tv
Safe Harbour, Series Finale, BBC Four review - too much message, not enough dramaSunday, 10 February 2019
Picture this. You’re sailing in the Timor Sea with family and friends on your luxurious yacht, hoiking the occasional plump fish out of the ocean to provide a ready meal washed down with Aussie plonk, when you suddenly chance across a decrepit, broken-down fishing boat crammed with mostly Iraqi refugees. What do you do? Read more...
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Das Boot, Sky Atlantic review - menacing drama on land and seaThursday, 07 February 2019
Wolfgang Petersen’s film Das Boot is now nearly 40 years old, but in this new TV sequel time has moved forward a mere nine months from the original story, into the autumn of 1942. Read more... |
Don McCullin: Looking for England, BBC Four review - a hard look at homeTuesday, 05 February 2019
A picture is worth more than a thousand words, never more so than with the photographs of Don McCullin. The octogenarian photographer’s black-and-white imagery made the Sunday Times colour supplement the talk of international media in the 1970s. Read more... |
Les Misérables, BBC One, series finale review - more moving than revealingMonday, 04 February 2019
It took the best part of six episodes, but we got there in the end: the reason David Oyelowo accepted the confusingly underwritten part of Inspector Javert in BBC One’s adaptation of Les Misérables was finally revealed. Read more... |
Camping, Sky Atlantic, review - Lena Dunham's tentative British exportFriday, 01 February 2019
When British sitcoms head west anything can happen. For every success – The Office had a happy second life with Steve Carell – there are half a dozen others that got lost in translation, including Coupling, Getting On, Gavin and Stacey, The It Crowd and The Vicar of Dibley. Read more... |
The Last Survivors, BBC Two review - living onMonday, 28 January 2019
When they were children the interviewees in this film – the last survivors – were taken away in incomprehensible circumstances, on their way to be murdered for who they were, in Germany and places further east. Read more... |
Imagine... James Graham, BBC One review - deft analysis of a working lifeTuesday, 22 January 2019
How does an unassuming 36-year-old with a terrifyingly sensible haircut and a mildly flamboyant taste in jumpers become the political playwright par excellence of his generation? Read more... |
Nolan: Australia's Maverick Artist, BBC Four review – a lust for life in all its aspectsMonday, 21 January 2019
Reckless, unstoppable, one step ahead of everyone else, a hell of a lot of fun, utterly charming, street smart – descriptions of the artist Sidney Nolan (1917-1992) poured out from colleagues, rivals, curators, art historians and dealers, not to mention friends and family, in this persuasive film. Read more... |
Black Lake, Series 2 Finale, BBC Four review - Swedish chiller fails to thrillSunday, 20 January 2019
A bunch of young-ish people stuck in a rambling house in the middle of nowhere, a hatchet-faced senior citizen guarding a hoard of murky secrets, assorted missing persons, a derelict sanatorium, lots of creepy noises and no telephones… hang on, isn’t that exactly the same formula as in the first series of Black Lake... Read more... |
American History's Biggest Fibs with Lucy Worsley, BBC Four review - rewriting history in the Land of the FreeFriday, 18 January 2019
The multi-costumed Lucy Worsley is television marmite, loved or loathed: her gesticulating enthusiasm can grate, as can her stream of bland platitudes. Typically the title is Worsley-twee, evoking fibs instead of lies and falsehoods; are we in the nursery, as smart Nanny Worsley seems to think? Read more... |
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