TV
No pain, no gain
The best episodes of Curb Your Enthusiasm are the ones that make you want to hide behind the sofa, cover…
Loose ends
On Sunday night, Holliday Grainger was on two terrestrial channels at the same time playing a possibly smitten sidekick of…
Rockies horror show
Tin Star, the latest Sky Atlantic drama, has a comfortingly familiar premise: Jim Worth (Tim Roth), an ex-detective from London…
Made in Port Talbot
Port Talbot, on the coast of South Wales, is literally overlooked. Most experience the town while flying over it on…
Second thoughts
I had planned to review David Mitchell and Robert Webb’s new Channel 4 sitcom Back without constantly referring to their…
Universal appeal
Yet another sign that we are living in very strange times: a pair of celebrities, their names made by TV,…
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…
Dethroned by feminism
I’m a bit worried about Game of Thrones (Sky Atlantic). Not seriously worried: there’s too much money invested, too much…
In praise of braindead filth
Melvyn Bragg on TV: The Box That Changed The World (BBC2, Saturday) was just what you would have expected of…
Something to crow about
There’s no way of saying this without shredding the last vestiges of my critical credibility, but this new Ben Elton…
That’s entertainment
The big returning show of the week began with servants laying out the silverware at a large country house in…
His dark materials
So: Game of Thrones. Finally — season six — the TV series has overtaken the books on which it is…
Special delivery
Five Star Babies: Inside the Portland Hospital won’t, I suspect, have been a hard sell to BBC2’s commissioning editors. Childbirth…
Singing Ireland into being
In recent years there’s been a fashion for arts documentaries presented by celebs rather than boring old experts — presumably…
Good cop, bad cop
Which is better, British TV drama or American? A couple of years ago, merely asking the question would have had…
Greedy greenies
‘We have a problem. Yes. At the wind farm.’ Any conspiracy thriller with lines like that has definitely got my…
Just what the doctor ordered
Every now and then, a costume drama comes along that’s so daringly unconventional as to make us re-examine our whole…
Night moves
The Night Manager (BBC1, Sunday) announced its intentions immediately, when the opening credits lovingly combined weapons and luxury items. ‘Blimey,’…
Marty’s way
Vinyl (Sky Atlantic) — the much-anticipated series, co-produced by Martin Scorsese and Mick Jagger, about the 1970s New York record…
It’s doomed!
The TV sitcom Dad’s Army ran on the BBC from 1968 to 1977 (nine series, 80 episodes) with repeats still…
Weekend world
When the time comes to make programmes looking back on the 2010s, I wonder which aspects of life today will…
An inconvenient truth
On the face of it, the Netflix documentary serial Making a Murderer should only take up ten hours of your…
Class of ’83
No one remembers this now but there really was a period, not so long ago, when the Eighties were universally…
Compliance order
Never a man tortured by self-doubt, Derren Brown introduced his latest special Pushed to the Edge (Channel 4, Tuesday) as…
