Arts
A man’s got to do what a man’s got to do
Jane Campion’s The Power of the Dog could also be called The Power of Benedict Cumberbatch, as he’s so spectacular.…
Soul searching
No musician ever went bust overestimating the public desire to hear classic soul. Slapping on a Motown backbeat has revived…
The root of the matter
Thanks to Covid, the days are gone — or at least suspended — when a TV travel programme meant a…
In a class of its own
Mike Leigh’s classic, Abigail’s Party, has been revived under the direction of Vivienne Garnett. The script is a guilty secret…
Beach House: Once Twice Melody
Grade: B+ Everything these days devolves to prog — and not always very good prog. Where once synths were vastly…
An honorary Frenchman
When the Courtauld Gallery’s impressionist pictures were shown at the Fondation Louis Vuitton in Paris in 2019, the Parisian public…
Men in black
Martin McNamara, the writer of Mosley Must Fall, a play on Radio 4 this week, must have had a jolt…
Whistling the scenery
With Glyndebourne’s The Rake’s Progress, the show starts with David Hockney’s front cloth. The colour, the ingenuity, the visual bravura:…
Bert Newton
And so the world finally bestirs itself in the direction of going out because it’s now allowable. A young millennial…
The unseen Victoria Wood
For a few years now I have been living with Victoria Wood. That sounds all wrong, obviously, and yet no…
Modern master
Gossipy, amusing, a little vain, Albrecht Dürer was a 16th-century Andy Warhol, says Martin Gayford
Health, wealth and happiness
Stories about money are never about money. They are about pain, about family, about atrocity, about luck, about health, about…
‘Having the right answer is boring’
Graeme Thomson talks to the cult singer Joan Wasser about the robotic nature of pop, finding salvation in songwriting and Tony Allen
The good, the bad and the cocky
Clint Eastwood is 91; Cry Macho may well be his last film. Or maybe not. He has, after all, been…
How’s your father?
I was turned on to Midnight Mass by Ricky Gervais who raved about it in one of his social media…
Screwball Austen
Let’s be honest. Jane Austen is popular because War and Peace doesn’t fit inside a handbag. Austen’s best-loved novel, Pride…
The Crucible
Sometimes you think the Apocalypse doesn’t go away. It just takes new and frightful forms. No sooner was the lockdown…
The eyes have it
Stuart Jeffries on the tyranny of the visual
Open book
365 Stories I Want To Tell You Before We Both Die is a podcast that experimental filmmaker Caveh Zahedi started…
Who dares wins
BBC1 continuity excitedly introduced the first in the new series of Doctor Who as ‘bigger and better than ever’ —…
Cheesy feat
Go see Pablo Larrain’s Spencer, which stars Kristen Stewart as Princess Diana, and the next day you will wonder: did…
A call to arms
’night, Mother is a two-hander that opens like a comedy sketch. ‘I’m going to kill myself, Mama,’ says Jessie. She’s…
Showtime
Until 1881, HMS Pinafore was the second-longest-running show in West End history. Within a year of its première it had…
Old school ties
It is incredibly hard to convey the fleeting invincibility and passionate self-significance that we feel on the cusp of adulthood.…
Oh dear, Abba’s new album is a bit of a dog: Voyage reviewed
Time has been very kind to Abba. No one back in the 1970s thought of them as geniuses. But they've even lost the talent for writing memorable tunes
