fri 01/08/2025

tv

Climate Change: The Facts, BBC One review - how much reality can humankind bear?

Katherine Waters

Peer down the glassy dark and you’ll see them. White bubbles trapped in the frozen lake which appear to be rising to the surface. Look through the permafrost this way and you’re seeing into the past: as the ice melts, gas which was captured and stored tens of thousands of years ago when woolly mammoths and sabre-toothed cats stalked Alaska is released into the atmosphere. Each slick of melt water is another decade returning to the rivers.

Read more...

Chimerica, Channel 4 review - fake news, true drama

Tom Birchenough

Chimerica is a stage-to-screen adaptation that has certainly kept up with the times.

Read more...

Trust Me, Series 2, BBC One review - hospital killer chiller

Adam Sweeting

Great, a new drama not by the Williams brothers. Instead it’s Dan Sefton’s second iteration of his medical thriller Trust Me, last seen in 2017 starring Jody Whittaker.

Read more...

Back to Life, BBC Three review - Daisy Haggard finds laughs in prison release

Jasper Rees

Pre-publicity for Back to Life has been all about its stablemate. This new six-part comedy comes from the same producers who brought you Fleabag, and the hope is that the Midas touch is catching.

Read more...

Rock Island Line: The Song That Made Britain Rock, BBC Four review - the early dawn of Britpop

james Woodall

If you were a fan of “Rock Island Line” when it became a pop hit, you’d have to be at least in your mid-70s now. In 1956, Paul McCartney heard Lonnie Donegan perform it live in Liverpool, and Paul’s rising 77.

Read more...

Don't Forget the Driver, BBC Two review - trying to beat the Bognor blues

Adam Sweeting

Bognor Regis was once renowned for its restorative climate and was much favoured by George V (he awarded the town the “Regis” tag), but times have changed if Toby Jones’s new series is anything to go by.

Read more...

Fleabag, Series 2 finale, BBC Three review - Phoebe Waller-Bridge's miraculous situation tragedy

Jasper Rees

The problem with Fleabag (BBC Three/BBC One) is that it makes almost all television look pedestrian. It’s like the difference between Fleabag’s scummily inadequate boyfriends and the unattainable perfection embodied by the cool sweary priest. Earth vs heaven. Water/wine. And now it is gone.

Read more...

The Widow, ITV review - Kate Beckinsale stars in tale of a missing husband

Markie Robson-Scott

The Williams brothers (The Missing, Liar, Rellik, Baptiste) are back.

Read more...

This Time with Alan Partridge, Series finale, BBC One review - back to his worst

Jasper Rees

Piers Morgan hated This Time with Alan Partridge (BBC One) and predicted it would be pulled before the end of the series. This may be taken as a kitemark of quality.

Read more...

Line of Duty, Series 5, BBC One review - already it's dark, dirty and dangerous

Adam Sweeting

Congratulations to Stephen Graham, guest-starring in this fifth season of BBC One’s Line of Duty, for still being alive at the end of episode one, a favour not routinely granted to headline names in Jed Mercurio’s...

Read more...

Pages

 

latest in today

'We are bowled over!' Thank you for your messages... ...
BBC Proms: Estonian Philharmonic Chamber Choir, Kaljuste rev...

Arvo Pärt was into his 40s before he made had his Big Musical Idea: simplicity. He has spent the subsequent half-century pursuing this ideal,...

Top Hat, Chichester Festival Theatre review - top spectacle...

After 76 years, you’d have thought they could’ve come up with a better story! Okay, that’s a cheap jibe and, given the elusive...

Late Shift review - life and death in an understaffed Swiss...

Floria (the superb Leonie Benesch: The Crown; The Teachers’ Lounge; September 5) is a nurse, working the severely understaffed...

Edinburgh Fringe 2025 reviews: Alright Sunshine / K Mak at t...

Alright Sunshine, Pleasance Dome ...

theartsdesk at the Three Choirs Festival - Passion in the Ca...

“Powerful, Timeless, Inspiring” it says on the front cover of the programme-book for this year’s supposedly 297th Three Choirs Festival at...

The Naked Gun review - farce, slapstick and crass stupidity

The original Naked Gun series (spun off from the Police Squad! TV show) brought reliable belly-laughs to the Eighties and...

Album: Reneé Rapp - Bite Me

The stage musical update of Mean Girls, and the film adaptation, pushed Reneé Rapp into the public eye. She played queen bitch Regina...

The Narrow Road to the Deep North, BBC One review - love, de...

Readers of Richard Flanagan’s Booker-winning novel will be familiar with its themes of war, extreme suffering, ageing, memory, fidelity and...

BBC Proms: Kholodenko, BBCNOW, Otaka review - exhilarating L...

According to the programme, Lutosławski’s Concerto for Orchestra is heard somewhere around the world every other week. In which case I’ve...