tv
Glyndebourne: the Untold History, BBC FourMonday, 23 June 2014
Celebrating the 80th anniversary of opera at Glyndebourne, this 90-minute documentary was fascinating when it delved into the house's history, but started to lose its bearings when it came back to the present day and dwelt at laborious length over this season's new production of Richard Strauss's Der Rosenkavalier. It was as if nobody could decide what sort of film to make, so they made two and cut chunks of them together. Read more... |
A Cabbie Abroad, BBC TwoMonday, 23 June 2014
“In this world nothing can be said to be certain, except death and taxes.” Given how easily some seem to dodge the latter, Benjamin Franklin’s oft-quoted epigram could do with a little modification. Nothing can be said to be certain, except death and taxis? That, at least, is the premise of A Cabbie Abroad. Read more... |
Fostering & Me with Lorraine Pascale, BBC TwoThursday, 19 June 2014
My heart sank when Lorraine Pascale’s documentary on fostering began with her making cakes with Junior, a 10-year-old boy in care. I feared Bake Off meets Who Do You Think You Are?, but those worries quickly faded as Pascale told her extraordinary story. Read more... |
Tigers about the House, BBC TwoTuesday, 17 June 2014
There is a saying that dogs have owners but cats have staff, and it's an axiom forcibly borne out by this new three-part series. The felines in question are Sumatran tiger cubs rather than primped and pampered household pets, but they're so rare, and so prone to the tigerish equivalent of infant mortality, that Australia Zoo's tiger expert Giles Clark decided to rear them at his family home. Read more... |
World Cup Finals 2014, BBC OneSunday, 15 June 2014
Gary Lineker has been honing his marketing schtick for several decades now, selling us a spud-based product that promises to make us feel great, only to fill us with self-loathing as soon as it’s finished. Yes, the England football team, seemingly made of potato, slickly packaged, but ultimately unsatisfying and undoubtedly bad for your health. (The crisps, I hear, are much healthier than they used to be.) Read more... |
Going to the Dogs, Channel 4Thursday, 12 June 2014
Two years ago Penny Woolcock was at the heart of Birmingham street gangs in her documentary One Mile Way; that one was titled after the fact that two of the city’s competing outfits were separated only by the distance of the film’s title. In Going to the Dogs, she's back in the same 'hood, this time investigating the city’s dog-fighting scene, with the help of one of the earlier film’s lead protagonists, Dylan Duffus, who proved here a very able narrator-presenter. Read more... |
Britain's Whale Hunters: The Untold Story, BBC FourTuesday, 10 June 2014
Before the Vikings came to Britain there was no whaling, though coastal-dwellers would avail themselves of any beached strays by chopping them up for their meat and oil. It was the bellicose Norsemen who imported the notion of actively pursuing the creatures, which is how the pilot whale hunt became a tradition in Stornoway in the Outer Hebrides. A line of boats would drive the whales into the shallows, where they were slaughtered by the islanders. Read more... |
David Beckham into the Unknown, BBC OneTuesday, 10 June 2014
As an appetiser to the tournament about to swamp your television, the BBC paired up one global football brand with another: Becks, meet Brazil; Brazil, meet Becks. Appropriately the encounter lasted 90 minutes, and featured long stretches in which the two tentative participants probed and prodded at each other, interleaved by occasional brief flare-ups of drama. Read more... |
John Ogdon: Living with Genius / You've Got a Friend: The Carole King Story, BBC FourSaturday, 07 June 2014
It's something of a cliche to regard concert pianists as mad geniuses or nutty professors, and John Ogdon fitted the formula only too well. Born in Nottinghamshire in 1937, he displayed absurdly precocious musical brilliance as a child, and in due course became one of the highest-flying students at the Royal Northern College of Music. Read more... |
The South Bank Show: Abi Morgan, Sky Arts 1Thursday, 05 June 2014
It’s been a decade since the television drama Sex Traffic brought writer Abi Morgan into the mainstream. It won an impressive collection of awards, and its tale of international prostitution networks, and their brutality, was as harsh and under-the-skin as they come. Read more... |
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