TV drama
Blue Lights Series 2, BBC One review - still our best cop show despite a slacker structureTuesday, 23 April 2024
The first season of Blue Nights was so close to police procedural perfection, it would be hard for season two to reach the same heights. Overall, it doesn’t, though there are still special moments.After an exhilarating start, its multiple narrative... Read more... |
Anthracite, Netflix review - murderous mysteries in the French AlpsTuesday, 16 April 2024
Ludicrous plotting and a tangled skein of coincidences hold no terrors for the makers of this frequently baffling French drama. Nonetheless, its story of a bizarre cult, a rapacious medical corporation and a trail of dead bodies stretching back... Read more... |
Scoop, Netflix review - revisiting a Right Royal nightmareFriday, 05 April 2024
What with the interminable Harry and Meghan saga, the death of the Queen and the recent health scares for Kate and King Chuck, this is just what the Royal Family needed – the exhumation of Prince Andrew’s catastrophic 2019 Newsnight interview with... Read more... |
This Town, BBC One review - lurid melodrama in Eighties BrummielandMonday, 01 April 2024
Industrious screenwriter Steven Knight has brought us (among many other things) Peaky Blinders, SAS: Rogue Heroes and even Who Wants To Be a Millionaire?, but This Town may not be remembered as one of his finest hours. Here, we find Knight... Read more... |
Passenger, ITV review - who are they trying to kid?Thursday, 28 March 2024
The screenwriting debut of actor Andrew Buchan, Passenger ends up resembling a bunch of ingredients looking for a cake. While characters come out with such meta-observations as “this isn’t Twin Peaks” and “this isn’t Broadchurch” – Buchan having... Read more... |
The Gentlemen, Netflix review - Guy Ritchie's further adventures in GeezerworldTuesday, 12 March 2024
Welcome back to Guy Ritchie’s Geezerworld, familiar from such slices of lurid villainhood as Lock, Stock…, RocknRolla and The Gentlemen (the movie). The Gentlemen (the TV series) takes some cues from the similarly-named big-screen event from 2019,... Read more... |
The Way, BBC One review - steeltown bluesTuesday, 20 February 2024
This three-part drama arrives trailing clouds of big-byline glory. Michael Sheen directed and produced it (as well as making fleeting appearances on screen), James Graham wrote it and documentary-maker Adam Curtis co-produced it.But what is it? Part... Read more... |
Kin, Series 2, BBC One review - when crime dynasties collideMonday, 19 February 2024
The end of the first series of Kin found Dublin’s Kinsella crime family ridding themselves of bloodsucking drug baron Eamon Cunningham, but this was not an unalloyed blessing. As this second series opens, the Kinsellas are having to make new... Read more... |
The New Look, AppleTV+ review - lavish period drama with more width than depthThursday, 15 February 2024
The frocks, the pearls, the chicest branding of any perfume in the world… Sorry, this is not what The New Look is about, for those who swooned at the V&A’s recent Chanel exhibition. The title promises a different focus, on the designer who... Read more... |
Masters of the Air, Apple TV+ review - painful and poignant account of the Eighth Air Force's bombing campaignThursday, 25 January 2024
“Are they all like that?” asks a shaken Major Bucky Egan (Callum Turner), after he’s completed his first bombing mission over Germany as a guest of the US Eighth Air Force’s 389th Bomb Group. They’ve been battered by flak and lacerated by German... Read more... |
Criminal Record, Apple TV+ review - law and disorder in HackneyFriday, 12 January 2024
It’s not easy to find a new way to package a drama about that perennially popular topic, the dark side of policing, but Criminal Record at least gets its ducks in a row with some strong writing by Paul Rutman and a strength-in-depth cast. Peter... Read more... |
Mr Bates vs The Post Office, ITV1 review - a star-packed account of an incendiary storySaturday, 06 January 2024
There isn’t a troupe officially called the Worshipful Company of British Character Actors, but there probably should be, given the sterling service it does for the nation, acting in prestige TV dramas based on real events. Toby Jones and Monica... Read more... |
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