Channel 4
Did the makers of When I Grow Up have no qualms turning a small boy into a hate figure?
Channel 4’s When I Grow Up had an important lesson for middle-class white males everywhere: you’re never too young to…
Why has Frankie Boyle gone so soft?
‘I spend a lot of time helping teenagers who’ve been sexually abused…’ — beat — ‘…find their way out of…
Why did no one think the premise of Mums Make Porn was questionable?
What can parents do about the avalanche of pornography available to their children on tablet, phone and laptop? This question…
It’s shocking how many Michael Jackson fans are still determined to take his side
Halfway through the first part of Channel 4’s extraordinary documentary Leaving Neverland (Thursdays), I flicked through the comments on social…
Promising but, compared to the first series, short of laughs: Fleabag reviewed
BBC2’s MotherFatherSon announced its status as a classy thriller in the traditional way: by ensuring that for quite a long…
Enjoyably contrived: BBC1’s Baptiste reviewed
What’s the best way to start a six-part thriller? The answer, it seems, is to have a bloke of a…
Les Misérables is another depressing example of the BBC’s woke quota targets
As the Allies advanced towards Germany in September 1944, their supplies were brought all the way from western Normandy in…
According to BBC4, what was one of the ‘most important inventions in modern music’?
Here’s a tricky quiz question for you. What word completes this sentence from a BBC4 documentary on Friday: ‘The world…
‘Brexit unleased something monstrous’: James Graham interviewed
‘I try to interpret the most generous version of somebody’s actions,’ says the dramatist James Graham. This rare ability to…
Full of bog-standard, if annoyingly effective, emotional manipulation: The Foreign Doctors Are Coming reviewed
Surprising I know, but judging from The Foreign Doctors Are Coming (Channel 4, Tuesday), Britain mightn’t be such a bad…
Channel 4 doesn’t do ‘news’ in any meaningful sense of the word – it’s pure propaganda
When President Trump refused to take a question from a CNN reporter at the Chequers press conference last week, I…
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…
Exhilaratingly original, C4’s Flowers is much more than just a ‘dark comedy’
On Wednesday, BBC Four made an unexpectedly strong case that the human body is a bit rubbish. Our ill-designed spines,…
Wild Wild Country makes me want to set up my own cult
I have decided to set up a cult, which you are all welcome to join, especially those of you who…
Ainsley Harriott is still unaccountably amused by almost everything: Costa Del Celebrity reviewed
These days, when it comes to people who used to be on the telly, the answer to the classic newspaper…
Channel 4’s Kiri is already shaping up to be one of the TV highlights of the winter
These days a genuinely controversial TV drama series would surely be one with an all-white, male-led cast that examined the…
A non-sniggering look at the latest developments in the lucrative sex-robot market
This week on Channel 4, we watched a cheery 58-year-old American engineer called James going on a first date. He…
The left-wing bias on Celebrity Gogglebox was excruciating
This week I want to put the boot in to Gogglebox (Channel 4, Fridays). Not the mostly likeable, everyday version,…
Loose ends
On Sunday night, Holliday Grainger was on two terrestrial channels at the same time playing a possibly smitten sidekick of…
Straight to hell
No, The State (Channel 4) wasn’t a recruiting manual for the Islamic State, though I did feel uneasy about it…
For goodness’ sake
Most new Netflix series are greeted not merely with acclaim, but with a level of gratitude that the returning Christ…
Norway’s noir
Valkyrien (C4, Sunday) is the hot new Scandi-noir series, which is being billed as Norway’s answer to Breaking Bad. In…
Candid camera?
Channel 4’s Catching a Killer offered the rare TV spectacle these days of a middle-aged white male copper leading a…
Even the sternest Leavisite critic would find it hard to resist BBC2's Peaky Blinders
The big returning show of the week began with servants laying out the silverware at a large country house in…
Trevor Phillips's documentary on Muslims was shocking - but not surprising
‘Our findings will shock many people,’ promised Trevor Phillips at the beginning of What British Muslims Really Think (Channel 4,…