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Arena: The Beatles’ Magical Mystery Tour Revisited, BBC Two

Kieron Tyler Sunday, 07 October 2012

Being told that Magical Mystery Tour was a home movie is bit tiring. Self-evidently, The Beatles’ filmic response to the psychedelic experience was not that. They tried, and failed, to hire Shepperton Studios. Known artists like Ivor Cutler and The Bonzo Dog Doo-Dah Band were brought on board. Gavrik Losey, then hot from being an assistant director on Modesty Blaise, worked on it. Masses of extras were employed.

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Hunted, BBC One

Adam Sweeting Friday, 05 October 2012

I daresay some of you, like theartsdesk, have been pining for the sadly departed Spooks. Its production company, Kudos, knows how you feel, and has rustled up this pacey, knotty and deliberately complicated thriller in its place.

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Best Possible Taste: The Kenny Everett Story, BBC Four

Kieron Tyler Thursday, 04 October 2012

Being dead – however recently – doesn’t necessarily mean reputations are immune from being rewritten or trampled on. Best Possible Taste was scheduled just before another channel’s documentary on Kenny Everett's fellow TV personality and BBC DJ Jimmy Savile, which raised allegations of his sexual assault of minors. Savile has been dead a year. Everett for seventeen.

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Ian Hislop's Stiff Upper Lip, BBC Two

Jasper Rees Wednesday, 03 October 2012

Shouldn’t it be a stiff lower lip? When a person loses control of his or her emotions, and gives in to the instinct to blub, the telltale sign is not the unstiffening of the upper lip but the wobbling of the lower. In short, we have been saddled with a national characteristic that is an anatomical inaccuracy. It was an American who got it wrong in the late 19^th century. But that’s not until next week.

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Monroe, ITV1

Thomas H Green Tuesday, 02 October 2012

The screenwriter Peter Bowker won over viewers of all stripes with his wonderfully clever, musical serial Blackpool and sealed the deal with the chunky post-Iraq War drama Occupation. He demonstrated a deft narrative touch, an expert ability to spin a yarn and the right level of unpredictability to give him a reputation as something of a televisual auteur.

Boardwalk Empire, Series 3, Sky Atlantic

Adam Sweeting Sunday, 30 September 2012

And so to the third series of HBO's panorama of the Prohibition era, where we joined the denizens of Atlantic City as they prepared to celebrate New Year's Day, 1923. In the finale of series two, we'd seen our chief protagonist, Nucky Thompson (Steve Buscemi), tying off some loose ends as he prepared to take the plunge into full-scale gangsterhood.

Servants: The True Story of Life Below Stairs, BBC Two

Mark Sanderson Saturday, 29 September 2012

At boarding school in the mid-1970s Matron – a grey-haired, sharp-beaked stick of a woman who put the fear of God into us – would often remark: “Remember, boys, always be polite to the lower orders.” She was referring to the army of cleaning and kitchen staff who kept the lino lethally polished and our stomachs full of stodge. It was as if the swinging Sixties had never happened.

Room at the Top, BBC Four

Jasper Rees Thursday, 27 September 2012

Do we really needed to hear more from Joe Lampton, the anti-hero of John Braine’s Room at the Top? His battle for social advancement and sexual self-expression has long since stopped holding up a mirror to society, you'd think. In fact we nearly didn’t hear more from him in this new BBC adaptation. Anyone turning on BBC Four one night in April last year expecting to watch would have been disappointed.

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The Paradise, BBC One

Veronica Lee Wednesday, 26 September 2012

It's a reasonable assumption that Emile Zola would never have guessed his novel Au Bonheur des Dames (The Ladies' Paradise, part of the Rougon-Macquart series) would be the inspiration for a BBC costume drama. And it's an even safer one that he would have barely recognised his 1883 novel, an acute observation of capitalism and bourgeois life in mid-19th-century France, in Bill Gallagher's adaptation The Paradise.

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Cuckoo, BBC Three

graeme Thomson Wednesday, 26 September 2012

The Special Relationship might be on a sticky wicket politically, but in telly at least it seems to be thriving. Spooks, Downton and Episodes have all recognised the sound commercial sense in bringing together marquee names from both sides of the pond. Now comes Cuckoo, a new six-part comedy series which pitches budding US film star and Saturday Night Live stalwart Andy Samberg against our very own comic giant Greg Davies.