TV
The Day of the Jackal, Sky Atlantic review - Frederick Forsyth's assassin gets a modern-day makeover
Adam Sweeting
Fred Zinnemann’s 1973 film The Day of the Jackal was successful thanks to its lean, almost documentary-like treatment of its story of a professional assassin methodically stalking his prey, French President Charles de Gaulle. Based on Frederick Forsyth’s novel, it also gained plausibility by being rooted in historical fact. In 1962 a group of disaffected army officers planned to kill de Gaulle after he granted independence to Algeria.However, Sky Atlantic’s reincarnation, scripted by Ronan Bennett, does away with almost all of that (although it does keep the bit where the shooter calibrates Read more ...
Helen Hawkins
The latest true-crime adaptation about a murderous man and his female victims turns its star into a bloody mess on a hospital table, her vital signs flatlining. And that’s just halfway through, with two episodes to go. At least the second half of Until I Kill You offers less gruesome generic territory (spoilers ahead): the bungled police investigation of the assault; the sympathetic WPC assigned to the surviving woman, Delia Balmer (Anna Maxwell Martin, pictured below, left); the dangerously clumsy twists and turns of the justice system; the eventual resolution of this sorry saga. But Read more ...
Road Diary: Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band, Disney+ review - the Boss grows older defiantly
Adam Sweeting
Director Thom Zimny has become the audio-visual Boswell to Bruce Springsteen’s Samuel Johnson, having made documentaries about the making of Born to Run and Darkness on the Edge of Town, Springsteen On Broadway and several more. Road Diary takes as its theme Springsteen’s 2023-4 tour, and uses that as a platform for an often emotional survey of his 50 year history with the E Street Band.This was the first time the E Street Band had been back on the road since 2017 (the Covid interregnum didn’t help), and there are some wry observations about scraping off the accumulated rust. Drummer Max Read more ...
Helen Hawkins
All three seasons of Industry are now on iPlayer, and after watching the most recent one and then backtracking for another look at the other two, I am still in two minds about it. With its forensic display of a toxic world where people are viewed as “capital” and anomie is the prevailing mode, is it masterly drama or an overheated mess? The pat answer would be, it’s both. Those two options become intertwined and indistinguishable the more you watch. Stylistically, it has a winning hand in its presentation of bouts of drink and drug-fuelled sex, wounding betrayals, vicious workplace Read more ...
Adam Sweeting
Delirium has greeted Disney’s eight-part adaptation of Jilly Cooper’s 1988 novel Rivals (part of her Rutshire Chronicles series).Perhaps it’s nostalgia for the previously-unloved Eighties, or maybe it’s because its non-stop conveyor belt of adultery, skulduggery and political incorrectness feels like some kind of liberation from the joyless paranoia of the 2020s. It also has lots of Eighties pop hits to keep it rattling along, from Tears for Fears and Blondie to ZZ Top and Depeche Mode.The rivals of the title are Rupert Campbell-Black, a former Olympic showjumper and now Minister for Sport in Read more ...
Helen Hawkins
It seems to be silly season for big-name directors. First, Coppola’s Megalopolis and Steve McQueen’s Blitz: why? Now Alfonso Cuarón’s Disclaimer: double why?What happens in the minds of directors whose careers have matured and whose audiences have come to expect a degree of subtlety and sophistication from them? Apple TV+ has managed to commission Slow Horses, Bad Monkey, Presumed Innocent and Time Bandits of late, some of the best television drama around. But this time it’s come up short. Cuarón has recruited a motley crew, presumably with an eye to their global saleabitliy, for this Read more ...
Helen Hawkins
The latest incarnation of David Mitchell, TV actor, looks at first sight much like the familar one from Peep Show and Back. Not a pufflepant in sight. His only costume change for Ludwig is a pair of wire-frame spectacles. HIs role is pretty familiar too: a buttoned-down individual who culturally favours the classics over the popular, the corduroy sports coat over the tracksuit. Presumably a fan of Beethoven, he has adopted the pen-name Ludwig for his line of work; behind the name he is John Taylor, bachelor. But fate calls him to apply his skills forensically, and he joins the line Read more ...
Adam Sweeting
Set in Yorkshire in the 1890s, and based on the novels by CL Skelton, The Hardacres is the story of the titular family who, it seems, were pioneers of takeaway fish, although not accompanied by chips. It’s their stall selling fried herring fresh from the ocean which makes the Hardacres an unexpected fortune.Hitherto, the family have been working as dockers and fish-gutters and struggling to make ends meet, and events take a turn for the worse when patriarch Sam (Liam McMahon) damages his hand in an accident. When his wife Mary (Claire Cooper) appeals to their employer, the charmless Mr Shaw ( Read more ...
Adam Sweeting
If you’re looking for an advertisement for how crime doesn’t pay, Joan will do very nicely. Written by Anna Symon, this six-part series is based on the memoirs of real-life jewel thief Joan Hannington, whose light-fingered accomplishments earned her notoriety back in the Eighties. Some apparently referred to her as “The Godmother”, though they don’t here.Stepping boldly and brassily into the lead role is Sophie Turner (who, once upon a time, played Sansa Stark in Game of Thrones). We first meet her when she’s living with Gary, a brutal, womanising thug who she eventually decides to leave Read more ...
Adam Sweeting
Is there no limit to the number of times the comic book heroes and villains from Marvel and DC can be recycled? HBO’s The Penguin (showing on Sky Atlantic) is a spin-off from Matt Reeves’s 2022 film The Batman, which starred Robert Pattinson in the title role and Colin Farrell as Oswald “Oz” Cobb, aka The Penguin.Farrell’s Penguin returns here as the star of his own show, though his extraordinary physical transformation makes him utterly unrecognisable.The usually rather handsome Irish actor is reborn as a grotesque and malevolent gargoyle, his face pudgy and puckered, cursed with a painful Read more ...
Helen Hawkins
Why do production companies think the world needs yet another reconstituted TV drama involving famous people in infamous situations? Newspapers and non fiction books already do a great job of telling these stories of intrigue and scandal: why is a TV adaptation a viable improvement?This is especially true when key moments of the action necessarily take place behind the closed doors of Fortress Firm and are effectively unknowable. All the production team can do is hire a decent writer to indulge in gifted speculation while they come up with a budget for securing the cream of the acting crop Read more ...
Adam Sweeting
“Let the train take the strain”, as the old advertising slogan urged us. The train in this six-part drama has to soak up a whole world of strain, as it’s taken over by cyber-hijackers who demand a huge ransom before they’ll consider relinquishing their technological grip.The train is called "The Heart of Britain", and it’s the night sleeper service from Glasgow to Euston. Some viewers may detect resemblances between this and Idris Elba’s Apple TV plane-drama Hijack, or (in a more rail-orientated vein) Snowpiercer, but Nightsleeper does at least have the distinction – well, kind of – of being Read more ...