Charming: The Other Bennet Sister reviewed
The Other Bennet Sister is to Pride and Prejudice what Tom Stoppard’s Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead is to Hamlet.…
Bonkers: Young Sherlock reviewed
Judging from the two biggest new streaming dramas around, the taste these days runs towards the kitchen sink – not…
Foot-to-the-floor entertainment: How to Get to Heaven from Belfast, Lisa McGee’s sequel to Derry Girls, reviewed
How do you follow a great sitcom? Judging from How to Get to Heaven from Belfast and Small Prophets, the…
Fascinating: The Fabulous Funeral Parlour reviewed
The Fabulous Funeral Parlour ended with possibly the least necessary caption in TV history: ‘Filmed in Liverpool’. Whenever I go…
The worst Agatha Christie adaptation I can remember
When it comes to Agatha Christie adaptations, there are normally two possible responses to the denouement. One is a deep…
Spectator Competition: Elementary
For Competition 3431, you were invited to submit a passage in which Sherlock Holmes solves one of the great mysteries…
Lucy Worsley’s sleuthing is rather impressive
Lucy Worsley’s Victorian Murder Club opened with its presenter unexpectedly channelling that gravelly voiced bloke who used to do all…
The cardinals spill the beans on the conclave
Secrets of the Conclave seemed rather optimistically titled, given that everybody at this year’s papal election had made a solemn…
Gothic lives matter: BBC2’s Civilisations reviewed
Anybody growing weary of the debate surrounding the BBC’s unexamined assumptions and biases about modern politics might have expected to…
Bleak but gripping: Channel 4’s Trespasses reviewed
Yeats famously summarised Ireland in the four words, ‘Great hatred, little room’. But, as Louise Kennedy’s 2022 debut novel Trespasses…
The joy of Mortimer and Whitehouse: Gone Fishing
If you didn’t already know that Down Cemetery Road was based on a novel Mick Herron wrote before the Slough…
Is there anything menopausal women can’t do?
Is there anything menopausal women can’t do (on television)? Last Sunday, as a couple of them were still working on…
Every line in the new Alan Partridge is perfect
By now, viewers of TV thrillers are no strangers to a baffling prologue – but this week brought a particularly…
Mr Bates this isn’t: The Hack reviewed
As we know, when terrestrial television has a big new hit these days, its response – once it’s got over…
The makers of Doc don’t seem to trust the show
The drama series Doc began with the most literal of bangs. While the screen remained black, the sound-effects team knocked…
Lower your expectations for Spinal Tap II
This Is Spinal Tap is now such a deserved comedy behemoth that it’s easy to forget how gradual its ascent…
Another Traitors rip-off – and it might be even better than the original: Channel 4’s The Inheritance reviewed
Another week, another show striving desperately to become the new Traitors. So it is that The Inheritance brings a group…
Spectator Competition: All grown up
For Competition 3410 you were invited to imagine a celebrated character from a children’s book in later life. There were…
The power of BBC’s The Narrow Road to the Deep North
It’s been a good week for fans of TV dramas that are set partly in Syria, feature poetry-lovers confronting extreme…
How to holiday White Lotus-style: Billionaire Playground reviewed
Today’s television is notably fond of presenting us with very rich people to both despise and wish we lived like.…
None of Mitfords sound posh enough: Outrageous reviewed
There aren’t many dramas featuring the rise of the Nazis that could be described as jaunty, but Outrageous is one.…
Channel 4’s Beth is a sad glimpse into the future of terrestrial TV
On the face of it, Beth seemed that most old-fashioned of TV genres: the single play. In fact, Monday’s programme…
Why is the BBC making stuff up about Jane Austen?
Jane Austen: Rise of a Genius began by saying that ‘getting into her mind isn’t easy’ – something you’d never…
Tantalisingly ambiguous – or just plain baffling: Hallow Road reviewed
An 80-minute film which for almost all of the time features two people in a car mightn’t sound particularly ambitious.…
How come the only Palestinians Louis Theroux met were non-violent sweeties?
Louis Theroux: The Settlers was never likely to be a programme with much of a narrative arc – and so…
