Channel 4

Did the makers of When I Grow Up have no qualms turning a small boy into a hate figure?

4 May 2019 9:00 am

Channel 4’s When I Grow Up had an important lesson for middle-class white males everywhere: you’re never too young to…

Frankie Boyle's New World Order, on which the comic is paid to say the totally and predictably sayable. Image: BBC/ Endemol Shine UK/ Brian J Ritchie

Why has Frankie Boyle gone so soft?

27 April 2019 9:00 am

‘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?

23 March 2019 9:00 am

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

16 March 2019 9:00 am

Halfway through the first part of Channel 4’s extraordinary documentary Leaving Neverland (Thursdays), I flicked through the comments on social…

Sian Clifford as Claire and Phoebe Waller-Bridge as Fleabag

Promising but, compared to the first series, short of laughs: Fleabag reviewed

9 March 2019 9:00 am

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

23 February 2019 9:00 am

What’s the best way to start a six-part thriller? The answer, it seems, is to have a bloke of a…

David Oyelowo as Javert in Andrew Davies's Les Misérables. Photo: BBC / Lookout Point / Laurence Cendrowicz

Les Misérables is another depressing example of the BBC’s woke quota targets

19 January 2019 9:00 am

As the Allies advanced towards Germany in September 1944, their supplies were brought all the way from western Normandy in…

Doors drummer John Densmore and Police percussionist Stewart Copeland. Photo: BBC / Somethin’ Else Sound Directions Ltd / Nico Wasserman

According to BBC4, what was one of the ‘most important inventions in modern music’?

12 January 2019 9:00 am

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

5 January 2019 9:00 am

‘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

11 August 2018 9:00 am

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

21 July 2018 9:00 am

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

30 June 2018 9:00 am

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’

16 June 2018 9:00 am

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

14 April 2018 9:00 am

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

27 January 2018 9:00 am

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

13 January 2018 9:00 am

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

2 December 2017 9:00 am

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

11 November 2017 9:00 am

This week I want to put the boot in to Gogglebox (Channel 4, Fridays). Not the mostly likeable, everyday version,…

Loose ends

23 September 2017 9:00 am

On Sunday night, Holliday Grainger was on two terrestrial channels at the same time playing a possibly smitten sidekick of…

Beyond belief: Sam Otto as Jalal in Peter Kosminsky’s The State

Straight to hell

2 September 2017 9:00 am

No, The State (Channel 4) wasn’t a recruiting manual for the Islamic State, though I did feel uneasy about it…

Autistic endeavour: Keir Gilchrist as Sam in Atypical

For goodness’ sake

26 August 2017 9:00 am

Most new Netflix series are greeted not merely with acclaim, but with a level of gratitude that the returning Christ…

Norway’s noir

17 August 2017 1:00 pm

Valkyrien (C4, Sunday) is the hot new Scandi-noir series, which is being billed as Norway’s answer to Breaking Bad. In…

Candid camera?

15 July 2017 9:00 am

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

7 May 2016 9:00 am

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

16 April 2016 9:00 am

‘Our findings will shock many people,’ promised Trevor Phillips at the beginning of What British Muslims Really Think (Channel 4,…