mon 18/08/2025

tv

Best of 2019: TV

theartsdesk

As symbolic moments go, the arrival of Martin Scorsese's new gangster epic The Irishman on Netflix took some beating.

Read more...

Liam Gallagher: As It Was, BBC Two review - no expletives deleted in exhausting rock-doc

Kathryn Reilly

Liam Gallagher knows exactly how "fucking fantastic… and fucking shit I am", and proceeds to tell us so for 85 minutes. This 10-year documentary project came about as a result of director Charlie Lightening’s friendship with Gallagher, formed as Oasis came to a predictable halt.

Read more...

Gavin & Stacey Christmas Special, BBC One - a big cwtch from Barry

Veronica Lee

What joy to be back with the Shipman and West families, created by writing team James Corden and Ruth Jones.

Read more...

Martin's Close, BBC Four review - where did the scary bits go?

Adam Sweeting

The series of short films, A Ghost Story For Christmas, became a Yuletide staple on BBC One in the 1970s. Most of them were adapted from the works of medieval scholar M R James, and drew their unsettling supernatural aura from the understated and academic tone of the writing.

Read more...

Cinderella: After Ever After, Sky 1 review - preposterous fairytale sequel tweaks the funny bone

Adam Sweeting

This divertingly daft sequel to the Cinderella story (Sky 1) was the brainchild of David Walliams, who introduced it as himself, sitting smugly by a roaring fire in his authorial smoking jacket.

Read more...

Hugh Grant: A Life on Screen, BBC Two review - hiding in plain sight?

Marina Vaizey

This charming BBC Two hagiography – which may be a contradiction in terms – opened on a montage of praise, with just a hint of irony for the hugely successful actor Hugh Grant. He was born in Hammersmith Hospital, although neither he nor his father can quite remember.

Read more...

A Christmas Carol, BBC One review – Dickens classic recast as gruelling horror story

Adam Sweeting

If you came to this expecting to be reminded of such ghosts of Scrooges past as Alastair Sim or Bill Murray, you will have been reaching either for the brandy or the defibrillator.

Read more...

Heston's Marvellous Menu: Back to the Noughties, BBC Two review - ghost of food trends past

Jill Chuah Masters

Heston Blumenthal, of triple-cooked chips fame, is a mad food scientist. Well, that’s how we’re introduced to him in Heston’s Marvellous Menu.

Read more...

The Brexit Storm Continues: Laura Kuenssberg's Inside Story, BBC Two review - rehashed political history fails to set pulses racing

Adam Sweeting

All the TV networks like to big up their news journalists as major players, but are they as important as they like to think?

Read more...

Charles I: Killing a King, BBC Four review - sad stories of the death of kings

Adam Sweeting

This three-part series by historian Lisa Hilton is a follow-up to her previous effort from last July, Charles I: Downfall of a King (BBC Four).

Read more...

Pages

 

latest in today

'We are bowled over!' Thank you for your messages... ...
Blu-ray: Who Wants to Kill Jessie?

"Crazy comedy" was a recognised subgenre in post-war Czech...

BBC Proms: Le Concert Spirituel, Niquet review - super-sized...

There’s a Proms paradox that’s familiar to Early Music fans....

Gibby Haynes, O2 Academy 2, Birmingham review - ex-Butthole...

Gibby Haynes is the wild-eyed crazy man who used to front the Butthole Surfers back in the 1980s and 1990s. At the time, there was none weirder or...

Edinburgh Fringe 2025 reviews - Cat Cohen / Lachlan Werner /...

Cat Cohen, Pleasance Courtyard ...

Album: Adrian Sherwood - The Collapse of Everything

UK dub maestro and producer, Adrian Sherwood is hardly what...

Oslo Stories Trilogy: Love review - freed love

Love was the Norwegian climax of Dag Johan Haugerud’s Oslo trilogy, the most lovestruck vision of his city and boldest prophesy of how to...

Music Reissues Weekly: The Residents - American Composer...

George & James was originally released in March 1984. Stars & Hank Forever! emerged in October 1986. The two LPs were...

Frang, Romaniw, Liverman, LSO, Pappano, Edinburgh Internatio...

Right from the bracing brass fanfare that began this Sea Symphony, you know exactly where you were: right in the midst of the deck, with...