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Walking Wounded: Return to the Frontline, Channel 4

Terry Friel Thursday, 21 February 2013

The public rarely sees the human cost of journalists covering war. More rarely still does it see the real civilian cost. That makes Walking Wounded a frank and refreshing insight into the world at either end of the lens.

Comment

Storyville: Google and the World Brain/How Hackers Changed the World, BBC Four

Lisa-Marie Ferla Thursday, 21 February 2013

At what stage will the trend among journalists and documentarians to regard anything relating to the internet with suspicion or, worse, ignorance come to an end? Although I recognise that my relationship with information technology has never been exactly typical, this stuff has been easy enough to access for more than half of my life now. And I’m not exactly young.

Utopia, Series Finale, Channel 4

Adam Sweeting Wednesday, 20 February 2013

"New Sars-like virus claims first Briton" according to a headline in yesterday's Times, news which will have sent spasms of alarm through Utopia-watchers. A couple of episodes ago we heard how the original Sars outbreak had been a fictional creation, and this series-closer began with overheard news reports of another attack of Russian flu in Britain, which was provoking "scenes of disorder".

Comment

Alex Polizzi - The Fixer, BBC Two

Tom Birchenough Wednesday, 20 February 2013

The arts are in a bit of a state just now. Okay, we all knew that. The money that was there in the past - and where it was coming from - just isn’t the same any more. Finding a new way of doing things is the buzz. Looking outside the box.

Comment

Her Majesty's Prison: Aylesbury, ITV

Jasper Rees Tuesday, 19 February 2013

Television is a regular prison visitor. You can’t keep Louis Theroux out of the grimmest Stateside penitentiaries, the drama departments drop in now and then for a stretch inside – most recently in Prisoner’s Wives. And then there’s ITV. A couple of years ago it reported from Wormwood Scrubs to find out how the prison system was coping in Brown’s Britain. It wasn’t the prettiest sight.

Comment

Complicit, Channel 4

Adam Sweeting Monday, 18 February 2013

It was the moment when we learned that Sergeant Nick Brody really had been converted into an Islamist agent that the spring went out of Homeland's step. Complicit doesn't make the same mistake. Skilfully spun out over its movie-length span, it's a probing examination of the ambiguities and uncertainties that bedevil intelligence work. It won't make you sleep any easier at night.

Vegas, Sky Atlantic

Adam Sweeting Friday, 15 February 2013

Not a bad idea for a series, even if it is a tiny bit Boardwalk Empire Goes to Nevada. In short: whoosh back to the early Sixties and poke about in the wild and lawless underbelly of Las Vegas, a city awash with debauchery and corruption and under the thumb of the Mob. Better still, the show was created by Nicholas Pilleggi, screenwriter for Martin Scorsese's gangster flicks Goodfellas and Casino.

The Sound and the Fury, BBC Four

Peter Culshaw Tuesday, 12 February 2013

As Julian Lloyd Webber combatively suggests of certain strands of 20^th-century music: “Let’s make a noise no one likes.

Black Mirror, Series Two, Channel 4

Jasper Rees Tuesday, 12 February 2013

Is Charlie Brooker a bit of a soppy old traditionalist at heart? In Black Mirror, our tuned-in, switched-on, networked-up society sits for its portrait. It’s never a pretty sight. Brooker’s vision of the near future, or the alternative present, is Swiftian in its modest savagery. There was a surprise in last night’s second-series opener - with Brooker, there always is – and on this occasion it was to do with the nature of the comedy. There wasn't any.

Lewis, The Final Episode, ITV

Adam Sweeting Tuesday, 12 February 2013

I wonder if ITV ever imagined this Inspector Morse spin-off would last seven series? The opening pair of episodes in this valedictory season of Lewis still clocked over eight million viewers, though the numbers have subsided a bit since. Future one-off specials have not been ruled out.