BBC1
Gothic lives matter: BBC2’s Civilisations reviewed
Anybody growing weary of the debate surrounding the BBC’s unexamined assumptions and biases about modern politics might have expected to…
Is there anything menopausal women can’t do?
Is there anything menopausal women can’t do (on television)? Last Sunday, as a couple of them were still working on…
Excruciating: Netflix’s House of Guinness reviewed
First the surprising news: not a single one of the four Guinness siblings in 1868 Dublin is black; and only…
Every line in the new Alan Partridge is perfect
By now, viewers of TV thrillers are no strangers to a baffling prologue – but this week brought a particularly…
The power of BBC’s The Narrow Road to the Deep North
It’s been a good week for fans of TV dramas that are set partly in Syria, feature poetry-lovers confronting extreme…
Channel 4’s Beth is a sad glimpse into the future of terrestrial TV
On the face of it, Beth seemed that most old-fashioned of TV genres: the single play. In fact, Monday’s programme…
Why is the BBC making stuff up about Jane Austen?
Jane Austen: Rise of a Genius began by saying that ‘getting into her mind isn’t easy’ – something you’d never…
How fun is it being part of an Amazonian tribe?
Tribe with Bruce Parry ran for three fondly remembered series in the mid-2000s. Now, upgraded to Tribe with Bruce Parry,…
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…
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…
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…
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…
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…
Why are these dead-eyed K-pop groups represented as some kind of ideal?
On Saturday, Made in Korea: The K-pop Experience began by hailing K-pop as ‘the multi-billion-pound music that’s taken the world…
BBC1’s new Rebus is the kind of TV detective they just don’t make any more
Imagine a new series of Morse in which the real-ale-quaffing, jag-driving opera buff is turned into a speed-snorting mod on…
Dramatic, urgent and intriguing: BBC1’s This Town reviewed
After conquering the world with Peaky Blinders (and before that by co-creating Who Wants to Be a Millionaire?), Steven Knight…
Riveting and heart-wrenching: BBC1’s Time reviewed
‘Only with women’ is a phrase used by more cynical TV types for a show that takes something that’s been…
Beyond the cringe
Big Brother is Nineteen Eighty-Four rewritten by Aldous Huxley. The detail that George Orwell got wrong is that far from…
Split decision
In the opening minutes of Best Interests (Monday and Tuesday), an estranged middle-aged couple made their separate ways to court,…
Bang goes nothing
Crossfire was a three-part drama in more ways than one. Running every night from Tuesday to Thursday, it brought together…
So much better than talking
In all the tributes to Her late Majesty’s constancy, dignity, wisdom and devotion to duty, not enough has been said…
The money shot
Is the onscreen portrayal of investment bankers as monsters true to life? Martin Vander Weyer talks to the writers of Industry
Central line
James Graham has made his considerable name writing political-based dramas of a highly unusual type: non-polemical ones. And this certainly…
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According to the makers, This is Going to Hurt is intended as ‘a love letter to the national health service’.…
