tv
The Guilty, ITVFriday, 06 September 2013
Scientists may have found a cure for insomnia. It’s thinking up names for television detectives. Have you noticed how elephant-tranquilisingly dull they are? Alec Hardy and Ellie Miller. Len Harper. Denise Woods. Tony Gates, Steve Arnott and Kate Fleming. Sergeant Geoff Plank. DS Fiona Photofit. Oh go on then, couple of ringers in there, but the rest have lately been busting crime on a mainstream channel near you (see sidebar to ID them all). Read more...
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Whitechapel, Series Four, ITV1Thursday, 05 September 2013
I can’t have been alone in my struggle to keep the two of them straight in my head: there’s the one set in the east end of London, in which a former BBC Spook tries to track down Jack the Ripper; and then there’s the one set in the east end of London, in which a former BBC Spook tries to track down a modern-day killer inspired by Jack the Ripper. Read more... |
Siege in the Sahara, Channel 4Wednesday, 04 September 2013
Bruce Goodison has been responsible for some of the more impressive television of the last decade, sometimes drama, sometimes straight documentary, and sometimes drama-documentary, like his Flight 93: The Flight That Fought Back. He was back in the latter genre in Channel 4’s powerful Siege in the Sahara, bringing the heightened tension of fictional reconstruction to the story of the assault on the Algerian gas plant at In Amenas by terrorists in January this year. Read more... |
The Newsroom, Series Two, Sky AtlanticTuesday, 03 September 2013
When The Newsroom’s first season started in 2012 the unthinkable seemed to have happened: Aaron Sorkin, creator of The West Wing and Oscar-winning writer of The Social Network, had lost his mojo. Not even his previous, erratic show, Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip, cancelled after its first season, had moments as excruciating as this. Read more... |
Rebuilding the World Trade Center, Channel 4Monday, 02 September 2013
“I see a lot of things up there, I get chills, see shadows. I don’t know if you call them ghosts or whatever, but you feel stuff. They’re trying to tell you something.” This is bolt boss Mohawk Joe “Flo” McComber, one of the many Mohawk iron workers rebuilding the World Trade Center. A tough guy, he’s not alone in sensing the spirits of the dead. “The site is being take care of in a different way. You feel it,” says Mike O’Reilly, another ironworker. Read more... |
Youssou N'Dour: Voice of Africa, BBC FourSaturday, 31 August 2013
You either get Youssou N’Dour, or you don’t. For millions on his home turf, the Senegalese singer is a major cultural figure: the street urchin-turned-superstar who almost became president. For large numbers of Western fellow travellers he’s the sexiest, most charismatic figure to emerge from the whole world music phenomenon. Read more... |
Martin Luther King and the March on Washington, BBC Two/MLK: The Assassination Tapes, BBC FourWednesday, 28 August 2013
It was only today I learned that, for copyright reasons, it is impossible to use Martin Luther King’s iconic “I Have A Dream” speech in its entirety without paying a hefty licensing fee to his estate. That knowledge made it easier to understand why a new documentary to commemorate the 50th anniversary of the March on Washington seemed to gloss over its figurehead’s famous words. Read more... |
My Hero: Ben Miller on Tony Hancock, BBC OneWednesday, 28 August 2013
Tony Hancock stopped producing the work on which his reputation rests the best part of half a century ago. He still casts a long old shadow. Many years before BBC Four embarked on its series of biodramas, a life of Hancock starring Alfred Molina captured some of that hulking self-disgust. More recently Paul Merton has become a one-man module in Hancock studies, even going so far as to re-enact some of the old Half Hours. Read more... |
Ancient Greece: The Greatest Show on Earth, BBC FourWednesday, 28 August 2013
Brush up your geography and dust down your history – Dr Michael Scott is investigating the sources of Greek drama and their influence on all theatre to the present day. But he isn’t going to make it easy. The opening instalment of Ancient Greece: The Greatest Show on Earth, a three-parter, was a giddying ride out of Athens to the farthest-flung regions of Google. Read more... |
What Remains, BBC OneMonday, 26 August 2013
It’s a while since BBC One served us up for Sunday night primetime something with so much black humour as there is to enjoy in What Remains. The tone of the script from Tony Basgallop (Inside Men) is as sardonic as it comes, and the cast of characters he assembles around its south London location doesn’t look like it will be presenting the human race in its most redeeming light. Read more... |
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