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Ian Hislop's Age of the Do-Gooders, BBC Two/ The Art of Germany, BBC Four

Fisun Güner Tuesday, 30 November 2010

There is probably only one thing that Ann Widdecombe and I have ever agreed upon: we both think it might be a really good idea to stick William Wilberforce on the Fourth Plinth. Why not? It’s nice to have contemporary art in Trafalgar Square, of course, but surely there are few other reforming characters as worthy as the great abolitionist?

Alan Bennett and The Habit of Art, More4

Matt Wolf Saturday, 27 November 2010

Few theatrical collaborations have been as successful as that achieved over five plays, two films, several decades, and numerous awards by the playwright Alan Bennett and the director Nicholas Hytner, who had jointly made a habit of art well before Bennett decided to write a play of that very name, premiered in November 2009 at the National Theatre. Now, More4 has come along with a documentary chronicling the two men's collaboration on a work that is itself about a collaboration. And if Adam...

Peep Show, Series 7, Channel 4

Veronica Lee Friday, 26 November 2010

What a pair of teases Jesse Armstrong and Sam Bain are. The co-writers (and co-creators, with Andrew O’Connor) of Peep Show write only one short series of this sitcom each year but such is its pull that fans don't forget and move on to other offerings. No, we wait with mounting glee for the programme to return to our screens and, let joy be unconfined, the seventh series started last night.

Fry and Laurie Reunited, Gold

howard Male Wednesday, 24 November 2010

There’s a surreal sitcom waiting to be written about the often-told story of when Charlie Higson and Paul Whitehouse were Stephen Fry and Hugh Laurie’s plasterers for a while in the early 1980s.

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Storyville: Mandelson - The Real PM?, BBC Four

Adam Sweeting Wednesday, 24 November 2010

Lord Mandelson of Foy gives a masterclass in political shoelace tying

The title could have used a bit more work, I'd have thought. No, Peter Mandelson was never "the real PM", and won't be now. As for the real Peter Mandelson, there is no evidence that any such mythical beast exists. And why hadn't Lord Mandelson become prime minister, film-maker Hannah Rothschild asked him in one of her deferential voices-off moments? Because Tony Blair and Gordon Brown had entered parliament in 1983, Peter explained with exaggerated patience, while he himself had only got...

Any Human Heart, Channel 4

Adam Sweeting Monday, 22 November 2010

Any period drama that crops up on Sunday nights is now automatically billed as a potential replacement for Downton Abbey. Any Human Heart has duly been described thus, but isn't.

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Leonard Cohen: Bird on a Wire, BBC Four

graeme Thomson Friday, 19 November 2010

The renaissance enjoyed by Leonard Cohen over the past few years is not only thoroughly welcome and entirely justified, but also partly a testament to the strange and powerful alchemy that sometimes occurs when the defiantly high-brow is swallowed whole by popular culture.

Lip Service: Series Finale, BBC Three

Veronica Lee Tuesday, 16 November 2010

When The L Word, an American drama series following the interconnected lives of a group of lesbians in Los Angeles, first aired in 2004, much of the acres of coverage it attracted made disbelieving mention of the cast members’ attractiveness, which is an implicit suggestion that lesbians are more usually at the back of the queue when good looks are being given out. Rather irritatingly, Lip Service, a drama series following the interconnected lives etc etc...

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Imagine: Ai Weiwei - Without Fear or Favour, BBC One

Josh Spero Tuesday, 16 November 2010

If you found yourself thinking that you were watching Mission: Impossible rather than Imagine, you could have been forgiven. Alan Yentob had clearly been banned from meeting Ai Weiwei in China, and so one of their interviews was conducted over a webcam, with Yentob sitting in the dark, like some spymaster of the arts.

Accused, BBC One

howard Male Monday, 15 November 2010

With a title like Accused it would be easy to imagine that Jimmy McGovern’s new series was going to be just another generic courtroom drama, but McGovern would never be that predictable. The man who made Brookside grittily unmissable back in the 1980s, reinvented the TV crime genre with Cracker in the 1990s, and then settled into full maturity with The Street which ended last year, would probably rather retire than deliver anything that wasn’t in some...