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Cutting Edge: Too Poor for Posh School?, Channel 4

Jasper Rees Friday, 12 March 2010

OK, let’s flop it out into the open. Let’s show the cards I was dealt way back when. Those boaters you saw at the start of Cutting Edge's Too Poor for Posh School? I may well, in another lifetime, blameless aeons in the netherworld of one’s past, have been seen wandering along a high street on a hill north-west of London underneath one of those. The tailcoats worn by pews full of adolescents on Sundays? Yep. Once upon a time that was oneself.

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Inside John Lewis, BBC Two

Gerard Gilbert Wednesday, 10 March 2010

Inside John Lewis: Middle England's favourite department store meets the credit crunch

There must have been gnashing of teeth and the rending of heavily discounted garments in the marketing departments of Marks & Spencer, House of Fraser et al, when they realised that their commercial rival had been granted a three-hour advertisement on the BBC, but then there has always been something about John Lewis that seems to elevate it above the ruck and maul of the high street. What that something was – and whether or not it was purely mythical – was the subject of Liz Allen’s...

A Band for Britain, BBC Two

Jasper Rees Tuesday, 09 March 2010

We know the grammar now by rote. Some local institution is on its uppers. A traditional way of life is threatened by changing times. Sic transit etcetera and so forth. What’s wanted is a shot in the arm, a kick in the seat, preferably administered by a famous well-known celebrity star, one if at all possible followed at all times by their own bespoke camera crew.

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Women, BBC Four / Dispatches - Cameron Uncovered, C4

Adam Sweeting Tuesday, 09 March 2010

You don't have to be female to wonder where the feminist revolution went. You only have to look at the not-very-private lives of footballers and the gaggles of wannabe WAGs flinging themselves in their path, or the way female pop stars seem to relish the requirement to dress up (or down) like porno queens, to wonder if it isn't high time somebody wrote an update of Kate Millett's Sexual Politics.

The Lure of Las Vegas, BBC Two

Veronica Lee Sunday, 07 March 2010

“The Mob made Vegas,” says its mayor since 1999, Oscar B Goodman. And he should know, having defended plenty of mobsters in his time when - he and I are equally quick to point out - he was a defence attorney and didn’t know what they were really up to.

Five Days, BBC One

Gerard Gilbert Friday, 05 March 2010

Flags of our Fathers? It's day five in Five Days

Benjamin Franklin once said that fish and guests start to smell after three days – and something similar happened to BBC One’s latest “event drama”, Five Days. The odour was that of decaying promise, and, if duty hadn’t called, I probably wouldn’t have hung around until the final episode of Gwyneth Hughes’s week-long saga. Not that it was boring exactly – in an unhurried,...

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Eddie Izzard: Marathon Man, BBC Three / The Man with the Golden Gavel, BBC Four

Adam Sweeting Thursday, 04 March 2010

Is Eddie Izzard running a lot of marathons really worth three hour-long documentaries? No, but it was worth watching this first one.

Five Days, BBC One

Jasper Rees Tuesday, 02 March 2010

We’ve been here before. In the first week of theartsdesk’s existence, the BBC began screening a daily drama by the name of The Cut. Daily drama has never been the BBC’s thing, unless you happen to speak Welsh and follow Pobol y Cwm, and so it proved with this online soap dished out in bite-size five-minute pieces.

Michael Winner's Dining Stars, ITV1

Adam Sweeting Saturday, 27 February 2010

Three of Michael Winner's Dining Stars means your cooking is 'historic beyond belief'

The national urge for self-flagellation on television continues apace with Michael Winner’s preposterous new series. Not content with having to eat cockroaches in Borneo, never mind being tongue-lashed by John Torode and that thuggish bloke who looks like a bailiff on Masterchef, the population is now queueing up to invite a cantankerous elderly man into their own homes to ridicule their cooking. At the end of the series, the winner gets to cook dinner for Michael's celebrity chums,...

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Damages, BBC Two

Gerard Gilbert Wednesday, 24 February 2010

The new series of the Glenn Close litigation drama Damages began like the previous two series of Damages – in the future tense. Someone deliberately slammed their car into the side of Patty Hewes’s car, and a grisly discovery was made in a wheelie bin. How we get to this dénouement will be revealed over the next three months. Am I up for such a commitment? Because miss just 10 minutes of this tortuous legal thriller and you’re up the proverbial creek.