sat 28/12/2024

prison

Inside, Studio Theatre, Roundhouse

Segun Oliaya as Brownie, hard-man top dog in Philip Osment's extraordinarily original new play

It’s just the luck of the draw. I’ve been sent to prison twice now in the past four days. Last Friday it was Clean Break’s day-long six-play epic in Soho. Last night it was an 80-minute all-male affair at the Roundhouse. Needless to say the...

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Mr Nice

Howard Marks was a pothead Errol Flynn, living a life of remarkable escapades and hair's-breadth escapes. A Welsh working-class Oxford graduate in nuclear physics and philosophy, he’d be fascinating company even if he wasn’t once the world’s most...

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Father & Son, ITV1

Dougray Scott as Michael O'Connor, unable to escape his gangland connections

I always used to wonder why casting directors ever sent for Dougray Scott when they might just as well have used an old chest of drawers or a pile of deckchairs instead, but at last this gloomy Scottish actor seems to be coming into his own. Maybe...

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Wormwood Scrubs, ITV1

'It’s a thankless task cuffing and lugging miscreants from cell to cell'

Last night in Wormwood Scrubs a prisoner hanged himself. Successfully. A doctor confirmed “that life is now non-existent”. Later on the same wing it happened again, only this time the suicide attempt didn't come off. For many years it has felt as...

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Lion's Den

Martina Gusman in Pablo Trapero's prison drama Lion's Den

Since his astonishing debut Crane World a decade ago, the Argentine Pablo Trapero has been quietly asserting himself as one of the world’s most singular directors. He’s perhaps best known for his breezy verité approach – shooting on location,...

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theartsdesk Masterclass: Jacques Audiard on A Prophet

Jacques Audiard's A Prophet arrives in Britain laden with plaudits (Best Film at the London Film Festival, Grand Jury Prize in Cannes and a fistful of superlative reviews). Here, in the first of a series of illustrated masterclasses, in which...

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A Prophet

A Prophet is a different sort of prison movie. Jacques Audiard's follow-up to The Beat That My Heart Skipped is another dip into the criminal underworld, and mostly takes place in a French jail. Nearly every other film or TV series I can think of...

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