TV
Mark Sanderson
At boarding school in the mid-1970s Matron – a grey-haired, sharp-beaked stick of a woman who put the fear of God into us – would often remark: “Remember, boys, always be polite to the lower orders.” She was referring to the army of cleaning and kitchen staff who kept the lino lethally polished and our stomachs full of stodge. It was as if the swinging Sixties had never happened. Even when the power was cut off during the winter of discontent there was always plenty of hired help to light the candles.Such archaic sentiment, even though the peasants have revolted, can still be found in leafy Read more ...
Jasper Rees
Do we really needed to hear more from Joe Lampton, the anti-hero of John Braine’s Room at the Top? His battle for social advancement and sexual self-expression has long since stopped holding up a mirror to society, you'd think. In fact we nearly didn’t hear more from him in this new BBC adaptation. Anyone turning on BBC Four one night in April last year expecting to watch would have been disappointed. Owing to a late-blooming rights dispute, the BBC decided on the day of broadcast not to go ahead. Now, 18 months later, with all legal ducks finally in a row, the first episode went out last Read more ...
Veronica Lee
It's a reasonable assumption that Emile Zola would never have guessed his novel Au Bonheur des Dames (The Ladies' Paradise, part of the Rougon-Macquart series) would be the inspiration for a BBC costume drama. And it's an even safer one that he would have barely recognised his 1883 novel, an acute observation of capitalism and bourgeois life in mid-19th-century France, in Bill Gallagher's adaptation The Paradise.Gallagher, who wrote the equally soapy Lark Rise to Candleford, has relocated the action from Paris to an unnamed city in the North-East of England, presumably Newcastle, where the Read more ...
graeme.thomson
The Special Relationship might be on a sticky wicket politically, but in telly at least it seems to be thriving. Spooks, Downton and Episodes have all recognised the sound commercial sense in bringing together marquee names from both sides of the pond. Now comes Cuckoo, a new six-part comedy series which pitches budding US film star and Saturday Night Live stalwart Andy Samberg against our very own comic giant Greg Davies. The third lead, Helen Baxendale, presumably ticked several boxes simply for being known on either side of the Atlantic seaboard for her (terrible) turn in Friends.So much Read more ...
Adam Sweeting
The uproarious success of Downton Abbey, now firmly established as one of Britain's great national pastimes, seems to have had the happy effect of persuading ITV1 that it must make more drama. Thus, the autumn of 2012 has been ushered in by new ITV dramas swirling about our ears like tumbling leaves, from The Last Weekend and The Scapegoat to the comeback of Downton itself.More interestingly, the channel has also served up a batch of conspicuously female-centric pieces, albeit with mixed results. The murdered-girl story A Mother's Son felt like a series brutally curtailed by chainsaw, losing Read more ...
josh.spero
There are two reasons I can often be found slumped on my sofa watching the 8.30pm cookery-show slot on BBC Two on a Monday evening: first, it has the perfect lead-in, University Challenge, after which nothing involving mental exercise is required; and second, I'm a greedy cook. Tonight saw the return to this slot of erotic gastronome Nigella Lawson with Nigellissima, whose cod-Italian title suggested exactly the food she would be cooking.But it's not so much the food I want to write about. Yes, it looked more desirable than Joseph Gordon-Levitt in Speedos - tagliata, chocolate cheesecake (not Read more ...
Adam Sweeting
In time-honoured fashion, hope sprang eternal for the British contenders in the 64th Primetime Emmy Awards, held last night in Los Angeles. Downton Abbey had picked up seven major nominations (and 16 in all, including various behind-the-scenes categories), while there were also high hopes for the multi-nominated Sherlock and gongtastic possibilities for the BBC detective series Luther and its star Idris Elba. Clive Owen was in the running for his portrayal of Ernest Hemingway in the HBO mini-series Hemingway & Gellhorn, while Jared Harris had a shout for Best Supporting Actor in Mad Read more ...
Emma Dibdin
"There used to be among families...a position, a certain...call it 'parade'." So stammered Benedict Cumberbatch's rigidly principled, increasingly broken Christopher Tietjens at the climax of last week's penultimate Parade's End, echoing his own line from the series' first episode as he struggled to justify his fidelity to adulterous wife Sylvia (Rebecca Hall).In the kind of verbally shrewd reversal that has defined Tom Stoppard's meticulous, occasionally magnificent script, a frustrated General Campion told him "there are no more parades for that regiment". Tietjens was the last Read more ...
Jasper Rees
Where next for Gareth Malone, who would ardently like to teach the entire planet to sing in perfect harmony? He began all those series ago with the ruffians and rapscallions who make up the average sixth form, most recently took his outreach work to tone-deaf soldiers’ spouses and for his next stop he’s boarding a plane to export The Choir Stateside. Other constituencies who could use a healing stint singing under Malone's pastoral wing would include politicians, football supporters and anyone to do with The X Factor. But for the moment, it’s back to the office for Gareth.In ep one of The Read more ...
fisun.guner
There’s nothing like having a fatwa hanging over you to find out who your friends are, for those who might be taken for natural allies may surprise you. And so it was when Salman Rushdie received his death warrant 23 years ago on St Valentine’s Day: there were those who proved their mettle, or at least found common cause with the imperilled writer. And then there were those whose instincts did not lie in the advocacy of free speech but in maintaining, as they saw it, a diplomatic pragmatism. Their principles, it seems, were flexible enough to allow them to spill ink for the British press Read more ...
Mark Sanderson
Mid-September: the nights are drawing in and, to quote that well-known costume dramatist John Milton, the period detail is as “thick as autumnal leaves that strew the brooks in Vallombrosa”. Downton – praise be! – is back. However, before the third series even gets into its penguin-suited stride it seems that paradise is about to be lost all over again. Lord Grantham has blown most of his wife’s fortune: the Canadian Trunk Line Company has hit the buffers and gone bust. While the crusty aristo refuses to be a failure his dependents have far more important things on their tiny minds. Lady Read more ...
Veronica Lee
Now here's a thing. Why would you invite one of his generation's most acclaimed classical actors, who is also a huge star of popular culture, to make his debut as a light entertainer in that most clichéd role, a quiz-show host? Well, when that individual is David Tennant, a brilliant Hamlet and a former Doctor Who, you are guaranteed to attract some new viewers and it gives a neat reboot to what is a very tired format: a bunch of comics answering soft questions (in this case about the history of comedy) but in actuality being given a chance to trot out jokes and anecdotes.So is he up to the Read more ...