tv
The Borgias, Sky AtlanticSaturday, 13 August 2011
The pre-publicity has been spinning this saga of the notorious Renaissance family as a kind of origin story for The Sopranos. I suppose you could argue that Rodrigo Borgia, like Tony Soprano, was in the waste management business, as he himself suggested when he took the Papal throne as Alexander VI: "God has chosen us as a new broom to sweep the Vatican clean of corruption." Read more... |
Chilean Miners: 17 Days Buried Alive, BBC TwoSaturday, 13 August 2011
On 5 August last year, a cave-in at Chile's 121-year-old San José copper mine left 33 workers trapped more than 2,000ft underground. Their subterranean ordeal would last 69 days, but this documentary concerned itself with the first 17 of those, the period during which the miners had no contact with anybody on the surface and had no way of knowing if they'd be rescued. Read more... |
Who Do You Think You Are? - June Brown, BBC OneWednesday, 10 August 2011
Your typical consumer of Who Do You Think You Are? on BBC One would almost certainly have been disappointed by last night's first instalment of the eighth series. There were no tears from June Brown, EastEnders' Dot Cotton, for a start. That is as it should be: what we got was a model of keen yet detached historical research, nothing from which Brown was going to take life-changing lessons, which is how facile this series can be. Read more... |
Shooting Stars, BBC TwoTuesday, 09 August 2011
“Oh my Gaaaad, you guys are crazy! That’s terrible. How could you say that?” exclaimed Shooting Stars contestant Brigitte Nielsen, unfortunately reinforcing our preconception that Americans just don’t get us Brits and our irony. Although it’s not really irony that Vic and Bob deal in, it’s a kind of vaudevillian surrealism. And they’ve shrewdly worked out that you can say just about anything to anyone as long as its impact is softened by its carefully crafted absurdity and the fact... Read more... |
Horizon: Do You See What I See? BBC TwoTuesday, 09 August 2011
Life is full of aphorisms ascribing properties to particular colours. The scarlet woman. Red light spells danger. Yet, according to the first in the new series of Horizon, colour is “one of nature’s great illusions”. Even so, wearing red reduces stress and increases confidence. This examination of how colour is seen and interpreted, and how it affects us, revealed that an awful lot of science bods are bothered about how and why we see what we see. Read more... |
Camelot, Series Finale, Channel 4Saturday, 06 August 2011
This wasn't only the series finale, but the last ever episode of Camelot, since the American Starz network has decided to scrap plans for further seasons. It's not hard to see why. After a fairly promising start, Camelot spent several instalments staggering around aimlessly, as if writers and directors had been beheaded by King Arthur's Excalibur. Annoyingly,... Read more... |
My Resignation, BBC FourThursday, 04 August 2011
I Resign. It’s not a phrase you hear that often these days. Unlike, obviously, You’re Fired. There was a time, largely synonymous with the era when Tory toffs and grandees had sufficient private income to walk away from employment, that a chap could afford to resign, as the phrase has it, with honour. Read more... |
Timeshift: All the Fun of the Fair, BBC FourWednesday, 03 August 2011
Is there a place for the travelling fun fair any more? Static attractions like Alton Towers and Thorpe Park have rides that are bigger, grander, more varied and scarier than anything a traditional, transient fair could ever transport. All the Fun of the Fair’s answer was that the fair has survived by winding the clock back, rekindling the past with original Victorian and Edwardian rides. There’s still room for something less bombastic. Read more... |
Geordie Finishing School for Girls, BBC ThreeTuesday, 02 August 2011
If you're reading this review, you'll probably be expecting a sarky analysis. It invites that - wow, posh girls with unpronounceable names have to work in a Newcastle chippy! - but the programme, which sent four Home Counties fillies up North to compare lives with four Newcastle lasses, hit on something so important that we should force MPs to watch it. Read more... |
Great Thinkers: In Their Own Words, BBC FourMonday, 01 August 2011
The only voice recording Sigmund Freud ever made was for the BBC. It was made in December 1938, at Freud’s West Hampstead home just a few months before the father of psychoanalysis succumbed to throat cancer. He was 82 and wouldn’t see out another year, yet here he was on fighting form: “People did... Read more... |
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