tv
Big Brother Watching Me: Citizen Ai Weiwei, BBC FourTuesday, 21 January 2014
For a film that opened with Ai Weiwei’s statement, “Without freedom of speech, there is no modern world, just a barbaric one,” there was an irony in the fact that Andreas Johnsen’s Big Brother Watching Me… started practically without words. When the artist was freed in June 2011 following 80 days in prison, one of the conditions of his release was that he would not talk to journalists. Read more... |
Mr Selfridge, Series 2, ITVSunday, 19 January 2014
We return to the dramatised Selfridges five years after the opening of the store that changed the face of British shopping - and yet, despite proving those who doomed his enterprise to failure wrong, the smile on its eponymous owner’s face is as false as his moustache is magnificent. Read more... |
The Musketeers, BBC OneSunday, 19 January 2014
It’s costume drama meets adventure story, it’s got smouldering manhood and heaving-bosomed women with sex, swordfights, politicking and even beautifully lit Prague doubling for 17th-century Paris, but the question hanging over the BBC’s lavish new Sunday-night primetime series The Musketeers is: what exactly is it? Read more... |
Call the Midwife, Series 3, BBC OneSunday, 19 January 2014
If it ain't broke don't fix it, and writer Heidi Thomas obviously has no intention of tinkering with the Call the Midwife formula. Virtually nothing has changed, except that there's a new character, Sister Winifred, while Chummy (Miranda Hart) is now living with her husband PC Noakes (Ben Caplan) and has a baby son. However, you can't keep a born midwife down, and Chummy's return to the Nonnatus House mothership by the end of the episode was a foregone conclusion. Read more... |
Death in Paradise, Series 3, BBC OneWednesday, 15 January 2014
Well, that was a shock. I can’t remember seeing many crows around on the Caribbean island of Saint-Marie that is the location of Death in Paradise, but assuming there are some they should by now be appropriately stoned. Read more... |
House of Fools, BBC TwoWednesday, 15 January 2014
Vic Reeves and Bob Mortimer's fans recall with huge affection their previous collaborations – among them Big Night Out and The Smell of Reeves and Mortimer, two wonderfully anarchic shows. Now comes their first traditional, one-room (well two actually) sitcom House of Fools, which, true to form, is a mix of physical comedy, bawdy humour, surreal sight gags and utter nonsense. Read more... |
Benefits Street, Channel 4Tuesday, 14 January 2014
A week ago the first episode of Benefits Street crashlanded on Channel 4. It visited the eponymous area of Birmingham where most residents are on some form of social security. Housing benefit, child benefit, disability benefit: you name it, they were in IDS's crosshairs. Channel 4’s regular payload of viewers shot off the chart: 4.3 million was higher than the ratings for any of its programmes last year. Read more... |
Timeshift - How to Be Sherlock Holmes, BBC Four / Sherlock, BBC OneSunday, 12 January 2014
As Benedict Cumberbatch's Sherlock reached the end of its latest brief span, Timeshift [****] surveyed the history of dramatic interpretations of Baker Street's finest with a wry eye, in a narrative sprinkled with nutritious facts and anecdotes. Read more... |
The Voice, Series 3, BBC OneSunday, 12 January 2014
If you’re a channel trying to prove that there is life in a tired old format, it’s hard to think of a more effective way than signing up Kylie Minogue. Read more... |
Hostages, Channel 4Sunday, 12 January 2014
Having brought us to the end of Homeland, Channel 4 are hoping lightning will strike twice by introducing another American series based on an Israeli original. Where Homeland was the American version of Hatufim, Hostages is derived from Bnei Aruba, made by Israel's Channel 10, who sold the format to CBS before the original had even been completed. Read more... |
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