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Punk Britannia, BBC Four

howard Male Saturday, 02 June 2012

“We didn’t have a real agenda. We just wanted to play some tunes and have a good time.” Thus spoke the immaculately suited but still mischievous-looking Mick Jones. And thank goodness he said it because, from the off - even before the off - I didn’t think anyone would. The interviewer (his ideological preconceptions crumbling) protested, so unfortunately Jones had to qualify his unguarded statement by saying he couldn’t of course speak for the other members of The Clash.

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Evidently... John Cooper Clarke, BBC Four

Thomas H Green Thursday, 31 May 2012

“You aren’t going to get another one of them, are you?” asks Alex Turner, rhetorically, with regard to John Cooper Clarke. He should know. The first explosion into the public eye by his band Arctic Monkeys, with their 2006 album Whatever People Say I Am, That’s What I’m Not, owed a direct stylistic debt to the Mancunian poet.

The South Bank Show, Sky Arts 1 /Sebastian Bergman, BBC Four

Adam Sweeting Monday, 28 May 2012

Lord Bragg permitted himself a knowing chuckle as he introduced Sky Arts's resurrection of The South Bank Show from the South Bank. He was standing in front of the National Theatre, whose director Nicholas Hytner was this week's subject, though within seconds he had been teleported to the streets of Manhattan, to preview the opening of Hytner's production of One Man, Two Guvnors on Broadway.

Pink Floyd: Wish You Were Here, BBC Four

Adam Sweeting Saturday, 26 May 2012

We now know that David Cameron's favourite album is Pink Floyd's Dark Side of the Moon, although there is a theory that he only picked it to avoid having to give the true answer, which is The Queen is Dead by The Smiths. Clearly this would have been a tactless selection in Diamond Jubilee year.

Delius: Composer, Lover, Enigma, BBC Four

graham Rickson Saturday, 26 May 2012

Serious programmes about classical music are now virtually invisible on the major channels. There’s always BBC Two’s Maestro at the Opera, I hear you shout. Or something with that nice Gareth Malone. A good selection of Proms will be shown live on BBC Four, but with luck will scrupulously avoid the witless interviews with celebs in lieu of proper interval talks...

House, Series Finale, Sky 1

Emma Dibdin Friday, 25 May 2012

It seems fitting that the final ever episode of a show that has revelled so gleefully in its main character’s willful refusal to change should pivot on the question of whether, finally, he can. This introspective swansong found our misanthropic medic in by far his direst straits yet – no small feat, when you consider that previous finales have seen him get shot, go clinically insane and, most recently, end up in prison.

Hitler's Children, BBC Two

Jasper Rees Thursday, 24 May 2012

Did Magda Goebbels do her children a favour by murdering all six of them in the bunker? Her rationale, as reported in the film Downfall, was the impossibility of imagining a life after Hitler for anyone called Goebbels.

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Harlots, Housewives and Heroines, BBC Four

Fiona Sturges Wednesday, 23 May 2012

Ooh look, she’s at it again. Fresh from hurling insults at David Starkey (well, he started it) and provoking the ire of historian Alison Light - who presumably didn’t make it through BBC casting - for daring to try on a bonnet on the box and thus “cheapening history”, Dr Lucy Worsley is back on our screens, doing ninja kicks in Puritan dress, trying Restoration gowns for size and shamelessly discussing Samuel Pepys’s “emissions”.

The Bridge: Series Finale, BBC Four

Kieron Tyler Sunday, 20 May 2012

It ended where it began, between Copenhagen and Malmö along the Öresund bridge. The journey back to square one took in issues of homelessness, mental health, immigration and child labour. Drug abuse, national identity, family break-up and the power of the media cropped up too. But none of these are what The Bridge hinged on.

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Tales of Television Centre, BBC Four

Fiona Sturges Thursday, 17 May 2012

“It’s like Big Ben. It’s like the Houses of Parliament. It’s like St Paul’s,” observed Susan Hampshire, reflecting on the iconic properties of Television Centre, the BBC’s 52-year-old nerve centre. Steady on, Susan, you thought, let’s not overdo it.