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Adam Sweeting
Thursday, 15 April 2021
As Line of Duty aficionados debate the identity of H and wonder who DCI Joanne Davidson shares her DNA with, this new three-part series from BBC Two investigates the history of...
Mark Kidel
Thursday, 15 April 2021
The Master Musicians of Joujouka, described by William Burroughs as a “4000 year-old rock’n’roll band”, and recorded by Brian Jones of the Rolling Stones in the late 1960s, have...
Graham Fuller
Thursday, 15 April 2021
Catch Us If You Can, the 1965 road movie starring Barbara Ferris and the eponymous drummer and guiding force of the Dave Clark Five, proved a more trenchant satire of capitalism...
Sarah Collins
Wednesday, 14 April 2021
Almost a year ago, in the midst of the first national lockdown, The Sunday Times broke the news that Boris Johnson had failed to attend five consecutive Cobra meetings in the lead...
Adam Sweeting
Wednesday, 14 April 2021
What may have happened here is that an intriguing book has been turned into a not so great TV series. Too Close was Natalie Daniels’s well-received first novel, and she has...
Jessica Duchen
Tuesday, 13 April 2021
I can’t deny that it’s great to be able to experience a recital by Benjamin Grosvenor live from the Barbican despite lockdown, streamed into your own home. The filming of this...
India Lewis
Tuesday, 13 April 2021
Fifty Sounds is translator Polly Barton’s first novel, conceived as part of Fitzcarraldo’s annual essay prize. The book...
Thomas H Green
Tuesday, 13 April 2021
11 Past the Hour opens with its title song, a delicious, twangy, string-laden Nancy Sinatra Bond theme that never was. The...
Liz Thomson
Monday, 12 April 2021
If American music has a royal family, it’s surely the Seeger clan. Charles, the patriarch, the composer, musicologist and...
Lisa-Marie Ferla
Monday, 12 April 2021
There’s a line in “No Home”, the staggering centrepiece of Lady Dan’s debut album, that perhaps sums up the project. “Wolves...
Kieron Tyler
Sunday, 11 April 2021
Speaking to America’s Hit Parader magazine in August 1967, Frank Zappa said “If you want to learn how to play guitar, listen...
Tom Baily
Sunday, 11 April 2021
Since launching his directing career in 2011 with The Showdown, Park Hoon-jung has established himself as a promising...
Matt Wolf
Saturday, 10 April 2021
Sequin is the screen name for the questing 16-year-old at the slowly awakening heart of Sequin in a Blue Room, a 2019...
David Nice
Saturday, 10 April 2021
There are so many good ideas, so much talented hard work from the singers of the Jette Parker Young Artists Programme and...
Graham Rickson
Saturday, 10 April 2021
Beethoven: Symphony No. 7, Piano Concerto No. 4, Rotterdam Philharmonic Orchestra/Lahav Shani (piano and conductor) (...
Guy Oddy
Saturday, 10 April 2021
If there’s someone who could claim to have proved Arnold Schoenberg’s pithy phrase “If it is art, it is not for all” it was...
Bernard Hughes
Friday, 09 April 2021
The Polyphonic Concert Club is a collective of musicians – including Isata Kanneh-Mason and I Fagiolini – offering recorded...
Russ Coffey
Friday, 09 April 2021
A trend's been emerging, of late, for ageing rockers to actually sound younger on each new record. We saw it with AC/DC's...
Adam Sweeting
Thursday, 08 April 2021
I once went to see Motorhead, back in the days when real men didn’t wear earplugs, and afterwards it was if somebody had...
disc of the day
DVD/Blu-ray: Catch Us If You Can
John Boorman's debut skewered the capitalist exploitation of youth culture
tv
Bent Coppers: Crossing the Line of Duty, BBC Two review - when crime paid handsomely for corrupt officers
Astounding history of how the Met went rotten from within
Too Close, ITV review - capable cast struggles with unrewarding material
Unconvincing TV treatment of Natalie Daniels novel
This is a Robbery: The World's Biggest Art Heist, Netflix - the last word (for now)
Three decades on and the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum mystery is still hot
film
DVD/Blu-ray: Catch Us If You Can
John Boorman's debut skewered the capitalist exploitation of youth culture
Night in Paradise review - lukewarm bloodbath
Violent gangster thriller is bogged down by morose pensive sequences
Sequin in a Blue Room review - soullessness and sex in Sydney
Directing debut is grimly compelling if not always plausible
new music
The Master Musicians of Joujouka - a 4000 year-old rock'n'roll band
Healing music from the Rif Mountains of Morocco
Album: Imelda May - 11 Past the Hour
Irish star makes a rare musical blunder into whiffy 'classic rock' and balladry on her latest
Singer-songwriter Peggy Seeger: still in the vanguard of her musical dynasty
A member of America's great musical clan, Peggy Seeger has been a fixture on the British folk scene for more than 60 years
classical
Benjamin Grosvenor, Barbican online review - black magic and golden-age gorgeousness
The British pianist's recital beautifully evokes romanticism in isolation
Classical CDs: Dramatic symphonies, medieval bagpipes and a solo bassoon
Three very different symphonies, music for mental well-being and an intriguing piano recital
Castalian Quartet, Stoller Hall, Manchester online review - mercurial playing fits a varied programme
Haydn and Adès rub shoulders in a recital of drama and excitement
opera
The Seven Deadly Sins / Mahagonny Songspiel, Royal Opera online - modern morality tales mesh uneasily
More time needed in knocking this fascinating Brecht/Weill double bill into shape
L'heure espagnole, Grange Park Opera online review - seduction and sandwiches in 60 minutes
Ravel takes a Kensington lunchbreak, in an operatic updating for the YouTube generation
Siegfried, Göteborg Opera online review - a hero for our times
Staging and singing in sync for the Ring’s scherzo
theatre
Romeo and Juliet, National Theatre online review - a triumphant hybrid
Simon Godwin's debut film is part dressed-down rehearsal, part cinematic flourish
Living Newspaper, Edition 3, Royal Court online review – bleak news, sharp words
Third instalment of the irreverent series takes on Boris, star signs, and casual sexism
A Midsummer Night's Dream, SHAKE Festival livestream review - a star turn from Luisa Omielan makes this 'Bottom's Dream'
Jenny Caron Hall's production, with sister Rebecca starring, offers 'mechanical' treats
dance
The Nutcracker: an end-of-year obituary
It's been a rough ride for the seasonal cash cow. Here's how ballet companies coped
The Seven Deadly Sins, Opera North online review - viscerally thrilling
Kurt Weill and Bertolt Brecht's indictment of capitalism in a vibrant new production
comedy
Loyiso Gola, Netflix review - South African muses on race, religion and friendship
Reflections that make you stop and think
Working From Home online review - Johnny Vegas and Jason Byrne in a strong line-up
Livestreamed variety evening is terrific fun
Comedy podcasts round-up 4: plus a vodcast and some retro audio
Anniversary release for Fawlty Towers vinyl
Books
Jonathan Calvert and George Arbuthnott: Failures of State review - a devastating exposé, slightly mistimed
Precipitous publication may mean this feat of research fails to make its mark
Polly Barton: Fifty Sounds review - what is lost in translation
How to understand a language if you don't understand yourself
Andrea Bajani: If You Kept a Record of Sins review - where blame, grief and discovery meet
Irresistibly spare narrative reckons with a mother’s death in Romania
visual arts
This is a Robbery: The World's Biggest Art Heist, Netflix - the last word (for now)
Three decades on and the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum mystery is still hot
Prix Pictet: Confinement review - a year in photographs
Prize-winning photographers respond to the pandemic
Pioneering Women, Oxford Ceramics Gallery online review - domestic pleasures
A survey of female potters explores ancient ubiquity and the allure of pure form
latest comments
Lovely review. I really enjoyed the film. The...
The accompaniments add so much.It's a lovely disc.
yes I really liked the vox clara, a lovely sound...
Intruder, terrible. None of the actors gel and "...
In the flashback to 1979. You showed a young...
A thoughtful and well-balanced critique that drew...
Thank you for your lovely, thoughtful review.
Only two actors are worth their salt in all this...