wed 18/09/2024

tv

Arena: Night and Day, BBC Four

Marina Vaizey

Arena is the longest-running arts documentary programme for television at the BBC, and perhaps the world: as the BBC itself phrases it, this compendium celebration presented 24 hours in 90 minutes for 40 years, marking the show's latest anniversary. Conceived by the ever-creative and energetic Humphrey Burton all that while ago, Arena has made over 600 films, looking at high and low culture with equal curiosity, alacrity and even audacity.

Read more...

Prom 2: The Doctor Who Prom in Pictures

theartsdesk

There's the First Night and there's the Last Night. Nowadays among the staples of the two-month world-famous festival of music at the Royal Albert Hall, there is also the Doctor Who Prom. Last night, to mark the 50th anniversary of the resurgent TV sci-fi show, a celebration was laid on featuring Murray Gold's music from the last eight years of Doctor Who.

Read more...

TV Gallery: Frozen Planet

Jasper Rees

What we're used to seeing whenever the BBC launches on one of its epic explorations of the natural world is moving pictures. But as well as training film cameras at their subects, from the largest mountains and glaciers to the smallest organisms, the hardy modern-day adventurers armed with their phenomenal hi-tech kit also train still cameras at everything they encounter.

Read more...

TV Gallery: Downton Abbey

theartsdesk

  1. Maggie Smith Violet, Dowager Countress of Grantham
  2. Hugh Bonneville Robert, Earl of Grantham
  3. Penelope Wilton Mrs Isobel Crawley
  4. Dan Stevens Matthew Crawley
  5. Michelle Dockery Lady Mary Crawley
  6. Theo James Kemal Pamuk
  7. Jim Carter Mr Carson
  8. Brendan Coyle Mr Bates
  9. Rob James-Collier Thomas
  10. Thomas Howes William
  11. Joanne...

    Read more...

TV Gallery: Cranford's Bonnets

Jasper Rees

It's sometimes referred to, just a bit dismissively, as bonnet drama. Whenever television visits the 19th century, the headwear of the female characters does indeed play its part. Of no adaptation of Victorian fiction is that truer than Cranford. The actresses wearing the bonnets are fairly resplendent too.

Read more...
 

latest in today

Donohoe, Roscoe, Stoller Hall, Manchester review - two great...

A little piece of musical history was made last night at Manchester Chamber Concerts Society’s season-opening concert. Two of the greatest...

Here comes the flood: Bob Dylan's 1974 Live Recordings

Lighters at the ready, because here comes the flood. Drawn from 16-track tape, 1/4in reels and lo-fi sound board cassettes that are now a half...

Wang, Lapwood, LSO, Pappano, Barbican review - grace and pow...

It takes stiff competition to outshine Yuja Wang, who last night at the Barbican complemented her spangled silver sheath with a disconcerting pair...

My Favourite Cake review - woman, love, and freedom

The taxi cab has become a recurring motif in modern Iranian cinema, perhaps because it approximates to a kind of dissident bubble within the...

Beethoven Sonata Cycle 1, Boris Giltburg, Wigmore Hall revie...

A happy, lucid and bright pianist, a forbidding Everest among piano sonatas: would Boris Giltburg follow a bewitching, ceaselessly engaging first...

The Band Back Together, Arcola Theatre review - three is a d...

We meet Joe first at the keys, singing a pretty good song, but we can hear the pain in the voice – but is that...

Music Reissues Weekly: Sean Buckley & The Breadcrumbs

Although Dagenham’s Sean Buckley & The Breadcrumbs are less than a footnote in the story of beat boom-era Britain, appearances on archive...

The Critic review - beware the acid-tipped pen

The setting is the lively 1930s London theatre world, but any sense that The Critic will be a lighthearted thriller should soon be...

Van Gogh: Poets & Lovers, National Gallery review - pass...

Van Gogh: Poets & Lovers includes many of his best known pictures and, amazingly, it is the first exhibition the...