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Zero Day, Netflix review - can ex-President Robert De Niro save the Land of the Free?Thursday, 20 February 2025
It seems that esteemed former US President George Mullen is subsiding gently into retirement on his luxurious country estate, with a publishing contract for his memoirs if he can ever manage to knuckle down and write them, when fate throws a curve-ball. Read more... |
The White Lotus, Series 3, Sky Atlantic review - hit formula with few surprises but a new bewitching soundtrackWednesday, 19 February 2025
The return of Mike White’s hit series can be celebrated for one major reason: its extraordinary music. That may sound like a minor reason, but this third iteration of the show confirms that the show's sound world is key to its success. Read more... |
Hacks, Season 3, NOW review - acerbic showbiz comedy keeps up the good workWednesday, 19 February 2025
Dying is easy, comedy is hard, according to the Georgian actor Edmund Kean. Luckily, everybody involved with the much-awarded Hacks understands precisely the creative anguish that top-flight comedy demands, and in its third season the show puts further expanses of clear blue water between itself and the competition. Read more... |
Surviving Black Hawk Down, Netflix review - the real story behind Ridley Scott's Oscar-winnerFriday, 14 February 2025
Ridley Scott’s 2001 film Black Hawk Down was a technically superb blockbuster bristling with thunderous action sequences and famous actors, though its gung-ho depiction of the heroics of American special forces during the appalling Somalian civil war always felt a little uncomfortable. Read more... |
Vietnam: The War That Changed America, Apple TV+ review - painful and poignant stories from a terrible conflictMonday, 03 February 2025
It’s been 50 years since the USA bowed to the inevitable and pulled out of Vietnam, in the midst of harrowing scenes of anguish and chaos. Read more... |
Paradise, Disney+ review - enigmatic drama with an unknown destinationSaturday, 01 February 2025
The latest from the This Is Us creator, Dan Fogelman, is a futuristic take on relationships among survivors once Earth has suffered an extinction event, a popular concept in these troubled times. Except that it starts out by following an equally popular narrative track, the classic locked-door whodunit. Where is this heading? Read more... |
Prime Target, Apple TV+ review - the appliance of scienceThursday, 23 January 2025
An opening sequence of a drone flying over a busy street in Baghdad, followed by a huge explosion that leaves many casualties and a gaping hole where a row of buildings used to be, suggests that Prime Target is going to be another special forces, war-on-terror type of drama. Read more... |
Out There, ITV1 review - drugs and thugs disfigure the Welsh landscapeWednesday, 22 January 2025
If nothing else, ITV’s new thriller Out There is a fabulous advertisement for the Welsh countryside. Many scenes were shot in Brecon and the Black Mountains, amid acres of wild, rambling moorland and majestic hillsides. But it’s not always a happy place. Here, farmer Nathan Williams (Martin Clunes) is trying to hang on to his family business, but profits are low, overheads are high, and the recently widowed Nathan isn’t as young as he used to be. Read more... |
What's the Matter with Tony Slattery?, BBC Two review - absorbing but troubling search for answersWednesday, 15 January 2025
In the late Eighties and Nineties, Tony Slattery became one of the most ubiquitous faces on television, appearing regularly on Whose Line Is It Anyway? and Have I Got News For You while popping up in quizzes and sitcoms all over the place (as well as in the movies Peter’s Friends and The Crying Game). He even became a film critic for a while, hosting Saturday Night at the Movies. Read more... |
American Primeval, Netflix review - nightmare on the Wild FrontierMonday, 13 January 2025
It seems The Osmonds may not have been the worst outrage perpetrated on an unsuspecting public by the Mormons. American Primeval is set in the 1850s, and is based around the real-life massacre of settlers travelling from Arkansas to California by the Mormon militia known as as the Nauvoo Legion. This took place at Mountain Meadows, Utah, apparently triggered by rising tensions between the US federal government and Mormon leader Brigham Young. Read more... |
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It all started on 09/09/09. That memorable date, September 9 2009, marked the debut of theartsdesk.com.
It followed some...
Jane Austen Wrecked My Life review - persuading us that the...
Do the French do irony? Well, was Astérix a Gaul? Obviously they do, and do it pretty well to judge by many of their movies down the...
The King of Pangea, King's Head Theatre review - grief...
There’s an old theatre joke. “The electric chair is too good for a monster like that. They should send him out of town with a new...
Album: Sam Binga - Sam Binga Presents Club Orthodontics
When I was writing the introduction to my book, Bass, Mids, Tops: An Oral History of Soundsystem Culture, I came up with a phrase, which...
Yoshitomo Nara, Hayward Gallery review - sickeningly cute ki...
It’s been a long time since an exhibition made me feel physically sick. The Hayward Gallery is currently hosting a retrospective of the...
Hespèrion XXI, Savall, QEH review - an evening filled with l...
For the first encore of the evening, it was not just the audience but the whole ensemble of Hespèrion XXI that was mesmerised as its leader,...
Album: Neil Young & the Chrome Hearts - Talkin' to...
When Neil Young releases a new album, you can be reasonably sure that you’ll get either a disc of melancholy singer-songwriter fare or a set of...
Samuel Arbesman: The Magic of Code review - the spark ages
The slightly overwrought subtitle, "How Digital Language Created and Connects Our World and Shapes Our Future", gives a...
Album: Mary Halvorson - About Ghosts
Although Mary Halvorson leads the sextet Amaryllis on About Ghosts, instrumentally, she does not place her guitar to the fore. The first...
A Midsummer Night's Dream, Bridge Theatre review - Nick...
It’s a sign of the inroads that the term “immersive” has made in theatreland that it now gets jokily namedropped at the...