TV
Channel 4's The Coalition reviewed: heroically free of cynicism
In a late schedule change, Channel 4’s Coalition was shifted from Thursday to Saturday to make room for Jeremy Paxman…
Will you miss Mad Men? James Delingpole won’t
Mad Men looked great but, as the final season draws to a close, was there really anything to it, wonders James Delingpole
Raised by Wolves review: council-estate life but not as you know it
Journalist, novelist, broadcaster and figurehead of British feminism Caitlin Moran, who writes most of the Times and even had her…
Jeffrey Archer’s diary: a pirate at the traffic lights, and other Indian wonders
This last week, in India, I visited six cities in seven days: Mumbai, Pune, Bangalore, Hyderabad, Calcutta and New Delhi.…
Poldark review: drama by committee
By my calculations, the remake of Poldark (BBC1, Sunday) is the first time BBC drama has returned to Cornwall since…
The Great European Disaster on BBC4 reviewed: propaganda worthy of Leni Riefenstahl
My favourite bit of The Great European Disaster (BBC4, Sunday) was the lingering shot that showed golden heads of corn…
UKIP: The First 100 Days, Channel 4, review: a sad, predictable, desperate hatchet job
Just three months into Ukip’s shock victory as the party of government and already Nigel Farage’s mob are starting to…
The Heckler: how funny really was Spitting Image?
Hold the front page! Spitting Image is back! Well, sort of. A new six-part series, from (some of) the team…
Better Call Saul review: the box set equivalent of a (very) well-made play
I lost count long ago of the number of dinner parties and pub conversations where I’ve had to utter the…
Arabian Motorcycle Adventures review: enthralling and constantly surprising
There were great numbers of young men who had never been in a war and were consequently far from unwilling…
Could it be that Wolf Hall is actually the teeniest bit dull?
In January 1958, the British government began working on the significantly titled Operation Hope Not: its plans for what to…
How consumer habits are subject to the law of unintended consequences
Some time in the 1960s, a group of people in an advertising agency (among them Llewelyn Thomas, son of Dylan)…
Channel 4’s Cyberbully: an unashamedly old-fashioned drama in being both well made and moral
Channel 4’s Cyberbully (Thursday), written by Ben Chanan and David Lobatto, turned out to be a brilliantly gripping drama, even…
How to win MasterChef - and why salmon is the fish of the devil
If ever my near-neighbour William Sitwell is killed in a bizarre shooting accident and I end up taking his place…
BBC1’s Remember Me: the curious case of the killer Yorkshire taps
BBC1’s authentically spooky three-part ghost story Remember Me hasn’t yet revealed what’s really going on in that gloomy Yorkshire town.…
How Hollywood is killing the art of screenwriting
Cinema is tough right now for writers. Thomas W. Hodgkinson reports from the front line at the Austin Film Festival
Don’t sneer at I’m a Celebrity. The show is teaching us to become model citizens
One of the great benefits of having teenage children is that they force you out of your fuddy-duddy comfort zone.…
Jaw-dropping confessions of a very un-PC Plod
There can’t have been many people who watched Confessions of a Copper (Channel 4, Wednesday) with a growing sense of…
James Delingpole falls in love with Grayson Perry - and almost comes round to Chris Huhne
I love Grayson Perry. You might almost call him the anti-Russell Brand: a genuinely talented artist who also has some…
Fellow saddoes rejoice: BBC4 has made a comedy-drama about metal detecting
Detectorists (BBC4) is a sad git’s niche comedy that would never have been commissioned if it hadn’t been written and…
Could the Kenyan mall atrocities happen here?
So you’ve just popped down to the supermarket for the weekly shop, toddlers in tow, when the grenades start to…
Marriage and foreplay Sharia-style
Needless to say, it’s not uncommon to hear single British women in their thirties and forties saying that all the…
BBC2’s Hotel India: slums? What slums?
Viewers who like their TV journalism hard-hitting should probably avoid Hotel India, a new BBC2 series about the Taj Mahal…
Eye-gouging within the first half-hour: the edgy new rules of TV drama
Where is Jessica Hyde? If those words mean nothing to you then I have some excellent news. If not, then…
The Three Musketeers is a triumph - because, like Game of Thrones, no one is safe
‘Pshaw!’ That was my first reaction to news of the BBC’s new ten-part Sunday night adaptation of The Three Musketeers.…
