tv
War Child, Channel 4Monday, 13 March 2017
In the mindset of Nigel Farage and his biddable followers, the route from Asia into Europe throngs with undesirables. Their threatening faces can be plastered on a vote-winning poster. In this calamitous failure of empathy, young men – hordes of them, to use our former Prime Minister’s lexical choice - are seen to be bent on kettling Western women and hoovering up benefits. Read more... |
Mutiny, Channel 4Tuesday, 07 March 2017
The masochistic reality show heralds a culture with an inferiority complex. There have been documentary re-running the race to the South Pole. Countless series place modern Britons in historical contexts where the dietary, sanitary and heating arrangements leave much to be desired. At the heart of them all is an anxiety that mod cons – radiators, white goods, frozen readymeals – have softened us. Read more... |
Prime Suspect 1973, ITVFriday, 03 March 2017
The prequel is here to stay. In the end every popular TV drama flogs itself to death. The star wants out, or the writer dies, or the original source material runs dry, or the public falls asleep. And there’s nowhere else to go. Nowhere, that is, apart from back in time. Hence the retro-fitted Endeavour and Gotham and Better Call Saul. Read more... |
Dispatches: Under Lock and Key, Channel 4Thursday, 02 March 2017
Five years ago BBC Panorama went undercover, sending in a reporter with a hidden camera to expose the horror going on at Winterbourne View, a hospital for people with learning disabilities and/or autism. There was outrage as the nation watched Winterbourne’s patients being tortured, degraded and abused by staff. Read more... |
The Replacement, BBC OneWednesday, 01 March 2017
Can women have it all? (Stop me if you’ve already heard this one). This is the premise of Joe Ahearne’s new three-part drama, set in the offices of a successful firm of architects in Glasgow. But he’s a bloke, what would he know about it? Read more... |
Meet the Lords, BBC TwoTuesday, 28 February 2017
To Westminster and Meet the Lords, a series which Radio Times assures me follows “the larger-than-life characters” in one of our “most idiosyncratic and important institutions”. Read more... |
Broadchurch, Series 3, ITVTuesday, 28 February 2017
The first series of Broadchurch was a gigantic hit four years ago, though 2015’s follow-up suffered a bit of a slow puncture. Can this third and supposedly final outing restore the show to its former glories? Read more... |
The Swingers, Channel 4Friday, 24 February 2017
Can something be gained in translation? From its title The Swingers promises much. Much more than the original Dutch title Nieuwe Buren, which the caption in the opening credit sequence translates as The Neighbours. Someone in syndication has asked themselves the question: who the hell watches Dutch TV dramas called The Neighbours (aside from captive Dutch audiences... Read more... |
Roots, BBC FourThursday, 23 February 2017
Those of us who saw the first, 1977 TV adaptation of Alex Haley's Roots in our teens still remember the shock and horror at its handling of a subject about which we knew little, American slavery. We know a lot more now, but the visceral reaction to inhumanity and injustice is no less strong. Read more... |
The Halcyon, Series 1 Finale, ITVTuesday, 21 February 2017
A screaming comes across the sky. It has happened before, but there is nothing to compare it to now… Read more... |
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