TV drama
Adam Sweeting
Interesting idea – a Western set in the Yorkshire Dales in the 1870s. Jessica Raine, spotted last year as the other Boleyn girl in Wolf Hall and evidently keen to put Call the Midwife as far behind her as possible, stars as Annie Quantain, a schoolmaster's widow forced to leave the family home thanks to a mountain of debts. As the bailiffs cart away the furniture, she's horrified to find herself a penniless vagrant. Desperate not to give up her children, she gets a tip that there's work to be had on a new viaduct-building project out in wildest Culverdale, and before long she's in among the Read more ...
Adam Sweeting
Since Benedict Cumberbatch is now one of the world's most in-demand actors, and his sidekick Martin Freeman isn't doing too badly either, getting them on a set together is like trying to get Simon & Garfunkel to do a reunion. Hence Sherlock fans now have just this one-off New Year special to slake their Cumberlust.To compensate, writers Mark Gatiss and Steven Moffat (pictured below) had laboured feverishly to cram as much as possible into this swirling 90-minute ride. The novelty du jour was to whisk the sleuthing chums back to the 1890s, into which they slotted so slickly that you Read more ...
theartsdesk
It's hard to disagree with Matthew Wright, in his brisk analysis of the shortcomings of British crime drama (see below). He notes how flashes of inspiration are smothered by skimpy budgets and the timidity of commissioning editors. The disastrous anti-climax of London Spy was a classic example. A British Sopranos seems further away than ever.But all is not lost, and as our picks of the year show, there has still been plenty of great stuff to watch, from the finely-woven historical drama of Wolf Hall to the dark and daring Jessica Jones or the comic touch of Mackenzie Crook and Peter Kay. Read more ...
Adam Sweeting
Earlier this year, Sky Living showed The Enfield Haunting, a tale of eerie events in a 1970s council house. One of its stars was Timothy Spall, playing a paranormal researcher. Maybe he had a premonition that his son Rafe would carry on the family's supernatural tradition in the leading role of Harry Price: Ghost Hunter (★★★★★).Anyhow, Spall Jr was shrewd, witty and skilful in the role of a 1920s spookbuster called in to investigate the mysterious case of a politician's wife, Grace Goodwin, who had been found wandering naked in a London market. Part of the problem was that she and Read more ...
Adam Sweeting
On Monday ITV showed BAFTA Celebrates Downton Abbey, in which a massed gathering of cast and crew plus a few celebrity guests toasted Downton's five-year stampede to global acclaim. Its creator Julian Fellowes waddled onstage and told an anecdote about how he'd been accosted by a Downton fan while browsing in a Barnes & Noble bookshop in New York. "Just let Edith be happy!" she wailed at him.As it turned out in this double-length finale, he did, exercising the God-like authority the Emmy, Golden Globe and BAFTA-scooping show has bestowed on him. In fact it all went a bit Richard Curtis as Read more ...
Adam Sweeting
Some things never change. Once more, we join DCI John Luther – though only for a two-part special – as he glues himself to the trail of a serial killer. And once again Luther is played by Idris Elba, a man who can freeze time or make villains throw down their weapons merely by gazing into the camera with an expression of quizzical world-weariness.This time, writer Neil Cross opened by taking us to a clifftop near Beachy Head, where Luther gazed moodily out across the English Channel, evidently in the grip of an existential crisis, perhaps a hangover from the death of DS Ripley in series three Read more ...
Adam Sweeting
Though Alfred the Great was renowned for educational and social reforms as much as for whupping the Danes on the battlefield, I'd never pictured him the way David Dawson has been playing him in The Last Kingdom. Pallid and sickly-looking, and plagued by all-too-human frailties, this Alfred looked more like a weedy consumptive poet than the midfield dynamo of embattled Ninth Century England.Yet it paid off in the end, as Alfred summoned all the strength he could find to drag himself and his entourage out of the soggy Somerset marshes (where, last week, he burnt the cakes in finest 1066 and All Read more ...
Barney Harsent
After the roaring success of Daredevil this year, Marvel brings us the next instalment in the TV rendering of their universe – or part of it at least. Jessica Jones, created by writer Brian Michael Bendis and artist Michael Gaydos in 2001, is a failed superhero and volatile PI who copes with her demons by drinking so heavily that at least one of her superpowers seems to reside in her liver. Super strength, near-flight and a fine line in withering sarcasm make up the rest.Once again, Netflix have released a show, in its entirety, on one day, so it’s up to us how we consume it. Rather than the Read more ...
Adam Sweeting
They said there'd never be an audience for a period drama about an aristocratic Edwardian family. Six series later, we're bidding adieu to a national (and indeed global) institution, as Julian Fellowes's motley band of ridiculous, ahistorical and frequently exasperating characters potter off into the fading TV sunset. There's still the Christmas special, but – though we might not admit it – we'll miss them.It was the casting wot dunnit. Some will undoubtedly argue that you can find more plausible characterisations in CBeebies or the new-look Thunderbirds, but despite the non-sequiturs and Read more ...
Adam Sweeting
It's the age of the prequel, sequel and origin story, and the ingenious Charlie Higson has decided that now is the time to give Robert Louis Stevenson's divided-self myth a superhero-style makeover. Action-packed and a little bit shocking, this supercharged Jekyll & Hyde (****) has the makings of a major hit.After a crisp precis of the kind of stuff the original Hyde got up (we got a long-distance view of him beating politician Sir Danvers Carew to death in a London street), we were whisked forwards 50 years to Ceylon, where nice doctor Robert Jekyll was inoculating the local children Read more ...
Adam Sweeting
Stunningly reinvented in series four, Homeland sustained the momentum with this tense and menacing fifth season opener. Carrie Mathison (Claire Danes) has now quit the CIA for a new job in Berlin, where she's working as head of security for billionaire philanthropist Otto Düring (Sebastian Koch). The past, however, is not giving up without a fight.In the light of recent real-life events, it was smart work by the writers to throw the spotlight on the German capital. Filming obviously took place before the current refugee crisis (and Frau Merkel's controversial leading role in it) blew up, but Read more ...
Veronica Lee
Revenge dramas are such a guilty pleasure - there's a vicarious thrill in watching a baddie being taken down in a way that we might wish to, but never would, in real life. And boy, but did Gemma take down cheating husband Simon in the closing episode of Mike Bartlett's Doctor Foster. Senior GP Gemma and hip property developer Simon's perfect life, with their perfect house and their perfect son was, of course, anything but - and finally it all came crashing down.Waiting for Gemma to exact her revenge on Simon over his relationship with their friends Susie and Chris's daughter, Kate (a Read more ...