tv
The Ice Cream Girls, ITVSaturday, 20 April 2013
A new drama series at 9pm on a Friday? How often does that happen, eh? Friday is supposed to be reserved for quiz shows, comedies and BBC Four documentaries about disco music. Read more... |
The Genius of Josiah Wedgwood, BBC TwoSaturday, 20 April 2013
As a self-taught chemist, innovative industrialist, a businessman who exploited and developed new means of distribution and marketing, an anti-slavery campaigner and a man dealing with his own disability, the Staffordshire potter Josiah Wedgwood was an important 18th-century figure, a pioneer whose achievements still resonate. But a genius? Read more... |
The South Bank Show: Tim Minchin, Sky Arts 1Friday, 19 April 2013
The new South Bank Show has glided into its second season with a seemingly effortless profile of multi-hyphenate Tim Minchin. In case we’ve forgotten what exactly we admire him for these days – so varied has been his decade-long career been, through satire, rock, musical comedy, stage performance, to co-creator of the RSC transfer-spectacular Matilda that's now storming Broadway – then this was a good reminder. Read more... |
Syria: Across the Lines, Channel 4Thursday, 18 April 2013
Covering both sides of a conflict is never easy. Apart from the physical dangers, warring parties are wary of journalists who've reported on and established ties with the enemy. Afghanistan showed this as clearly as anywhere, when the US forces were suspicious of any journalists with Taliban contacts. Read more... |
Endeavour, Series 1, ITVMonday, 15 April 2013
Where will it end? Inspector Morse keeled over all the way back in the year 2000. Then the faintly unimaginable happened. Morse’s plodding sidekick Lewis got a promotion and started solving Oxford’s apparently inexhaustible supply of murders himself. When Lewis retired this January, the logical choice would have been to hand the baton on his lanky junior. Hathaway sounds like a series, doesn't it? Read more... |
The Security Men, ITVSaturday, 13 April 2013
Does Caroline Aherne hate women? Surely not, but given that there have been plenty of painfully humourless so-called comedies over the years with this heavy a reliance on recurring jokes about older women’s breasts you could be forgiven for hoping that one of the country’s most high-profile comediennes might use her position to produce something a little less puerile than The Security Men. Read more... |
Victoria Wood's Nice Cup of Tea, BBC OneFriday, 12 April 2013
The cup of tea is a national institution that brings comfort and good cheer to millions. So is Victoria Wood. Blend them in a pot and you’ve got a pleasing brew called Victoria Wood's Nice Cup of Tea. It might not have been so. When Wood last ventured out into the former Empire it was to visit all the places in the world named after Queen Victoria. The concept felt slightly stewed. Not here. Read more... |
Scott & Bailey, Series 3, ITVThursday, 11 April 2013
I don't know how accurate Scott & Bailey is as a portrayal of the daily experiences of policewomen, but screenwriter Sally Wainwright is enjoying herself hugely with the chaotic private lives of her protagonists. Quite a bit of this echoes back to the death of barrister Nick Savage (the ineffably sleazy Rupert Graves) in series two. He was DC Rachel Bailey's lover, though he'd failed to mention that he was already married with two children. Read more... |
Arne Dahl: The Blinded Man - Part One, BBC FourSunday, 07 April 2013
Swedish cop drama Arne Dahl snugly fits BBC Four’s Saturday-evening slot for continental European TV imports, but it also suggests that the well might be running dry. Based on the opening episode there’s not much intrinsically wrong with it, but it’s not distinctive and – beyond Irene Lindh’s forceful portrayal of lead detective Jenny Hultin – lacks any characteristically Scandinavian markers. Read more... |
High Art of the Low Countries, BBC FourFriday, 05 April 2013
There was a time when the art of the Low Countries was considered to be very lowly and base indeed. It was the high art of Italy that counted if you were a person of culture and breeding. Not for you the carousing common folk of Jan Steen, or those watery flatlands of Van Goyen, touched with too much bleak realism. It was the arcadian Campagna of Claude – like Poussin a Frenchman but with the Rubicon flowing through his veins – that you looked to. Read more... |
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