Television
Reminds you how uncomplicatedly thrilling the first moon landing was: BBC2’s 8 Days reviewed
As the title suggests, 8 Days: To the Moon and Back (BBC2, Wednesday) comprehensively disproved the always questionable idea put…
Kanye wipes the floor with David Letterman
My plan to cut the BBC out of my life entirely is working well. Apart from the occasional forgivable lapse…
Shameless and corny: ITV’s Beecham House reviewed
ITV’s new drama Beecham House is set in late 18th-century India where the British and French were still battling it…
Girls will love it – and there’s just enough eye candy for boys: Big Little Lies reviewed
Six hundred and thirty years ago, Chaucer revealed in ‘The Wife of Bath’s Tale’ that what women really want is…
Makes you wonder if you’ve got drunk without noticing: Wild Bill reviewed
Usually, the return of Killing Eve would be pretty much guaranteed to provide the most unconventional, rule-busting TV programme of…
Blast from the past
How many people do you think died at Chernobyl? 10,000? 50,000? 300,000? The correct answer, according to the never knowingly…
Earth dying in five billion years I can deal with, but not a world-weary Brian Cox
When you see the opening caption ‘4.6 billion years ago’, it’s a pretty safe bet that you’re watching a programme…
Sunday night on the Beeb was an orgy of virtue-signalling and third-rate sport
After its new costume drama You Go, Girl! (Sundays) about how amazing, empowered and better-than-men women are, especially if they…
A clunky exercise in box-ticking: Russell T. Davies’s Years and Years reviewed
These days, a common way of introducing radio news items is with the words ‘How worried should we be about…?’…
Gloriously un-PC: Chris Lilley’s Swiftian, scabrous, gleefully misanthropic Lunatics reviewed
‘Unfunny, boring and utterly unrelenting,’ says the Guardian’s one-star review of Chris Lilley’s new sketch series Lunatics (Netflix). And if…
Did the makers of When I Grow Up have no qualms turning a small boy into a hate figure?
Channel 4’s When I Grow Up had an important lesson for middle-class white males everywhere: you’re never too young to…
Why has Frankie Boyle gone so soft?
‘I spend a lot of time helping teenagers who’ve been sexually abused…’ — beat — ‘…find their way out of…
I admire the scale and ambition of Game of Thrones – but isn’t it just a little bit corny?
If you’ve ever faced the social embarrassment of having to admit that you’ve never seen Game of Thrones (Sky Atlantic,…
If you liked Triumph of the Will, you’ll love Our Planet
If you liked Triumph of the Will, you’ll love this latest masterpiece of the genre: Our Planet. The Netflix nature…
The mob is right about Line of Duty – it remains unmissably exciting
On Sunday a drama began with ED905 being stolen by an OCG who’d faked an RTC that required IR, little…
The greatest Beatle? Pete Best
Which of the Beatles would you most like to have been? Not either of the dead ones, presumably. Nor the…
Why did no one think the premise of Mums Make Porn was questionable?
What can parents do about the avalanche of pornography available to their children on tablet, phone and laptop? This question…
It’s shocking how many Michael Jackson fans are still determined to take his side
Halfway through the first part of Channel 4’s extraordinary documentary Leaving Neverland (Thursdays), I flicked through the comments on social…
Promising but, compared to the first series, short of laughs: Fleabag reviewed
BBC2’s MotherFatherSon announced its status as a classy thriller in the traditional way: by ensuring that for quite a long…
I’ve never seen Coogan better or Partridge funnier: This Time with Alan Partridge reviewed
Steve Coogan is back as Alan Partridge but frankly who cares? Like Ali G, I’ve long thought, he’s one of…
Enjoyably contrived: BBC1’s Baptiste reviewed
What’s the best way to start a six-part thriller? The answer, it seems, is to have a bloke of a…
Like getting Banksy to repaint the Sistine Chapel: Sky Atlantic’s Das Boot reviewed
‘I know, let’s repaint the Sistine Chapel. But this time we’ll get it done by Banksy.’ Perhaps this wasn’t the…
Watch Paxo set a new PB for lip-curling: Paxman On The Queen’s Children reviewed
You might well expect a royal documentary on Channel 5 to be unashamedly gossipy. You might also expect it to…
Why Gomorrah could never have been made by the BBC
Boy often likes to rebuke me for having impossibly high standards when it comes to TV. ‘Why can’t you just…
Danny Dyer’s Right Royal Family might well be the oddest TV show of recent times
Last year on Who Do You Think You Are?, Danny Dyer — EastEnders actor and very possibly Britain’s most cockney…
