ITV
Victoria, Series 3, ITV review - can Her Maj cope with the Age of Revolution?Monday, 25 March 2019
ITV has an enviable knack for creating populist historical costume dramas which never seem to wear out, despite a million rotations on ITV3. Once everybody had got over the shock of a young and glamorous Queen Victoria, who had previously... Read more... |
The Bay, ITV, review - Broadchurch goes northThursday, 21 March 2019
In the 1970s, the Mancunian stand-up Colin Crompton had a famous routine about Morecambe. He characterised Morecambe as “a sort of cemetery with lights” where “they don't bury their dead, they stand them up in bus shelters with a bingo ticket in... Read more... |
Cheat, ITV review - fear and loathing in academiaTuesday, 12 March 2019
As fans of Inspector Morse are well aware, there are plenty of snakes lurking in the grass at our premier seats of learning. In place of Morse’s Oxford, Cheat brings us leafy, picturesque Cambridge, presented here as an agreeable haven of historic... Read more... |
Endeavour, Series 6, ITV review - reassuringly accomplished return of the brainy copperMonday, 11 February 2019
The end of series five of Endeavour found PC George Fancy shot dead, Cowley police station closed and the old crew dispersed. With Led Zeppelin on the soundtrack (it’s 1969), the sixth series opened minus WPC Trewlove, but with Fred Thursday demoted... Read more... |
Cold Feet, Series 8, ITV, review - mortality liteTuesday, 15 January 2019
How much more is there to say about the thrills and spills of midlife? Cold Feet made a surprisingly nimble return to ITV a couple of series ago after a long furlough. There was little evidence of stiff joints or saggy bottoms in Mike Bullen’s... Read more... |
Best of 2018: TVThursday, 27 December 2018
Bruce Springsteen once sang about there being "57 channels and nothin' on". Those were the days. Now we have so much to watch (including Netflix's Springsteen on Broadway) that all the world's remaining elephants couldn't remember them all.But... Read more... |
Sir Cliff Richard: 60 Years in Public and in Private, ITV review - bachelor boy bounces backTuesday, 11 December 2018
It was when he was on holiday at his agreeable estate in the Algarve in August 2014 that Cliff Richard got a phone call telling him his Berkshire home was being raided by the South Yorkshire Police. It was the beginning of a four-year ordeal in... Read more... |
Strangers, Series Finale, ITV review - Eastern promise goes unfulfilledTuesday, 30 October 2018
After seeming to spend an interminable amount of time wandering around in a daze and blundering up blind alleys, Strangers finally gathered its wits and cantered towards the finishing tape with a renewed sense of purpose in the final two episodes.... Read more... |
Queen of the World, ITV review - born to run and runWednesday, 26 September 2018
Awesome numbers: over a million miles, the equivalent of 42 times around the globe, have been traversed by Her Majesty the Queen, enabling visits over the past seven decades or so to 117 different countries. No one has reigned longer nor travelled... Read more... |
Strangers, episode 2, ITV review - conspiracy theories multiplyTuesday, 18 September 2018
You might consider it odd that a man whose wife spends half the year in Hong Kong without him hasn’t managed to get around to catching a plane from Heathrow to visit her in the Far East, but that is the case with Jonah Mulray, the stressed-out... Read more... |
Vanity Fair, ITV review - seductions of social climbingMonday, 03 September 2018
Emcee Michael Palin, as William Makepeace Thackeray himself, introduces us to the show: “Yes, this is Vanity Fair; not a moral place certainly; nor a merry one, though very noisy.” All his major characters – or “puppets” – are riding a fairground... Read more... |
h 100 Awards: Broadcast - TV's national treasuresMonday, 13 August 2018
In the ever-expanding field of broadcast, it’s easy to get lost in the deluge of product raining down from swaggering global providers who sometimes seem to have more money than critical acumen. How gratifying, then, that some of the best of British... Read more... |
