Television

Have today’s TV dramatists completely given up on plausibility?

5 October 2024 9:00 am

In advance, Ludwig sounded as if it was aimed squarely at the Inspector Morse market. Set among spires of impeccable…

Like The Joker, but less pretentious: The Penguin reviewed

28 September 2024 9:00 am

Doctor Who fans may remember that after the show’s triumphant return in the early 2000s, we found out that showrunner…

More Airplane! than Speed: Nightsleeper reviewed

21 September 2024 9:00 am

Earlier this year, ITV brought us Red Eye, a six-part drama set mainly on an overnight plane from London to…

Easy-on-the-eye tosh: Netflix’s The Perfect Couple reviewed

14 September 2024 9:00 am

The Perfect Couple is an exemplar of that genre sometimes cynically known as ‘poverty programming’: dramas that train all of…

Sick, cynical and irresistible: Netflix’s Kaos reviewed

7 September 2024 9:00 am

Kaos is a new Netflix gods-and-monsters black-comedy blockbuster that will scorch your screen and fry your brain like a thunderbolt…

Must-watch TV: Apple TV+’s Pachinko reviewed

31 August 2024 9:00 am

Pachinko is like an extended version of the Monty Python ‘Four Yorkshiremen’ sketch (‘I used to have to get out…

Why are these dead-eyed K-pop groups represented as some kind of ideal?

24 August 2024 9:00 am

On Saturday, Made in Korea: The K-pop Experience began by hailing K-pop as ‘the multi-billion-pound music that’s taken the world…

About as edgy as Banksy: Joe Rogan’s Netflix special reviewed

17 August 2024 9:00 am

My resolution this summer was to see how far into the Olympics I could get without watching an event. It’s…

Ambitious, bold and confusing: BBC4’s Corridors of Power – Should America Police the World? reviewed

10 August 2024 9:00 am

Narrated by Meryl Streep, Corridors of Power: Should America Police the World? announced the scale of its ambition straight away.…

Clear, thorough and gripping: BBC2’s Horizon – The Battle to Beat Malaria

27 July 2024 9:00 am

If you transcribed the narrator’s script in almost any episode of Horizon, you’d notice something striking: an awful lot of…

Am I slightly psychopathic to be so obsessed with gangster TV?

20 July 2024 9:00 am

Most of my favourite TV shows seem to involve gangsters in one way or another: The Sopranos, Breaking Bad, Top…

Utterly bog-standard: BBC2’s The Turkish Detective reviewed

13 July 2024 9:00 am

A partly subtitled show set in Istanbul might sound like a brave departure for a BBC Sunday night crime drama.…

If you can stand the stress, The Bear is still possibly the best thing on TV

6 July 2024 9:00 am

The Bear has been called ‘the most stressful thing on TV’ and I think that’s probably a fair description. It’s…

Why you should never watch sci-fi series on streaming channels

22 June 2024 9:00 am

Jason Dessen, the hero (and, as you’ll discover shortly, anti-hero) of Apple TV’s latest sci-fi caper Dark Matter, is a…

When piracy meets protest

15 June 2024 9:00 am

Sometimes there are advantages to being ill-informed. Knowing embarrassingly little about why 30 Greenpeace activists were jailed in Russia in…

How a TikTok dance craze turned into a brainwashing cult

8 June 2024 9:00 am

Because you don’t – I hope – use TikTok you will never have heard of the Wilking sisters. But back…

BBC1’s new Rebus is the kind of TV detective they just don’t make any more

25 May 2024 9:00 am

Imagine a new series of Morse in which the real-ale-quaffing, jag-driving opera buff is turned into a speed-snorting mod on…

Nowhere near as miserable as I remember it: The Beatles – Let It Be reviewed

18 May 2024 9:00 am

Beatles lore has long held that the film Let It Be was a depressing portrait of the band falling apart.…

Why did C.J. Sansom approve this moronic Disney+ Shardlake adaptation?

11 May 2024 9:00 am

What would C.J. Sansom have made of the Disney+ version of his novel series about 16th-century crookback lawyer Matthew Shardlake?…

Sordid, ugly and threadbare: Jimmy Carr – Natural Born Killer reviewed

27 April 2024 9:00 am

Here’s an offensive joke: ‘Jimmy Carr gets paid to do a Netflix special.’ All right, it’s not original – I…

Danny Dyer’s new C4 programme is deeply odd

20 April 2024 9:00 am

Who do you think said the following on TV this week: ‘I love being around gay men – seeing a…