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: Reviews
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 […]
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 […]
SCREENGRAB: The Great Pottery Throwdown, Let Us Entertain You, Grand Designs – House of the Year
It’s Pot Stars – the Great British Knock-Off
TV Review: The Dresser
Ian McKellen and Anthony Hopkins excel in this feature-length adaptation of Ronald Harwood’s tragicomedy
TV Review – The Apprentice
“I don’t know why you’re laughing,” said Karren Brady to Project Manager Vana Koutsomitis in the boardroom of this week’s Apprentice. “Because it’s just not funny.” This has to qualify as one of the stupidest things ever said on The Apprentice, in what is admittedly a fiercely contested field. Of course Vana and her team’s […]
TV Review – Simon Schama’s Face of Britain
“Don’t go. Don’t change. Stay with me.” Thus spake Simon Schama in an unusual apostrophe that began the fourth, penultimate episode of Face of Britain, his history of British portraiture. If it sounded like a fairly shameless appeal to channel-hoppers it was unnecessary: this was Schama the Charmer at his absolute best, quietly provocative, unpredictable, […]