BBC2
I had no idea how fascinating rubbish could be: The Secret Life of Landfill reviewed
Not the most beguiling of titles, I admit, but The Secret Life of Landfill: A Rubbish History (BBC4, Thursday) was…
Did Ed Balls mean to make a documentary on the joys of Trump’s America?
The thing I most regret having failed ever to ask brave, haunted, wise Sean O’Callaghan when I last saw him…
Fury and excitement – how the journalists at the New York Times have coped with Trump
Back when his country was controlled by the USSR, the Czech writer Milan Kundera pointed out that ‘Union of Soviet…
Understated and heartbreaking: BBC2’s King Lear reviewed
I recently came across a theory of the American poet Delmore Schwartz’s that Hamlet only makes sense if you assume…
Law & Order, made – and banned – in 1978, puts most recent crime series in the shade
It’s not every day that a television screenwriter is threatened with a trial for sedition, but G.F. Newman was after…
Jaw-dropping: My Year with the Tribe reviewed
For a while now, the Korowai people of Western Papua have been the go-to primitive tribe for documentary-makers. The Korowai…
Portentous, po-faced but also highly imaginative: The City & The City reviewed
BBC2 has a new drama series for Friday nights. The main character is a world-weary middle-aged police inspector with an…
Sun readers will be disappointed – E.M. Phwoar-ster it is not: Howards End reviewed
Any readers of the Sun who excitedly tuned in to Howards End on Sunday night with their pause button at…
Loose ends
On Sunday night, Holliday Grainger was on two terrestrial channels at the same time playing a possibly smitten sidekick of…
1967 and all that
As you may have spotted, the BBC is marking the 50th anniversary of the decriminalisation of male homosexuality with an…
In praise of braindead filth
Melvyn Bragg on TV: The Box That Changed The World (BBC2, Saturday) was just what you would have expected of…
Impure thoughts
Spoiler alerts aren’t normally required for reviews of Shakespeare — but perhaps I’d better issue one before saying that in…
That’s entertainment
The big returning show of the week began with servants laying out the silverware at a large country house in…
Special delivery
Five Star Babies: Inside the Portland Hospital won’t, I suspect, have been a hard sell to BBC2’s commissioning editors. Childbirth…
Good cop, bad cop
Which is better, British TV drama or American? A couple of years ago, merely asking the question would have had…
Northern exposure
Some things I have learned about Iceland after watching six episodes of Trapped (BBC4, Saturdays). 1. They seem to feel…
Was my article the inspiration for this brilliant BBC dramatisation?
The two things I hate most about Christmas are a) Advertland showing me how sparkly and joyous my home and…
Spying and potting
The main problem with being a TV critic, I’ve noticed over the years, is that you have to watch so…
Why most four-year-olds deserve to be sectioned
The first episode of Let Us Entertain You (BBC2, Wednesday) definitely couldn’t be accused of lacking a central thesis. Presenter…
The Last Kingdom is BBC2’s solemnly cheesy answer to Game of Thrones
The opening caption for The Last Kingdom (BBC2, Thursday) read ‘Kingdom of Northumbria, North of England, 866 AD’. In fact,…
Lifting the veil
Finally I realise why women are so pissed off. It all goes back to the first codified laws — circa…
Sick and tired
When the link between tobacco and lung cancer was first established in the early 1950s, one obvious question arose: should…
Affairs in squares
On all those comic lists of the world’s shortest books (Great Italian War Heroes, My Hunt for the Real Killers,…
Institutional feminism
Some revelations, it seems, are capable of being endlessly repeated while still remaining revelations. Think of all the books, articles…
Serial thriller
For keen students of China, this week’s television provided yet more proof that Deng Xiaoping’s decision to open the country…
