Television
Curse you, Sandbrook
Gosh it isn’t half irksome when someone who went to the same school as you but is considerably younger than…
It’s everywhere
They’re now televising proceedings from the Court of Appeal. Great. As if I didn’t have enough to do already, keeping…
Tales of the unexpected
‘Life is what happens to you while you’re busy making other plans,’ said John Lennon. Quite apposite from a man…
Double standards
Will the women on ITV’s The X Factor (Saturday) stop perving? I suppose there are two ways to tackle the…
Farce and furious
Among the criticisms rightly levelled at the BBC are that its commissioning editors are overcautious, unimaginative, unadventurous and over-reliant on…
Watching the detectives
Did Dr Jekyll turn into Jack the Ripper? Besides becoming evil Mr Hyde, did Robert L. Stevenson’s fictional creation morph…
Counting the cost
The acclaimed television series Breaking Bad has ended. Steffen Huck on what it can teach us about economics
Myth mash-up
This week saw the final episode of possibly the greatest television series ever. Breaking Bad wasn’t made by the BBC,…
At home with the royals
Are you following the world’s most watched aristocratic family? If you recall, they recently took into their ranks a member…
Gangs busted
You wait a whole lifetime for a lavishly shot, starrily cast, mega-budget gangster drama set in Birmingham to come along.…
Comic relief
Funny what rises from the rubble. In 1916 British army officer Captain Fred Roberts was searching the bombed-out remains of…
School’s in
You know you’re getting old when TV starts getting nostalgic about eras during which you were already feeling old and…
Let us eat cake
I’m not crazy about cookery shows. I suspect they indicate how little we are cooking, rather than how much. We’re…
Harrowing journey
One of Boy’s more annoying teenage rules of thumb is that, if Dad likes it, it must be crap. This…
Tragic comedies
How did our comedies become so sad? BBC1’s new sitcom Big School (Fridays) opened with a scene that would probably…
Anglo-Saxon disaster
‘Somerset. Winter 877,’ said the subtitles below an arty, BBC-nature-doc style close-up of a coot paddling amid the reeds on…
The fake and the furious
I watched Top Gear (BBC2, Sunday) for the first time in my life last week (the rock under which I’ve…
Public lives
Watching Burton and Taylor (BBC4, Monday) I felt a bit like I do when I go to the theatre —…
Poking fun by proxy
I sincerely hope you’re not watching television. With the glorious summer sun we’re having, you should be having picnics and…
Institutional Toynbeeism
Last week I was on holiday with my family on the Algarve. The good news was that, thanks to the…
Dark pleasures
Luther is back, in Luther, and so is Donny Osmond, of Donny & Marie fame. Could there be two more…
