Benedict Cumberbatch
Adam Sweeting
And so we reached the end of series two with The Reichenbach Fall, the last of a miserly three episodes. I suppose this criminally meagre ration leaves us eager for more, though the way Benedict Cumberbatch's career is rocketing skywards and Hollywood-wards, it might have been wise to shoot some more episodes with him while he still had the overcoat on and the violin to hand.Anyway, Moriarty was back, played once again with a kind of amphibian slipperiness by Andrew Scott (pictured right). This week's screenwriter was Steve Thompson, who had been set the daunting task of constructing an Read more ...
Matt Wolf
The thrilling does battle with the banal and just about calls it a draw, which is a synoptic way of describing the effect of Steven Spielberg's film of War Horse, based on the Michael Morpurgo novel that spawned the now unstoppably successful play. Those nay-sayers who said it couldn't be done will find their prejudices confirmed, preferring the imaginative reach infinitely more easily arrived at by the use of puppets on stage. On the other hand, no one does epic screen moments quite like Spielberg, which on occasion means wincing through various passages while you await this director's long- Read more ...
graeme.thomson
My, but it’s been a bumper few months for the Baker Street Boy. There’s been Anthony Horowitz’s superior new Holmes novel, The House of Silk, Guy Ritchie’s second instalment of his steampunk take on Sherlock as karate-kicking action hero, and now the return of the BBC’s stylish reboot of Holmes as a new millennium net 'tec. And what a lot of fun it was. There may be helicopters, webcams and Wi-Fi, and Dr Watson may be blogging rather than scratching away at the old pen and ink, but still the essence of what makes Holmes such an enduringly compelling fictional figure was evident in spades.The Read more ...
Adam Sweeting
There's quite a bit to admire in DR Hood's debut feature. There's the cast for a start, headed by nascent superstar Benedict Cumberbatch alongside Brit-dram It-girl Claire Foy. Beguiling, too, is the piece's setting in the fenlands of East Anglia (quite near Mildenhall airbase, one would guess, judging by the eerie shots of American aircraft drifting overhead). It's countryside which never quite makes its mind up whether it's starkly beautiful or menacingly primitive.The same fault line of doubt runs down the middle of the marriage of Dawn and David (Foy and Cumberbatch). The opening Read more ...
Jasper Rees
A low-budget Britflick in which four middle-class young men go on a sentimental road trip to Pembrokeshire: doesn’t sound like much of a movie, does it? The twist is that one of them has terminal cancer. To prick your interest further, he’s played by Benedict Cumberbatch. There is a small actorly elite whose members can read out the phone directory and make it sound like the King James Bible. Cumberbatch has lately become one of them. He’s the reason Third Star got past first base and boy does it lean heavily on the charisma of his performance.The title is a misquotation from Peter Pan – “ Read more ...
Sam Marlowe
Like the misbegotten monster at its heart, this stage version of Mary Shelley’s seminal novel is stitched together from a number of discrete parts; and though some of the pieces are in themselves extremely handsome, you can all too clearly see the joins. Here’s a bit of half-baked dance theatre, there a scene of simple, touching humanity. And for each dollop of broad ensemble posturing, there’s a visually stunning scenic effect. In the midst of it all are two excellent performances by Benedict Cumberbatch and Jonny Lee Miller, who alternate in the roles of vauntingly ambitious Read more ...
Adam Sweeting
There was a risk that this new take on the indestructible sleuth of Baker Street might be smothered at birth by a dust-storm of pre-publicity, with coverage stretching from the tabloids to Andrew Marr (who really seems to believe he's an arts correspondent, and not just Alfred E Neuman's long-lost twin brother). Previewers couldn't help making comparisons between Benedict Cumberbatch's manic, omniscient Sherlock and the current Doctor Who, which I suppose was inevitable since Who writers Steven Moffat and Mark Gatiss are the brains behind Holmes, 2010-style.But after being dropped into the Read more ...
David Nice
A pall of ennui hangs over the 1930s drawing room of the National’s latest Rattigan revival, as deadly as the boredom its burnt-out party people all dread. The trouble is, I’m not sure to what extent the playwright intended it.To write about the etiolated and the unfocused, the lost souls of the inter-war years, needs energy and clarity. Here, though, some of us went away feeling muddy-headed irritation rather than sympathy at the end of a long evening. That might partly be ascribed to a script that thrusts forward melodrama when it needs truth, but a less than perfect Lyttelton ensemble didn Read more ...