tv
The Night Manager, Series Finale, BBC OneMonday, 28 March 2016
So at a stroke, The Night Manager has proved that appointment-to-view television is not yet dead in the age of Netflix, and that the BBC can do itself a favour in battling against the best American dramas if it can find a US production partner (AMC in this case). Read more...
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Blue Eyes, More4Saturday, 26 March 2016
Blue Eyes, the latest imported Swedish drama, has a lot of hype to live up to. After Borgen, Wallander, The Killing and the rest, Scandi noir is scarcely a novelty in itself. Yet Blue Eyes brings the ultra-topical subject of the far right and the immigration debate to the more familiar territory of murders in sun-starved pinescapes. Read more... |
Line of Duty, Series 3, BBC TwoFriday, 25 March 2016
Two years after its brilliant second series, which put Keeley Hawes's DI Lindsay Denton through the wringer with harrowing intensity, Jed Mercurio's bent-coppers drama is back. This time it's Daniel Mays, as Sgt Danny Waldron, sitting in the crosshairs of Ted Hastings and his AC12 anti-corruption team. Read more... |
The A Word, BBC OneWednesday, 23 March 2016
It’s surprising how few dramas there are about the autistic spectrum. Dustin Hoffman’s turn in Rain Man (1988) misleadingly suggested that all sufferers are also geniuses. On British television Kid in the Corner (2001) was inspired by Tony Marchant’s experience as the parent of a child with Asperger’s (although the boy in the drama had ADHD). Read more... |
Brendan O'Carroll: My Family At War, BBC TwoThursday, 17 March 2016
It’s another military centenary, and another conundrum for broadcasters – how to tell a sombre story in an engaging way. The 1916 Dublin Easter Rising is an iconic event, but if we’re honest, not one many viewers will know in detail. The televisual warhorses for this kind of reminiscence – black-and-white portrait photos, sombre brass bands, and many talking heads atop camphor-scented tweed – are respectful but just a little bit dull. Read more... |
Happy Valley, Series 2 Finale, BBC OneWednesday, 16 March 2016
There was an eye-popping moment of high-risk bravura at the climax of Happy Valley. Murderous detective John Wadsworth (Kevin Doyle) had finally been cornered on a railway bridge and was all for leaping off. Sergeant Catherine Cawood (Sarah Lancashire), wheezing hard from the chase, tried to talk him away from the edge but hadn’t done the relevant training. Wadsworth had, however, with a 100 percent success rate to prove it. Read more... |
Art of Scandinavia, BBC FourTuesday, 15 March 2016
Through the snowy wastes we crunched. The winter scenery was overwhelmingly beautiful and almost devoid of any human habitation: gorgeous mountains in the distance, the black waters of the fjords gleaming, the winter sun shining through the pale blue sky. And lo, here was Andrew Graham-Dixon, in woollen hat and furred windbreaker, to introduce us to centuries of Norwegian art. Read more... |
The People v OJ Simpson: American Crime Story, BBC TwoTuesday, 15 March 2016
Halfway through its 10-week run, The People v OJ Simpson: American Crime Story appears to be running in real time as it slowly, painstakingly tells the story of how one of the US's biggest sports stars was accused of the murders of his ex-wife Nicole Brown and her friend Ronald Goldman in 1994. Read more... |
Trapped, Series Finale, BBC FourSunday, 13 March 2016
A Nordic noir that began in a blazing fish factory was bound to have lots of red herrings. Trapped, however, did not cheat and eventually revealed not only who set the fire but who was the father of Maggi, the ginger cutie waiting ever so patiently for his gift of a red fire engine. Read more... |
Virtuoso Violinists at the BBC, BBC FourSaturday, 12 March 2016
Virtuoso Violinists was an hour of unalloyed informative pleasure that toured televised highlights of great violinists playing great music. Its painless excursion into the western classical canon reminded us why the BBC is the NHS of culture, and we delighted here in a guide who proved as accomplished a presenter as she is a performer of genius. Read more... |
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