drama
Jasper Rees
There are around 800 pages in a Dickensian doorstopper and it has been said around 800 times that if Dickens were working today he would be a show runner on a soap. Finally it has come to pass. Andrew Davies attempted something similar with his Bleak House, diced up into half-hour gobbets. But Dickensian is nothing less – or maybe that should be nothing more – than EastEnders in top hats and mobcaps.Its 20 episodes have been scheduled over that time of year which Dickens wishes could happen all the year round, two episodes a day. Its scriptwriter Tony Jordan, formerly of EastEnders, had Read more ...
Matt Wolf
A host of pictorially arresting, even painterly images can't make a satisfying whole out of In the Heart of the Sea, Ron Howard's film that doesn't dig very deep, its penetrating title notwitstanding. Howard has always been drawn to unusual realms, whether they be the intellect in A Beautiful Mind or space in Apollo 13 but his would-be literary-historical voyage into the world of squalls at sea has too many passages that are simply wet. Bring back Master and Commander. At heart a sort of Into the Storm with English Lit 101 bells on, the film posits a look at how Herman Melville's 1851 Read more ...
Lisa-Marie Ferla
It stands to reason that the contents of a prequel can never be entirely surprising. Some details have to be constants, some plot twists left unturned. As soon as it became clear that the second series of Noah Hawley’s Fargo predated the events of the first by some 25 years, we knew that state trooper Lou Solverson (Patrick Wilson) would be left standing at the end of it. But of all the things to have as a constant, Wilson’s sympathetic portrayal of the steadfast cop was as secure a tether as they come.The universe of Fargo is one in which anything can happen, and frequently does – we’re Read more ...
Tom Birchenough
Young Bulgarian writer-directors Kristina Grozeva and Petar Valchanov have made a tight, bleak, suspenseful drama in The Lesson (Urok), driven by a commanding, unforgiving performance from actress Margita Gosheva who leads the film. Clearly made on a tight budget (though that doesn’t intrude on production values), their first feature tells an often remorseless story of what happens when the money runs out, which replays themes familiar from the Balkans while also attaining an almost existential dimension.For a story set in the countryside, and in the summer, their cinematographer Krum Read more ...
Tom Birchenough
If the title wasn’t already occupied, television-wise, the BBC might have titled Capital “The Street”. It’s got the high soar-aways over urban geography that recall the soaps, but here they spread wider, taking in a metropolis. It’s “capital” as in London, and we may wonder just who’s been padding around the premises before John Lanchester’s 2012 novel, from which Peter Bowker’s three-part drama is adapted. As a big-blend city story, comparisons to Dickens have been plentiful. But throw in the other meaning of the title – foundations of capitalism, the movement of money and all that, in a Read more ...
aleks.sierz
Do scandals have a sell-by date? When it comes to sex and politicians, the answer is no. The tabloids, and the news-hungry public, still seem to relish a good story about a powerful man who is caught with his trousers around his ankles. So Harley Granville Barker’s Waste – first put on in 1907 and then rewritten some 20 years later – is ostensibly a highly relevant drama of a personal tragedy in which our characteristic national mix of prurience and puritanism gets a longwinded airing. Certainly, the plot is instantly recognisable.At its centre is a maverick independent politician, Henry Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
However it is looked at, Sleepwalker is one of British cinema’s strangest films. What initially seems to be a Mike Leigh-style, Abigail’s Party-ish hyper-real take on middle class mores quickly becomes an intense journey into dystopian horror which nods to both Italian gialli and films which deconstruct the nuts and bolts of British social attitudes. If late-period Mario Bava and Lindsay Anderson had collaborated to direct an episode of The Good Life, this might have been the result.Sleepwalker begins simply enough. Angela and Richard Paradise (Joanna David and Nicholas Grace) are urban, Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
Attempting to halt an enemy army with a small unit of troops on bicycles seems impossible and improbable, but this is exactly what happened at Lundtoftbjerg in the south of Jutland in the early hours of 9 April 1940 as Germany invaded the strategically important Denmark.Although the assault was launched on more than one front, this aspect of the land campaign is the subject of the Danish film April 9th, which tells the true story of how ill-equipped, low-population Denmark had no chance. Even so, the Danish troops did what they could after first sighting the invaders at 4.50am. There were Read more ...
Barney Harsent
Bernard Cornwell's best-selling Sharpe series, set during the Napoleonic wars, transferred to television with huge success. This week, it’s the turn of his Saxon Stories to make the jump, as the BBC airs its lavish, eight-part drama The Last Kingdom, based on Cornwell's novels. Set against the backdrop of the Viking invasion of Britain and the birth of modern England, it follows the adventures of the impetuous, imperfect and complex hero Uhtred, born a Saxon, brought up a Dane.However, it could so easily have been otherwise. After gaining a history degree, Cornwell initially began a career in Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
Sparrows Can’t Sing can be seen in many ways. The film, completed in 1962 and released to British cinemas in March 1963, features an extraordinary cast which now seems an uncanny roll call of British character and comic actors: James Booth, Avis Bunnage, Yootha Joyce, Roy Kinnear, Stephen Lewis, Murray Melvin, Arthur Mullard, Victor Spinetti, Barbara Windsor and more. For this alone, Sparrows Can't Sing would be a landmark.It is also a classic comedy and funny - frequently, extremely so. It was the only film directed by Joan Littlewood, then almost single-handedly effecting a sea change in Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
Tangerines has a simple premise which is executed straightforwardly. Yet it proves affecting to a degree seemingly out of proportion to the proposition behind the film. A man living in a war zone finds that the conflict has, literally, come to his door. He takes in an injured survivor from each of the opposing sides and, as they come back to health, steers them to confront and accept each other’s humanity. Where there was neither, tolerance and respect are cultivated.And that's it, the plot of Georgian director Zaza Urushadze’s Tangerines. The film’s impact stems from the subtlety of the Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
When a lead character is warned that “it’s easier to be scrutinised in a small town”, it’s instantly clear they are not going to take the advice, keep their head down and make sure they don’t attract attention. In South Korean director July Jung’s first full-length feature, police chief Young-nam inevitably makes her presence felt soon after her arrival from Seoul in the southern coastal region of Yeosu.Although A Girl at My Door explores small-town hierarchies and tensions, and the rifts and violence barely below the surface, it has to be taken as a commentary on South Korea overall as well Read more ...