TV arts
Best of 2024: TVSunday, 29 December 2024
They say cinema is dying (you never know, they may be wrong), but you can’t help noticing the stampede of movie stars towards TV and streaming. Many of 2024’s most memorable shows had a big-screen name attached, even if it was impossible to be... Read more... |
Liaison, Apple TV+ review - tangly Franglais thriller presses some hot buttonsThursday, 02 March 2023
Vive l’entente cordiale! “Despite Brexit” (as the BBC likes to say), Apple TV+ has successfully bridged the Channel to create this lurid Anglo-French thriller, in which Euro-skulduggery rubs shoulders with bribery, corruption and high treason.At... Read more... |
ReMastered: Tricky Dicky and the Man in Black, Netflix review - dynamic saga of music and politicsFriday, 03 April 2020
Netflix’s ReMastered series is one of the streaming channel’s undersung gems. Launching in 2018, when Tricky Dick and the Man in Black first aired, it has proved to be a solidly well-made set of music documentaries. Some of its subjects have... Read more... |
Classic Albums: Tears for Fears, Songs From The Big Chair, BBC Four review - anatomy of an anthemSaturday, 15 February 2020
Roland Orzabal, co-founder and lead guitarist of Tears for Fears, laughs to himself often during this documentary — the latest in the BBC’s often-excellent, always-forensic Classic Albums series. “I agree, I agree, it sounds great,” says Orzabal. He... Read more... |
Best of 2019: TVMonday, 30 December 2019
As symbolic moments go, the arrival of Martin Scorsese's new gangster epic The Irishman on Netflix took some beating. It exemplified the adage that "TV is the new cinema", and at the same time perhaps suggested a new and less digestible adage,... Read more... |
Hugh Grant: A Life on Screen, BBC Two review - hiding in plain sight?Tuesday, 24 December 2019
This charming BBC Two hagiography – which may be a contradiction in terms – opened on a montage of praise, with just a hint of irony for the hugely successful actor Hugh Grant. He was born in Hammersmith Hospital, although neither he nor his father... Read more... |
Best of 2017: TVSunday, 31 December 2017
Young people will laugh incredulously when you tell them that once upon a time, there was only one television channel in Britain. Now we've lost count, and as even the Queen pointed out in her Christmas broadcast, many of her subjects would now be... Read more... |
Queen: Rock the World, BBC Four review - we won't rock youSaturday, 04 November 2017
Forty years ago Whispering Bob Harris made a documentary about Queen. He eavesdropped on them as they recorded the album News of the World and then followed them around America on tour. The film was never broadcast but the footage was exhumed for... Read more... |
h.Club 100 Awards: Broadcast - calling out around the worldWednesday, 27 September 2017
As Sky’s Head of Drama Anne Mensah puts it, her ambition is to “stay local but look global”. This might serve as a motto for television in its entirety, as technology swallows the planet and TV is increasingly shaped by coalitions of international... Read more... |
Melvyn Bragg on TV, BBC Two review – too many talking heads, too little actionSunday, 02 July 2017
Presumably it seemed like a good idea at the time. Broadcasting juggernaut Lord Bragg would undertake a sweeping survey of the way that television has transformed our lives and reflected British society in the last 70-odd years, soaring over dramas... Read more... |
10 Questions for The Radiophonic Workshop's Paddy KingslandMonday, 12 June 2017
Formed in 1958 by Desmond Briscoe and Daphne Oram, the BBC Radiophonic Workshop pioneered groundbreaking innovation in music making, using anything and everything to create new textures and tones to satisfy eager TV producers looking for otherwordly... Read more... |
The Face of Britain by Simon Schama, BBC TwoThursday, 29 October 2015
This was the fifth and last in a series of hour-long programmes amounting to a vivid, varied and extraordinarily lively history of Britain. Although ostensibly a history of portraiture, the images have been hooks for Simon Schama, that most... Read more... |
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