TV
Bring up the bodies
BBC2’s one-off drama Then Barbara Met Alan(Monday) told the true story of how two disabled performers on the cabaret circuit…
An Englishwoman in Paris
A couple of years ago, I happened to read Graham Norton’s third novel Home Stretch. Rather patronisingly, perhaps, I was…
Lobster and dead pig
ITV’s new version of The Ipcress File began with a close-up of a pair of black-rimmed glasses just like those…
Rapper’s delight
The most disappointing pop performance I’ve ever seen – and in the course of my 15-odd years as a music…
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…
(no title)
According to the makers, This is Going to Hurt is intended as ‘a love letter to the national health service’.…
The great pretender
It’s 1993 and you’re studying at a top agricultural college with a bright future ahead of you, perhaps in farming…
Dog’s breakfast
It has taken me a while to watch Yellowjacketsbecause I found the premise so offputting: in 1996 a plane carrying…
Women beware women
As you may have noticed, it’s something of a golden age for TV shows about how invisible middle-aged women are…
If you watch one thing this Christmas, make it The Witcher
If you only watch one thing on TV this Christmas, make it The Witcher(Netflix). It’s by turns funny, exciting, scary,…
1963 and all that
For people who like a good upper-class scandal (or ‘people’, as they’re also known), 1963 was definitely a vintage year.…
Tolkien rubbish
A couple of years ago, in that near-forgotten era when we could travel almost freely, I canvassed social media as…
I saw a film today, oh boy
My late friend Alexander Nekrassov loathed the Beatles, which I used to think was a wantonly contrary position akin to…
Formula milquetoast
If it weren’t for this job I sometimes wonder whether I’d even bother watching TV at all. This mood strikes…
The root of the matter
Thanks to Covid, the days are gone — or at least suspended — when a TV travel programme meant a…
Who dares wins
BBC1 continuity excitedly introduced the first in the new series of Doctor Who as ‘bigger and better than ever’ —…
Take two women
Passing is Rebecca Hall’s adaptation of the Nella Larsen novella (1929) about two biracial women, one of whom chooses to…
Dutch courage
The Forgotten Battle is a Dutch feature film commemorating the desperate and relatively little-known Allied assault on the Scheldt estuary…
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…
The quiet Glaswegian
Robert Jackman talks to Robert Carlyle about Begbie, playing a Tory prime minister and the merits of keeping your head down
O what a lovely Waugh!
Sumptuous, glorious, luminous, lavish: Granada’s 40-year-old adaptation of Brideshead Revisited remains the sine qua non of mini-series, says Mark McGinness
Heart and Seoul
Should we be worried that Squid Game is the most popular show in Netflix’s history? If it’s a case of…
A spoonful of Sugar
Murder Island features eight real-life ‘ordinary people’ seeking to solve a fictional killing on a fictional Scottish island. What follows…
Comic genius
A global pandemic is no match for the Marvel multiverse, says Rosie Millard
Follow the science
It is, of course, not unknown for a man to become famous with the support of his family — and,…
