BBC1

Stately, sly and well-mannered: BBC1’s Miss Austen reviewed

8 February 2025 9:00 am

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?

30 November 2024 9:00 am

‘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?

23 November 2024 9:00 am

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

19 October 2024 9:00 am

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?

5 October 2024 9:00 am

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?

24 August 2024 9:00 am

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

25 May 2024 9:00 am

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

6 April 2024 9:00 am

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

4 November 2023 9:00 am

‘Only with women’ is a phrase used by more cynical TV types for a show that takes something that’s been…

I watched it so that you didn’t have to: ITV2’s Big Brother reviewed

14 October 2023 9:00 am

Big Brother is Nineteen Eighty-Four rewritten by Aldous Huxley. The detail that George Orwell got wrong is that far from…

One of the best (if not the jolliest) TV dramas of 2023: BBC1’s Best Interests reviewed

17 June 2023 9:00 am

In the opening minutes of Best Interests (Monday and Tuesday), an estranged middle-aged couple made their separate ways to court,…

Well-meaning thriller with moments of implausibility: BBC1's Crossfire reviewed

24 September 2022 9:00 am

Crossfire was a three-part drama in more ways than one. Running every night from Tuesday to Thursday, it brought together…

The political cunning of Elizabeth II: BBC1's The Longest Reign – The Queen and Her People reviewed

17 September 2022 9:00 am

In all the tributes to Her late Majesty’s constancy, dignity, wisdom and devotion to duty, not enough has been said…

Are bankers really as bad as they're portrayed on screen?

3 September 2022 9:00 am

Is the onscreen portrayal of investment bankers as monsters true to life? Martin Vander Weyer talks to the writers of Industry

A masterclass in evenhandedness: James Graham’s Sherwood reviewed

18 June 2022 9:00 am

James Graham has made his considerable name writing political-based dramas of a highly unusual type: non-polemical ones. And this certainly…

The medical equivalent of The Responder: BBC1's This is Going to Hurt reviewed

12 February 2022 9:00 am

According to the makers, This is Going to Hurt is intended as ‘a love letter to the national health service’.…

Shades of Tony Soprano: BBC1's The Responder reviewed

29 January 2022 9:00 am

Older readers may remember a time when people signalled their cultural superiority with the weird boast that they didn’t watch…

A cut above TV's usual #MeToo fare: BBC1's Rules of the Game reviewed

15 January 2022 9:00 am

As you may have noticed, it’s something of a golden age for TV shows about how invisible middle-aged women are…

Tells us more about today than the early 1960s: BBC1's A Very British Scandal reviewed

18 December 2021 9:00 am

For people who like a good upper-class scandal (or ‘people’, as they’re also known), 1963 was definitely a vintage year.…

Amateurish and implausible: BBC1's Vigil reviewed

18 September 2021 9:00 am

Tense, claustrophobic, gripping, thrilling, realistic: just some of the adjectives no one is using to describe BBC1’s Sunday night submarine…

When did Sunday night TV become so grim? Baptiste reviewed

31 July 2021 9:00 am

There was, you may remember, a time when Sunday night television was rather a jolly affair: gently plotted and full…

Honest, faithful and fantastically enjoyable: BBC1's The Pursuit of Love reviewed

15 May 2021 9:00 am

I’d been expecting the BBC to make a dreadful hash of The Pursuit of Love, especially when I read that…

A TV doc that is truly brave: BBC1's Ian Wright – Home Truths reviewed

8 May 2021 9:00 am

Ian Wright: Home Truths began with the ex-footballer saying that the home he grew up in was ‘not a happy…

This Is My House has rekindled my love for the BBC

1 May 2021 9:00 am

Here’s a thought that will make you feel old. Or worried. Or both. The poke-fun-at-celebrity-houses series Through the Keyhole —…

Watch Mark Kermode find 1950s political attitudes in 1950s films

16 January 2021 9:00 am

The new series of Mark Kermode’s Secrets of Cinema began with an episode on British comedy films. As ever, Kermode…