fri 26/09/2025

tv

Opinion: Bazalgette is welcome at the Arts Council

Ismene Brown

So the chairman of Big Brother TV becomes chairman of the Arts Council. Is it good or bad that Sir Peter Bazalgette will now hold the purse-strings for our publicly supported arts, the most debated, the most fragile, the most ephemeral elements of our national cultural consciousness, the most opposite of the time-wasting that is reality TV?

Read more...

Thinking of Something Funny: Eric Sykes, 1923-2012

Jasper Rees

“One never consciously observes. The only people who consciously observe are policemen and undercover agents.” Eric Sykes, who has died at the age of 89, was the last of the great vaudevilleans. When I met him in the late 1990s, he was already totally deaf and largely blind, and somehow continued to work and remain remarkably chipper with it. He had his first ear operation in 1952, another a decade later, whereafter he wore a hearing aid camouflaged as a pair of thick-rimmed glasses.

Read more...

BAFTA Television Awards 2012

Adam Sweeting

It wouldn't have been theartsdesk's pick of the pops, but ITV1's Fred West drama Appropriate Adult had a great night at the BAFTA Television Awards. Dominic West took Leading Actor, Emily Watson was Leading Actress, and Monica Dolan completed the hat-trick by taking Supporting Actress.

Read more...

theASHtray: Walliams on Dahl, Gill vs. Beard, and a new (old) play by Eugene O'Neill

ASH Smyth

There’s something in the water at the commissioning editors’ local, I think, resulting, of late, in a rash of rather good arts-n-culture biopics. This week, it was the turn of Roald Dahl, the Big Friendly Giant who made an absolute shit-load of cash telling really not-very-bedtime stories to young children.

Read more...

He Was More Than a Monkee: Davy Jones, 1948–2012

Kieron Tyler

The death of Davy Jones is a surprise. A horrible surprise. Less than a year ago he was on stage at the Royal Albert Hall in the reunited Monkees, full of life, hogging the stage, hamming it up and celebrating the wonderful songs of America’s manufactured answer to The Beatles.

Read more...

Black Cab Sessions: music TV catches up with the net?

joe Muggs

Tonight on Channel 4, a new music series begins with a fantastic premise. A group of music obsessives drive around the USA in a London black cab, finding interesting musicians and recording them performing and talking in the back of the cab. Sounds a little bit like the 2008 Stephen Fry in America series, doesn't it? Well maybe, except Black Cab Sessions has been broadcast online since 2007.

Watch the Black Cab Sessions trailer:

Read more...

Channel 4 has high hopes for Homeland

Adam Sweeting

If you don't fancy any more masters-and-servants dramas on a Sunday evening, you can thank Channel 4 for bringing the excellent Homeland to its Sunday roster. Kicking off tonight, it arrives in the UK basking in Golden Globe glory, having picked up accolades for Best Drama Series and Best Actress in a Drama Series in last month's ceremony.

Read more...

Dustin Hoffman rides his Luck on Sky Atlantic

Adam Sweeting

Further advancing the theory that television is the place for pedigree actors to be seen nowadays, Dustin Hoffman makes his TV debut in HBO's Luck, which kicks off on Saturday 18 February on Sky Atlantic.

Read more...

The Return of Upstairs Downstairs

Adam Sweeting

The BBC's updated Upstairs Downstairs is not a lucky show. Its three-night debut in December 2010 brought unflattering comparisons to Downton Abbey, a fate also likely to greet the imminent series two thanks to Downton's booming national-treasure status. Worse, Upstairs... is reeling from the double blow of losing Eileen Atkins's Lady Maud and Jean Marsh as Rose Buck.

Read more...

Birdsong Arrives on BBC One

Adam Sweeting

Since the publication of Sebastian Faulks's World War One-era bestseller Birdsong in 1993, actors and film-makers have been falling over each other to bring a version to the screen. Such names as Joe Wright, Sam Mendes, Ralph Fiennes, Andrew Davies, Eva Green, Rupert Wyatt and Damian Lewis have been connected with a string of abortive efforts, but up to now a short-lived stage version directed by Trevor Nunn has been the only dramatisation to have seen the light of day.

Read more...

Pages

 

latest in today

'We are bowled over!' Thank you for your messages... ...
Lacrima, Barbican review - riveting, lucid examination of th...

So often the focus – in the coverage of a royal wedding – is the story of the woman wearing the bridal dress. While every...

Joanna Pocock: Greyhound review - on the road again

Joanna Pocock’s second full-length book, Greyhound, tells the story of a single journey made and remade. In 2006, after the death of her...

Entertaining Mr Sloane, Young Vic review - funny, flawed but...

Playwright Joe Orton was a merry prankster. His main work – such as Loot (1965) and What the Butler Saw...

Helleur-Simcock, Hallé, Wong, Bridgewater Hall, Manchester r...

Rachel Helleur-Simcock’s first appearance with the Hallé after appointment as leader of its cello section was auspicious – she became the soloist...

Mariah Carey is still 'Here for It All' after an e...

One of the great moments of Private Eye magazine’s fustiness in recent years was putting Mariah Carey in Pseud’s Corner, for the quote about how...

Tosca, Royal Opera review - Ailyn Pérez steps in as the most...

Forget Anna Netrebko, if you ever gave the Russian Scarpia’s former cultural ambassador much thought (theartsdesk wouldn’t). It should be...

iD-Reloaded, Cirque Éloize, Marlowe Theatre, Canterbury revi...

It was the absence of performing animals that defined it in the 1980s, but contemporary...

Bacchae, National Theatre review - cheeky, uneven version of...

The word "after" can be elastic when a modern writer is inspired by a classic. Nima Taleghani here stretches it to breaking point, although, to be...