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The Born Free Legacy, BBC FourTuesday, 28 September 2010
If you have fond childhood memories of either the Born Free book or movie, you might want to stay away. From the opening moments of this documentary, the knowledge that lion-loving conservationist George Adamson was fatally shot in the back on a dirt road in Kenya will immediately stop John Barry’s epic and optimistic theme song from swelling to life in your head. But that’s only the beginning of a systematic dismantling of the Born Free myth from a documentary which,... Read more...
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Whites, BBC TwoTuesday, 28 September 2010
Those of us who occasionally still wake abruptly at 3am, a cool, clammy film of sweat creeping across our brow, as we recollect the full horror of Lenny Henry’s Chef! (God, that cruelly mocking exclamation mark), could be forgiven for approaching this new kitchen-com with a degree of trepidation. Read more... |
Downton Abbey, ITV1Monday, 27 September 2010
With the BBC still in the middle of shooting their revival of Upstairs, Downstairs, ITV1 have nipped in ahead of them with Julian Fellowes's spiffing new sundown-on-the-aristocracy drama. In a battle of the stage dames, the Beeb has bagged Eileen Atkins, whereas ITV has signed up Maggie Smith as Violet, Dowager Countess of Grantham. Read more... |
True Blood, Channel 4Friday, 24 September 2010
How did vampires manage to stage a near-total hijack of the popular media? It used to be just Christopher Lee in a cloak with Hammer Films’ home-made cardboard bats hanging on wires over his head, but now we’re up to our throats in Buffy, Angel, The Twilight Saga, Blade, Van Helsing… and True Blood, HBO’s somewhat superior exercise in blood-squirting southern Gothic, now back for its second series on Channel 4. Read more... |
Unequal Opportunities, BBC TwoTuesday, 21 September 2010
There’s an equality gap in our education system. Poor kids come bottom of the class, while rich kids are destined for the elite universities. In the eloquent words of education minister Michael Gove: “Rich thick kids do better than poor clever kids.” And we’ve got loads of stats to back this up. |
Spooks, BBC OneTuesday, 21 September 2010
Looks like being a chilly autumn in Spooks world. In time-honoured fashion, the new series waved goodbye to another former stalwart with the funeral of Ros Myers (Hermione Norris), blown to bits in the last series and thus freed up to splash about in the moral squalor of ITV1's new Bouquet of Barbed Wire. Read more... |
Joe Maddison's War, ITV1Sunday, 19 September 2010
Alan Plater wrote to the end. When he died earlier this year, he had completed a final screenplay which found him returning whence he came. Joe Maddison’s War was set in his native North-East, and portrayed the impact of wartime on ordinary working-class lives. With the help of nostalgic singing and dancing, the tone was comic and affectionate, but with an undimmed glint of good old socialist indignation. They don’t make dramas like this any more. But whenever they do, the more... Read more... |
The Special Relationship, BBC TwoSunday, 19 September 2010
The double act between screenwriter Peter Morgan and his favoured leading man Michael Sheen has given us some of the most teasingly enjoyable dramas of recent years, but how much genuine insight they've given us into Tony Blair or New Labour remains a moot point. Read more... |
Spitfire Women, BBC FourSaturday, 18 September 2010
“It was the best part of my life,” said one silver-haired lady in ringing tones, while another described it as “poetry” and a third as “the aeroplane and you were one”. What these doughty octogenarians were describing in this gem of a film was flying Spitfires during the Second World War. Read more... |
Herb Alpert, Tijuana Brass and Other Delights, BBC FourFriday, 17 September 2010
I used to have a childhood fascination with the music of Herb Alpert, because I liked the tunes and always felt there was a hint of melancholy behind Herb’s breezy, nonchalant exterior. Everybody else found Alpert laughably cheesy, but happily, this excellent documentary proved that I was right all along by building a watertight case for regarding him as something of a neglected legend. Read more... |
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