Television
Anjelica Huston is comprehensively upstaged in the BBC’s new Agatha Christie
Coincidentally, two of this week’s big new dramas began with a fourth wall-busting declaration of their narrative methods. At the…
I think I’ve found the perfect TV series
Drops of God is one of those gems of purest ray serene that cable TV prefers to keep hidden in…
The White Lotus is off to a shaky start
The White Lotus, now back for a third series, could perhaps be best described as Death in Paradise for posh…
Is work really more fun than fun?
Wouldn’t it be marvellous if instead of going to work every day we could contract out the tedium to avatars…
Stately, sly and well-mannered: BBC1’s Miss Austen reviewed
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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?
‘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?
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
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
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
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
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
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
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?
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
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
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
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
Kaos is a new Netflix gods-and-monsters black-comedy blockbuster that will scorch your screen and fry your brain like a thunderbolt…
