TV drama
SAS Rogue Heroes, BBC One review - rock'n'roll desert warfare from the pen of Steven KnightMonday, 31 October 2022
Irregular warfare has proved to be a speciality with the British armed forces. This new six-part series, based on Ben Macintyre’s 2016 book, tells the story of the chaotic birth of the Special Air Service during the war in North Africa in 1941, and... Read more... |
All Creatures Great and Small, Series 3 finale, Channel 5 review - revived vet show still strikes a popular noteFriday, 21 October 2022
Ben Vanstone, the showrunner for Channel 5’s hit revival of All Creatures Great and Small, originally foresaw it as stretching over four seasons, but has subsequently revised his opinion. With the third series ending and the fourth already in... Read more... |
The Watcher, Netflix review - fear and loathing in the New Jersey suburbsWednesday, 19 October 2022
Netflix can’t get enough of Ryan Murphy, whose list of productions with the super-streamer includes Halston, Ratched and recent hit Monster: The Jeffrey Dahmer Story. Now here he is again with The Watcher, a teasing little mystery based on a true... Read more... |
Karen Pirie, ITV review - cold case mystery drags itself across the finish lineMonday, 10 October 2022
Although plaudits have been rolling in for Lauren Lyle’s smart and sparky portrayal of the titular detective in Karen Pirie (ITV), getting to the end of the third and final episode felt like a long slog. The traditional ITV two-hour slot is of... Read more... |
Inside Man, BBC One review - strong cast trapped on a sinking shipWednesday, 05 October 2022
Screenwriter and showrunner Steven Moffat is renowned for some of his work, especially Sherlock, but other stuff not so much (I direct you towards Dracula or The Time Traveler’s Wife). When the history is written, Inside Man is liable to languish at... Read more... |
This England, Sky Atlantic review - how Boris's No 10 got Covid wrongWednesday, 28 September 2022
From underneath the messy ash-white thatch of hair, a strange mooing suddenly issues: Sir Kenneth Branagh is wrestling with Boris Johnson’s odd way of saying the “oo” sound. It’s a brave attempt but ultimately a bit wayward, rather like the drama... Read more... |
Crossfire, BBC One review - pacy and nail-biting, the holiday from hellWednesday, 21 September 2022
A sun-baked island resort; Keeley Hawes taking a leisurely dip in an infinity pool as we hear her in voiceover musing on how events happen unchosen, with you in them; then we are up in her room, where she is texting somebody. The sounds of gunshots... Read more... |
The Capture, Series 2 finale, BBC One review - gripping ride to a barnstorming conclusionTuesday, 13 September 2022
[Here be spoilers.] If you have been glued to the second season of The Capture, just ended, does it bother you that its content is borderline science fiction? Probably not. Writer Ben Chanan’s depiction of artificial intelligence may outstrip... Read more... |
The Capture, Series 2, BBC One review - caught up in the China syndromeTuesday, 30 August 2022
When the first series of The Capture arrived three years ago, theartsdesk liked it so much that we reviewed it three times. Writer-director Ben Chanan had successfully, and addictively, tapped into a secret dystopia of blanket digital surveillance... Read more... |
Van der Valk, Series 2 Finale, ITV review - sleaze, corruption and skulduggery in AmsterdamMonday, 22 August 2022
Despite the jarring effect of having British actors speaking colloquial English while purporting to be Dutch policemen working in Amsterdam, the second series of ITV’s Van der Valk arrived at its third and final episode feeling as if it had reached... Read more... |
Marriage, BBC One review - a brilliantly executed drama series with a big heartMonday, 15 August 2022
The gifted writer-director Stefan Golaszewski (Him and Her, Mum) has surpassed himself with his latest drama series, Marriage. Given hour-long episodes to play with, rather than the usual half-hour, he has created an unfeasibly rich four-parter out... Read more... |
Murder in Provence, ITV review - a little light sleuthing amid fabulous French sceneryTuesday, 02 August 2022
Connoisseurs of the Britbox streaming service may already have caught up with this three-part series, which has evidently been pressed into service on ITV to pad out TV’s annual summer slump. They could have called it Midsomer Murders Goes to the... Read more... |
