TV
Line of Duty thinks – rightly – that there’s drama in the subsections of police acts
Which is better, British TV drama or American? A couple of years ago, merely asking the question would have had…
How does anyone keep up with all the good stuff out there on TV?
‘We have a problem. Yes. At the wind farm.’ Any conspiracy thriller with lines like that has definitely got my…
Doctor Thorne is pleasantly undemanding viewing
Every now and then, a costume drama comes along that’s so daringly unconventional as to make us re-examine our whole…
BBC1’s The Night Manager verges on parody
The Night Manager (BBC1, Sunday) announced its intentions immediately, when the opening credits lovingly combined weapons and luxury items. ‘Blimey,’…
Verging on the corny: Martin Scorsese’s Vinyl reviewed
Vinyl (Sky Atlantic) — the much-anticipated series, co-produced by Martin Scorsese and Mick Jagger, about the 1970s New York record…
Watch it backwards – and then don’t stay for long: Dad’s Army reviewed
The TV sitcom Dad’s Army ran on the BBC from 1968 to 1977 (nine series, 80 episodes) with repeats still…
Back in Time for the Weekend gives the 1950s its usual kicking
When the time comes to make programmes looking back on the 2010s, I wonder which aspects of life today will…
Netflix's Making a Murderer is fascinating - but is it true?
On the face of it, the Netflix documentary serial Making a Murderer should only take up ten hours of your…
The integrity and chain-smoking of these East German Commies is rather attractive
No one remembers this now but there really was a period, not so long ago, when the Eighties were universally…
A morally dubious mix of Candid Camera and Fawlty Towers: Pushed to the Edge reviewed
Never a man tortured by self-doubt, Derren Brown introduced his latest special Pushed to the Edge (Channel 4, Tuesday) as…
Where’s all the joy gone?
Britain seems to be suffering from a dearth of lightheartedness
The rise and fall of Sony
Sony was the Apple of its day and more. Stephen Bayley charts its years of creativity unrivalled in the history of consumerism
Why did a Russian ballet dancer throw acid in his boss’s face?
The 16th June 1961 and 17th January 2013 are two indelible dates in the annals of Russian ballet. Two events…
Twenty things I will ban when I am elected your Dictator For Life in 2016
The two things I hate most about Christmas are a) Advertland showing me how sparkly and joyous my home and…
Radio is flowering because it’s so much more potent than TV
Who would have thought in this visually obsessed age of YouTube, selfies and Instagram that radio, pure audio, no images…
I’m a Celebrity is like The Simpsons: good if you’re thick; even better if you’re not
The best bit in I’m A Celebrity… Get Me Out Of Here! (ITV) will be when the prisoners finally revolt…
Is television at its best when it mimics radio?
Not that long ago the BBC trumpeted a new Stakhanovite project to big up the arts in its many and…
James Delingpole cringes at London Spy’s gay sex scenes
The main problem with being a TV critic, I’ve noticed over the years, is that you have to watch so…
Not all crap TV is all that crap
Girl is back for half-term so I’ve been able to watch nothing but crap on TV this week. Some of…
The Last Kingdom is BBC2’s solemnly cheesy answer to Game of Thrones
The opening caption for The Last Kingdom (BBC2, Thursday) read ‘Kingdom of Northumbria, North of England, 866 AD’. In fact,…
Hunted blows a fresh breeze through the stale world of reality TV
Television used to employ entertainers to entertain the public. Back then you could count the channels on the fingers of…
Was BBC1’s Rooney show more scripted reality than documentary?
Close to the Edge (BBC4, Tuesday) feels very much like an idea conceived during a particularly good night in the…
James Delingpole discovers the fons et origo of indie music
I really hadn’t meant to write a postscript to last week’s column on my dark Supertramp past. But then along…
ITV’s Midwinter of the Spirit is a satisfying example of Middle-England Gothic
For years, Ian Fleming was famously self-deprecating about the James Bond books. (‘I have a rule of not looking back,’…
An Inspector Calls is poisonous, revisionist propaganda - which is why the luvvies love it
What a load of manipulative, hysterical tosh is An Inspector Calls. It wasn’t a work with which I was familiar…
