the opening episode of a new comedy series is like flipping pancakes with one hand while playing the Moonlight Sonata with the other. You have to introduce your characters and invent the world they live in, while squeezing in enough plot to keep the action moving.So high-fives to Sophie Willan, the first recipient of the BBC's Caroline Aherne writing bursary, for getting Alma’s Not Normal (BBC Two) off to a flyer. It’s a story of grungy, low-life Bolton, peopled with characters teetering between tragedy and farce. Willan plays Alma, the unemployed and barely educated daughter of drug Read more ...
Adam Sweeting
When the notorious Bergen-Belsen concentration camp in northern Germany was liberated by the British 11th Armoured Division on 15 April 1945, the BBC’s reporter Richard Dimbleby was there to record the occasion. It was Dimbleby’s report for BBC radio, describing how he’d been plunged “into the world of a nightmare”, that alerted the wider world to the scale of the horrors which the Nazis had been perpetrating in the camps. The BBC producers in London were so appalled by Dimbleby’s account that they were proposing not to broadcast it, until he threatened to resign if they didn’t.There were Read more ...
Adam Sweeting
While not the most headline-catching show on Netflix, Ozark has been steadily accruing critical accolades (including a couple of Emmys) and a devoted audience. Perhaps this superb third series will mark the tipping point where Ozark crosses over from cliqueishness to mass adulation.It all began back with the first season in 2017, when Marty Byrde’s Chicago-based financial services company fell foul of their client, a Mexican drug cartel. Marty’s partner made the insane blunder of skimming off $8m of the cartel’s funds, which their company were supposed to be laundering. Long story short, a Read more ...
Marina Vaizey
Mirrors and windows, looking at ourselves or out into the world, reflecting the culture or making it: compare and contrast. This was the subliminal debate in Spies (BBC Four), the latest instalment of Mark Kermode’s essays on the history and trajectory of movie-making, with some mention too of that complementary form of film, the television programme.Spies, espionage, conspiracy, and what you see isn’t necessarily truthful or real – does all this sound and feel familiar? All human behaviour is here, from trust and loyalty to morality, immorality and amorality, the relationships of individuals Read more ...
The Trip to Greece, Series Finale, Sky 1 review - bittersweet swansong for the cantankerous comrades
Adam Sweeting
Could this mock-mythic journey, emulating the trek homewards to Ithaca of Homer’s hero Odysseus, really be the final series of The Trip (Sky 1)? Or will Steve Coogan and Rob Brydon see sense, and realise that they’ll never have as many free lunches as this again?This concluding episode continued the bantering, competitive tone of its predecessors, but director Michael Winterbottom had added some additional portentous wrapping. The opening depicted Coogan voyaging (in Ingmar Bergman-esque monochrome) through a cavern with a mysterious boatman – Charon, the ferryman of Hades, perhaps. Then Read more ...
Adam Sweeting
The cringe-making horror of adolescent schooldays is vividly re-lived in this US import (on Sky Comedy), but with a cunning twist. Its supposedly confused and hormonal leads are played by 30-somethings Maya Erskine and Anna Konkle, who blend themselves in with a cast of actual 13-year-olds with uncanny skill.The year 2000 setting has been painstakingly crafted through clothes, Teen magazine covers starring Sarah Michelle Gellar and a breezy power-pop soundtrack. Despite the American location and terminology (the girls are just entering 7th grade, which means middle school), the dramas and Read more ...