Television
Trouble in paradise
‘Riviera is the new Night Manager,’ I read somewhere. No, it’s not. Riviera (Sky Atlantic, Thursday) is the new Eldorado…
Never knowingly understated
At one uncharacteristically low-key point in Sunday’s Poldark — back for a third series on BBC1 — Ross (Aidan Turner)…
How the west coast was won
There’s an incredibly addictive old iPhone game called Doodle God where you effectively invent civilisation from scratch by combining basic…
Heaven knows they’re miserable now
On the face of it, the two new big drama series of the week don’t have a great deal in…
The great rock’n’roll swindles
Birds have been giving me a lot of grief of late. There’s Tappy — the blue tit who has built…
Police force
I’ve often thought that a good idea for an authentic TV cop show would be to portray the police as…
Serial offenders
Since completing season two of the brilliant Narcos, I’ve been unsuccessfully looking for a replacement serial drama that is more…
Arms race
Like most documentaries, Britain’s Nuclear Bomb: The Inside Story (BBC4, Wednesday) began by boasting about all the exclusives it would…
The real deal
The other day I had a very dispiriting conversation with a TV industry insider. It turns out that everything you…
Psycho thriller
Psychological thrillers — or ‘thrillers’ as they used to be known — have become almost as ubiquitous on television as…
Look back in anger
‘What we really need is a faux-historical drama series about police brutality and black activism set in 1970s London,’ said…
Age as allegory
Sky Atlantic — available only to Sky customers — has the cunning/infuriating policy of broadcasting the kind of programmes most…
Oh! What a lovely Waugh
Jack Whitehall could have been perfectly awful as Paul Pennyfeather in Decline and Fall (BBC1, Fridays). He has spent most…
Let’s hear it for the boys
Girls creator Lena Dunham has received criticism from all sides. Detractors on the right see her as an exhibitionist provocateur.…
Beyond belief
As we know from all those newspaper articles and actress interviews, there’s a scandalous lack of high-profile British TV dramas…
To die for
Down the Mighty River with Steve Backshall (BBC2) was perfect Sunday-night TV — one of the most enjoyable adventure travelogues…
On the money
Fans of tough investigative journalism should probably avoid Channel 4’s How’d You Get So Rich? Presenter Katherine Ryan’s main tactic…
On the money
Fans of tough investigative journalism should probably avoid Channel 4’s How’d You Get So Rich? Presenter Katherine Ryan’s main tactic…
The terrible truth
Here’s the bad news. One day you or someone like you will be shopping in a mall or enjoying a…
The terrible truth
Here’s the bad news. One day you or someone like you will be shopping in a mall or enjoying a…
Occupational hazard
Rival law-enforcement agencies arguing about which of them should investigate a murder has, of course, been a staple of crime…
Occupational hazard
Rival law-enforcement agencies arguing about which of them should investigate a murder has, of course, been a staple of crime…
Occupational hazard
Rival law-enforcement agencies arguing about which of them should investigate a murder has, of course, been a staple of crime…
Fatal attraction
Recently on holiday I did a very bad thing. I nearly left the Fawn to die on a precipitous mountain…
Fatal attraction
Recently on holiday I did a very bad thing. I nearly left the Fawn to die on a precipitous mountain…
