TV
Surviving Black Hawk Down, Netflix review - the real story behind Ridley Scott's Oscar-winnerFriday, 14 February 2025
Ridley Scott’s 2001 film Black Hawk Down was a technically superb blockbuster bristling with thunderous action sequences and famous actors, though its gung-ho depiction of the heroics of American special forces during the appalling Somalian civil... Read more... |
Vietnam: The War That Changed America, Apple TV+ review - painful and poignant stories from a terrible conflictMonday, 03 February 2025
It’s been 50 years since the USA bowed to the inevitable and pulled out of Vietnam, in the midst of harrowing scenes of anguish and chaos. Apple’s new six-part documentary series doesn’t bring any astounding new revelations about America’s traumatic... Read more... |
Paradise, Disney+ review - enigmatic drama with an unknown destinationSaturday, 01 February 2025
The latest from the This Is Us creator, Dan Fogelman, is a futuristic take on relationships among survivors once Earth has suffered an extinction event, a popular concept in these troubled times. Except that it starts out by following an equally... Read more... |
Brian and Maggie, Channel 4 review - Thatcherism's date with TV destinyThursday, 30 January 2025
The thesis underlying this two-part drama is that Brian Walden’s 1989 TV interview with Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher marked the end of the long-form, forensic political interview, while also being a catalyst for Thatcher’s resignation a year... Read more... |
Prime Target, Apple TV+ review - the appliance of scienceThursday, 23 January 2025
An opening sequence of a drone flying over a busy street in Baghdad, followed by a huge explosion that leaves many casualties and a gaping hole where a row of buildings used to be, suggests that Prime Target is going to be another special forces,... Read more... |
Out There, ITV1 review - drugs and thugs disfigure the Welsh landscapeWednesday, 22 January 2025
If nothing else, ITV’s new thriller Out There is a fabulous advertisement for the Welsh countryside. Many scenes were shot in Brecon and the Black Mountains, amid acres of wild, rambling moorland and majestic hillsides. But it’s not always a happy... Read more... |
What's the Matter with Tony Slattery?, BBC Two review - absorbing but troubling search for answersWednesday, 15 January 2025
In the late Eighties and Nineties, Tony Slattery became one of the most ubiquitous faces on television, appearing regularly on Whose Line Is It Anyway? and Have I Got News For You while popping up in quizzes and sitcoms all over the place (as well... Read more... |
American Primeval, Netflix review - nightmare on the Wild FrontierMonday, 13 January 2025
It seems The Osmonds may not have been the worst outrage perpetrated on an unsuspecting public by the Mormons. American Primeval is set in the 1850s, and is based around the real-life massacre of settlers travelling from Arkansas to California by... Read more... |
Lockerbie: A Search for Truth, Sky Atlantic review - Colin Firth stars in gruelling dramatisation of the 1988 terror attackFriday, 03 January 2025
The destruction of Pan Am flight 103 over Lockerbie on 21 December 1988 was one of the ghastliest events in what would become known as the War on Terror, and 36 years later it’s still shrouded in mystery and ambiguity.Lockerbie: A Search for Truth... Read more... |
SAS Rogue Heroes, Series 2, BBC One review - Paddy Mayne's renegade warriors invade ItalyWednesday, 01 January 2025
Having carved a swathe of terror and destruction through the Axis forces in North Africa, the SAS return for a second series (again written by Steven Knight, and with another rockin’ soundtrack featuring the likes of The Cult’s “She Sells Sanctuary... Read more... |
The Split: Barcelona, BBC One review - a soapy special with seasonally adjusted sentimentalityMonday, 30 December 2024
Maybe it was the timing, even though most of the action takes place in bright sunlight, that made The Split’s two-parter uncharacteristically soft-centred. This was a Christmas-but-filmed-last-summer special, often a guarantee of a mushy mash-... Read more... |
Best of 2024: TVSunday, 29 December 2024
They say cinema is dying (you never know, they may be wrong), but you can’t help noticing the stampede of movie stars towards TV and streaming. Many of 2024’s most memorable shows had a big-screen name attached, even if it was impossible to be... Read more... |
