TV
Markie Robson-Scott
“Make contact with the left eye - it is a direct pathway to the emotions. Then make yourself scarce so that the desire in her can grow.” This fine flirting advice comes from a Stasi officer to his students, preparing them for a honey-trap mission to seduce West Berlin intelligence officers.The Same Sky, set in 1974 (on Netflix for three years before C4 and Walter Presents took it up) is an unusual – and very well acted – six-part UK-German co-production, directed by Oliver Hirschbiegel (Downfall) and created by Paula Milne, whose English script was translated into German by the director. And Read more ...
Adam Sweeting
Neil Cross’s novel Burial was hailed for its skilful plotting and insightful characterisations, as well as its macabre atmosphere. Disappointingly, the author’s own adaptation of the book looks clumsy and uncomfortable on TV.It’s being shown in four parts on consecutive nights on ITV, and Wednesday’s part three left us poised on the brink of a denouement which may prove ugly and brutal. However, so far the story has failed to ignite, despite the way it keeps telling us how creepy, spooky and other-worldly it’s supposed to be. The main stumbling block is Russell Tovey’s leading role as Nathan Read more ...
Adam Sweeting
Plenty of pedigree wattage has been packed into this slickly addictive new HBO drama (showing on Sky Atlantic). The twin headliners are affluent Manhattan couple Grace and Jonathan Fraser (Nicole Kidman and Hugh Grant, the latter basking in the high-end prestige which has accrued since his virtuoso performance as Jeremy Thorpe in A Very English Scandal). It’s written by telly-doyen David E Kelley, creator of (among other things) Big Little Lies, which also starred Kidman.Big Little Lies probed the private lives and murky secrets of a group of wealthy but insecure Californians, while previous Read more ...
Adam Sweeting
Towards the end of this new documentary, an account of how he recorded his new album Letter to You at his home studio in New Jersey, Bruce Springsteen delivers a eulogy to the E Street Band. “The greatest thrill in my life is standing behind that microphone with you guys behind me,” he tells his gnarled old troupe, as they near the completion of the album (it took them four days, all of them playing live in the studio).Then, over a snowy winter landscape shot from a slow-flying drone in the rich monochrome that’s the movie’s trademark, Bruce adds a kind of valediction to life itself, mulling Read more ...
Adam Sweeting
A lifelong socialist who has regularly written about the Labour party, playwright David Hare admits that in his career he has “rarely looked closely at the appeal of Conservative values”. On the evidence of the first episode of his new political thriller Roadkill (BBC One), the reason for that would be because he finds Conservative values repellent, judging by the swamp of sleazy allegations which threatens to drown his protagonist,Tory Transport Minister Peter Laurence. Nor is Prime Minister Dawn Ellison’s tone of sarcastic contempt (delivered with relish by Helen McCrory, wearing various Read more ...
Veronica Lee
After nine successful series, a Bafta and an Emmy nomination, Taskmaster has moved from Dave to Channel 4 – amusingly, the broadcaster that its creator Alex Horne first took it to but which turned it down. It has made the transition seamlessly – ie, without changing a thing – and is still utterly daft and a joy to watch. But then, when you have a great concept that's well executed, why muck around with it?For the uninitiated: in each series a different group of five comics or comedy actors solve a succession of parlour-game tasks, using just silly props and their ingenuity, against the clock Read more ...
Adam Sweeting
Is Emily in Paris “the dumbest thing on Netflix right now?” or a sugar-rush of escapism in the midst of our global pandemic misery? “We need things to make us smile,” commented one Parisian viewer. “In the time of Covid,we don’t need more to stress us out.”The show’s creator, Darren Star, has a genius for tickling the ratings g-spot, having been the mastermind behind Beverley Hills, 90210, Melrose Place and Sex and the City. This time, though, he’s ventured beyond traumatised teens in California and the tortuous lives of career women in New York, to take a look at transcontinental culture Read more ...
Adam Sweeting
Enlisting Hollywood giant Samuel L Jackson to host a series about the history of slavery, his own ancestors having been trafficked from West Africa to the Americas, was a headline-grabbing move, and scenes where we travelled with Jackson to the historic slaving hotspot of Gabon rang with a steely sense of commitment. Elsewhere, though, the editorial focus was slack and the content rambling, as though the project (on BBC Two) had undergone a last-minute salvage job using whatever was at hand.However often you hear them, the details of the slave trade are stomach-turning – it’s estimated that Read more ...
Adam Sweeting
Famous dystopian novels are reliably popular with TV adapters, so it’s strange that this is the first time Aldous Huxley’s treatise on a society controlled by technology and psychological manipulation has been turned into a TV series. Of course, these days you need a pretty good fictional dystopia to surpass the one already running amok outside your window. Still, this is written and produced by David Wiener, one of the masterminds of Fear the Walking Dead, so you might at least hope for a generous helping of horror and massed blood-letting.But last week’s first episode of Brave New World ( Read more ...
Jessica Duchen
Classical music TV documentaries don’t often merit comparison to buses. So it was singularly bad luck that Black Classical Music: The Forgotten History hit the TV screens the day after a very different film, John Bridcut's profile of Bernard Haitink which virtually sanctified an already great and venerable conductor and sparked heights of ecstasy amid innumerable lovers of 19th-century standard concert repertoire. In the aftermath, The Forgotten History was nearly forgotten all over again.It offered a fount of tumultuous stories, ranging across three centuries of classical composers Read more ...
Peter Quantrill
Before his retirement last summer at the age of 90, Bernard Haitink worked magic on the podium, no one is in any doubt about that. Lining up one friend and musician after another to admit they don’t know how he does it hardly seems the most promising basis for a feature-length documentary. Yet John Bridcut’s film also works, rather like one of Haitink’s performances, by placing trust in his material and moulding its form with a nudge here, a pause there. The result, no less than his much admired portrait of Janet Baker, is worthy of its subject, and praise doesn’t come higher than that.There Read more ...
Graham Fuller
Sky’s 12-part documentary series The Movies is an unabashed celebration of American cinema. Barrages of clips make it an entertaining survey of Hollywood (and occasionally Off-Hollywood) through the years. Downplaying film as art, and scarcely trenchant about its engagement with society and politics, however, this chronicle errs on the side of dutiful. Enthusiasm gets you only so far.It’s also marred by its breathlessness. No sooner has a single movie or the work of an important director or actor or a significant trend been identified then it’s onto someone or something new. That’s not to say Read more ...