tv
Time Bandits, Apple TV+ review - larky expanded rerun of the Gilliam/Palin classicThursday, 01 August 2024
“Family-friendly fun” seems to have mutated over the years into elaborate films featuring high-octane animation, starry voicing and often mushy sentiments. In older children’s TV, gone are the days of actual humanoids mucking about with stun guns. Only Doctor Who has continued to deliver the teatime goods. Read more... |
Lady in the Lake, Apple TV+ review - a multi-layered Baltimore murder mysterySaturday, 27 July 2024
Laura Lippman’s source novel for Apple’s new drama became a New York Times bestseller when it was published in 2019, and director Alma Har’el’s screen realisation has fashioned it into an absorbing dive into various social, racial and political aspects of mid-Sixties America. Read more... |
The Jetty, BBC One review - lowlife in a Northern townWednesday, 17 July 2024
Jenna Coleman seems to pick her roles with care, whether it’s Queen Victoria, the girlfriend of mass murderer Charles Sobhraj in The Serpent, or “occult detective” Johanna Constantine in The Sandman, but her antennae may have been a bit awry when she climbed aboard this one. Read more... |
The Turkish Detective, BBC Two review - a bad business in the BosphorusTuesday, 09 July 2024
Any show making its debut in the midst of Wimbledon and the Euro-football, plus a spectacular performance by Lewis Hamilton at Silverstone, is likely to be gasping for air, and BBC Two’s ditzy new cop series didn’t so much charge out of the blocks as trip over them. Masterminded by Ben Schiffer, the eight-part series is based on Barbara Nadel’s Inspector Ikmen novels, which are much loved by their readers. Read more... |
The Night Caller, Channel 5 review - all he hears is radio ga gaMonday, 08 July 2024
Showing over four consecutive nights, Night Caller is a stripped-down psychological thriller which steadily boils up to a conclusion which is both shocking and tragic. Read more... |
Presumed Innocent, Apple TV+ review - you read the book and saw the movie...Monday, 17 June 2024
Scott Turow published his cunningly-wrought legal thriller in 1987, and Alan J Pakula’s powerful movie version, starring Harrison Ford, appeared in 1990. Enough time has elapsed, perhaps, for Apple TV’s revised version of Presumed Innocent for the streaming age. Read more... |
Eric, Netflix review - a fairytale of New YorkThursday, 06 June 2024
New York in the 1980s is the setting for Abi Morgan’s new six-part drama, and it’s a city riddled with squalor, homelessness, racism and rampant crime. The Aids pandemic is also beginning to rear its hideous head. Read more... |
Tokyo Vice, Series 2, BBC iPlayer review - an exciting ride that stretches credibilityThursday, 30 May 2024
It’s entirely fitting that Jake Adelstein should have a poster for All the President’s Men on the wall of his Tokyo apartment, since it was the filmic apogee of the notion of journalist as superstar. Read more... |
The Beach Boys, Disney+ review - heroes and villains and good vibrationsFriday, 24 May 2024
It was – let’s see – 63 years ago today that Brian Wilson taught the band to play. Fabled for their resplendent harmonies and ecstatic hymning of the sun-kissed California dream, the Beach Boys seemed to represent everything golden and glorious about the mythic American West Coast. If you lived in Detroit or Deptford, it looked like a wonderland indeed. Read more... |
Rebus, BBC One review - revival of Ian Rankin's Scottish 'tec hits the jackpotMonday, 20 May 2024
The previous incarnation of Ian Rankin’s Scottish detective on ITV starred, in their contrasting styles, John Hannah and Ken Stott. For this Rebus redux, arriving nearly 25 years after the original first series began, screenwriter Gregory Burke has reworked the character as a younger Detective Sergeant, drawing on the spirit of Rankin’s original novels but with the author’s blessing to take the character somewhere new. Read more... |
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