thu 27/02/2025

tv

Laurel Canyon, Sky Documentaries review - musical bliss in lotus land

Adam Sweeting

It was Alison Ellwood who directed 2013’s History of the Eagles, and now she’s at the helm of this new two-parter on Sky Documentaries, telling the story of the Los Angeles music scene from the mid-Sixties...

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Bears About the House, BBC Two review - uphill struggle to save hunted animals

Marina Vaizey

Sun bears and moon bears are probably doomed, so why bother? Wildlife trafficking is a hugely profitable worldwide criminal enterprise, with small charities (fingers in the dyke, anyone?) doing their best to stem the flow.

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The Real Eastenders, Channel 4 review - timewarp on the Thames

Adam Sweeting

This quirky little film about the Isle of Dogs (Channel 4), a vanishing fragment of the old London docklands overshadowed by the Canary Wharf skyscrapers while its traditional homes are usurped by new and unloveable tower blocks,...

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Institute, BBC Four review – masculinity and memory in a nightmarish world of work

Sam Marlowe

Missing the office? Or dreading the day you have to return? What’s your relationship to the people you work with and for, and how does it intersect with your personal life? Do your paymasters know you? Do they care about you? Are there days when the routine and the hierarchy of it all just feels like a spirit-crushing game?

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Rockfield: The Studio on the Farm, BBC Four review - the amazing story of Britain's own honky chateau

Liz Thomson

Farms have played quite a large part in the history of rock, not just in terms of those wealthy stars who retire to one, tending sheep and making cheese. The festivals at Woodstock, the Isle of Wight and Glastonbury all took place on farms but before everyone turned on, tuned in and dropped out in the mud and the sun, two farmers in a village on the Welsh borders had set up the world’s first residential recording studio.

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The Plot Against America, Sky Atlantic review - fascism comes to 1940s USA

Adam Sweeting

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.

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The Rise of the Murdoch Dynasty, BBC Two review - how the Aussie tycoon acquired huge political leverage

Adam Sweeting

As an opening line to BBC Two's new three-part series, “Rupert Murdoch is an enigma” failed to set pulses racing.

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Mrs America, BBC Two review - how a conservative revolutionary scuppered the Equal Rights Amendment

Adam Sweeting

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...

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The Choir: Singing for Britain Finale, BBC Two review - stirring songs from a garden shed

Adam Sweeting

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).

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The Battle of Britain, Channel 5 review - 80th anniversary of the RAF's finest hour

Adam Sweeting

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.

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