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Day of the Triffids, BBC One

Adam Sweeting Tuesday, 29 December 2009

A battered Dougray Scott as Bill Masen, protecting mankind from rampant man-eating vegetation

Saving the planet from ecological disaster is all very laudable, but be careful what you wish for. In this two-part Anglo-Canadian production of John Wyndham's 1951 sci-fi novel, the voracious man-eating plants called triffids had been artificially cultivated as a fuel source, so successfully that triffid oil had enabled the world to wean itself off fossil fuels and thus curtail global warming. The story didn’t bother itself...

An Englishman in New York, ITV1

Jasper Rees Tuesday, 29 December 2009

There was something very postmodern about the resumption of Quentin Crisp’s story. To recap, in case you missed episode one back in 1975, The Naked Civil Servant has been turned into a successful television drama, and its subject into a celebrity.

The South Bank Show, ITV1

Adam Sweeting Monday, 28 December 2009

The end of the South Bank Show? Surely some mistake. But there was Melvyn, looking into the camera with a resigned air, telling us that this film about the Royal Shakespeare Company (“possibly the greatest theatre company in the world”) was indeed the end of the line, give or take the occasional retrospective special.

Christmas TV Comedy Review

Veronica Lee Sunday, 27 December 2009

Time was when British families planned Christmas Day around The Queen in the afternoon and (depending which generation you fall into) Morecambe and Wise, Victoria Wood, French and Saunders or The Vicar of Dibley in the evening. But now it seems television bosses have all but given up on offering family entertainment, as BBC One's comedy fare was transmitted entirely after the watershed and ITV1’s sole offering, Ant & Dec’s Christmas Show, was broadcast on Boxing Day.

Hamlet, BBC Two / Doctor Who, BBC One

Adam Sweeting Saturday, 26 December 2009

The BBC's reinvention of Doctor Who under the auspices of Russell T Davies has proved to be an inspired upgrade of a legendary 1960s marque fit to rank alongside BMW's resuscitation of the Mini, though it would hardly be sensible to argue that the new-look Doctor is distinguished by Germanic precision engineering or a coolly mathematical design philosophy. Quite the opposite.

The Royal Ballet in Cuba, More4 / The Rite of Spring, BBC Three

Ismene Brown Saturday, 26 December 2009

There were some odd sights in Christmas Day viewing but none more discomfiting, I’d bet, than seeing a ballerina lying on a physio’s couch having a leg dragged quickly up to touch the side of her head while the other leg lay perfectly still pointing downwards. Can the body really do that? Another weird sight - dozens of people in full 18th-century French costume and wigs dancing in 40-degree heat on a Cuban stage.

Television 2000-9: Reality TV

Jasper Rees Friday, 25 December 2009

It’s possible Endemol didn’t give the book too close a reading. George Orwell conceived Big Brother as an all-seeing eye whose function was to enforce social and political conformity. Let us not revisit here the gallery of desperadoes, sextroverts and day-release wannabes who formed a disorderly queue to parade themselves for days, weeks, months and indeed years on end in the Big Brother house. They did conform in a sense: every single one of them wanted to stand out from the crowd...

Television 2000-9: TV in the Age of Uncertainty

Adam Sweeting Thursday, 24 December 2009

10 Minute Tales, Sky1

Sheila Johnston Monday, 21 December 2009

At last something good on the telly at Christmas, you think. Eleven new short films premiere nightly on Sky over the holiday period starting this evening.

A Child's Christmasses in Wales, BBC Four

Jasper Rees Friday, 18 December 2009

“One Christmas was so much like another, in those years around the sea-town corner now and out of all sound except the distant speaking of the voices I sometimes hear a moment before sleep, that I can never remember whether it snowed for six days and six nights when I was 12 or whether it snowed for 12 days and 12 nights when I was six.” Dylan Thomas’s A Child’s Christmas in Wales, broadcast on the radio in 1955, offered young listeners a flavour of his aromatic observations of...