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You've Been Trumped, BBC TwoTuesday, 23 October 2012
It has never been easier to get sucked into a warm, simplistic sensibility which portrays every rich capitalist businessman as corrupt and amoral, but you spend 90 minutes watching Donald Trump in action and you start to wonder. If Trump didn't exist you suspect Martin Amis would invent him. He would probably call his caricature of a dastardly US business tycoon Donald Shit. Read more...
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Panorama: Jimmy Savile - What The BBC Knew, BBC OneTuesday, 23 October 2012
From 10pm last night to around 11.40, the BBC did what no other broadcaster in the world would have the stomach for. It turned its guns with maximum lethalness on itself. The result was extraordinary television. Read more... |
Girls, Sky AtlanticMonday, 22 October 2012
While it’s not unusual for an imported television show to have been downloaded, discussed and dissected at length long in advance of of its UK transmission date, HBO’s Girls is even harder than most to approach with an open mind. Read more... |
Getting On, Series 3, BBC FourWednesday, 17 October 2012
Getting On exists somewhere on the spectrum between Carry On and Samuel Beckett. Set in a hospital ward where mostly geriatric patients are tended by middle-aged staff all with problems of their own, it looks unflinchingly at the great maladjusted edifice that is the Health Service and all who ail in her. And in Vicki Pepperdine’s tightly coiled consultant Dr Pippa Moore it has perhaps the most delightful sitcom grotesque since Malcolm Tucker first started turning the air blue. Read more... |
Imagine: Freddie Mercury - The Great Pretender, BBC OneWednesday, 17 October 2012
This film, promised Imagine's host Alan Yentob, would be "the nearest we'll get to the real Freddie Mercury, a shy man in search of love and a driven artist living behind the protection of his stage persona". Probably true, but the shyness and the protective persona, coupled with vigorous policing by the Queen organisation, meant that film-maker Rhys Thomas couldn't add a great deal to what's already known about Mercury. Read more... |
Wonderland: Walking With Dogs, BBC TwoTuesday, 16 October 2012
If you asked a bunch of foreigners to describe the British, I bet one of the phrases most frequently used would be “a nation of dog lovers”, so it was no surprise to discover that film-maker's Vanessa Engle's latest bulletin about the British and the way they live (shown as part of the excellent Wonderland strand) was about this nation's love affair with canines. Read more... |
Downton Abbey, ITV1: Death of Lady SybilMonday, 15 October 2012
You suspected she was a goner the moment the doctors started to front up like King Kong and Godzilla. Having given birth to a girl, the rebellious bluestocking Lady Sybil got her marching orders last night on Downton Abbey and Jessica Brown Findlay’s husky larynx will be heard no more pouring oil on troubled waters. The rest of the cast can rely on a berth in Julian Fellowes’ gilded prison for all eternity. Ms Brown Findlay is available for work. Read more... |
Good Cop, Finale, BBC OneSunday, 14 October 2012
It was tough luck for Good Cop that the real-life killing of two female police officers in Manchester prompted the BBC to postpone its fourth and final episode, judging that its plotline of rookie cop Amanda Morgan acting as bait for a couple of knife-wielding thugs who preyed on women was too near the knuckle. Read more... |
Me and Mrs Jones, BBC OneSaturday, 13 October 2012
It's always either a very good or a very bad sign when my notebook remains untainted by my scrawl when I'm reviewing; either I am too busy enjoying myself to make notes or I'm so unengaged that I can barely be bothered to lift my pen. Read more... |
DCI Banks, Series 2, ITV1Thursday, 11 October 2012
Charm, politeness and glittering repartee are clearly not considered important qualities for the Yorkshire-based policepersons who work alongside DCI Banks. TV coppers are rarely a barrel of laughs but for this bunch, spitting, snarling and glaring are their default modes of communication. Read more... |
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