mon 10/02/2025

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In Their Own Words: British Novelists, BBC Four

howard Male

Every great novel is a world, and every great novelist responds to and recreates their own time in their own image. Therefore how could a three-part documentary series possibly cover that fertile period in British literature that took in both world wars and their aftermath?

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Vexed, BBC Two

Gerard Gilbert Waking the deadpan: Toby Stephens and Lucy Punch in 'Vexed'

Lucy Punch – what a great name for a comedian (or a female boxer). Unfortunately that is the only thing that’s great about Vexed, a new comedy drama written by Howard Overman, creator of Channel 4’s perky ASBO (RIP) superpower fantasy Misfits. His new show is that relative rarity, a...

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The Heroes of Biggin Hill, Yesterday

Adam Sweeting Fitters rearm a Spitfire during the Battle of Britain in 1940

The Yesterday channel’s ongoing “Spirit of 1940” season has provoked a giant surge in its viewing figures, another reminder of the grip World War Two still exerts on large chunks of the British public. The Battle of Britain in particular has become a self-contained historical moment emblematic of what the British regard, or at least used to regard, as their finest characteristics – patience, courage, stoicism and a dogged refusal to accept bullying European dictatorships. Maybe we haven’t...

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Domesday, BBC Two/ Treasures of the Anglo-Saxons, BBC Four

Josh Spero

What was originally a coincidence of reviewing – two dispatches from the Dark Ages, Treasures of the Anglo-Saxons on BBC Four and Domesday on BBC Two – in fact turned into a remarkably instructive diptych of how and how not to make history programmes for the television.

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Madness in the Fast Lane, BBC One

howard Male

Words such as horror, grotesque, shocking and bizarre are fired at us before the title has even appeared on screen: clearly this documentary is set on living down to its sensationalist title. One bleak sunless day in May 2008, Swedish twins Sabina and Ursula Eriksson ran into traffic on the M6. Both miraculously escaped with their lives but then turned on the police officers trying to help them. With a lack of subtlety and restraint typical of this kind of schedule-filler, director Jim Nally...

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Grandma's House, BBC Two

Fisun Güner

There are many for whom Simon Amstell can do no wrong. He is clever, he is funny, and he fronted Never Mind the Buzzcocks. What’s more, although his appearance suggests a cute, geeky vulnerability, his exquisite sarcasm can skewer the most inflated, the most inured of celebrity egos. The egos queued up to be guest panellists on that cool music quiz, only to get shot down by some clever, insightful putdown.

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The Unforgettable Bob Monkhouse, ITV1

Adam Sweeting Bob Monkhouse: 'What's the difference between roast beef and pea soup? Anyone can roast beef...'

He wasn't a jack of all trades, said his friend June Whitfield, "he was a master of all trades". The charge of "smarminess" dogged Bob Monkhouse throughout his career, but as this quietly penetrating documentary made clear, he was highly intelligent, multi-talented and had a lot of layers he kept to himself. Actor, scriptwriter, singer, novelist (though they didn't really mention that part), stand-up comic, cartoonist, radio star, gameshow host and posthumous campaigner against the prostate...

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Mistresses, BBC One

Fisun Güner

We know we’re in cut-price Sex and the City territory when it’s not iPhones that are getting top product placement billing but Clearblue pregnancy tests. A box was held aloft between the trembling fingers of Jess as the camera slowly caressed its glistening cellophane surface for a lingering close-up.

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The Normans, BBC Two

Gerard Gilbert In the absence of newsreel footage, Professor Robert Bartlett leans heavily on the Bayeux Tapestry

My surname came to Britain with the Normans, and I must say that my forebears have had a bad press in their adopted homeland. From Hereward the Wake to Robin Hood, Anglo-Saxon legends have depicted us as despotic and cruel, whereas we were great builders of castles and cathedrals, brilliant horsemen and tip-top administrators, as well as being despotic and cruel. Anyway, it was...

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The Great Outdoors, BBC Four

graeme Thomson Mark Heap and Ruth Jones in 'The Great Outdoors': 'Irresistible force and immovable object'.

Now that Last of the Summer Wine has been strapped aboard the great Stairmaster to the Sky, there’s a gap in the market for a comedy in which the landscape has a starring role. Written by Kevin Cecil, whose credits include Black Books, and Andy Riley, The Great Outdoors is a bucolic al fresco sitcom following the members of a rambling club in the Chilterns as they trudge through their drab, rather lonely lives and negotiate their petty rivalries. Like the...

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