tv
Armistead Maupin's Tales of the City, Netflix, review - sex and dope soap is back in San FranciscoFriday, 07 June 2019
It helps to be of a certain vintage to appreciate the first impact of Tales of the City. Armistead Maupin’s column, begun in the San Francisco Chronicle in 1978 as a frank and joyous portrayal of gay culture, became a series of half a dozen cult novels. These started appearing in the UK from the mid-1980s. Read more...
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The Virtues, Episode 4, Channel 4 review - a bitter redemptionWednesday, 05 June 2019
Shane Meadows has said that he always wanted to make a film where people didn’t talk. It’s homage to the European cinema he loves, with its preference for atmosphere over action, ambiguity over resolution, but it is also a way to confront an experience that lay dormant within his own life for too long. Read more... |
63 Up, ITV review - age is beginning to wither themWednesday, 05 June 2019
The first film in this extraordinary series, Seven Up!, was made for Granada Television’s World in Action in 1964. It picked 14 seven-year-old British children from different social backgrounds, aiming to revisit them every seven years to see how their lives were progressing. Paul Almond directed the first programme, but ever since this has been Michael Apted’s baby. Read more... |
Her Majesty's Cavalry, ITV review - my kingdom for a horseWednesday, 05 June 2019
If you should happen to be loitering in London’s Knightsbridge at 4am, don’t panic if you find yourself surrounded by the massed horsemen of the Household Cavalry. When they need to rehearse for great occasions like the Queen’s birthday, they can only do it in the middle of the night when there’s no traffic on the roads. Read more... |
Chernobyl, Episode 4, Sky Atlantic review - life in the death zoneTuesday, 28 May 2019
Chernobyl (Sky Atlantic) is the most unmissable show on TV. Perhaps it’s because the Soviet nuclear catastrophe in 1986 was so blood-freezingly horrific that the filmmakers didn’t need to fictionalise or exaggerate. Read more... |
The Planets, BBC Two review - boy-band boffin rides againTuesday, 28 May 2019
Professor Brian Cox, still looking cheekily boy-band-ish at the age of 51, has made himself a child of the universe. His day job is professor of particle physics at Manchester University, but turn him loose with a camera crew and an unfeasibly large budget and he turns into a starry-eyed cosmic hippy. Read more... |
Summer of Rockets, BBC Two review - pride and prejudice in 1950s BritainWednesday, 22 May 2019
Hallelujah! At last the BBC have commissioned a Stephen Poliakoff series that makes you want to come back for episode two (and hopefully all six), thanks to a powerful cast making the most of some perceptively-written roles. Read more... |
Alastair Campbell: Depression and Me, BBC Two review - is there an alternative to a life on anti-depressants?Wednesday, 22 May 2019
Persistent depression is debilitating and terrifying, as Alastair Campbell illustrated vividly in this punchily-argued film. We first saw him looking like a disturbed, miserable ghost, as he described in his video diary a sudden plunge into depression at New Year, 2018. He seemed to be ebbing away before our eyes. Read more... |
Heathrow: Britain's Busiest Airport, ITV review - 80 million passengers but not much actionWednesday, 22 May 2019
It’s remarkable that this meandering observational documentary about the five square mile airport west of London has stretched to a fifth series. Heathrow may have 77,000 staff and expect 80 million passengers to pass through this year, but that doesn’t mean everything they do is interesting. Read more... |
Hatton Garden, ITV review - ancient burglars bore againTuesday, 21 May 2019
Have we passed peak Hatton Garden? It’s now four years since a gang of old lags pulled off the biggest heist of them all. They penetrated a basement next door to a safe-deposit company, drilled through the wall, and made off with many millions quids’ worth in diamonds, cash and the like. Read more... |
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