tv
Grayson Perry: Rites of Passage, Channnel 4 review - making meaning in deathFriday, 24 August 2018
Grayson Perry is at it again. The Turner Prize winner, Reith lecturer, sculptor, printmaker, ceramicist, curator, writer, British Museum trustee, CBE, RA – plus Britain's and the art world’s favourite transvestite – is trying to find sense in things and events, or, as he has put it, invent meaning in a meaningless world. Read more... |
Disenchantment, Netflix review - Matt Groening show has promise after poor startFriday, 17 August 2018
It’s an event that only comes around once a generation: a new Matt Groening TV series. The Simpsons is rightly regarded as one of the greatest shows ever made. It changed the face of American television, and 10 years later was followed Futurama, a series that may lack the cross-demographic appeal of its predecessor, but consistently produced satirical masterpieces. Read more... |
On the Edge, Channel 4, review - fast and furious new dramasWednesday, 15 August 2018
Television drama is living through a golden age, yes, but one thing mainly absent from the vast choice available on terrestrial and streaming broadcasters alike is the short story. Short dramas used to be a regular fixture on television, when schedules were more fluid and pre-satellite channels less risk-averse. Read more... |
Murder in Soho: Who Killed Freddie Mills?, BBC Four review - cold case solved?Thursday, 02 August 2018
They don’t make boxers like Freddie Mills any more. A granite lump of grinning charisma, he had a brow and jawline straight from a kids’ cartoon and, despite his humble origins and thuggish contours, a charmingly well-to-do voice. Mills was light heavyweight world champ for a time, then drifted into showbiz and, eventually, running a nightclub in Soho. Then he died in sudden and mysterious circumstances. Read more... |
Age Before Beauty, BBC One review - mid-life makeover madnessWednesday, 01 August 2018
If you were looking for the antidote to Love Island, this might be just the job. Read more... |
Hidden, Series Finale, BBC Four review - a whydunnit, not a whodunnitSunday, 29 July 2018
Some contend that this Snowdonia-set mystery was a Scandi hommage too far, a mere recycler of gloom-shrouded riffs familiar from the likes of The Bridge or The Killing. Well yes, there was that element to it, but if you stuck with it it grew into far more than a mere copycat procedural. Read more... |
The Bletchley Circle: San Francisco, ITV review - the ludicrous in search of the preposterousThursday, 26 July 2018
Belatedly picking up from where series 2 of The Bletchley Circle left off in 2014, this comeback version has a go at transporting a couple of the original characters to the Californian West Coast, where they embroil themselves in the hunt for that old chestnut, a serial killer. Read more... |
Who Is America?, Channel 4 review - sudden return of Sacha Baron CohenTuesday, 17 July 2018
Cunningly kept under wraps until the last moment, Sacha Baron Coen’s new show is a timely reminder of his gift for trampling the boundaries of good taste and decorum. Read more... |
Unforgotten, Series 3, ITV review - death on the M1Monday, 16 July 2018
So it’s back to London’s Bishop Street police station for a third series of screenwriter Chris Lang’s cold case saga. Read more... |
Keeping Faith, BBC One review - this summer's watercooler dramaFriday, 13 July 2018
How well do you know the person you love? Are they someone completely different when you’re not around? This is the central question Eve Myles (main picture) has to answer in the BBC’s latest mystery drama. 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.
It followed some...
Guards at the Taj, Orange Tree Theatre review - miniature ma...
It’s 1648 in Agra, and an excitable young guardsman has come up with an idea: a giant flying platform that he calls an “aeroplat”. As...
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...
Aci, Galatea e Polifemo, La Nuova Musica, Bates, Wigmore Hal...
Last time I saw the lovelorn Cyclops from Handel’s richly turbulent cantata, Aci, Galatea e Polifemo, he was in a warehouse at Trinity...
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’...
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...
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...