tue 22/07/2025

tv

The Accident, Series Finale, Channel 4 review - ambitious mini-series leaves many unanswered questions

Jill Chuah Masters

Channel 4’s The Accident closed with a bang and a whimper. Jack Thorne provided a definitive answer to his series’ central question, but his characters and subplots petered out in the meantime.

Read more...

Britain’s Lost Masterpieces, Episode Three, BBC Four review – more than a bit of Botticelli

Tom Baily

Once again the whodunit becomes the whoforgedit in the newest installment of the Britain’s Lost Masterpieces series.

Read more...

Gold Digger, BBC One review - Julia Ormond tackles those mid-life blues

Adam Sweeting

A tip of the hat to Julia Ormond for boldly going where many an actress might have chosen not to. In this new six-parter by Marnie Dickens, she plays Julia Day, a mother of three who’s just divorced her husband and is turning 60.

Read more...

Ant Middleton and Liam Payne: Straight Talking, Sky 1 review - when the commando met the pop star

Adam Sweeting

“What is wrong with us? What are we doing here?” Liam Payne asked the camera, as we neared the end of his jaunt round picturesque Namibia with his quizmaster Ant Middleton. The short answer would be “it’s for the publicity, you idiot,” but of course he knows that full well. He’d just leapt off a cliff face and swung in wide circles on a rope above the russet-coloured desert far below.

Read more...

World on Fire, BBC One, series finale review - may this fine war drama fight on

Jasper Rees

A bit like all those people on the home front in 1940 (but only a little bit), we sit and nervously wait for news. Is World on Fire (BBC One) still listed among the living? Or even now is someone typing up the letter and sticking it in a brown envelope?

Read more...

Arena: Everything is Connected - George Eliot's Life, BBC Four review - innovative film brings the Victorian novelist into the present

India Lewis

Gillian Wearing’s Arena documentary Everything is Connected (BBC Four) is a quietly innovative biography of an author whose works still resonate with their readers and the country within which she wrote.

Read more...

The Fall of the Berlin Wall with John Simpson, BBC Four review – the future we’ve left behind

Tom Baily

John Simpson remains the BBC’s longest serving foreign correspondent. Here, he returns to the biggest moment of his career. This personalised retelling of the collapse of the Berlin wall encompasses fond remembrance, factual detail and the confidence of retrospective analysis. And, the big BUT question is addressed: where are we now?

Read more...

Dublin Murders, Series Finale, BBC One review - eerie detective drama grips tightly

Adam Sweeting

You wouldn’t expect a drama called Dublin Murders (BBC One) to be a laugh a minute, but the cumulative anguish, menace and torment of this eight-parter made it almost unbearable, even if viewers were thrown a tiny scrap of hope in the final frames.

Read more...

Rich Hall's Red Menace, BBC Four review - laconic comic referees the Free World versus Communism

Adam Sweeting

Who won the Cold War? Nobody, according to comedian Rich Hall in this 90-minute film for BBC Four. His theory is that after the symbolic fall of the Berlin Wall 30 years ago, Russia and America merely “flipped ideologies”.

Read more...

Rick Stein's Secret France, BBC Two review - is the travelling chef's palate growing jaded?

Jill Chuah Masters

Another year, another cookbook. Rick Stein is back for his next round of food travels and this time, we’re going to France. “For the French, food isn’t part of life, it is life itself,” says Stein, as his Porsche zips through the French countryside.

Read more...

Pages

 

latest in today

'We are bowled over!' Thank you for your messages... ...
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,...

Album: Spafford Campbell - Tomorrow Held

Guitarist Louis Campbell and fiddle player Owen Spafford started playing together as teenagers in the National Youth Folk Ensemble when Sam...

The Estate, National Theatre review - hugely entertaining, b...

The first rule for brown people, says the main character – played by BAFTA-winner Adeel Akhtar – in this highly entertaining dramedy, is not to...

Music Reissues Weekly: Mike Taylor - Pendulum, Trio

Wheels of Fire was Cream’s third album. Issued in the US in June 1968 and in the UK two months later, it was a double LP. One record was...