Television
A very watchable doc cashing in on Line of Duty: BBC2's Bent Coppers reviewed
If you’re after an exciting, twisty programme about police corruption that doesn’t also feel a bit like sitting an exam…
Intelligence-insulting schlock: Sky Atlantic's Your Honor reviewed
I’m really not enjoying Your Honor, the latest vehicle for Bryan Cranston to play a good man driven to the…
It's impossible not to feel snooty watching ITV's Agatha and Poirot
Agatha and Poirot was one of those programmes that had the annoying effect of making you feel distinctly snooty. ITV’s…
Why I’m glad to see the back of Call My Agent!
For the past few weeks I have been binge-watching the Netflix series Call My Agent! (or Dix pour cent, as…
Is Jed Mercurio bored with Line of Duty?
When a drama begins with news of a ‘Chis handler’ receiving ‘intel graded A1 on the matrix’ that causes a…
Apple+'s new series damn near cost me my marriage: Calls reviewed
Calls is the very antithesis of televisual soma. In fact it’s so jarring and discomfiting and horrible that I think…
Undemandingly enjoyable (just don’t read the episode’s title): McDonald & Dodds review
Well, this a bit awkward. A fortnight ago, in my last TV column, I confidently asserted that, despite the involvement…
How stupid do the script writers of Sky’s Devils think we are?
Here’s a worried question I want to plant in your head: when is TV drama going to start depicting the…
Bloodlands is well worth watching – just don't expect Line of Duty
To begin on a cheerful note, it’s certainly been a good week for fans of slow-burn British crime dramas with…
Impossibly exciting: Sky Atlantic's ZeroZeroZero reviewed
ZeroZeroZero is the impossibly exciting new drugs series from Roberto Saviano — the author who gave us perhaps my all-time…
Incoherent and conspiracy-fuelled: Adam Curtis’s Can’t Get You Out of My Head reviewed
‘History,’ wrote Edward Gibbon, ‘is, indeed, little more than the register of the crimes, follies, and misfortunes of mankind.’ In…
You'll wish you were gay: Channel 4's It's a Sin reviewed
To promote his new drama series about Aids in the early 1980s, Russell T. Davies insisted in an interview that…
John DeLorean: man of mystery – and full-blown psychopath
DeLorean: Back from the Future was one of those documentaries — for me at least — that takes a story…
Like trying to understand some obscure but fashionable meme: WandaVision reviewed
‘What the world needs now is a black and white pastiche of classic 1950s and 1960s sitcoms reviving two Marvel…
Watch Mark Kermode find 1950s political attitudes in 1950s films
The new series of Mark Kermode’s Secrets of Cinema began with an episode on British comedy films. As ever, Kermode…
Superb but depraved: BBC1’s The Serpent reviewed
The Serpent is the best BBC drama series in ages — god knows how it slipped through the net —…
A romcom with very little com: BBC1’s Black Narcissus reviewed
In Black Narcissus, based on the novel by Rumer Godden, five nuns set off for a remote Himalayan palace in…
Netflix's Barbarians taught me those Romans had it coming
Of all the times and places to have been on the wrong side of history, I can’t imagine many worse…
Watch Andrew Marr stare at places where stuff happened: New Elizabethans reviewed
Congratulations, everyone! It turns out we’re much better than those bigoted old Brits of the 1950s. After all, they were…
I could have directed it better: Steve McQueen's Small Axe reviewed
Unlike with every other BBC period drama series these days, I didn’t have to sit through Small Axe: Mangrove grumbling…
Like much jazz, it might have benefited from being less solemn: BBC4's Ronnie's reviewed
Ronnie’s: Ronnie Scott and His World-Famous Jazz Club was like the TV equivalent of an authorised biography: impressively thorough, often…
Did any of this actually happen? The Crown, season four, reviewed
‘We have to stop it now!’ says Princess Margaret (Helena Bonham Carter), smoking another cigarette, obviously. She’s talking about the…
Is The Undoing properly great or just a run-of-mill thriller with a brilliant casting director?
There must be some people somewhere who vaguely know their own spouses — but if so, they don’t tend to…
Has Spitting Image ever been funny?
Thank you, Spitting Image, for the nostalgia trip! Your new series on BritBox has rekindled with almost Proustian fidelity those…
Enough plotlines to power several seasons of The West Wing: BBC1's Roadkill reviewed
Like many a political thriller before it, BBC1’s Roadkill began with a politician emerging into the daylight to face a…
