tv
How They Built the Titanic, Channel 5 review - the great liner revisited again, but why now?Wednesday, 11 December 2019
The appalling fate of the allegedly unsinkable liner Titanic in 1912 has fuelled endless feature films and documentaries, not to mention a dismal drama series by Julian Fellowes (there was also a proposed Titanic II vessel which would have been built in China, but which remains mysteriously un-launched). Read more... |
Elizabeth Is Missing, BBC One review - a tender but tough-minded drama about ageing and lossMonday, 09 December 2019
In films, as in life, unreliable narrators are not hard to find. But there is something remarkable about the unreliable narrator of Elizabeth is Missing, BBC One’s newest feature-length drama. Its protagonist, Maud (Glenda Jackson), is unreliable in the extreme – confused, forgetful and emotionally wounded. Read more... |
Giri/Haji, Series Finale, BBC Two review - a thriller, but much more besidesFriday, 06 December 2019
Happily, Joe Barton’s tinglingly original thriller (BBC Two) finished as smartly as it began, not by any humdrum tying-up of loose ends but by giving free rein to the story’s ambiguities and impossible choices. If indeed they really were choices. Read more... |
The Family Secret, Channel 4 review - lives destroyed by historic sexual abuseWednesday, 04 December 2019
“Restorative Justice Practitioner” sounds like a euphemism for a Mad Max-style lone avenger, but in director Anna Hall's devastating film for Channel 4, it was a woman called Kate whose job was to bring together... Read more... |
Takaya: Lone Wolf, BBC Four review - enigmatic predator baffles boffinsWednesday, 04 December 2019
Who can explain the mystery of the solitary wolf who has taken up residence on an archipelago off Vancouver Island – the Discovery and Chatham Islands to be precise – and has developed his own unique hunting methods while patrolling his self-contained personal turf? Read more... |
The Man Who Saw Too Much, BBC One review – death camp in the cloudsThursday, 28 November 2019
Boris Pahor is the oldest known survivor of the Nazi concentration camps. In this program, the 106-year-old recounts his experiences as a political refugee and prisoner to the Nazis during their rule in his native Slovenia. Read more... |
Tutankhamun with Dan Snow, Channel 5 review - too many presenters spoil Egyptian boy-king docWednesday, 27 November 2019
It’s claimed that the current world tour of Tutankhamun’s extraordinary treasures will be the last, but they said that about Frank Sinatra too. Whatever, the boy-pharaoh’s life and legend will retain their unprecedented mystique, but no thanks to this first of three programmes fronted by pop-historian Dan Snow. Read more... |
8 Days, Sky Atlantic review - could armageddon really be this boring?Wednesday, 27 November 2019
Beware the asteroid Horus! It’s 60km wide and it’s hurtling towards Earth at incalculable speed. Scientists say, with unfeasible precision, that the impact point will be La Rochelle in France, and it’s going to destroy all of western Europe. Read more... |
The Sinner, Series 2, BBC Four review - a white-knuckle ride into spiritual darknessSunday, 24 November 2019
The first series of The Sinner in 2017 starred Jessica Biel as a disturbed woman who seemingly inexplicably stabbed a man to death on a beach, then could remember nothing about the crime. Read more... |
Country Music by Ken Burns, BBC Four review - grand history of fiddlers on the hoofSaturday, 23 November 2019
Ken Burns is the closest American television has to David Attenborough. They may swim in different seas, but they both have an old-school commitment to an ethos that will be missed when it’s gone – the idea that television is a place to communicate information with a sober sense of wonder. Burns’s field is American history in all its breadth and depth. Last time round it was a lapidary decalogue of documentaries about the Vietnam War. Read more... |
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It all started on 09/09/09. That memorable date, September 9 2009, marked the debut of theartsdesk.com.
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