Acid test
Many years ago a man on the end of my cigarette stole my soul. Mr Migarette (for such was his…
The thrilling game
‘The Terminal List is… a dated and drably made eight-part military thriller that offers little intrigue or excitement,’ says the…
This will end badly
I don’t think it’s my imagination: it really is getting harder and harder to find anything worth watching on TV.…
On the offensive
Just how edgy and dangerous is Ricky Gervais? There is no one more edgy and dangerous, we learn from no…
Rotten Apples
Having now watched it to the end, I would say that Slow Horses (Apple TV+) is by far the best…
Come spy with me
How thriller writers must miss the Cold War! Early John le Carré and Len Deighton had it easy when trying…
The age of innocence
Netflix’s share price has collapsed and a major factor, people are saying, is its relentless pushing of agendas. I think…
Weirder and weirder
The only impersonation I can do is my Jimmy Savile impersonation. This is not uncommon among people of my generation:…
In the land of the subtitle
The iron law of TV these days is that if you want to avoid series that are suffocatingly right-on the…
Rapper’s delight
The most disappointing pop performance I’ve ever seen – and in the course of my 15-odd years as a music…
Let’s talk about pecs
Jack Reacher is back on the screen and aficionados of the hugely successful Lee Child airport thrillers in which he…
The great pretender
It’s 1993 and you’re studying at a top agricultural college with a bright future ahead of you, perhaps in farming…
Dog’s breakfast
It has taken me a while to watch Yellowjacketsbecause I found the premise so offputting: in 1996 a plane carrying…
The drugs don’t work
One of my first jobs in journalism was as the arts correspondent of the Daily Telegraph. I’d hop on my…
Around the World In Eighty Days is the worst TV this Christmas
‘In many ways, Phileas Fogg represents everything that’s alarming and peculiar about that old sense of British Empire. Potentially, it’s…
If you watch one thing this Christmas, make it The Witcher
If you only watch one thing on TV this Christmas, make it The Witcher(Netflix). It’s by turns funny, exciting, scary,…
Tolkien rubbish
A couple of years ago, in that near-forgotten era when we could travel almost freely, I canvassed social media as…
I saw a film today, oh boy
My late friend Alexander Nekrassov loathed the Beatles, which I used to think was a wantonly contrary position akin to…
Formula milquetoast
If it weren’t for this job I sometimes wonder whether I’d even bother watching TV at all. This mood strikes…
How’s your father?
I was turned on to Midnight Mass by Ricky Gervais who raved about it in one of his social media…
Dutch courage
The Forgotten Battle is a Dutch feature film commemorating the desperate and relatively little-known Allied assault on the Scheldt estuary…
Heart and Seoul
Should we be worried that Squid Game is the most popular show in Netflix’s history? If it’s a case of…
Man and boy
So how exactly did Tony Soprano become a New Jersey mob boss? It’s 1967 and young Anthony is struggling to…
Sub standard
Tense, claustrophobic, gripping, thrilling, realistic: just some of the adjectives no one is using to describe BBC1’s Sunday night submarine…
White mischief
Every now and then, you see a new series — Succession, say, or Chernobyl or To the Lake — which…
