A romcom with very little com
In Black Narcissus, based on the novel by Rumer Godden, five nuns set off for a remote Himalayan palace in…
The great awakening
Congratulations, everyone! It turns out we’re much better than those bigoted old Brits of the 1950s. After all, they were…
Great Scott
Ronnie’s: Ronnie Scott and His World-Famous Jazz Club was like the TV equivalent of an authorised biography: impressively thorough, often…
Twin peaks
There must be some people somewhere who vaguely know their own spouses — but if so, they don’t tend to…
Hare-brained
Like many a political thriller before it, BBC1’s Roadkill began with a politician emerging into the daylight to face a…
Porn again
A woman is eating a pie in her car as it gets an automatic wash. Careful to keep the pie…
The odd couple
Collectors of TV titles that sound as if they were thought of by Alan Partridge will presumably have spotted Danny…
Me time
‘You may think our modern world was born yesterday,’ said Simon Schama at the beginning of The Romantics and Us.…
There’s no business like show business
Fifteen minutes into the first episode of I Hate Suzie, main character Suzie Pickles was doing a photoshoot in her…
The time of our lives
Presumably because a small part of it takes place in Salford, the epigraph to Andrew O’Hagan’s latest novel consists of…
Stitches and bad-ass bitches
If it’s a test of a good documentary series that it takes us deep into an unknown, even unimaginable world,…
Opulence and chaos
Nobody could argue that Andrew Davies isn’t up for a challenge. He’d also surely be a shoo-in for Monty Python’s…
Containing multitudes
It might seem a bit of a stretch to see deep similarities between Michaela Coel (young, female, black and currently…
The psychedelic scene
There aren’t many authors as generous to their readers as David Mitchell. Ever since Ghostwritten in 1999, he’s specialised in…
A drive on the wild side
When a 90-minute documentary is introduced with the words ‘This is the M25’, you’d be within your rights not to…
Breast is best
This week, BBC1 brought us a three-part dramatisation of an ‘unprecedented crisis’ in recent British life. Among other things, it…
Dallas with violins
On the face of it, a French-language drama about a Parisian symphony orchestra mightn’t sound like the most action-packed of…
The escape artist
Arena: The Changin’ Times of Ike White (Monday) had an extraordinary story to tell — but one that, halfway through…
Antique dildos
Danny Brocklehurst, the scriptwriter for Sky One’s Brassic, used to work for Shameless in its glory days — although if…
Shock and gore
There were plenty of TV shows around this week designed to cheer us up. Sky Atlantic’s Gangs of London, however,…
For love or money
There can’t be many programmes that bring to mind quotations from both Henry Kissinger and Boney M., but BBC2’s The…
A soldier’s life
First shown on BBC Scotland, Harry Birrell Presents Films of Love and War (BBC4, Wednesday) was the documentary equivalent of…
Accentuate the negative
Sky One’s Breeders (Thursday) bills itself as an ‘honest and uncompromising comedy’ about parenting. To this end, the opening scene…
Completely unhinged
Faced with Marina Lewycka’s new novel, it’s tempting to say that The Good, the Bad and the Little Bit Stupid…
Seeking closure
As in many thrillers, the characters on display in Flesh and Blood (ITV, Monday to Thursday) often seemed locked in…
