wed 23/07/2025

tv

Ghislaine Maxwell: Epstein's Shadow, Sky Documentaries review - the iniquitous fall of the tycoon's daughter

Adam Sweeting

Last year, Netflix released Jeffrey Epstein: Filthy Rich, a four-part documentary about the notorious financier and convicted sex offender.

Read more...

Framing Britney Spears, Sky Documentaries review - the rollercoaster ride of the former teen icon

Adam Sweeting

She became one of the most successful pop stars in history, but Britney Spears has also become a paradigm of the horrors and pitfalls of life in the white heat of showbusiness.

Read more...

Physical, Apple TV+ review - too much pain, not enough gain

Adam Sweeting

It’s not easy to sum up Physical in a pithy soundbite, though “quasi-political misanthropic comedy” might be vaguely in the right ballpark.

Read more...

BBC Cardiff Singer of the World 2021 Final, BBC Four review – an embarrassment of vocal riches

David Nice

A massive musical hope for the future is what we all need right now, after 14 stop/semi-start months and a threatened decimation of the concert and opera scene, the danger of which isn't over yet.

Read more...

Loki, Disney+ review - the God of Mischief gets his own TV series

Adam Sweeting

After appearing in six of Marvel’s Avengers movies, Tom Hiddleston’s Loki (the God of Mischief) gets his own TV series.

Read more...

Lupin, Part 2, Netflix review - master of disguise versus racists and lies

Adam Sweeting

Lupin isn’t really about the fictional character it’s named after (the gentleman thief Arsène Lupin, created in 1905 by French writer Maurice Leblanc), but about Assane Diop, who’s an obsessive fan of the Lupin novels.

Read more...

The Beast Must Die, Britbox review - a crime story which plumbs psychological depths

Adam Sweeting

They all laughed when the streaming service Britbox declared that it wanted to become a sort of UK-orientated Netflix, because so far it’s been mostly a back catalogue operation which plunders the BBC and ITV archives. You really want to pay a subscription to watch Are You Being Served? and Rosemary and Thyme?

Read more...

Time, BBC One review - grim and gritty study of life behind bars by Jimmy McGovern

Adam Sweeting

Jimmy McGovern’s new three-part drama about prison life is about as far as you could travel from Ronnie Barker’s Seventies sitcom Porridge, even if they are both on the same TV channel.

Read more...

Anne Boleyn, Channel 5 review - whispery and weepy

Matt Wolf

"Get out!" The order, spoken some way into the third and final episode of Channel 5's entry into the Tudor drama sweepstakes, Anne Boleyn, certainly seizes one's attention.

Read more...

Mare of Easttown, Season Finale, Sky Atlantic review - great performances in a town called malice

Adam Sweeting

With the last series of Line of Duty having left portions of its viewership dismayed and disgruntled, one consolation prize has been the way the many fine qualities of HBO’s Mare of Easttown (on Sky Atlantic) have seen it promoted it into the “unmissable” bracket.

Read more...

Pages

 

latest in today

'We are bowled over!' Thank you for your messages... ...
Burlesque, Savoy Theatre review - exhaustingly vapid

"It all starts with a snap," or so we're told early in the decidedly un-snappy Burlesque, which spends three hours borrowing shamelessly...

Tosca, Clonter Opera review - beauty and integrity in miniat...

At first sight, it seemed that Clonter Opera’s decision to tackle Tosca this year might be a leap too far. Its once-a-year complete...

Album: Paul Weller - Find El Dorado

Paul Weller occupies a strange place in the cultural sphere. Especially since he was adopted as an elder statesman of Britpop in the mid 1990s, he...

BBC Proms: McCarthy, Bournemouth SO, Wigglesworth review - s...

It started like Sunday afternoon band concert on a seaside promenade, a massive ensemble playing it light. But while there were several too many...

theartsdesk Q&A: writer and actor Mark Gatiss on 'B...

Having played Sherlock Holmes’s politically involved older brother Mycroft in the BBC’s hit crime series Sherlock...

Ballard, Prime Video review - there's something rotten...

Following the success of its screen version of Michael Connelly’s veteran detective Harry Bosch, starring Titus Welliver,...

Don't Rock the Boat, The Mill at Sonning review - all a...

Now 45 years in the past, its dazzling star gone a decade or so, The Long Good Friday is a monument of British cinema....

Blu-ray: The Rebel / The Punch and Judy Man

Comedian Tony Hancock’s vertiginous rise and fall is neatly traced in the two films he completed in the early 1960s. The warning signs were...

Bookish, U&Alibi review - sleuthing and skulduggery in a...

As a sometime writer of Poirot, Sherlock and Christmas ghost stories,...