tv
The Pigeon Tunnel: Stories from the Life of John le Carré, Apple TV+ review - outstanding, intriguing portrait of David CornwellFriday, 20 October 2023
When the Oscar-winning documentary-maker Errol Morris sat David Cornwell down before his Interrotron camera in 2019, the first salvo of the chat came, not from the interviewer, but from his subject: “Who are you?” Read more...
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Frasier, Paramount+ review - he's back! But should he be?Friday, 13 October 2023
F. Scott Fitzgerald said there were no second acts in American lives, but here’s Frasier Crane coming back for his third. Frasier first appeared on TV in the third series of Cheers in 1984. After Cheers bit the dust in 1993, Frasier was transported from Boston to Seattle and reborn in his own show, which ran until 2004 and stands as one of the most revered comedies in TV history (alongside, it must be said, Cheers). Read more... |
The Reckoning, BBC One review - Savile saga that doesn't tell the whole storyWednesday, 11 October 2023
The problem with star casting is that the viewer can’t escape what it is: a very well known face pretending to be another very well known face. Read more... |
Boiling Point, BBC One review - chef drama that's simmering nicelyMonday, 02 October 2023
The problem facing any chef series is that its daily dramas are essentially rooted in the same small, sweaty space. It’s like one of the reductions prepared there, all the flavours compressed into an intense spoonful of sauce. Read more... |
The Continental, Prime Video - welcome to the expanding John Wick universeWednesday, 27 September 2023
Now that earnings from the John Wick movie franchise have topped a billion dollars, it’s no surprise that there should be moves afoot to cash in by developing a “John Wick Universe”. Read more... |
Wilderness, Prime Video review - twisty thriller that leaves a nasty aftertasteMonday, 18 September 2023
Jenna Coleman has had a mostly upbeat acting CV to date, notably playing Clara in Doctor Who and the young Queen in ITV’s Victoria. The mood darkened with her excellent turn as the French-Canadian girlfriend of the mass murderer in The Serpent; now it turns to pitch with Wilderness. Read more... |
Top Boy, Season 5, Netflix review - grime and punishmentSaturday, 16 September 2023
And so Ronan Bennett’s Hackney gangster odyssey reaches its conclusion, having made the leap from its Channel 4 origins back in 2011 to become, over its last three series, one of Netflix’s top-rating and most acclaimed shows. And it has managed to do it without diluting or compromising its London roots, despite detours to Jamaica, Spain, Morocco and even Ramsgate. Read more... |
Who Is Erin Carter?, Netflix review - secrets and ultra-violence under the Catalan sunThursday, 07 September 2023
One thing we know for sure about Erin Carter is that she’s played by Swedish-Kurdish actor Evin Ahmad, and it’s clear right from the start that she’s a woman with a complicated past which she’s trying to run away from. But you’ll have to get to episode four before the mysteries start to unwind themselves. Read more... |
The Woman in the Wall, BBC One review - deliciously dark murder mystery with a tragic hinterlandMonday, 04 September 2023
Ruth Wilson possibly hasn’t had as much to get her teeth into on-screen since she vamped it up in Luther. Her performance as Lorna Brady in The Woman in the Wall is an object lesson in the way a performer in demand for her engaging looks and edgy sexiness can smartly step off that particular conveyor belt and go off in a totally new direction. Read more... |
The Following Events Are Based on a Pack of Lies, BBC One - deliciously bingeable drama from the Skinner sistersWednesday, 30 August 2023
They could have titled this series Gaslighting. It’s a sly and twisty thriller about a conman whose deadliest weapon is his gift for making his victims feel as if everything that happened to them was their own fault, and they brought it on themselves. Read more... |
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Anyone who has seen Lee Miller’s photographs – those taken of her in the 1920s when she was a dazzling American beauty, those she took as a...
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Album: Floating Points - Cascade
I made a terrible mistake when I first got this LP: I played it on my laptop speakers. That’s not the straight up foolishness you might think,...
LSO, Pappano, Barbican review - singular adventures for a ne...
Somehow those of us required to translate the musical experience into words look for the moments which defeat us. One such was the extraordinary...