Television

Stately, sly and well-mannered: BBC1’s Miss Austen reviewed

8 February 2025 9:00 am

It is a truth universally acknowledged that lazy journalists begin every piece about Jane Austen with the words ‘It is…

Not a complete waste of time: Netflix’s La Palma reviewed

1 February 2025 9:00 am

Netflix is the television equivalent of pasta and ready-made pesto: a slightly desperate but acceptable enough stand-by when you’ve got…

Certainly intriguing: Apple TV+’s Prime Target reviewed

25 January 2025 9:00 am

Needless to say, there have been any number of thrillers that rely on what Alfred Hitchcock called a MacGuffin: something,…

Irritating but watchable: American Primeval reviewed

18 January 2025 9:00 am

American Primeval should really be called Two Incredibly Annoying Women In The Wild West. Yes, the first title is more…

Playing Nice is beautifully done – but they miscalculated the opening scene

11 January 2025 9:00 am

There must have been a time when slow-burn psychological thrillers didn’t start with a scene of high drama followed by…

No one will convince me that Keira Knightley can fight: Black Doves reviewed

4 January 2025 9:00 am

If your heart sinks at the prospect of a thriller series starring Keira Knightley as a highly trained undercover agent…

Leavisites should stay away: Sky’s Bad Tidings reviewed

14 December 2024 9:00 am

Reviewing Sky’s The Heist before Christmas last year, I suggested that all feature-length festive television dramas begin with credits announcing…

Dune: Prophecy is much worse than you will believe possible

7 December 2024 9:00 am

Do you remember that nagging sense of mild disappointment as you sat through Dune 2? You’d been impressed by Dune:…

We’re wrong to mock Do They Know It’s Christmas?

30 November 2024 9:00 am

‘I hope we passed the audition,’ said an alarmingly youthful Bob Geldof at one point in The Making of Do…

How did Wolf Hall escape the attentions of the BBC’s diversity commissars?

23 November 2024 9:00 am

Wolf Hall is one of the few remaining jewels in the BBC’s tarnished crown. Presumably that’s why it was allowed…

Top tosh: The Diplomat reviewed

16 November 2024 9:00 am

The Diplomat bears the same relationship to 21st-century ambassadorial geopolitics as Bridgerton does to the salons and social mores of…

Spy-drama porn: Sky’s The Day of the Jackal reviewed

9 November 2024 9:00 am

All the previewers have been drooling lasciviously over The Day of the Jackal reboot and, having seen the first three…

A bit of a mess: Channel 4’s Generation Z reviewed

2 November 2024 9:00 am

In the second of this week’s two episodes of Generation Z (Sunday and Monday), a teenage girl called Finn wondered…

You’ll even hate the cat: Disclaimer, on Apple TV+, reviewed

26 October 2024 9:00 am

Sometimes spoilers can be your friend. For example, I have just cheated and looked up on the internet the shocking…

A hit – but please don’t pretend it’s feminist: Disney+’s Rivals reviewed

19 October 2024 9:00 am

For most of my adult life, clever, well-read, feminist women have told me how much they love Jilly Cooper. It…

A fashion series made by people who hate fashion: Apple TV+’s La Maison reviewed

12 October 2024 9:00 am

I’m a bit disappointed – déçu, as we Francophiles like to say – with La Maison. When French TV drama…

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.…