Television
The best podcasts to fall asleep to
‘Yous!’ a train cleaner in rubber gloves says as we arrive at Liverpool Lime Street. ‘What are yous doing here?’…
More Airplane! than Speed: Nightsleeper reviewed
Earlier this year, ITV brought us Red Eye, a six-part drama set mainly on an overnight plane from London to…
Are the Rees-Moggs ready for their new reality?
I felt slightly anxious for Sir Jacob Rees-Mogg when I read he’d agreed to have a reality show made about…
When piracy meets protest
Sometimes there are advantages to being ill-informed. Knowing embarrassingly little about why 30 Greenpeace activists were jailed in Russia in…
Biddy Baxter and the perils of remembering the past
I’ve been reading the cracking, crackling new biography Biddy Baxter: The Woman Who Made Blue Peter by Richard Marson (he’s a friend,…
Losing the plot
The Reunion opened in 1997 with some young people being carefree: a fact they obligingly signalled by zipping around the…
Flipping the script
Will we even notice if AI replaces screenwriters?
The BBC’s biggest problem
As I write this, the director-general of the BBC is being quizzed on the corporation’s future by people who were…
Is that enough about Phillip Schofield?
As I have noted before, there is always another circle. I thought that last week’s scandal (originally entitled ‘Suellagate’ or…
Unreality shows
The blurred lines between sport and entertainment
No more Mr Nice Guy
Volodymyr Zelensky is one of the few leaders of modern times whose charisma, determination and sheer cojones can be said,…
Diary
It feels like the end, but we’ve been here before. The past months of Boris Johnson’s teetering administration have felt…
Central line
James Graham has made his considerable name writing political-based dramas of a highly unusual type: non-polemical ones. And this certainly…
Sex Pistol’s Notebook
‘Just when I thought I was out, they pull me back in,’ groans a weary Al Pacino in The Godfather…
Changing channels
The television will be revolutionised
Auntie’s issues
At long last the state of Oregon has got around to installing tampon machines in the male lavatories of its…
My crowning achievement
It’s fairly commonplace for people to wonder what, if anything, they’ll be remembered for. I’m going to be 59 later…
Heart’s content
According to Pliny the Elder, Scipio Aemilianus was the first man to shave daily. The origin of the name Boeing…
The truly disadvantaged group in Britain
I’m not sure what to think about the BBC’s announcement that it wants a quarter of its staff to be…
The day I nearly brought RT down
It is interesting to watch Ofcom finally remove the broadcasting licence from the Russian propaganda channel Russia Today (RT). I…
The unseen Victoria Wood
For a few years now I have been living with Victoria Wood. That sounds all wrong, obviously, and yet no…
Sky’s the limit
When I promised my 13-year-old son, Charlie, that we would go to as many QPR games as possible in 2021-22…
Lights, camera, traction
There’s a great revival under way in the British TV and film industry, but it’s not the BBC that’s behind…
