drama
aleks.sierz
At the moment, most of the energy in British new writing seems to be coming from American and Irish playwrights. This is such a regular phenomenon, one that comes around every few years, that it seems idle to speculate on the reasons for it; surely, it’s enough to welcome another new talent from Ireland? As well as being the artistic director of Tall Tales theatre company, Deirdre Kinahan is a prolific playwright. Her UK debut, Moment, opened last night at the Bush Theatre in west London, and is an engrossing study of a dysfunctional family.Of all the ordeals of modern life, bringing home Read more ...
aleks.sierz
In contemporary British drama, kids are usually either suffering or doomed innocents. But Winterlong's Oscar is different. He is a loner who was abandoned by his schoolgirl mum and his scary dad at the age of four years old, and tries to make his way in a chilly world armed only with his small but powerful reserves of love. The writing throbs like an infected wound, so you can see why actor Andrew Sheridan’s debut play was joint winner of the 2008 Bruntwood Prize for playwriting, receiving its premiere at the Royal Exchange Theatre in Manchester earlier this month, and now visiting the Soho Read more ...
Jasper Rees
There was a moment in last night’s Silk when a young solicitor turned up late for a trial. He was also an actor, he explained to his client’s counsel, and had to attend an audition. For a Head & Shoulders ad. The USP of Peter Moffat’s courtroom dramas is that, more than any writer since John Mortimer, he knows whereof he speaks. Having once been a barrister himself, the serpentine ins and outs of chambers, the politicking and skulduggery etc etc are his area of expertise. So you take it on trust that the events dramatised here are the truth and nothing but.Thus a barrister Read more ...
Adam Sweeting
When Treme debuted on HBO in the States, some excitable critics watched the pilot episode and instantly proclaimed it a masterpiece superior even to The Wire. David Simon, who created both shows, may have been delighted. Or on the other hand, he might have wondered how anybody could assess a complex, long-term portrayal of New Orleans in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina so categorically on so brief an acquaintance.Now Treme is here, though at the moment sadly confined to the elite mini-monde of Sky Atlantic. Having watched the pilot, I felt ill equipped to deliver a definitive judgment of Read more ...
howard.male
I only needed to see the trailer of this new eight-part science-fiction series for the words “Battlestar” and “Galactica” to spring depressingly to mind: the neutral colourlessness of everything, the characters looking meaningfully into the middle distance, the scrubby Earth-like landscape of Carpathia (rather than its almost anagrammatic Caprica from Battlestar), and the fact that this was another bunch of disenfranchised humans trying to settle on a new planet. But then to top it all, one of the leads from that cult American series (British actor James Bamber) also appeared in the opening Read more ...
Jasper Rees
When it was broadcast over Christmas the jury was split on Upstairs Downstairs. Some were spitting with rage at the temerity inherent in the idea of revisiting 165 Eaton Place (though the street exteriors, it's revealed on the DVD documentary, were actually shot in Leamington Spa). Never mind that Jean Marsh and Eileen Atkins owned the rights and could do as they pleased with their property. Others seemed to forgive them their trespasses.Its appearance while the nation was still recovering from a massive fix of genuflection porn in Downton Abbey gave Heidi Thomas’s fresh cast of characters – Read more ...
Jasper Rees
Yes, the Sky 1 drama department is trying to elbow some room on the national sofa and their policy with Mad Dogs is to cast it to the very hilt. Thus John Simm, Philip Glenister, Max Beesley and Marc Warren, playing four old lags who’ve sort of lost touch over the years, board a plane for Spain, summoned for a nostalgic bunfight by another compadre. Like all gentlemen of a certain age let off the leash to play, they were full of cock-of-the-walk swagger as they marched out of the airport in shades, wielding the videocams they’d been given for the trip. However, you knew it was all going up Read more ...
Adam Sweeting
Henry Hathaway's 1969 version of True Grit famously won John Wayne his solitary Oscar for Best Actor. Jeff Bridges, remaking the role of battered, boozing, one-eyed lawman Rooster Cogburn in the Coen brothers' new incarnation, is nominated for the second year running after last year's triumph with Crazy Heart. Look out Colin Firth, because Bridges is in such barnstorming form that we could conceivably see him roaring off into the Hollywood night clutching another statuette, swigging moonshine and firing his six-gun in the air.But despite its services to the Duke, Hathaway's film also raised Read more ...
Adam Sweeting
They've remade everything else, so what took them so long to get around to Hawaii Five-0? Maybe the exotic Hawaiian locations of JJ Abrams's Lost helped to trigger flashbacks of Steve McGarrett & co, which would explain why Abrams's henchmen Alex Kurtzman and Roberto Orci are co-producers of the new Five-0. And why Daniel Dae Kim, who played Jin in Lost, reappears here as Chin Ho Kelly.The refreshing thing about Five-0 (revisited) is that while it has been given a brisk 21st-century spring clean, with international terrorism, people-smuggling and a blast of ultra-modern spook Read more ...
hilary.whitney
No prizes for guessing what the future holds for the four Irishmen ensconced in the empty swimming pool in Enda Walsh’s latest play, Penelope, which opens at Hampstead Theatre next week. For these unfortunate creatures are the last of Penelope’s suitors from Homer’s Odyssey, the pariah who invade Odysseus’s home and make merry at his expense whilst shamelessly trying to win the hand of his faithful wife – and their time is up. Odysseus is homeward bound and they must face up to what is basically going to be an unavoidable bloodbath.“These four men”, says Walsh, “have been having conversations Read more ...
howard.male
A young girl runs in slow motion through the woods, the cameraman in hot pursuit: this is only the opening seconds of ITV1’s new drama series, and already I was wondering to what degree this new five-parter was going to test my cliché tolerance level. But fortunately Marchlands pulled itself together and settled down to spend most of its first hour just letting us get to know the three families who had lived in the Marchlands house over the four previous decades.Via a series of inventive dissolves we were moved with seamless ease from 1968 to 1987 to 2010, and quickly made aware that the Read more ...
Adam Sweeting
The Town narrowly missed out on an Oscar nomination for Best Picture, and revisiting it on DVD I reckon it was hard done-by. True, it's possible to pigeonhole it under Heist Thriller, but it's a particularly fine one, and it's much more besides. Displaying multi-hatted expertise as star, director and screenwriter, Ben Affleck (deriving the story from Chuck Hogan's novel Prince of Thieves) has rooted his panicky shoot-outs and scorching car chases in a meticulously realised Boston milieu. Specifically, the story centres on the Charlestown district, notorious for its multi-generational Read more ...