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Secrets of the Arabian Nights, BBC Four

Veronica Lee Thursday, 21 April 2011

Richard E Grant travels the ancient trade route that brought 'The Arabian Nights' to Europe

Everybody knows One Thousand and One Nights, even if they don’t know they do. Ever been to the panto to see Aladdin? Watched Sinbad the Sailor on stage, or Sheherazade at the opera or ballet, or perhaps watched one the many film versions of The Thief of Baghdad? Yes to any of those and you’re a fan of possibly one of the greatest series of stories ever told.

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Filthy Cities, BBC Two

Adam Sweeting Tuesday, 19 April 2011

Dan Snow: TV's enthusiastic filthmeister

Dan Snow's toxic trilogy climaxed in New York, where he crawled voyeuristically through the rotten core of the Big Apple. It was part Discovery Channel documentary, part Gangs of New York dirty realism, as Snow took a frankly indecent relish in regaling us with tales of death, disease and raw capitalism at its baby-eating worst.

The Reckoning, ITV1

howard Male Monday, 18 April 2011

'Don’t worry sweetheart, it’ll all be over in two episodes': Max Beesley assures Ashley Jensen

I made the mistake of catching up with the darkly sumptuous The Crimson Petal and the White just before knuckling down to review this new two-part drama, and it was like moving from fine vintage wine to warm supermarket-brand lager. To begin with, I couldn’t dissociate Ashley Jensen from her perky but dim character in Extras, so the moment she found herself confronted with a game-show-from-hell scenario of committing a murder in return for five million quid, I expected...

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The Secrets of Scott's Hut, BBC Two

Adam Sweeting Sunday, 17 April 2011

Captain Scott's doomed 1910-1913 expedition to the South Pole has become one of the enduring myths of the later British Empire, a paradigm of pluck, grit and a refusal to surrender in the teeth of hideous odds. Subsequently, some historical revisionists have reached a different conclusion, that Scott was in fact an ill-prepared amateur who committed a string of fatal errors.

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Monroe, Series Finale, ITV1/ Rubicon, BBC Four

Adam Sweeting Thursday, 14 April 2011

(Left to right) Sarah Parish, James Nesbitt and Tom Riley on the alert for flying one-liners in 'Monroe'

So Monroe reached the end of series one, and I still couldn't read what its tone was supposed to be. Some artsdesk readers have expressed enthusiasm for the theme tune, but I find its jogging Celtic jauntiness symptomatic of Monroe's wider problems. Obviously you can't expect too much from a bit of title music, but surely it should give you a clue as to whether the show is a hard-hitting drama about life and death or a sitcom?

If Walls Could Talk: The History of the Home, BBC Four

Fisun Güner Thursday, 14 April 2011

Lucy Worsley: Engaging and jolly, and a tiny bit like Queenie in 'Blackadder'

I prefer "living room", but I have a friend who insists on "lounge". For some reason that probably goes deep into the psyche, I cringe at "sitting room". Same goes for "front room". As for "reception room", I’ve only ever seen that in the windows of estate agents. "Parlour", too, is a rarity, confined now to TV period dramas, which is exactly where "drawing room" seems to be heading (or perhaps I’m not mixing in the right circles). And anyone who calls it a "dining room" should surely be...

Britain's Next Big Thing, BBC Two

Josh Spero Tuesday, 12 April 2011

Professor Richard Weston, purveyor of digital-print scarves (very now, darling), and Theo Paphitis

The talent show search - not for another star but for another field to devour - has reached its logical conclusion. Whereas most such shows - The X Factor, for example - are ostensibly about one skill or another as a pretext for marketing, Britain's Next Big Thing last night on BBC Two was a talent show about finding a merchandising opportunity. Artisans were given the chance to...

The Great Estate: The Rise and Fall of the Council House, BBC Four

Veronica Lee Monday, 11 April 2011

Author and journalist Michael Collins with Terry Gooch, the first tenant of Thamesmead in 1968

In 2004 Michael Collins wrote a fascinating book, The Likes of Us: A Biography of the White Working Class. It was part memoir of his south-London childhood, part history of the area and part polemic. Two-thirds was an excellent read, a thoroughly researched and well-written account of the many generations of his family who had lived in Walworth, but the last third was a confused mess of an argument about what he saw as the plight of the modern-day white working class - marginalised...

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Lewis, ITV1

Adam Sweeting Sunday, 10 April 2011

Read Adam Sweeting's review of "Intelligent Design", the last-ever episode of Lewis

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Room at the Top, BBC Four

Jasper Rees Thursday, 07 April 2011

Sex and the single male: Matthew McNulty as Joe Lampton in 'Room at the Top'

Another week, another northern novel about working-class libidos adapted for BBC Four. One is still catching one’s breath from the festival of copulation that was Women in Love. Spool forward a few decades - or a week in television scheduling terms - and roughly the same set of characters have reconvened for the next instalment of how's your father in Room at the Top. They’ve...