fri 01/11/2024

tv

The Tourist, BBC One review - gripping Outback thriller from the Williams brothers

Adam Sweeting

This latest outing from the astonishingly prolific Jack and Harry Williams (The Missing, Baptiste, The Widow, Strangers etc) gives itself a huge leg-up by exploiting the epic lonely spaces of the Australian Outback.

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Best of 2021: TV

theartsdesk

There's so much stuff on TV, in all its many multi-streaming hats, that I somehow haven't got around to watching Succession. Apparently it's the best TV show ever made.

Oh well, there's bound to be another one along in a minute. Theartsdesk's eagle-eyed reviewers have found plenty to amuse themseves with elsewhere during 2021, and we parade our particular predilections below. Adam Sweeting

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A Very British Scandal, BBC One review - the wild life and times of the Duchess of Argyll

Adam Sweeting

The title might provoke a quick double-take. Wasn’t A Very British Scandal that series about Jeremy Thorpe and Norman Scott, starring Hugh Grant and Ben Whishaw?

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The Amazing Mr Blunden, Sky Max / The Mezzotint, BBC Two reviews - blundering Blunden eclipsed by M R James

Adam Sweeting

Friday night was Mark Gatiss night.

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The Girl Before, BBC One review - high-tech dream home contains many a heartache

Adam Sweeting

Would you be willing to play the guinea pig in a designer-superhome created by a deranged architect?

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You Don't Know Me, BBC One review - true love meets inner-city crime wave

Adam Sweeting

I sympathised with the prosecuting barrister when she put it to the court that the accused, a man called Hero (Samuel Adewunmi), was “using his closing speech to construct a work of fiction”.

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Hellbound, Netflix review - supernatural assassins usher in an age of terror

Adam Sweeting

Netflix is sometimes criticised for bringing too much of everything to its online feast, but the way it’s opening up previously under-exposed territories is becoming seriously impressive.

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The Beatles: Get Back, Disney+ review - 1969 revisited in Peter Jackson's three-part documentary

Adam Sweeting

A caption tells us that while filming the Beatles at Twickenham Film Studios in January 1969 for a planned TV broadcast, director Michael Lindsay-Hogg and his crew amassed 60 hours of film and 150 hours of audio recordings. Some of it was seen in the 1970 film Let It Be, but the bulk of it has remained locked in the vaults ever since. Until now.

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Death of England: Face to Face, National Theatre at Home review - anti-racist trilogy ends with a bang

aleks Sierz

One of the absolute highpoints of new writing in the past couple of years has been the Death of England trilogy. Written by Roy Williams and Clint Dyer, these three brilliant monologues have not only explored vital questions of race and racism, identity and belonging, but have also provided a record of theatre-going before, during and after the pandemic lockdown.

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Dopesick, Disney+ review - the harrowing inside story of America's OxyContin scandal

Adam Sweeting

“Drug companies are supposed to be honest,” says a lady from the Department of Justice, explaining why the US Food and Drug Administration had been treating the pharmaceutical industry with a light, indeed barely detectable, regulatory touch.

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