tv
The Plot Against America, Sky Atlantic review - fascism comes to 1940s USAWednesday, 15 July 2020
Based on Philip Roth’s 2004 novel of the same name, The Plot Against America flashes back to the global turbulence of the 1940s to depict a counterfactual America that turns to the dark side. Read more... |
The Rise of the Murdoch Dynasty, BBC Two review - how the Aussie tycoon acquired huge political leverageWednesday, 15 July 2020
As an opening line to BBC Two's new three-part series, “Rupert Murdoch is an enigma” failed to set pulses racing. Read more... |
Mrs America, BBC Two review - how a conservative revolutionary scuppered the Equal Rights AmendmentThursday, 09 July 2020
In the midst of our increasingly confrontational politics of race and gender, it was a timely move to make this series (on BBC Two) about Seventies radical feminism and the battle over the Equal Rights Amendment (ERA) in the USA, even if... Read more... |
The Choir: Singing for Britain Finale, BBC Two review - stirring songs from a garden shedWednesday, 08 July 2020
Once again the incredible healing powers of Gareth Malone swung into action, as his quest to find a universal anthem for the Covid crisis boiled up to a climax (BBC Two). Read more... |
The Battle of Britain, Channel 5 review - 80th anniversary of the RAF's finest hourWednesday, 08 July 2020
The notion of massed aircraft dogfighting over southern England seems inconceivable now, but the Battle of Britain in the summer of 1940 was all too horribly real for its participants. Read more... |
Being Beethoven, BBC Four review – from grubby kid to grumpy geniusTuesday, 07 July 2020
Documentaries like this one make me sentimental for a time, until about 25 years ago, when classical music was a more or less weekly presence on terrestrial TV. Read more... |
The Kemps: All True, BBC Two review - more self-promotion than self-mockeryMonday, 06 July 2020
The spoof “rockumentary” always sounds like a great idea, but it’s hard to pull off. Largely this is because rock stars are so divorced from reality that an element of self-parody is already built in, albeit unwittingly (“everybody’s so different, I haven’t changed” as Joe Walsh deadpanned in "Life's Been Good"). Read more... |
Penny Dreadful: City of Angels, Sky Atlantic review - the good, the bad and the unspeakableThursday, 02 July 2020
American history of the 1930s and ‘40s suddenly seems to be all the rage on TV, cropping up in the reborn Perry Mason, Das Boot and now this new incarnation of Penny Dreadful (Sky Atlantic). The original was a blowsy Gothic mash-up of Dracula, Frankenstein, Jekyll & Hyde and anything vaguely related that could be made to fit. Read more... |
Storyville: Welcome to Chechnya, BBC Four review - trauma, tension and resistanceThursday, 02 July 2020
David France’s revelatory film may have been subtitled “The Gay Purge”, but from the start it was clear this wasn’t just another documentary from Russia charting the increasing pressure faced by that country’s queer community. Read more... |
Das Boot, Series 2 Finale, Sky Atlantic review - deeper and darkerWednesday, 01 July 2020
The second series of Das Boot (Sky Atlantic) began strongly, and by the time we reached this last pair of episodes it was almost too agonising to watch. 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...
Blitz review - racism persists as bombs batter London
Blitz, set on a vast CGI canvas in September 1941, is an improbable boy’s adventure tale that depicts the misery and terror that was...
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...
Small Things Like These review - less is more in stirring Ir...
There’s much to note and commend about Small Things Like These, a sensitive, gorgeously shot and moving adaptation of Claire Keegan’...
Anora review - life lesson for a kick-ass sex worker
Anora has had so much hype since it won the Palme d’Or at Cannes in May that it doesn’t really need another reviewer weighing in. Sean...
Album: Willie Nelson - Last Leaf on the Tree
Well, seems like only yesterday when I reviewed Willie Nelson’s last album, Borderline, an excellent set from the man’s ninth decade, and...
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...