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Friday Night Lights: Touchdown at last for a scorching sporting saga

Tue, 14 Feb 2012 00:00:01 +0000

As tough pitches for a British television audience go, a drama about high-school American football in small-town Texas must be up there. Yet Friday Night Lights is among the top dramas to come out of the US in recent years with an emotional intensity that hits harder than legendary Chicago Bears player The Fridge.

Ian Burrell: There aren't enough female comics on TV – and the BBC knows it's not funny

Mon, 13 Feb 2012 00:00:01 +0000

This is a critical year for BBC comedy, when it will finally seek to address previous failings in giving a television platform to the funniest women in Britain. The track record is poor. It's now 35 years since Victoria Wood made her breakthrough on That's Life. Since then we've had Dawn French and Jennifer Saunders as the women of the Eighties alternative comedy movement, Caroline Aherne emerging in the guise of Mrs Merton in the Nineties and, for some years now, Jo Brand as a lone funny-woman on panel shows.

Meet the mini-mice: What does it take to make a Miley Cyrus?

Sat, 11 Feb 2012 00:00:01 +0000

Once upon a time, there was a little girl. She had a dream... to be a princess. But not just any princess – she wanted to be a Disney princess.

Cultural Life: Sidse Babett Knudsen, actress

Fri, 10 Feb 2012 00:00:01 +0000

Television: Before I started on 'Borgen', people introduced me to some great American box-sets to convince me that TV could be good. I now watch them all the time. Amy Poehler is very funny in 'Parks and Recreation' and 'In Treatment', with Gabriel Byrne, is also really good. How can one room with just two characters be so captivating? For more laughs I watch 'Modern Family'. Rico Rodriguez is very funny as the son, Manny Delgado.

The Week In Radio: No domestic bliss from these safe suburban sitcoms

Thu, 09 Feb 2012 00:00:01 +0000

What pops into your head when you think of sitcoms? Middle-class households filled with Ikea furniture? Acne-dappled teenagers slumped on sofas delivering withering put-downs to their parents? Neighbours with personality disorders who don't knock before coming into the house? Scripts so rotten that their terrible stench lingers in the memory for years to come?

Sue Cook reflects on two decades of broadcasting at the BBC

Tue, 07 Feb 2012 13:41:49 +0000

Imagine turning on the TV to watch I’m Alan Partridge, Steve Coogan’s celebrated sitcom, and hearing your name mentioned over and over again. It’s something Sue Cook has had to get used to. The comedian constantly talks about her in his show, although she insists their association is pure fantasy.

Slapstick to serious can be a bumpy ride

Mon, 06 Feb 2012 00:00:01 +0000

So what do we think of Miranda Hart's performance so far in Call the Midwife?

The Week In Radio: Balding's golden moments win over a sports cynic

Thu, 02 Feb 2012 00:00:01 +0000

I've never liked sport. As a person whose job basically involves listening to stuff, and whose spine has become embedded in the sofa like an ancient fossil, the last thing I want to do is have my nose rubbed in other people's physical accomplishments. I know what you are going to say: that I'm missing out, that I'm denying myself a wondrous sense of communality with my fellow human beings. There are indeed times when I wish I could lose myself in the glorious highs and gut-wrenching lows of other people's physical endeavour. But where you might see athletes bravely breaking the pain barrier in the name of international sporting achievement, I just see a group of loons running around in circles.

Why mystery man Marlow's return is music to the ears

Wed, 01 Feb 2012 00:00:01 +0000

It was actor Patrick Malahide's naked bottom among the forest bracken that really excited the tabloids in late 1986 – thus beginning the denigration of Britain's greatest television dramatist, Dennis Potter, into the handy red-top label of "Dirty Den". More sophisticated viewers of Potter's The Singing Detective admired the enigmatic sauciness in Joanne Whalley's eyes, as her Nurse Mills rubbed cream on the nether regions of bed-prone author Philip E Marlow (played by Michael Gambon). Either way, the frank sexual scenes were only one part of Potter's masterpiece, and should not distract today's more mature TV audience.

John Walsh: Stand by your four-posters, this soap could get steamier

Tue, 31 Jan 2012 00:00:01 +0000

Just as we're suffering from Downton blues and First World War fatigue (think also War Horse and Birdsong), this new saga of the family and servants at 165 Eaton Place hurtles us forward to autumn, 1938.

Homeland: Beyond the call of duty

Tue, 31 Jan 2012 00:00:01 +0000

Few shows can pull of the difficult trick of executing a near flawless first season. Homeland, the acclaimed US spy drama, which starts on Channel 4 next month, is one of them. The twisty thriller, which stars Claire Danes as an on-the-edge CIA agent struggling to hide her bipolar condition and Damian Lewis as the returning war hero she suspects may be a terrorist plant, won widespread praise in America with the Los Angeles Times calling it "politically resonant, emotionally wrenching and plain old thrilling to watch" and The New Yorker branding it the "standout drama of the new season". At this month's Golden Globes it won best actress and best television drama, the latter award coming at the expense of much-hyped series such as Boardwalk Empire and Game of Thrones.

Spielberg's NBC TV venture Smash is set to divide and multiply

Fri, 27 Jan 2012 00:00:01 +0000

Steven Spielberg's upcoming NBC TV venture, Smash, suggests a whole new future for the story-within-a-story device. Due to air in the UK on Sky Atlantic later this year and starring Anjelica Houston, Debra Messing, and Katharine McPhee, this comedy drama, which premieres in the US on 6 February, presents the backstage politics behind the production of, and the drama of the production process of, a fictional Broadway show about Marilyn Monroe.

The Week In Radio: Still lapping up the delights of a shore-fire success

Thu, 26 Jan 2012 00:00:01 +0000

How has Desert Island Discs done it? How has it survived decades of culls and re-branding to become a broadcasting institution, seemingly impervious to change and yet still crushing the competition with ease? Of course, despite its shades of grandeur and infallibility, being an institution can be dangerous. They are liable to be remodelled or torn down altogether. You can just imagine some pipsqueak controller, desperate to ingratiate themselves with a younger audience, replacing presenter Kirsty Young with Fearne Cotton and rechristening it "Desert Island Downloads".

Jane Lynch: 'I couldn't have coped with fame when I was younger'

Sun, 22 Jan 2012 00:00:01 +0000

My life has changed since 'Glee' I recently went to my doctor and had no make-up on. I didn't look great, and had to put my bag in front of my face when someone tried to take my picture. Then again, when I first picked my daughter up from school, the kids were like, "It's Sue Sylvester." Now I'm just another mum.

'Vi er alle i samme båd,' or, roughly 'we're all in this together'

Sun, 22 Jan 2012 00:00:01 +0000

A telegenic prime minister holding together a shaky coalition and fighting a battle over independence for a smaller neighbour arranges "date nights" to ensure harmony at home. What could be a description of David Cameron's hectic lifestyle sums up the challenges facing Birgitte Nyborg, the fictional prime minister in the hit Danish TV series Borgen, which has become essential viewing in Downing Street.

Pleased to meet you, hope you guess my name: The Swinging Sixties' great get-togethers

Sun, 22 Jan 2012 00:00:01 +0000

It was, as they like to say, a fashion moment: when, in 1962, the photographer David Bailey bundled the model Jean Shrimpton on to a plane to New York with orders to provide British Vogue with some pretty spreads. For a few harum-scarum days the pair zipped around the grottier areas of Manhattan. They brought back a fistful of shots of Shrimpton in an amusement park, a street market, stepping in puddles, and pinned by chain-link fences. The few who saw the shoot never forgot it. Was it fashion photography or street photography?

The war story that inspired Birdsong

Sat, 21 Jan 2012 00:00:01 +0000

If there is one thing a First World War veteran likes, it is a nice cup of tea. When a group of ten old British soldiers arrived at a modern hotel outside Béthune in Flanders on Wednesday afternoon, they and their friends swiftly downed half a dozen two-litre Thermoses beneath the disbelieving eyes of the hotel's middle-aged Madame.

The Week In Radio: I'm sorry, but the celebrity satirists haven't got a clue

Thu, 19 Jan 2012 00:00:01 +0000

Radio 2's Hot Gossip is a panel show hosted by Claudia Winkleman about celebrity tittle-tattle, but not in the shameless we-don't-care-if-you-think-we're-shallow sense. It is, in fact, propelled by shame.

Z Cars: The show that blew the whistle on the British bobby

Wed, 18 Jan 2012 00:00:01 +0000

At the beginning of the 1960s, viewers had two main choices of television cop show; the BBC's Dixon of Dock Green, whose eponymous hero was already aged 59 when the show commenced in 1955, or ITV's No Hiding Place, in which the hawk-like Det Supt Lockhart, who wore his trilby at a rakish angle, righted wrongs and occasionally fluffed his lines.

Putting on a brave front: Behind the scenes of the BBC's epic adaptation of 'Birdsong'

Sun, 15 Jan 2012 00:00:01 +0000

On the banks of a dirty, swollen tributary of the Danube, a picnic is under way. Under bamboo parasols and on heavy rugs lie the remains of a sumptuous spread: baguettes, fruit, cheese, cake, lemon barley water and a wine of rather pricey-looking vintage – 1906 Château Les Alberts Bordeaux. But rather than Budapest in the early 21st century, we are in Amiens 101 years earlier.

The Week In Radio: PMQs prove that Victoria's the true voice of the people

Thu, 12 Jan 2012 00:00:01 +0000

Victoria Derbyshire or Jeremy Vine? It's a bit like asking whether you're a cat or a dog person. If you are disposed to radio phone-in shows then chances are you have a preference. Personally, I'm with Derbyshire. This isn't through any great admiration for her broadcasting style, but more a reflection of my intense allergy to Vine, whose smug, sing-song voice is like kryptonite to my soul. I'd do anything to avoid listening to him goading callers into bellowing about how the country has gone to the dogs and that prison is too good for 'em. When I clock him on the radio in shops or cafés I have been known lunge at the offending equipment, sending small children and old ladies tumbling in my wake.

Andrew Scott: A pin-up who is hard to pin down

Thu, 12 Jan 2012 00:00:01 +0000

An arch-villain who blows raspberries, has "Stayin' Alive" as his ringtone and introduces himself to his enemy with the wheedling words: "Is that a British Army Browning L9A1 in your pocket – or are you just pleased to see me?" It's not quite what you'd expect from Moriarty, the man that Sir Arthur Conan Doyle described as "the Napoleon of Crime, the greatest schemer of all time, the organiser of every devilry, the controlling brain of the underworld, a brain which might have made or marred the destiny of nations". But then little about the BBC's zesty reimagining of Sherlock Holmes for the 21st century is predictable. And, Jim Moriarty, as played by Andrew Scott, is one of the least predictable and most thrilling elements of all.

Edwin Drood: The mysterious appeal of Dickens' darkest tale

Tue, 10 Jan 2012 00:01:16 +0000

The Mystery of Edwin Drood, the tale of an opium-addicted choirmaster with an erotic obsession with his nephew's teenage fiancée, is one of Charles Dickens' darkest and most modern novels.

The Week In Radio: The stylus gurus know how to spin a good yarn

Thu, 05 Jan 2012 00:00:01 +0000

Being a radio DJ is a cinch nowadays. Where once upon a time a DJ had to haul crates of records into work, now they can simply take in their iPod, set it to shuffle and then lie down for an executive nap.

Nothing like a Dane: New thriller Borgen centres on a trailblazing female politician

Thu, 05 Jan 2012 00:00:01 +0000

Who, just 12 months ago, would have predicted that some of us would have become so familiar with Denmark's pool of top actors? That's not to patronise Denmark in any way – it's just that for obvious linguistic reasons, we haven't as a nation been terribly conversant with the Danish acting community. However, the first two series of The Killing have introduced us to many of their leading lights – not only, of course, to Sofie Grabol, who is now an unlikely household name in Britain (well, in the 500,000 households that regularly tune in to the Copenhagen-set thriller), but also to a wide range of new faces who had hitherto been the preserve of Danish viewers or those with a special interest in Scandinavian film and television.

Zooey Deschanel: 'I do try really hard to be normal'

Wed, 04 Jan 2012 00:00:01 +0000

Every now and then actors come along who are the television equivalent of Marmite: those who love them do so with unabashed passion; those who hate them are equally vocal – and the two sides will never agree. Zooey Deschanel is one such actress.

The old favourites who keep on riding their Luck

Mon, 02 Jan 2012 00:00:01 +0000

Television these days is supposed to be about youth.

Neil has a rummage through William's treasure chest

Sun, 01 Jan 2012 00:00:01 +0000

Neil MacGregor's A History of the World in 100 Objects was the best series on the radio in 2010, a magnificently wide-ranging survey of humanity.

It's elementary – just lie back and enjoy

Sun, 01 Jan 2012 00:00:01 +0000

Broadcasters aren't hanging about: the year's highlights begin, well, today.

Ten people who changed the world: Sofie Grabol, star of The Killing

Sat, 31 Dec 2011 00:00:01 +0000

That was a short but sweet cameo by actress Sofie Grabol in Absolutely Fabulous on Christmas Day. You surely saw it. Eddy Monsoon (Jennifer Saunders) fell asleep while watching The Killing on her laptop and dreamt that Grabol's character Sarah Lund, dressed in trademark jeans and Faroese sweater, was nosing around her bedroom in the manner so beloved by fans of the BBC4 drama, lifting and inspecting objects and her searchlight gaze sweeping the room as Eddy gabbled in made-up Danish.

My Secret Life: Hermione Norris, actress, 44

Sat, 31 Dec 2011 00:00:01 +0000

My parents are... My father is dead, my mother was a health worker who was also interested in the arts, and who continues to have an insatiable appetite for culture. I really don't know how she does it.

Ten people who changed the world: Hugo Taylor, Made in Chelsea star

Sat, 31 Dec 2011 00:00:01 +0000

It would probably be going too far to suggest that Hugo Taylor changed the world, all by himself, in 2011. But Hugo and his fellow stars of so-called "structured reality" – Made in Chelsea (MIC); The Only Way is Essex (TOWIE); Desperate Scousewives; Geordie Shore – certainly changed the world of celebrity. Or, at least, nudged it forwards a bit. To be honest, I could have written about TOWIE's Amy Childs instead, given that she brought the vajazzle to public attention. Or Kim Kardashian, the recently married/divorced queen of Stateside structured reality. Or Mark Wright, also of TOWIE, but he was in the jungle filming I'm a Celebrity....

2012: The unmissable cultural treats

Fri, 30 Dec 2011 00:00:01 +0000

From Dickens to phone hacking: Actress Claire Foy talks heroes and villains

Thu, 29 Dec 2011 00:00:01 +0000

For a British actress, tying the ribbons on a period drama bonnet for the first time is an important rite of passage. For Claire Foy, though, the occasion was particularly memorable. In 2008, aged just 24, she landed the lead role in Andrew Davies' 14-part adaptation of Little Dorrit, having previously appeared only in the pilot of Being Human and in a single episode of Doctors. All of a sudden, she was being directed by her teen idol. "I've seen Pride and Prejudice about 4,000 times. I'm not joking: I know every single line. I used to go round to my Aunty Cath's house and we'd all sit under the duvet and spend all day watching the whole thing. I was obsessed," she says. "So when I first saw my bonnet, I was like, 'Are you kidding me?'"

The Week In Radio: Stir childhood memories and allow to simmer

Thu, 29 Dec 2011 00:00:01 +0000

Food is wasted on the radio. If cooking on television is the equivalent of being invited to dine at the chef's table, only to watch with distress as the dishes are taken elsewhere, doing it on the radio is like being denied entry to the restaurant altogether and, deranged with hunger, listening to the sound of chewing through the door. This is why every time they bring out the mixing bowl on Woman's Hour, a little part of me dies. Do I want to hear Jane Garvey swooning over Yotam Ottolenghi's baba ganoush? Unless said chef is prepared to courier a sample to my house, I do not. Would I like Mary Berry's top tips on making the perfect roulade? I'd rather deep-fry my own eyeballs.

Time to laugh at the louche lives of the Edwardians

Mon, 26 Dec 2011 00:00:01 +0000

Alexander Armstrong and Ben Miller only had one problem when making Felix and Murdo, their new Channel 4 comedy about two Edwardian gentlemen of leisure: a national shortage of the correct period costumes. Armstrong takes up the story: "There are so many dramas about that era being made at the moment, from Downton Abbey to Titanic, that trying to hire costumes for Felix and Murdo was a nightmare!"

Andrew Martin: Can I have my Sherlock back, please?

Mon, 26 Dec 2011 00:00:01 +0000

When people berated Steven Spielberg for dumbing down Tintin, I looked on with bemusement, but then I didn't spend half my childhood reading Tintin stories. I did spend half of my childhood reading Sherlock Holmes stories, which is why I have a bone to pick with Guy Ritchie, director of the Christmas blockbuster and nominal Holmes film, A Game Of Shadows.

My Secret Life: Robert Vaughn, actor, 79

Sat, 24 Dec 2011 00:00:01 +0000

My parents were... always on the road. They were actors, so I was raised predominantly by grandparents in Minnesota. I spent holidays with my mother and stepfather but lived in my grandparents' house.

The pick of Christmas television: How to make the most of your holiday viewing

Fri, 23 Dec 2011 00:00:01 +0000

Finally the torrent of festive-themed cookery shows has subsided – no more Jamie/Hugh/Gordon/Nigella/Lorraine/Heston/Hairy Bikers hectoring viewers to try something new this Christmas when they must know that 98 per cent of us will persist with dried-out roast turkey and over-boiled sprouts. No, now is the time for the main event – the family gathered, collectively or individually, round their flickering giant flat-screen TV(s), home cinemas, laptops and mobile phones.

Vanessa Kirby: A Dickens leading lady with a dark side

Thu, 22 Dec 2011 00:00:01 +0000

The first time I saw Vanessa Kirby, she was dead within 20 minutes. Yet the rising British star made a considerable impression as the luckless debutante Ruth Elms in this year's hit BBC2 series The Hour. Beautiful yet fragile, her blonde hair piled high, her presence haunted the show (as well as Ben Whishaw's enamoured investigative reporter) almost effortlessly. Little wonder Paul Taylor, in these very pages, noted Kirby was "a star if ever I saw one", when he reviewed this year's Royal Court production of Anya Reiss's The Acid Test, in which she starred.

The Week In Radio: Festive cheer as Cryer unwraps comedy classics

Thu, 22 Dec 2011 00:00:01 +0000

Take down the tinsel, unplug the lights, remove that life-size glowing reindeer from the roof: Christmas has been called off. I know this because there's no sign of it on Radio 4, and I think we can all agree that if it's not on Radio 4 – the voice of authority, the land of all that is decent and true – then it probably isn't happening at all.

Arts review of 2011 - Television: You've no idea how much we liked watching

Sun, 18 Dec 2011 00:00:01 +0000

Documentary of the Year

Adam Curtis's latest cut-and-paste polemic All Watched Over by Machines of Loving Grace left me typically mesmerised while Terry Pratchett's euthanasia documentary Choosing To Die was unforgettably poignant, if lacking in intellectual rigour.

Arts review of the year - Radio: The lost sons of our wars live on in their playlists

Sun, 18 Dec 2011 00:00:01 +0000

Top of the bill, and recipient of this year's This Is Why I Pay My Licence Fee Award, is Jeremy Vine's five-programme series marking Armistice Day, The Songs My Son Loved.

Steven Moffat: Storyteller in chief

Sat, 17 Dec 2011 00:00:01 +0000

He is sometimes referred to as "The Moff", this inventor of scary monsters who has pitted the Time Lord against the Weeping Angels, a murderous breed of statuesque aliens, and the Smilers, a race of grimacing androids that resemble Steven Berkoff clones dressed as choirboys.

Blue Peter: Is the BBC deserting a sinking ship?

Sat, 17 Dec 2011 00:00:01 +0000

It has entertained and informed generations of children on a Reithian diet of homespun craft skills, adventure and studio pets but Blue Peter yesterday signalled its retreat from the terrestrial airwaves it has dominated for 53 years.

The Week In Radio: Exasperated by only the company of men

Thu, 15 Dec 2011 00:00:01 +0000

It was around 7.57am last Friday, while listening to the Today programme, that I started quietly banging my head on the kitchen table. John Humphrys had introduced a story about the psychological welfare of women who had had abortions. A new report carried out by the Royal College of Psychiatrists suggested that having a termination appeared not to increase the risk of serious mental health problems, a conclusion that contradicts the claims of some anti-abortion groups.

BBC feels the commercial chill of 'fake' documentary

Tue, 13 Dec 2011 00:00:01 +0000

The BBC moved yesterday to protect one of its most valuable international brands amid claims that scenes shown on Sir David Attenborough's acclaimed series Frozen Planet were filmed in a Dutch animal park and not in the wild.

Heads Up: The Borrowers

Sun, 11 Dec 2011 00:00:01 +0000

What are we talking about?

A proper bit of Christmas telly from the BBC: a new adaptation of The Borrowers, Mary Norton's much-loved children's book about tiny people who live under the floorboards.

Simon Cowell: The missing X Factor

Sun, 11 Dec 2011 00:00:01 +0000

They sing, they cry, and then they talk about going on journeys. It could only be The X Factor. Tonight it's the big one, the final we've all been waiting for (though not all for the same reason).

Role play: Laurence Fox on being Mr Billie Piper

Sat, 10 Dec 2011 00:00:01 +0000

Sometimes I think they should teach psychoanalysis at journalism college; it would come in handy when interviewing someone like the actor Laurence Fox. Not that Fox is off his head – far from it – but there seems to me to be some interesting cross-currents swishing around his mental make-up.

The case of the amazing reinvention: On set with the stars of TV’s Sherlock

Fri, 09 Dec 2011 00:00:01 +0000

Next Friday sees the nationwide cinema release of Sherlock Holmes: A Game of Shadows, the follow-up to Guy Ritchie's 2009 blockbuster starring Robert Downey Jr as Holmes and Jude Law as Watson – a cavalier re-imagining of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's fictional detective for the age of the multiplex. Viewers willing to accept fiction's greatest violin-playing sleuth as an unkempt, prize-bareknuckle-fighting slob and the stolid Watson as more kick-arse than Jason Bourne have presumably never been anywhere near the source novels – or if they have, they will be less proprietorial, and have a greater taste for absurdity, than your average Holmesian purist.

The Week In Radio: Oldies show proves you can't always get what you want

Thu, 08 Dec 2011 00:00:01 +0000

Does all modern music sound the same to you? Do you hanker for the days when rock stars knew how to be rock stars? Does the sight of teenagers with their trousers at half-mast make your spleen explode? Have you – though you swore it would never happen – finally morphed into your parents? If so, perhaps it's time to embrace the inexorable slide towards an old age of liquidised ready-meals and Antiques Roadshow.

David Attenborough: Going to extremes

Wed, 07 Dec 2011 00:00:01 +0000

He's shown us polar bears mating, devious Adélie penguins and elephant seals slugging it out on a rocky beach. We've watched the beauty of a polar spring melt into summer, then shivered as the seasons slow and freeze into autumn and winter once more. His voice has soundtracked wolves hunting in the tundra, emperor penguins huddled on Antarctic shores and even the bizarre habits of the Arctic's woolly bear caterpillar, which lives through 14 winters of suspended animation before becoming a moth. Along the way there has been plenty of the sort of high-definition natural history drama that we've come to expect. But tonight, the BBC's latest David Attenborough-narrated epic, Frozen Planet, draws to a close with a depressingly familiar message: it's a fragile world out there, the polar regions are warming and this has profound implications for all life on Earth.

The Week In Radio: No escape from reality in a moving inside story

Thu, 01 Dec 2011 00:00:01 +0000

Radio has never fully explored the reality format so adored by television. I can't help thinking it's missing a trick here. Imagine the pleasure of hearing Just a Minute's Nicholas Parsons shattering contestants' dreams, in gentlemanly fashion, on an X Factor-style sing off: "You now have 60 seconds on Gloria Gaynor's "I Will Survive". Hesitation! Oh, gracious me, what bad luck!" Or how about a cut-price version of I'm a Celebrity... set not in the Australian jungle but a Birmingham housing estate, with Zane Lowe, Melvyn Bragg and Pam Ayres bickering over Pot Noodle rations?

This fine romance won't survive another revival

Mon, 28 Nov 2011 00:00:01 +0000

In Before Sunrise, a sweet and unashamedly pretentious romance that gripped a generation of teenagers 16 years ago with its youthful optimism and promise of adventure, Jesse, a main character, jokes about making a reality TV programme that would capture "the poetry of day-to-day life".

Heads Up: This is England '88

Sun, 27 Nov 2011 00:00:01 +0000

What are we talking about?

A new This is England...instalment from director Shane Meadows, in what is turning out to be quite the ongoing project.

The power of Community

Fri, 25 Nov 2011 00:00:01 +0000

It's the best show never to have been on a mainstream UK television channel, an idiosyncratic comedy filled with movie pastiches, Eighties in-jokes and knowing nods to everything from Downton Abbey to Doctor Who.

The Week In Radio: Bedtime stories that are still the stuff of dreams

Thu, 24 Nov 2011 00:00:01 +0000

Where would radio be without literature? Stuck with hours of dead air, that's where. Just as we cram our shelves with books at home, so radio commissioners use them to grout the gaps between news programmes, science documentaries and The Archers. Look at the schedules and you'll see them all over the place, being discussed, dissected, dramatised or simply read out loud, Jackanory-style.

The Killing: When celibacy and sleuthing make for a fatal attraction

Wed, 23 Nov 2011 00:00:01 +0000

Raymond Chandler would have approved of The Killing's Sarah Lund, although perhaps not of he casual jumper and jeans get-up – after all Philip Marlowe "dresses as well as can be expected", which in the 1940s would have meant a suit, tie and hat. Rather Marlowe's creator would have approved of the fact that Lund has so far eschewed becoming romantically embroiled – with either cop partners or suspects.

Barbican celebrates Avengers' 50th anniversary

Fri, 18 Nov 2011 00:00:01 +0000

It was supposed to be disposable light entertainment: a knockabout spy-fi show that was as much about Sixties fashion as nuclear fission. Half a century on, however, The Avengers is one of the most cherished British television series ever.

The Week In Radio: Still the No 1 news show for a new world order

Thu, 17 Nov 2011 00:00:01 +0000

There's a certain type of listener that organises their day around what's on the radio. The Today programme might haul them out of bed on a weekday morning and see them through breakfast and ablutions, while lunch might be accompanied by Jeremy Vine declaiming about cuckolding vicars. For me, Friday evenings aren't complete without a glass of wine and the sound of Jonathan Dimbleby on Any Questions quietly banging his head on the desk at being called David for the 874th time.

Return of the TV Western

Tue, 15 Nov 2011 00:00:01 +0000

Slow-talking men with mysterious pasts, good-time gals and feisty frontierswomen, barroom brawlers and fast-fisted double talkers; it can only mean one thing – the television Western is back in fashion, and in a big way.

Going live: When TV glitches attack

Mon, 14 Nov 2011 00:00:01 +0000

You can remove drug-addled contestants from talent competitions, but even shows with the biggest budgets can't take technical hitches out of live television . The X Factor has had plenty of challenges to contend with this series, after being overtaken in its ratings battle with the BBC's rival Strictly Come Dancing and having to throw wannabe popstar Frankie Cocozza off the programme for boasting about drug taking. But Saturday night saw it faced with two new problems.

My secret life: Lyndsey Marshal, actress, 33

Sat, 12 Nov 2011 00:00:01 +0000

My parents are... My mum still lives in Manchester. My dad passed away when I was 19 and at drama school – he had heart failure – so that was quite a big thing. I'm very, very close to my mum, though I don't see her as much as I'd like to.

One Minute With: Simon Mayo, radio presenter

Fri, 11 Nov 2011 00:00:01 +0000

Where are you now and what can you see?

The Week In Radio: The careerist comics who are taking the mic

Thu, 10 Nov 2011 00:00:01 +0000

Being funny on the radio should be a breeze for comics. You'd think they'd be in their element: on a stage with a microphone, with the added advantage that their listeners, scattered across the country rather than crammed in the back room of a pub, can't see the sweat patches forming under their arms.

From high school dreams to American screams

Mon, 07 Nov 2011 00:00:01 +0000

Most people find working on one television show to be an exhausting affair; however, most people are not Ryan Murphy.

David Abraham: 'Channel 5 thinks it's clever, but we're still the No 1'

Mon, 07 Nov 2011 00:00:01 +0000

David Abraham, chief executive of Channel 4 for the past 18 months, says he is not worried by the apparent resurgence of its rival Channel 5, owned by the maverick media mogul Richard Desmond. He sleeps easily at night, partly because he is convinced that Channel 4 is performing better than its critics suggest and partly because he doesn't accept the narrative that says Channel 5 is on the up, with profits soaring and a new, young audience arriving to watch Big Brother, a show his own channel made famous.

'We often deal in taboo...' - Ricky Gervais and Stephen Merchant