Olivia Colman
Broadchurch, Series 2, ITVTuesday, 06 January 2015
You can see why writers and TV companies like the idea of creating sequels to successful series, but trying to make lightning strike twice has obvious drawbacks. In the case of the original Broadchurch, the runaway ratings blockbuster which ended in... Read more... |
LockeMonday, 14 April 2014
The first line of his Wikipedia entry says that Tom Hardy "is an English actor" (he was born in Hammersmith), but for the 84 minute duration of Locke I was fully prepared to accept that he came from Llangollen or Llareggub. The film's narrative... Read more... |
Rev, Series 3, BBC TwoTuesday, 25 March 2014
Perhaps the BBC didn't need to make W1A, its new self-satirising sitcom. In the clerical comedy Rev, the Church of England could be considered a very serviceable metaphor for the Corporation, with its unfathomable layers of bureaucracy, well-meaning... Read more... |
Cuban FuryWednesday, 12 February 2014
The British romcom is in crisis. Once a pretty reliable source of charm and laughs, these films channelled the spirit of the UK's reliably brilliant sitcoms through the silver screen. Our romantic comedies can be great because we hold no truck with... Read more... |
The 7.39, BBC OneTuesday, 07 January 2014
There are times us northerners watch your typical London-set big-budget BBC drama and think, well, this really is another world. Whether it’s the two-hour commutes or the estate agencies where there is so much business that nobody has time to sit... Read more... |
The Suspicions of Mr Whicher: The Murder in Angel Lane, ITVMonday, 13 May 2013
The disgraced ex-cop turned private investigator has become such a trope of contemporary noir that the fate of the first great modern detective, following the events of his first televised outing, is not particularly surprising. The Murder in Angel... Read more... |
Broadchurch, Series Finale, ITVTuesday, 23 April 2013
And the killer is... No, that would be telling, and you might not have watched it on catch-up yet. But was the revelation worth the wait?We often complain about the way British TV dramas are often squeezed into three or four (or two) parts, when an... Read more... |
I Give It a YearWednesday, 06 February 2013
Although I Give It a Year seems to have more than a whiff of a Richard Curtis rom-com about it, don’t be fooled as this is the debut of British writer-director Dan Mazer, the co-writer of the emphatically more outré Brüno and Borat, along with... Read more... |
Hyde Park on HudsonWednesday, 30 January 2013
Another week, another presidential movie. Another year, another lead role for a stuttering English monarch. Hyde Park on Hudson feels like the product of one of those irony-free meetings in Burbank. You know, the ones in which executives crank up a... Read more... |
Hay Fever, Noël Coward TheatreMonday, 27 February 2012
“Winsome” isn’t a word you hear very often these days. The taint of coy, simpering campery already hung about it in the 1920s when Noël Coward gave it a starring role in the after-dinner word-charades of his hit Hay Fever. Yet now (as then) it’s a... Read more... |
DVD: TyrannosaurTuesday, 07 February 2012
I started keeping a swear word tally at the start of Paddy Considine’s Leeds-set Tyrannosaur and abandoned my efforts several minutes in when it looked as if I was about to fill an entire page. As the film begins, Peter Mullan’s character Joseph... Read more... |
Streep has to share honours at the London Film Critics' Circle AwardsThursday, 19 January 2012
Predictably and no doubt justly, it was a good night for The Artist at tonight’s London Critics’ Circle Film Awards. It won Film of the Year, Director of the Year for Michel Hazanavicius and Actor of the Year for its dashing lead Jean Dujardin. Both... Read more... |
