tue 29/07/2025

tv

Bears About the House, BBC Two review - uphill struggle to save hunted animals

Marina Vaizey

Sun bears and moon bears are probably doomed, so why bother? Wildlife trafficking is a hugely profitable worldwide criminal enterprise, with small charities (fingers in the dyke, anyone?) doing their best to stem the flow.

Read more...

The Real Eastenders, Channel 4 review - timewarp on the Thames

Adam Sweeting

This quirky little film about the Isle of Dogs (Channel 4), a vanishing fragment of the old London docklands overshadowed by the Canary Wharf skyscrapers while its traditional homes are usurped by new and unloveable tower blocks,...

Read more...

Institute, BBC Four review – masculinity and memory in a nightmarish world of work

Sam Marlowe

Missing the office? Or dreading the day you have to return? What’s your relationship to the people you work with and for, and how does it intersect with your personal life? Do your paymasters know you? Do they care about you? Are there days when the routine and the hierarchy of it all just feels like a spirit-crushing game?

Read more...

Rockfield: The Studio on the Farm, BBC Four review - the amazing story of Britain's own honky chateau

Liz Thomson

Farms have played quite a large part in the history of rock, not just in terms of those wealthy stars who retire to one, tending sheep and making cheese. The festivals at Woodstock, the Isle of Wight and Glastonbury all took place on farms but before everyone turned on, tuned in and dropped out in the mud and the sun, two farmers in a village on the Welsh borders had set up the world’s first residential recording studio.

Read more...

The Plot Against America, Sky Atlantic review - fascism comes to 1940s USA

Adam Sweeting

Based on Philip Roth’s 2004 novel of the same name, The Plot Against America flashes back to the global turbulence of the 1940s to depict a counterfactual America that turns to the dark side.

Read more...

The Rise of the Murdoch Dynasty, BBC Two review - how the Aussie tycoon acquired huge political leverage

Adam Sweeting

As an opening line to BBC Two's new three-part series, “Rupert Murdoch is an enigma” failed to set pulses racing.

Read more...

Mrs America, BBC Two review - how a conservative revolutionary scuppered the Equal Rights Amendment

Adam Sweeting

In the midst of our increasingly confrontational politics of race and gender, it was a timely move to make this series (on BBC Two) about Seventies radical feminism and the battle over the Equal Rights Amendment (ERA) in the USA, even if...

Read more...

The Choir: Singing for Britain Finale, BBC Two review - stirring songs from a garden shed

Adam Sweeting

Once again the incredible healing powers of Gareth Malone swung into action, as his quest to find a universal anthem for the Covid crisis boiled up to a climax (BBC Two).

Read more...

The Battle of Britain, Channel 5 review - 80th anniversary of the RAF's finest hour

Adam Sweeting

The notion of massed aircraft dogfighting over southern England seems inconceivable now, but the Battle of Britain in the summer of 1940 was all too horribly real for its participants.

Read more...

Being Beethoven, BBC Four review – from grubby kid to grumpy genius

Peter Quantrill

Documentaries like this one make me sentimental for a time, until about 25 years ago, when classical music was a more or less weekly presence on terrestrial TV.

Read more...

Pages

 

latest in today

'We are bowled over!' Thank you for your messages... ...
theartsdesk at the Pärnu Music Festival 2025 - Arvo Pärt at...

Life-changing? That's how the Pärnu Music Festival felt on my first visit in 2015, alongside the discovery of...

The Winter's Tale, RSC, Stratford review - problem play...

There’s a deal to be made when taking your seat for The Winter’s Tale. It’s one the title alone would have...

Brixton Calling, Southwark Playhouse review - life-affirming...

What a delight it is to see the director, the star, even the marketing manager these days FFS, get out of the way and let a really...

BBC Proms: Batsashvili, BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra, Rya...

This Prom began in sombre and melancholic shades of grey. Then...

Inter Alia, National Theatre review - dazzling performance,...

Rosamund Pike is back. For her first stage appearance since 2010, when she played Hedda Gabler in Adrian Noble’s production for Bath Theatre Royal...

The Waterfront, Netflix review - fish, drugs and rock'n...

You wouldn’t really want to belong to the Buckley family, a star-crossed dynasty who run their fishing business out of Havenport,...

Album: Debby Friday - The Starrr of the Queen of Life

Debby Friday is a Nigerian-Canadian singer-producer who found...

The Fantastic Four: First Steps review - innocence regained

Marvel goes back to its origins, gulping the fresh air of Stan Lee and Jack Kirby’s first hit comic The Fantastic Four in 1961. Ignoring...

Music Reissues Weekly: The Pale Fountains - The Complete Vir...

The Pale Fountains played their first live show on 12 February 1980 as the support to on-the-up fellow...