BBC2
The bankers’ darling
This week’s Imagine… Jeff Koons: Diary of a Seducer (BBC1, Tuesday) began with Koons telling a slightly puzzled-looking Alan Yentob…
Bad robots
You’d think scientists might have realised by now that creating a race of super-robots is about as wise as opening…
Pet rescue
I adore Andrew Roberts. We go back a long way. Once, on a boating expedition gone wrong in the south…
Are you being funny?
Monday saw the return of possibly the weirdest TV series in living memory. Imagine a parallel universe in which Are…
Living history
It has been a while since the BBC really pushed the boat out on the epic history documentary front. Perhaps…
Aussie rules
Some years ago I paid a visit to the site of the Gallipoli landings because I was mildly obsessed with…
Target practice
Ever since the days of Tony Hancock, many of the best British sitcoms — from Dad’s Army to Fawlty Towers,…
Comics’ trip
Who says British television lacks imagination? You might have thought, for example, that every possible combination of comedian and travel…
The Turner effect
By my calculations, the remake of Poldark (BBC1, Sunday) is the first time BBC drama has returned to Cornwall since…
The long goodbye
In January 1958, the British government began working on the significantly titled Operation Hope Not: its plans for what to…
On war and remembrance
There’s a plausible theory — recently rehearsed in the BBC’s excellent two-part documentary The Lion’s Last Roar? — that our…
Home again
One of the more welcome and surprising things about television at the moment is that Homeland (Channel 4, Sunday) is…
Hoard games
Detectorists (BBC4) is a sad git’s niche comedy that would never have been commissioned if it hadn’t been written and…
Murder in the mall
So you’ve just popped down to the supermarket for the weekly shop, toddlers in tow, when the grenades start to…
Carry on Mumbai
Viewers who like their TV journalism hard-hitting should probably avoid Hotel India, a new BBC2 series about the Taj Mahal…
Gangs busted
You wait a whole lifetime for a lavishly shot, starrily cast, mega-budget gangster drama set in Birmingham to come along.…
The fake and the furious
I watched Top Gear (BBC2, Sunday) for the first time in my life last week (the rock under which I’ve…
