Sky atlantic
This was England
In advance, The Gallows Pole: This Valley Will Rise was touted as a radical departure for director Shane Meadows. After…
Motivated by love
At the start of Somewhere Boy, an 18-year-old boy is rescued from an isolated house by his aunt Sue following…
Why I love a cliché
You’d have to pay me an awful lot more than I get for this column to review Monster: The Jeffrey…
There will be blood
House of the Dragon got off to a pretty uninspirational start, I thought: no major characters brought to a shocking…
Let’s talk about pecs
Jack Reacher is back on the screen and aficionados of the hugely successful Lee Child airport thrillers in which he…
Dog’s breakfast
It has taken me a while to watch Yellowjacketsbecause I found the premise so offputting: in 1996 a plane carrying…
If it ain’t broke
At one point in an early Simpsons, Homer comes across an old issue of TV Guide, and finds the listing…
White mischief
Every now and then, you see a new series — Succession, say, or Chernobyl or To the Lake — which…
Skins in togas
I’ve been looking at the reviews so far of Sky’s new Romans series Domina and none seems to have noticed…
The best of British
There was certainly no lack of variety among new TV dramas this week, with a standard British thriller up against…
Filthy lucre
If you’re after an exciting, twisty programme about police corruption that doesn’t also feel a bit like sitting an exam…
Ill-judged sanctimony
I’m really not enjoying Your Honor, the latest vehicle for Bryan Cranston to play a good man driven to the…
Dumb and dumber
Here’s a worried question I want to plant in your head: when is TV drama going to start depicting the…
Three plots for the price of one
ZeroZeroZero is the impossibly exciting new drugs series from Roberto Saviano — the author who gave us perhaps my all-time…
Perfectly pointless
‘What the world needs now is a black and white pastiche of classic 1950s and 1960s sitcoms reviving two Marvel…
Twin peaks
There must be some people somewhere who vaguely know their own spouses — but if so, they don’t tend to…
Who dares wins
‘Art is dead,’ declared Mark Steyn recently. He was referring to the new rules — copied from the Baftas —…
There’s no business like show business
Fifteen minutes into the first episode of I Hate Suzie, main character Suzie Pickles was doing a photoshoot in her…
Containing multitudes
It might seem a bit of a stretch to see deep similarities between Michaela Coel (young, female, black and currently…
A drive on the wild side
When a 90-minute documentary is introduced with the words ‘This is the M25’, you’d be within your rights not to…
Shock and gore
There were plenty of TV shows around this week designed to cheer us up. Sky Atlantic’s Gangs of London, however,…
Vol-au-vent horror
Not much was clear in the opening scenes of The Pale Horse (BBC1, Sunday), which even by current TV standards…
The only way to survive Christmas TV is to avoid anything seasonal and watch Giri/Haji
The key to surviving the next couple of weeks of TV is to avoid like the plague anything that smacks…
