1970s

How Berlin nearly broke Bowie

14 September 2024 9:00 am

This week’s Archive on 4 is a treat for David Bowie fans. Francis Whately, the producer behind several of the…

Ambitious, bold and confusing: BBC4’s Corridors of Power – Should America Police the World? reviewed

10 August 2024 9:00 am

Narrated by Meryl Streep, Corridors of Power: Should America Police the World? announced the scale of its ambition straight away.…

No one should be doing indie rock at 43: Band of Horses's Things Are Great reviewed

2 April 2022 9:00 am

Grade: B That thing, ‘indie rock’, is so well played and produced these days, so pristine and flawless, that it…

Oh dear, Abba’s new album is a bit of a dog: Voyage reviewed

6 November 2021 9:00 am

Time has been very kind to Abba. No one back in the 1970s thought of them as geniuses. But they've even lost the talent for writing memorable tunes

Apocalypse, Seventies-style: BritBox's Survivors reviewed

21 August 2021 9:00 am

When the apocalypse comes, I want it to be scripted by a 1970s screenwriter. That’s my conclusion after watching the…

A very watchable doc cashing in on Line of Duty: BBC2's Bent Coppers reviewed

24 April 2021 9:00 am

If you’re after an exciting, twisty programme about police corruption that doesn’t also feel a bit like sitting an exam…

'You can't have opinions any more': Rick Wakeman interviewed

19 December 2020 9:00 am

Rod Liddle talks to Rick Wakeman about lockdown, the Sex Pistols, and how you can’t have opinions any more

I could have directed it better: Steve McQueen's Small Axe reviewed

28 November 2020 9:00 am

Unlike with every other BBC period drama series these days, I didn’t have to sit through Small Axe: Mangrove grumbling…

The artist who left no physical record of her work

2 May 2020 9:00 am

While locked-down galleries compete to keep their artists in the public eye — or ear — by uploading interview podcasts,…

Twiggy photographed by Justin de Villeneuve in the Rainbow Room at Big Biba, early 1970s. [JUSTIN DE VILLENEUVE]

A short history of art deco – from high art to two-tone shoes, garden gates to Twiggy

1 December 2018 9:00 am

On 10 September 1973 the 1930s Kensington High Street department store formerly known as Derry & Toms reopened as Big…

The best album of the year so far, by some margin

23 June 2018 9:00 am

Grade: A+ While the young bands plunder the 1980s for every last gobbet of tinny synth and hi-hat, the singer-songwriters…

Law & Order, made – and banned – in 1978, puts most recent crime series in the shade

5 May 2018 9:00 am

It’s not every day that a television screenwriter is threatened with a trial for sedition, but G.F. Newman was after…

Sound and vision

30 September 2017 9:00 am

To get a reminder of how strange the 1970s were, there’s no need to plough through lengthy social and political…

Chaos among the commodes in Nina Stibbe’s old folks’ home

28 May 2016 9:00 am

A card in a shop window — ‘non-unionised, auxiliary nurses sought… 35p per hour. Ideal for outgoing compassionate females’ —…

Vinyl, Sky Atlantic

Verging on the corny: Martin Scorsese’s Vinyl reviewed

20 February 2016 9:00 am

Vinyl (Sky Atlantic) — the much-anticipated series, co-produced by Martin Scorsese and Mick Jagger, about the 1970s New York record…

Noma Dumezweni as Linda

A rare moment of transcendence at the Royal Court

2 January 2016 9:00 am

Illness forced Kim Cattrall to withdraw from Linda, the Royal Court’s new show, and Noma Dumezweni scooped up the debris…

The hatred that Martin Amis and Jeremy Corbyn have in common

29 October 2015 9:00 am

Everyone loves an underdog. It doesn’t matter how incompetent they might be — indeed, incompetence works in their favour. You…

A crushing case for brutalism — with the people left out

10 October 2015 9:00 am

Elain Harwood’s flawed but impressive study of modernist architecture manages perfectly to reflect its subject, says David Kynaston

A clear-eyed account of socialism: Paul Higgins and Stella Gonet in ‘Hope’ at the Royal Court

If you thought politics was boring, you should check out today’s political theatre

2 May 2015 9:00 am

How has political theatre fared during the coalition? Not very well, writes Lloyd Evans

Jaw-dropping confessions of a very un-PC Plod

22 November 2014 9:00 am

There can’t have been many people who watched Confessions of a Copper (Channel 4, Wednesday) with a growing sense of…

When did it become OK to be boring?

10 May 2014 9:00 am

Being boring was once the worst of all social sins. Now it’s practically compulsory