tv
Innocent, ITV review - David Collins wants his life backThursday, 17 May 2018
Addressing the baying media on the steps of the courthouse after being acquitted of murdering his wife, for which non-crime he’d spent the last seven years in prison, David Collins (Lee Ingleby) was a bitter and angry man. Read more... |
Patrick Melrose, Sky Atlantic review - an olympiad of substance abuseMonday, 14 May 2018
Edward St Aubyn’s Patrick Melrose novels have been admired for their prose style, scathing wit and pitiless depiction of a rotting aristocracy. Read more... |
The Bridge, BBC Two, series 4 review - Scandi saga is darker than everSaturday, 12 May 2018
In the 1990s, which brought us Morse, Fitz and Jane Tennison, an idea took root that all television detectives must be mavericks. They needed to be moody, dysfunctional, addictive, a bit of an unsolved riddle. These British sleuths were all variations on a glum theme but the scriptwriters knew the limits. Make them suffer, but don’t put them through hell. Read more... |
The Woman in White, Series Finale, BBC One review - good-looking, but flatTuesday, 08 May 2018
Much has been made of this adaptation of The Woman in White having an especial relevance for our times. Read more... |
Homeland, Series 7 Finale, Channel 4 review - Russian rouletteMonday, 07 May 2018
In a manner uncannily reminiscent of last year’s Season 6, this latest edition of Homeland spent at least half the series trying to get warmed up for the dash to the tape over the final furlongs. Read more... |
Ballet's Dark Knight - Sir Kenneth MacMillan, BBC Four review – hagiography and home videosMonday, 07 May 2018
If you came to this programme knowing nothing about the choreographer Kenneth MacMillan, you may have learned a few things. That he died, tragically and rather dramatically, of a massive heart attack during a first night performance of one his own ballets. That he was "interested" in sex and death, and frequently choreographed violent forms of both in his ballets. Read more... |
Friday Night Dinner, Channel 4 review - predictable but funSaturday, 05 May 2018
The Goodmans are back - for a fifth (and rumoured possibly to be the last) series of Friday Night Dinner, Robert Popper’s deliciously daft comedy set in a secular Jewish household in north London and based on the Peep Show producer's own upbringing. Read more... |
Jazz Ambassadors, BBC Four review - the cool warFriday, 04 May 2018
As the ice hardened in the Cold War of the mid-1950s, and the USSR mocked the USA for both its supposed barbarism and racial segregation, the representative from Harlem, Adam Clayton Powell Jr, had a bright idea. Read more... |
Syria: The World's War, BBC Two review - anatomy of a conflict, brilliantly toldFriday, 04 May 2018
This was not a film that left you with much respect for the wisdom of politicians, but perhaps its truest line came from John Kerry, when he called the ongoing – seven years, and counting – Syrian conflict “an insult to the humanity of this planet”. Read more... |
Jeff Beck: Still on the Run, BBC Four review - a legend without portfolioSaturday, 28 April 2018
As Aerosmith’s guitarist Joe Perry put it, “there’s a certain amount of fuck you-ness in everything Jeff does.” Perhaps it’s this which has allowed Jeff Beck to achieve the rare feat of surviving into his seventies as what you might describe as a guitar legend without portfolio. 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...