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Sudan: The Last of the Rhinos, BBC Two review - requiem for disappearing wildlifeThursday, 29 June 2017
“The northern white rhinos are just a symbol of what we do to the natural world,” as one of the contributors to this haunting documentary put it. Read more... |
Who Should We Let In? Ian Hislop on the First Great Immigration Row, review – how history repeats itselfFriday, 23 June 2017
Immigration…immigration… immigration… that’s what we need! Not the words of record-breaking, tap-dancing trumpeter Roy Castle, rather it’s the gist of a Times leader from 1853 (admittedly, fairly heavily paraphrased). Read more... |
Chance, Universal review – Hugh Laurie is reborn as a film-noir shrinkWednesday, 21 June 2017
Hugh Laurie, in his new role of forensic neuropsychiatrist Eldon Chance, tells us that he works with those who are “mutilated by life”, and we soon see that Chance himself falls into that category. He’s in the midst of a divorce, he only sees his daughter Nicole at weekends, and his work seems to fill him with a kind of morbid weariness. Read more... |
Ripper Street, BBC Two, Series 5 review – apocalypse looms in Victorian WhitechapelTuesday, 20 June 2017
There has always been an air of incipient doom hovering over Ripper Street, since the show is more of a laboratory of lost souls than a mere detective drama. Read more... |
Murdered For Being Different, BBC Three review - unbearable but unmissableMonday, 19 June 2017
Heaven alone knows we've pressing anxieties enough to preoccupy us, but if you have the emotional bandwidth to accommodate more, the iPlayer can oblige. Available now on BBC Three is the latest in what now becomes a trilogy of heartrending dramas with Murdered in the title. Read more... |
Riviera, Sky Atlantic review - codswallop on the Côte d'AzurFriday, 16 June 2017
W Somerset Maugham, who knew a thing or two about the dark side, summed up the Riviera as “a sunny place for shady people”. On the evidence of this first episode, Riviera is a funny place for shitty people. Read more... |
Fearless, ITV review - Helen McCrory lights up dense conspiracy thrillerTuesday, 13 June 2017
Emma Banville is almost too good to be true: a human rights lawyer who houses Syrian refugees, wins the most hopeless cases of wrongful conviction, won’t be bullied by anyone – coppers, prison wardens, the system. OK she smokes, presumably for the stress, and pints of lager don’t sit quite right in her hand. And she’s trying to adopt a child with, somewhat implausibly, John Bishop. Read more... |
The Loch, ITV review - hokum shrouded in Scotch mistMonday, 12 June 2017
There’s something nasty in Loch Ness – a corpse tied to a curling stone – but, this being tellyland, the real monsters lurk on its shores. The Loch aspires to be a Scottish Broadchurch – Braidkirk? – but, alas, is nothing of the sort. Read more... |
Poldark, Series 3, BBC One review - tempestuous passions and pantomime villains ride againMonday, 12 June 2017
Is it always the same bit of Cornish clifftop they gallop along in Poldark? Anyway here it was again, raising the curtain on the third series. Read more... |
Summer of Love: How Hippies Changed the World review - the weird and wonderful roots of the Sixties countercultureSaturday, 10 June 2017
As the accompanying music reminded us, it's the time of the season for looking back in languor at the psychedelic daze that descended on America's West Coast in 1967. It was an era when one was enjoined, if going to San Francisco, to "be sure to wear flowers in your hair". 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...
Album: Architects - The Sky, The Earth & All Between
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The Last Showgirl review - Pamela Anderson stars as a middle...
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The Score, Theatre Royal Haymarket review - curious beast of...
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Album: Abel Selaocoe - Hymns of Bantu
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The Ferryman, Gaiety Theatre, Dublin review - Jez Butterwort...
Dublin theatregoers have been inundated with Irish family gatherings concealing secrets or half-buried sorrows, mixing “bog gothic” with very real...