9/11
Adam Sweeting
With theartsdesk readers still reeling from the demise of Italianate sleuthing series Zen, now comes news of the axing of glossy MI5 drama Spooks. The BBC has announced that the show's 10th series, starting next month, will be its last, though it seems the decision to pull the plug was taken by production company Kudos rather than by the Corporation."We didn't want to get to the point where the BBC said we really don't want another one," said executive producer Jane Featherstone. "We wanted to kill it off in its prime."
Spooks was originally launched in the wake of the 9/11 attacks in New Read more ...
Peter Culshaw
Strange portents – the weather is always dry and baking hot this time of year in Fes. This time it was like winter, with lashing rain and thunder for the first few days of the Fes Festival. But then things are strange in general here; events are moving fast throughout the Maghreb. The first day I was there saw a demonstration of thousands in Rabat, and a smaller one in Fes. By the last day a new constitution had been posted online, with the King renouncing some of his powers. The energy in the city seems slightly giddy with expectation and a certain optimism.Fes was always a fascinating city Read more ...
peter.quinn
Sometimes you can leave a concert feeling slightly shortchanged: a perceived weakness in the programming; an unprepared, lacklustre conductor; a phoned-in performance. No danger of any of the above at the marathon session three of Reverberations, a weekend of concerts at LSO St Luke's and the Barbican devoted to the music and influence of the contemporary US composer Steve Reich. Actually, by the end of the evening, some people may have been ruing just how many artists have fallen under Reich's influence. We filed into the Barbican at 6pm on Saturday. We left the hall at 12.15am on Sunday Read more ...
Matt Wolf
When cultural talk drifts toward Mr Big, thoughts tend to turn to Sex and the City's Chris Noth, whose New York is world enough and time away from the doomed metropolis populated by the "big fellah" played by Finbar Lynch in Richard Bean's play of the same name. This big guy is, in fact, slight but menacing: the type of man not unacquainted with the very methods of violence which Harold Pinter, among others, dramatised so well. And when Lynch's Costello remarks, "Unlike you, I am not mentally ill," one sits up and takes notice. The issue here has less to do with what Costello is not and Read more ...
Ismene Brown
It must have been with a leaden heart that the BBC Proms planning team realised that 2010's Last Night would fall plumb on 9/11. How to reconcile all the traditional Brit triumphalism and singing of Jerusalem with the rather more contemporary need to reconcile all, whether out of Jerusalem or not? They did, and full marks for a delicate balancing-act of culture politics and a moving occasion last night (admitted by one who had spent a lifetime avoiding the Last Night of the Proms).Booking Renée Fleming, for one, was a canny move. She is most people’s favourite American soprano, gorgeous to Read more ...
Adam Sweeting
If reality TV became a mass-audience opium for a world turning bleaker and nastier, what we might as well call unreality TV has been fulfilling a related role while following a different trajectory. In a world that has never been quite the same since 9/11 opened up a big crack in it, some of TV's most compelling creations have been the ones which have dared to tamper with perceived reality in subtle, disturbing ways. We all felt that the earth had moved in some indefinable fashion, and we've been struggling ever since to understand exactly how. Jim Morrison's line, "the future's Read more ...