BBC1
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According to the makers, This is Going to Hurt is intended as ‘a love letter to the national health service’.…
Good cop, bad cop
Older readers may remember a time when people signalled their cultural superiority with the weird boast that they didn’t watch…
Women beware women
As you may have noticed, it’s something of a golden age for TV shows about how invisible middle-aged women are…
1963 and all that
For people who like a good upper-class scandal (or ‘people’, as they’re also known), 1963 was definitely a vintage year.…
Sub standard
Tense, claustrophobic, gripping, thrilling, realistic: just some of the adjectives no one is using to describe BBC1’s Sunday night submarine…
Finding Karyo
There was, you may remember, a time when Sunday night television was rather a jolly affair: gently plotted and full…
Under the radar
I’d been expecting the BBC to make a dreadful hash of The Pursuit of Love, especially when I read that…
Wright and wrong
Ian Wright: Home Truths began with the ex-footballer saying that the home he grew up in was ‘not a happy…
My rekindled love for the BBC
Here’s a thought that will make you feel old. Or worried. Or both. The poke-fun-at-celebrity-houses series Through the Keyhole —…
The weirdness of Britain present and past
The new series of Mark Kermode’s Secrets of Cinema began with an episode on British comedy films. As ever, Kermode…
Superb but depraved
The Serpent is the best BBC drama series in ages — god knows how it slipped through the net —…
A romcom with very little com
In Black Narcissus, based on the novel by Rumer Godden, five nuns set off for a remote Himalayan palace in…
Poetry in motion
How did the universe begin? Did the great god Bumba vomit us up, as the Kuba believe? Or did we…
Hare-brained
Like many a political thriller before it, BBC1’s Roadkill began with a politician emerging into the daylight to face a…
The odd couple
Collectors of TV titles that sound as if they were thought of by Alan Partridge will presumably have spotted Danny…
Opulence and chaos
Nobody could argue that Andrew Davies isn’t up for a challenge. He’d also surely be a shoo-in for Monty Python’s…
Containing multitudes
It might seem a bit of a stretch to see deep similarities between Michaela Coel (young, female, black and currently…
Pure poison
The big mistake people make with Alan Bennett is to conflate him with his fellow Yorkshireman David Hockney. But whereas…
Breast is best
This week, BBC1 brought us a three-part dramatisation of an ‘unprecedented crisis’ in recent British life. Among other things, it…
A kind of magic
You have to admire the spirit of the organisers of last weekend’s One World: Together at Home concert. To put…
Shock and gore
There were plenty of TV shows around this week designed to cheer us up. Sky Atlantic’s Gangs of London, however,…
Why on earth did Glenda Jackson give up acting? BBC1’s Elizabeth is Missing reviewed
Watching BBC1’s Elizabeth Is Missing made one of the more puzzling decisions of recent decades seem more puzzling still. Entirely…
War of the Worlds is as bad as Doctor Who
Edwardian England deserved everything it got from those killer Martian invaders. Or so I learned from the BBC’s latest adaptation…
Patronising, clichéd and corny: BBC1’s Gold Digger reviewed
Some last taboos, it seems, can remain last taboos no matter how frequently they’re confronted. Grief, the menopause, masturbation, mental…
God awful: BBC1’s His Dark materials reviewed
‘Here’s your new Sunday night obsession…’ the BBC announcer purred, overintoned and mini-orgasmed, like she was doing an audition for…
