TV
Adam Sweeting
Location, location, location... a tangible sense of place and local identity can make or break a TV drama, and Under Salt Marsh exploits this to the full. It’s a haunting murder mystery, triggered by the discovery of the body of eight-year-schoolboy Cefin in a drainage ditch near the small town of Morfa Halen (that’s Welsh for “salt marsh”). Its aura of foreboding and sadness is infinitely enhanced by being set amid beautiful but austere Welsh countryside and coastline, particularly the marshy flatlands which give it its title. Cefin’s death takes on extra layers of significance Read more ...
Adam Sweeting
Evil capitalists are in the cross-hairs of this six-part thriller, conceived and mostly written by Sotiris Nikias. Possibly not the most original of villains, but they serve well enough as the basis for a story which takes a dive into the unscrupulous underbelly of London’s Square Mile and then spreads its tentacles around a cluster of assorted reprobates and untrustworthy characters.Our heroine is Zara Dunne (Sophie Turner), who works at pension fund managers Lochmill Capital, based in a swanky new skyscraper somewhere near the Lloyd’s building and the Gherkin. But while the company’s high- Read more ...
Adam Sweeting
The pitch for this movie might have been “Heat meets Miami Vice”, and it’s to the credit of writer/director Joe Carnahan that the finished result can stand toe to toe with those two without feeling any need to apologise. The Rip is also noteworthy for bringing back together those two grizzled old Bostonians, Matt Damon and Ben Affleck, who co-star and co-produce (and also negotiated a special bonus deal with Netflix for the cast and crew, depending on the film’s success).It’s a tough, tense tale of Miami cops battling against not only Colombian drug cartels but also shady goings-on within the Read more ...
Adam Sweeting
An opening sequence set in the Andalusian city of Ronda, with its spectacular bridge across the El Tajo gorge, seems to be setting us up for a torrid adventure in semi-tropical heat. Especially after a desperate-looking character finds himself alone in Ronda’s empty bullring, before a solitary bull comes thundering out of its enclosure and gores him to death.However, canonical Christie-ness subsequently reasserts itself, with the action moving back to green and pleasant old Blighty and a gaggle of posh party guests at the country house, Chimneys. Many of them seem to be rather dim chinless Read more ...
Adam Sweeting
As one of the characters tells us: “There are two sides to every story… someone is always lying.” This telly-isation of Alice Feeney’s source novel, created by a quartet of screenwriters and directed by William Oldroyd and Anja Marquardt, picks up that idea and runs with it energetically. It pitches us into a vision of an American rural south which is plagued with deceit, guilt, simmering resentment and murderous intent dating back decades. No-one is entirely innocent, and at least one person is incredibly guilty.The plot orbits around a group of female classmates who grew up in the small Read more ...
Adam Sweeting
Reviews of The Hunting Wives have been taking the line of “it’s complete trash but I love it!”, which seems a perfectly reasonable response. It’s an everyday story of deceit, murder, weird sex and all kinds of corruption, set deep in the heart of Texas where they have some very strict ideas about guns and religion, especially the entirely taboo topic of abortion.Adapted from May Cobb’s novel by screenwriter Rebecca Cutter, it centres on a tightly-knit group of women in li’l old Maple Brook, TX. Joining them is new kid in town Sophie O’Neil (Brittany Snow) and her rather uptight and preppy Read more ...
Adam Sweeting
If any readers can still remember 2024’s first iteration of Red Eye, they will have an approximate idea of the kind of things they can expect from this second instalment, in short, fast-food drama tarted up with a bit of political skulduggery. Screenwriter Peter A Dowling has cunningly identified a niche in the market for aviation-centric thrillers, though where last year’s model was set almost entirely on board an aircraft en route to Beijing, this one is mostly locked inside the American Embassy in London.Aviation-wise, the McGuffin du jour is an RAF aircraft which has mysteriously crashed Read more ...
Adam Sweeting
Time flies. It’s 10 years since the first iteration of The Night Manager landed on BBC One (shortly before its star Tom Hiddleston had a fling with Taylor Swift, trivia fans). John le Carré, author of the Night Manager novel, died in 2020. He was apparently pleased with the first series, as was his son – and custodian of his father’s estate – Simon, which helped to inspire screenwriter David Farr to create this follow-up.By his own account, the germ of series two came to Farr in a dream. “I had a very clear image one night of a black car driving over the hills in Colombia, towards a boy,” he Read more ...
theartsdesk
Analysts tell us that the UK’s top-rated TV show this Christmas was the King’s speech, with the Strictly Christmas special coming in a mere third. If this means anything at all, perhaps it’s just indicative of the bafflingly-expanding TV universe where it’s becoming impossible to keep tabs on everything that’s out there on a seemingly countless number of channels (and who on earth decided that “U&Drama” was a name to titillate the punters?). Even newspaper TV critics can’t seem to agree on what’s worth reviewing.But on the subject of U&Drama, they at least deserve a tip of the hat for Read more ...
Adam Sweeting
Whether there really was a poisonous professional rivalry between Mozart and Antonio Salieri, composer to the Imperial court in Vienna, seems less than likely, but the success of Peter Shaffer’s Amadeus, on both stage and screen, has convinced the world otherwise. In Shaffer’s view, we see a Salieri consumed with envy and jealous rage at the effortless brilliance of Mozart, who seemingly had access to a continual stream of divinely-inspired inspiration. Salieri, by contrast, would be remembered only as “the patron saint of mediocrities”.Sky Atlantic’s adaptation, written by Joe Barton, Read more ...
Adam Sweeting
This follow-up to 2022’s Man vs Bee finds Rowan Atkinson reprising the role of Trevor Bingley, a bumbling no-hoper who is somehow still at large in the community. He’s now separated from wife Jess (Claudie Blakley), with whom his daughter Maddy (Alanah Bloor) has been living, and dwells alone rather forlornly in a remote house in the countryside.Quite why Atkinson (in collaboration with co-writer Will Davies) seems so invested in this hapless and rather pathetic character remains a mystery, since it eschews entirely what used to be Atkinson’s main strengths (eg sardonic delivery, deadpan but Read more ...
Adam Sweeting
Among the many versions of America on parade in the ever-expanding universe of Taylor Sheridan, the one portrayed in Mayor of Kingstown is surely the bleakest. As AI helpfully informs us: “The show offers little respite, depicting extreme violence, moral ambiguity, and systemic failure without much sugarcoating.”Yet the longer it goes on, the more addictive it becomes. Now in the middle of season 4, the show continues to tighten its tendrils of menace, thuggery and corruption with seemingly no concern for the viewer’s delicate sensibilities. Much of its allure stems from its impeccable Read more ...