Television
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…
Gripping: Amazon Prime’s The Tank reviewed
I don’t know how it got past the increasingly powerful ‘All Germans were evil Nazis’ censors but Amazon has released…
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…
Why has it all gone wrong for The Night Manager?
The Night Manager is finally back after ten years with three major drawbacks: no Elizabeth Debicki for the sex scenes;…
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…
Enough with torture-porn TV
Has anyone got to the end of Malice yet? I’m halfway through – at the time of writing, anyway –…
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…
The Beast in Me is surprisingly addictive
The Beast in Me is one of those ‘taut psychological thrillers’ that everyone talks about in the office. This might…
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…
Pluribus is a mess
Pluribus is another drama set in the dystopian future. But on this occasion the integrity of the entire human race…
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…
Film and TV are run by satanists
I once came up with a brilliant idea for a children’s Sunday-evening TV series. It would follow the adventures of…
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…
A great comedy about a terrible sport
I’m trying to think of things I’m less interested in than American football. The plant-based food section? Taking up my…
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…
Excruciating: Netflix’s House of Guinness reviewed
First the surprising news: not a single one of the four Guinness siblings in 1868 Dublin is black; and only…
The death of cinéma vérité
Oh, how we lived. Or, how we thought we lived. Despite the numerous criticisms levelled at the BBC on a…
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…
Netflix’s Hostage is an act of cultural aggression
Apart from hunting, one of the very few consolations of the end of summer is that telly stops being quite…
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…
The brilliance of BBC Alba
During lockdown, a friend and I moved into a flat that had a difficult relationship with the TV aerial. Ineptitude…
Alien: Earth is wantonly disrespectful to the canon
I once spent a delightful weekend in Madrid with the co-producer of Alien. His name was David Giler (now dead,…
I love how awful My Oxford Year is
The punters are saying My Oxford Year is a disaster. ‘Predictable, uninspiring and laughable,’ complains some meanie on Rotten Tomatoes.…
