One of the immutable laws of broadcasting is that you never, ever, quit while you’re ahead. If you, or more likely someone else, hit upon a good idea then it is your civic duty to flog that horse until it’s welted carcass is carrion by the roadside. Hence The Great British Bake Off and the […]
Category archives: Articles
How Stan Lee Made His Own Luck
If contemporary pop culture has a superhero, it may well be Stan Lee. Granted, he doesn’t look much like a superhero: Lee is 93, he doesn’t hear too well these days and his eyes disappear almost completely when he smiles. But Lee is possessed of a superpower that has made him a very rich man: […]
Screengrab – The Great Sport Relief Bake Off, Attenborough and the Giant Dinosaur, The Real Marigold Hotel
Some people watching The Great Sport Relief Bake Off last week will have done so because they like baking, others because they wanted to do their bit for charity, but I suspect that most of us wanted to rubberneck at the Prime Minister’s wife. We don’t know that much about Samantha Cameron, really, given that […]
Screengrab – The Getaway Car, The Comic Strip Presents… Red Top, The Story of China
I assume that Jeremy Clarkson had a clause in his contract saying, ‘No inane, embarrassing, ratings-grabbing spin-offs from Top Gear – or not while I’m on the show.’ That can be the only explanation for why crud like The Getaway Car has not dripped from beneath the wheel arch until now. The Getaway Car […]
War and Peace – episode 3 hits new heights
By the end of last night’s third episode of Andrew Davies’s adaptation of War and Peace, half way through its run, one thing was clear – this is an epic romance, the likes of which we have not seen on television since Davies’s 1995 classic Pride and Prejudice. At his best Davies is capable of […]
Screengrab – War and Peace, Jericho, Beowulf: Return to the Shieldlands
As Downton Abbey poop poops off in to the sunset and the BBC’s new War and Peace rumbles in to view, a suggestion: British television drama should all be period drama. We should stop trying to make anything else and just stick to what we’re good at. Forget nuggety, multi-layered, contemporary binge-watch series where we […]
Downton Abbey Final Season Preview
From the set, for Yahoo TV. Drink it all in here
TV Review of the Year 2015
26th March was the most significant date in British television this year. That was when the announcement was made saying that, much as everyone had guessed, the sixth series of Downton Abbey would be the last. On balance, its makers have pulled the plug at about the right time. Always try to leave a party […]
What Star Wars Can Teach Your Children
We took a big step together the other day, my five-year-old son and I: we sat down and watched the original Star Wars. This had long been foretold – the hype for The Force Awakens, the latest instalment in the franchise which opens this weekend, had built up over the course of this year to […]
And Then There Were None – Agatha Christie for the Modern Age
The world’s bestselling crime novel has never been adapted for television. Why not? And why now?