ITV
I Had the X Factor... 25 Years Ago, BBC TwoTuesday, 13 December 2011
This was the television equivalent of the slaves in ancient Rome, who used to run alongside their imperial masters whispering in their ear, "Remember, you are mortal." Long before the tantrums, bombast and megalomania of The X Factor, there was... Read more... |
The X Factor: The Final, ITV1 - The ResultMonday, 12 December 2011
And we're done. As you'd expect for a grand final, everything was pumped up yet further. A guest spot by Coldplay came over like a Nazi rally styled by kindergarten teachers who once took an E, all rainbow squiggles and brain-obliterating strobes.... Read more... |
The X Factor: The Final, ITV1Sunday, 11 December 2011
Well, there we go. Another series of The X Factor about to splutter and crunch to a halt. Seventeen-year-old shouter Amelia Lily has been voted out despite actually turning in the finest performances of the night, leaving delightfully rough-round-... Read more... |
The Nation's Favourite Bee Gees Song, ITV1Saturday, 10 December 2011
“They’re some of the greatest pop songs ever written,” declares Sir Elton John. He’s right. The Bee Gees – Barry, Maurice and Robin Gibb – are responsible for songs that will live forever, songs that are part of successive generation’s cultural... Read more... |
Without You, ITV1Friday, 09 December 2011
It's your worst nightmare. Two WPCs appear at your door and inform you that your husband has been killed in a road accident. It doesn't help that the one doing the talking looks like the uglier sister of Macbeth's witches. Then they twist the knife... Read more... |
Downton Abbey aims to rule Yuletide schedulesSaturday, 03 December 2011
ITV has been cunningly trailing its Christmas bumper edition of Downton Abbey, which will feature guest stars Nigel Havers and Samantha Bond and the spectacle of Mr Bates being dragged before the beak for murdering his first wife. Now that details... Read more... |
South Bank Show comes to Sky ArtsThursday, 01 December 2011
Three years after it was, as they say, "let go" by ITV, The South Bank Show, with Melvyn Bragg at the helm, is set to return on Sky Arts in 2012. The idea has been in the wind since Sky Arts revived The South Bank Show Awards in January this year,... Read more... |
The Jury, ITV1Tuesday, 08 November 2011
Apart from voting, there is only one duty the United Kingdom asks of its residents: if, or less likely when, it comes, to answer the summons to sit and listen to evidence in a criminal court and, with 11 other randomly selected individuals, reach a... Read more... |
Downton Abbey, Series 2 Finale, ITV1Monday, 07 November 2011
And so the eventful second series surged to a close with a bumper 90-minute edition - or at least it was in a 90-minute slot, generously padded with the commercials battling to scramble aboard the great ship Downton - and we were still left dangling... Read more... |
An Audience With Barry Manilow, ITV1Friday, 28 October 2011
This wasn’t going to offer any surprises. Bernadette Nolan, Lulu and Stacey Solomon would deliver the questions they’d rehearsed. Manilow would respond, then deliver the relevant song. He’s a charmer, and you’d have to be made of lead not to be... Read more... |
Downton Abbey, ITV1/ Lulu - Something to Shout About, BBC TwoSunday, 16 October 2011
I suspect writer Julian Fellowes's guilty secret is that he has an attic stuffed with novels from Mills & Boon, such are the luridly romantic plotlines and cliché-flirting characters in Downton Abbey. If you think you can see it coming, then you... Read more... |
Downton Abbey, Series 2, ITV1Monday, 19 September 2011
And now for that difficult second album. Downton Abbey’s stately progress last autumn revived in television audiences a taste thought long dead: for populist drama offering a sepia-tinted vision of the English class system in which the well-to-do... Read more... |
