fri 01/11/2024

tv

The North Water, BBC Two review - a terrible voyage into the great beyond

Adam Sweeting

It’s perhaps unfortunate that The North Water arrives on BBC Two only a few months after The Terror, since it’s impossible to avoid the parallels between them.

Read more...

The Blood Pact, All 4 review - a (tax) inspector falls

Sebastian Scotney

In Klem (meaning "clamp"’), we find ourselves in the calm, ordered and ordinary world of Amsterdam-Zuid. There are parents’ evenings to be attended, school plays to be watched. The area’s many pretty parks are just perfect for the early morning jog. Tall green bins stand in neat rows.

Read more...

Clickbait, Netflix review - fiendishly cunning thriller keeps everybody guessing

Adam Sweeting

It seems Covid-19 may not be the only plague threatening mankind.

Read more...

The White Lotus, Sky Atlantic review - dark side of a tropical paradise

Adam Sweeting

As we saw recently in M Night Shyamalan’s Old, a visit to a holiday resort in a tropical location can have ghastly consequences.

Read more...

Britannia, Series 3, Sky Atlantic review - murder, mysticism and anaemic slapstick

Adam Sweeting

According to series newcomer Sophie Okonedo, arriving in Roman Britain as Hemple, the wife of David Morrissey’s General Aulus, "I was already a fan of the show. I love it so much… I’d been thinking this is such a brilliant show to be in.”

Read more...

Hit & Run, Netflix review - Lior Raz excels as a hard man on a hazardous mission

Adam Sweeting

Lior Raz is Israel’s very own man with a very particular set of skills. However, unlike the looming 6ft 4in Liam Neeson who plays Bryan Mills in the Taken films, Raz is stocky, shaven-headed and clocks in at a mere 5ft 7in.

Read more...

Deceit, Channel 4 review - how Colin Stagg became prime suspect in the Rachel Nickell case

Adam Sweeting

It seems unlikely that the Metropolitan Police will welcome Channel 4’s new four-part dramatisation of the hunt for the killer of Rachel Nickell, since it’s a reminder of yet another of the Met’s historic catastrophes.

Read more...

Watch the Sound with Mark Ronson, Apple TV+ review - riveting survey of the technology that transformed music

Adam Sweeting

Producer to the stars and creator of the monstrously successful “Uptown Funk”, Mark Ronson knows a thing or two about making noises. He has combined this know-how with a laid-back knack for presenting to make this six-parter for Apple TV+, delving into the history of how developing technology has driven innovation in the music business.

Read more...

I Am Victoria, Channel 4 review - improvised drama in need of more substance

Adam Sweeting

This opener to the second series of Dominic Savage’s I Am… dramas starred Suranne Jones as the titular Victoria, an ultra-driven career woman surrounded by the trappings of material success but spinning into a dark vortex of depression.

Read more...

Bo Burnham: Inside, Netflix review - a masterpiece about lockdown angst

Veronica Lee

Some people perfected their banana loaf or sourdough bread during lockdown. Others tried to learn a new language or how to play an instrument. Bo Burnham produced this masterpiece.

Read more...

Pages

 

latest in today

Road Diary: Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band, Disney+...

Director Thom Zimny has become the audio-visual Boswell to Bruce Springsteen’s Samuel Johnson, having made...

The Buddha of Suburbia, Barbican Theatre review – farcical f...

Hanif Kureishi’s 1990 novel The Buddha of Suburbia begins like this: “My name is Karim Amir, and I am an Englishman born and bred, almost...

Help to give theartsdesk a future!

It all started on 09/09/09. That memorable date, September 9 2009, marked the debut of theartsdesk.com.

It followed some...

Rigoletto, English National Opera review - another hit for M...

How we used to mock those stuck-in-the-mud opera houses that wheeled out the same moth-eaten production of some box-office favourite decade after...

How To Survive Your Mother, King's Head Theatre review...

It is unsurprising to learn in the post-show Q&A that each audience receives Jonathan Maitland’s new play based on his 2006...

Album: The Cure - Songs of a Lost World

Could melancholia be an elixir of creative youth? Or is it that sad people were never really that youthful, so age suits them? Certainly it seems...

Industry, BBC One review - bold, addictive saga about corpor...

All three seasons of Industry are now on iPlayer, and after watching the most recent one and then backtracking for another...

theartsdesk at Wexford Festival Opera - let's make thre...

Name three operas framing dramas within, and you’d probably come up with Leoncavallo’s Pagliacci, Strauss’s Ariadne auf Naxos...

Dr Strangelove, Noël Coward Theatre review - an evening of d...

Even by Stanley Kubrick’s standards, Dr Strangelove went through an extraordinary evolutionary process. After starting it off as a...

Aci, Galatea e Polifemo, La Nuova Musica, Bates, Wigmore Hal...

Last time I saw the lovelorn Cyclops from Handel’s richly turbulent cantata, Aci, Galatea e Polifemo, he was in a warehouse at Trinity...