TV
Marina Vaizey
This was the first of four programmes looking at houses made of extraordinary materials in various environments, some extreme. We began with "Mountain", and further explorations are promised to "Coast", "Forest" and "Underground". The presenters were a contrasting pair: the rake-thin and wiry architect Piers Taylor, and actress and property developer Caroline Quentin, both at ease conversationally to the camera and with each other. Caroline Q was the surrogate viewer connecting to us. She nearly toppled over as she explored the potential frisson of the instability of a fragment of the Read more ...
Adam Sweeting
Historic unsolved murders have become their own mini-genre, with the likes of Cold Case lurking in the small print of the schedules and Silent Witness still going strong in its 20th series. A hit the first time out in 2015, Unforgotten is back with a new investigation of another mystery cadaver.This time, the deceased was dredged out of the River Lea in north-east London, having been crammed into a suitcase (post-mortem, one hopes). Detectives Cassie Stuart (Nicola Walker) and Sunny Khan (Sanjeev Bhaskar) were promptly down on the riverbank, poking at the mysterious plasticky skin of the Read more ...
Veronica Lee
We're back at Friday Street, the crumbling cop shop on the wrong side of Manchester, where DI Viv Deering marshals her squad of anarchic misfits to fight crime. Paul Abbott's rude but not crude police comedy drama was a great hit first time round and managed to be riotously unPC while unravelling a complicated serial murder case. And, as with the late, great Cagney and Lacey, some of the best scenes were in the ladies' loo; two of Deering's closest aides are women (played by Elaine Cassidy and Alexandra Roach).At the end of the first series we learned that Deering's husband was the killer and Read more ...
Jasper Rees
Sherlock’s back in the here and now, and not before time. Twelve months ago, Benedict Cumberbatch’s Holmes laid down his mobile phone to return to Edwardian London for a plate-spinning deer-stalking mind-warping one-off. The Abominable Bride, though good in parts, caused a mass outbreak of head-scratching. Had Team Gatiss/Moffat fallen a little too in love with metatextual rebooting and gone and got lost in their own hall of mirrors?It now looks as if they thought so too. The fourth series began with a story that, by Sherlockian standards, played a unusually straight bat. It began at the Read more ...
Mark Sanderson
The hyperbole began as soon as the voiceover did: “For most of us Judi Dench is M…” So much for Bernard Lee. The implication was that if you can remember him, then Judi Dench: All the World’s Her Stage was not for you. After all, she played James Bond’s boss for 17 years – until, at Daniel Craig’s suggestion, the sky fell in on her in Skyfall.Older fans of 007 – ie those watching BBC Two on a Friday evening – will have heard it all before (on Wogan, Film 97 and Desert Island Discs). Despite promising to uncover her secrets, there were no revelations in Francis Whately’s tribute to the much- Read more ...
Matthew Wright
Yorkshire-born screenwriter Sally Wainwright has carved a distinguished niche for herself as chronicler of that brooding, beautiful region’s social and familial dramas. After the romance of Last Tango in Halifax and the gritty panorama of Happy Valley, she has settled on perhaps the quintessential troubled Yorkshire family, with awesome bleakness on the side: the Brontës.Despite a difference of 150 years in setting, To Walk Invisible is not only a seamless progression from Wainwright’s previous work, but the story comes, ready-made, both achingly sad and also driven by a passion that can’t Read more ...
Adam Sweeting
If there's one big question hanging over the television industry, it's "how long can the old broadcast networks survive in the new era of subscription and downloading services?" No doubt there will be a variety of answers, with different hybrid arrangements and partnerships springing up to deliver programming across multiple formats. From the viewer's point of view, it's a pain to have to keep subscribing to multiple providers such as Netflix or Amazon, not to mention all the extra devices we now have sticking out of the back of the TV. On the other hand, have viewers ever had it so good? Read more ...
Veronica Lee
A 90-minute biographical documentary about Bruce Springsteen, you may think, is for Springsteen fans only. But really anyone who is interested in fame, friendship, family relationships and the creative process will have enjoyed this – a revealing mix of personal testimony, The Boss reading from his recently released autobiography of the same title, Springsteen family home movies, and rarely seen footage of his early career.For music fans, the most interesting section was where Springsteen talked about his influences – they are wide and varied, and have a noticeably large number of British Read more ...
Jasper Rees
A year ago to the day the BBC laid on a festive slaughter of Agatha Christie characters. And Then There Were None had the look of a well-dressed abattoir as her victims toppled like ninepins at the hands of an invisible slayer. The scriptwriter Sarah Phelps has returned to the queen of crime for this year’s two-part Christmas murder mystery. The source for The Witness for the Prosecution is a mere 23-page story in which there’s really only house room for one corpse. It belongs to the unfortunate Emily French (Kim Cattrall), a hot-to-frot society dame of a certain vintage who has a weakness Read more ...
David Benedict
The last time BBC TV headed over to West Side Story, it landed itself with a contradiction. Christopher Swann’s 1985 fly-on-the-wall documentary The Making of West Side Story – about Leonard Bernstein recording his celebrated score with a cast of opera singers – bagged the prestigious Prix Italia, but the actual material was a wildly unidiomatic misfire. The reverse was true of BBC2’s Boxing Day special West Side Stories – The Making Of A Classic. The material – archive and newly filmed – that producer/director Ursula Macfarlane had acquired was often first-rate: what she did with it was Read more ...
Lisa-Marie Ferla
The best thing about a year without Doctor Who? It’s been a year since we last heard people (adults) complain that the show’s increasingly labyrinthine, convoluted plots were too complex for children.But the best thing about this year’s Christmas special? It was a self-contained, fast-paced hour which perfectly captured the childlike wonder and good fun that has always been at the heart of a show about a time-travelling space alien.Everything else was present and correct for this festive feastIn what was perhaps a nod to the show’s ever-increasing popularity on BBC America, The Return of Read more ...
Mark Sanderson
So this is Christmas – and what have they done? Scheduled a detective drama that begins with a family being carved up with an axe. Ho ho ho! While Maigret’s Dead Man was no doubt intended to provide a healthy corrective to the festive feel-goodery of Call The Midwife on BBC One, it goes too far. We could have done without the details of torture (a candle-flame to naked breasts) and bloody execution. At least it doesn’t show them (the details, not the breasts).Nor is there any sign of Noël in the rues moyennes de Paris (Hungary once again standing in for France). Happily, though, this is a Read more ...