TV
Jasper Rees
No one knows better than Kay Mellor that people from all walks are brought together by common experience. Being on the game in Band of Gold. Wanting to lose weight in Fat Friends. And no experience is more common than pregnancy. Hence In the Club, a new series focused on an ante-natal class.When Mellor was pregnant, you can guess her cravings. Drama. Lashings of it. Huge great ice cream scoops on burnt toast with extra toppings. We’ve been going for only an hour and we’ve already had a bank robbery, a possibly fatal car crash, unexpected twins, not to mention an unexpected birth, plus a Read more ...
fisun.guner
We’ve had only two poll tax riots in England. And since England has only twice legislated for a tax on the person, this proves rather a decisive verdict on its popularity. The last lot was in 1991, and though many protesters may have wished for the head of Margaret Thatcher, no one was beheaded.The earlier uprisings resulted in several lopped heads, including that of Wat Tyler, a name that should be familiar to anyone with some passing knowledge of England’s medieval past. The violent uprisings of 1381, led by Tyler, only came to be known as the Peasants’ Revolt in the 19th century. The Read more ...
Tom Birchenough
As we approach the anniversary of the beginning of World War I, the television schedules devoted to it are becoming denser and denser. In volume, at least, rather more than insight. We wonder just what more can be broadcast, after all, about the history concerned that has not already been said at some point in the century that has followed the conflict's tragic onset?Jan Peter’s ambitious Great War Diaries answers two questions that remain relevant, namely, just how did it really feel, and then, what was it like for those on the other side(s)? One of the more impressive programmes we have Read more ...
Florence Hallett
If, like me, you switched this on feeling sheepish about your sketchy knowledge of Chinese art, you would have welcomed as a ready-made excuse the news that some monuments synonymous with Chinese culture are relatively recent discoveries. It seems unthinkable that the terracotta army guarding the burial site of China’s first Emperor Qin Shi Huang was the stuff of legend and rumour until 1974, but it turns out that much of the 22-square-mile area occupied by the memorial is still to be explored and it could be another century before the site is fully excavated.We have all seen those eerie Read more ...
Jasper Rees
A few years ago I sat high up in a rapt, sweltering Albert Hall as a lone pianist performed for two hours in the round. Neither before nor since has the BBC Proms treated a classical musician like a rock god. But then Lang Lang, whether his music-making causes you to cheer or shudder, was and remains the poster boy of a cultural revolution. A few weeks earlier he'd opened the Olympic Games in Beijing.That afternoon he duetted with two guests: his father on the Chinese erhu, representing China’s musical past, and a nine-year-old pianistic prodigy called Marc Yu representing the slightly Read more ...
Adam Sweeting
The RAF's renowned aerobatics team found itself at the centre of a political mini-storm last week when it was asked to use only blue and white smoke trails (but not red) at the Commonwealth Games opening ceremony in Glasgow. The MoD briskly quashed the request, prompting dark rumours about an anti-separationist conspiracy in Whitehall. However, I can't imagine the pilots themselves even noticed, so ferociously do they have to concentrate on their day jobs.This documentary followed the Arrows during the six months of training leading up to this year's air display season, which happens to be Read more ...
Veronica Lee
Joseph Bullman's first series – about six London streets – won several awards, and deservedly so. Now he has turned his attention to Scotland in a three-parter starting in Edinburgh's Moray Place, and last night's opener was another beautifully judged mix of architectural history and social comment.Moray Place, Scotland's most expensive, and therefore poshest, street (and far removed from the area of Sunshine on Leith), is part of the Moray estate, designed by the 10th Earl of Moray. The Earl saw a chance to make a killing in early 19th-century Edinburgh, when the medieval Old Town – where Read more ...
Jasper Rees
What is an opening ceremony for? For the taste gendarmerie on Twitter, it’s a juicy chance to fall on the festivities like a pack of wolves and tear the thing to shreds. For homegrown celebrities now domiciled far from the host country, it’s a chance to reaffirm vows of patriotism in public. For everyone else, it’s a party attended by some ridiculously beautiful athletes, plus the codgers of the bowls team.Bombastic? Certainly. Bloated? For sure. Tacky? Hell yes. Any ceremony featuring John Barrowman and Susan Boyle is hardly calculated to score maximum points for artistic impression. Even Read more ...
Adam Sweeting
Supposedly, The Mill [*] was Channel 4's highest-rating drama of 2013, and the viewers' reward is this second series. However, the secret of the success of this dour, dimly lit series is hard to fathom. Its attempt to convert the history of working-class protest during the Industrial Revolution into a plausible interplay of character is as teeth-gnashingly literal-minded as it was first time round.Often, writer John Fay hardly seemed to bother with the "drama" part at all, as his screenplay lapsed into indigestible lumps of didacticism. This opening episode was a sustained campaign against Read more ...
Andy Plaice
We all love a good guitar riff and so a whole hour devoted to this one simple pleasure sounds like a surefire hit. BBC Four is the go-to channel for the rock‘n’roll documentary and this latest offering boasted a dazzling line-up including Brian May, Tony Iommi and Johnny Marr. The message was clear: if the riff was good enough for Beethoven, then pop and rock could learn a thing or two as well. From "Johnny B Goode" to "Smoke on the Water", crossing "Apache" to "Back In Black", the short repeated phrase we call the riff is the DNA of rock‘n’roll, we were told; the “skeleton of the song Read more ...
Lisa-Marie Ferla
A few months ago, Glasgow Girls - Cora Bissett and David Greig’s 2013 musical based on the true story of seven teenage girls from Drumchapel, Glasgow and their campaign to end the forced removal of school-age asylum seekers - returned to the city’s Citizens Theatre for another sell-out run. It makes the timing of this all-new reinterpretation of a story that has already been the subject of two TV documentaries a little strange, particularly as it too was billed as a “musical drama”: surely a more effective approach, I thought, would have been to adapt the existing critically acclaimed show, Read more ...
Jasper Rees
If you like middle-market tabloids, you’ll be into Coast. Like a reliable tide, the show about the sea has been washing up on BBC Two’s shores since 2005. A factual series defined by the ocean main which surrounds the British Isles, it comes with a stock of stories that, unlike the mackerel population, seem in no danger of running out. They are so plentiful, in fact, that last year David Dimbleby felt free to fish in pretty much the same waters with his series Britain and the Sea.Rather than rely on a single presenter, Coast goes for the multi-person approach. Nicholas Crane, geeky in specs Read more ...