TV
The Responder, BBC One review - the loneliness of the long-distance copperTuesday, 25 January 2022
Cops on the box… don’t we just love ‘em? From Jimmy Perez and Ted Hastings to Inspector Reid from Ripper Street and Stella Gibson from The Fall the list is endless, but obviously we need more. The copper seems to have become the battered Everyperson... Read more... |
Rules of the Game, BBC One review - feminist workplace drama topples into farceThursday, 13 January 2022
The BBC have billed this as a “four-part thriller about sexual politics in the modern workplace”, which is slightly misleading because it looks as though it’s taking place in about 1983. The action centres on a sportswear company called Fly Dynamic... Read more... |
Witch Hunt, All 4 review - dark deeds and dirty moneySaturday, 08 January 2022
When business and politics collide, the result may very well be corruption. Such is the case in this taut, streamlined thriller from Norway, one of many gems from the Walter Presents stable.Ida Waage (Ingrid Bolsø Berdal, pictured below) is the... Read more... |
The Apprentice, Series 16, BBC One review - will they never learn?Friday, 07 January 2022
“Will they never learn?” people must have been screaming as they watched the opening episode of the 16th series of The Apprentice – I certainly was. After all these years, the hopefuls vying to take Lord Sugar's £250,000 to invest in their business... Read more... |
The Tourist, BBC One review - gripping Outback thriller from the Williams brothersSunday, 02 January 2022
This latest outing from the astonishingly prolific Jack and Harry Williams (The Missing, Baptiste, The Widow, Strangers etc) gives itself a huge leg-up by exploiting the epic lonely spaces of the Australian Outback.The opening sequence of episode... Read more... |
Best of 2021: TVTuesday, 28 December 2021
There's so much stuff on TV, in all its many multi-streaming hats, that I somehow haven't got around to watching Succession. Apparently it's the best TV show ever made.Oh well, there's bound to be another one along in a minute. Theartsdesk's eagle-... Read more... |
A Very British Scandal, BBC One review - the wild life and times of the Duchess of ArgyllMonday, 27 December 2021
The title might provoke a quick double-take. Wasn’t A Very British Scandal that series about Jeremy Thorpe and Norman Scott, starring Hugh Grant and Ben Whishaw?Duh, of course not! That was A Very English Scandal (though both of them are produced by... Read more... |
The Amazing Mr Blunden, Sky Max / The Mezzotint, BBC Two reviews - blundering Blunden eclipsed by M R JamesFriday, 24 December 2021
Friday night was Mark Gatiss night. His new version of Antonia Barber’s novel The Ghosts (filmed as The Amazing Mr Blunden in 1972 by Lionel Jeffries and similarly titled here) sprawled across two hours on Sky, while his adaptation of M R James’s... Read more... |
The Girl Before, BBC One review - high-tech dream home contains many a heartacheMonday, 20 December 2021
Would you be willing to play the guinea pig in a designer-superhome created by a deranged architect? That is one question posed by this four-part drama (adapted by JP Delaney from his own novel), a kind of haunted house mystery underpinned by the... Read more... |
Landscapers, Sky Atlantic review - Olivia Colman and David Thewlis star as a pair of convicted killersWednesday, 08 December 2021
In 2014, Susan and Christopher Edwards were jailed for a minimum of 25 years for the killing of Susan’s parents, William and Patricia Wycherley. They’d been shot dead in 1998, and lay buried in their garden at 2 Blenheim Close, Mansfield for 15... Read more... |
You Don't Know Me, BBC One review - true love meets inner-city crime waveTuesday, 07 December 2021
I sympathised with the prosecuting barrister when she put it to the court that the accused, a man called Hero (Samuel Adewunmi), was “using his closing speech to construct a work of fiction”.This was a crafty meta-joke. You Don’t Know Me itself is a... Read more... |
Hellbound, Netflix review - supernatural assassins usher in an age of terrorFriday, 03 December 2021
Netflix is sometimes criticised for bringing too much of everything to its online feast, but the way it’s opening up previously under-exposed territories is becoming seriously impressive. Suddenly, South Korea is beginning to look like a powerhouse... Read more... |
