TV
Veronica Lee
Ben Chanan's The Capture (BBC One), which he wrote and directed, is a bang-up-to-the-minute dystopian thriller about the increasingly surveilled society we live in. In last night’s opening episode of six, he set out his stall from the first frame, where the bored staff in a CCTV control room were doing routine scans of the neighbourhood, until one of them saw a violent crime taking place in which a soldier attacked a woman in the street.Then we flashed back several hours to see the soldier, Shaun Emery (Callum Turner), winning his appeal against his conviction for murdering an insurgent in Read more ...
Veronica Lee
This was the first of a two-part investigation into... well, I don't know what. The voiceover of High Society: Cannabis Café said it was an experiment “to test the alleged benefits of weed” and the people featured all had “a personal motivation for getting stoned” as they visited an Amsterdam coffee shop, where dope is sold legally.The jaunty music and lack of scientific context suggested that it was essentially a voyeuristic exercise where we watched normally uptight Brits getting giggly, having the munchies and (a few) telling someone they loved them.There were occasional funny moments Read more ...
Veronica Lee
Is there any challenge that television producers haven't filmed celebrities doing? They won't be happy until they've followed a bunch of them snowboarding down an Alp while baking a cake, conducting an orchestra and researching their family history. And if it involves a little sob followed by a group hug, bonus!But I can't be cynical about Sink or Swim (Channel 4) because it's in aid of the charity Strand Up to Cancer. The programme's USP is that 11 celebrities – using the term loosely – who are all weak or non-swimmers are being trained to do a sponsored relay swim across the Channel next Read more ...
Veronica Lee
There was a time when a new series of The Affair (Sky Atlantic) would cause the heart to quicken; now, not so much. Actually that sounds like the course of most extramarital affairs – an initial rush to spend time with the object of your affection, only for the desire to dwindle over time. Yet the opening episode (of 11) of the fifth and final series promised that this would be an interesting hook-up as there's an intriguing new thread with the introduction of the adult version of a character we last saw as a child in a previous series.In the opening episode things were in a state of flux in Read more ...
Rachel Halliburton
It may sound perverse to say it, but Albert was the perfect twenty-first century prince. Thrust into the heart of the British monarchy he was simultaneously an oppressed outsider who – despite his reputation as the most handsome prince in Europe (not least when wearing white cashmere pantaloons) – struggled to make his voice and intelligence heard. This curiously female aspect of his plight certainly adds a frisson to a story that would be remarkable by any standards. Thank goodness for historians that it is: for two hundred years after both he and Victoria were born we are being Read more ...
Adam Sweeting
This is how Steven Knight pictured Peaky Blinders when he first set about creating it. “I was very keen not to do a traditional British period drama, especially where it comes to depictions of working class people. Where the impulse is to say ‘it’s a shame, it’s a pity, isn’t it awful, wasn’t everything terrible for women’.“The Shelbys are a family that completely controlled their own destiny, and also coming from that background myself I wasn’t surrounded by people walking around saying ‘poor me, isn’t it terrible’. They were enjoying life and making the most of it, glamourising it, and that Read more ...
Sebastian Scotney
The Bauhaus school and its subsequent influence make an extraordinary story, and this film by Mat Whitecross, which has assembled a whole range of different voices and perspectives and woven them together, told it well.As a school, the Bauhaus lasted just 14 years from beginning to end. It opened in 1919 when Walter Gropius was finally able to accept an invitation to merge the art schools of Weimar and to be the principal of the “Staatliches Bauhaus”. The roll call of star teachers which Gropius attracted to Weimar was impressive right from the early years: Wassily Kandinsky, Paul Klee, Read more ...
Markie Robson-Scott
The BBC’s version of Love Island has familiar ingredients: ten 20-somethings, many with pale manicures and hair extensions, on an island, in this case Mykanos. It’s not to everyone’s taste. “All I see is water, I don’t see no nail shops,” observes Melissa, whose argumentativeness causes her to fall out with people and who wants to improve her friendship skills.The concept that they’re united by heartbreak – they’re not – is a shaky one, which weakens the programme’s impact. There are too many variables, not enough clarity about goals. Are they mainly just here for a nice Greek island break? Read more ...
Markie Robson-Scott
Animal behaviourist Jo-Rosie Haffenden, who lives in Spain, has some very good dogs (and a charming toddler, who knows how to sit). Can she transfer her training skills to three-year-old Graydon in Bristol, who has six tantrums a day, and 14-month-old Dulcie in Croydon, who has never gone to sleep in her cot? “Kids are more like dogs than people think,” she says in Train Your Baby Like a Dog, a new parenting programme called “dehumanising” in a Change.org petition asking the network to cancel the show, signed by nearly 25,000 people this week.But Haffenden’s approach, apart from the Read more ...
Liz Thomson
It was a lovely summer’s day in southern England, much as it was in County Sligo. I was with my parents, driving to visit a very elderly relative. We arrived not long after the news of Lord Mountbatten’s death was announced and my great aunt was distraught, more over the death of someone she saw as a war hero than over the general carnage, I suspect. I don’t recall if my parents saw his death as a particular tragedy – “The Troubles” were a decade old that day in August 1979 and everyone hated the IRA for the destruction of so many lives, many on mainland Britain. When I went to interview Read more ...
Owen Richards
What’s the next level above national treasure? We’ll need a name for it by the end of All Woman, Kathy Burke’s new Channel 4 documentary. With a big heart and a foul mouth, she’s travelled the country trying to define 21st century womanhood – an incredibly tall order for three hour-long shows, but episode one proved she’s more than up for the task.The first concept under Burke’s watchful eye was beauty, and where better to start than former Love Island contestant Megan Barton-Hanson? The two shared a sympathetic conversation about the pressures young girls face to conform to beauty standards Read more ...
Owen Richards
Life on the Welsh coast isn’t getting any easier: defendant Madlen was found guilty of murder, husband Evan was coming home from prison, and Faith had just given Steve Baldini a rather uncomfortable snog on the beach. She’s probably pining for that first series now, at least the hubby was out of the picture.In the latest episode of BBC's watercooler hit, Faith’s become entangled in a murder enquiry of her own. After running errands for local baddie Gael Reardon, one of her contacts has turned up on a morgue slab. The victim had called Faith just before his death, so it won’t be long until the Read more ...