http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/tv/features/?service=Rss http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/tv/features/cardiff-confidential-saying-farewell-to-gavin-amp-stacey-1824969.html http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/tv/features/cardiff-confidential-saying-farewell-to-gavin-amp-stacey-1824969.html ]]> <p> Just 24 months ago, the first series of Gavin & Stacey had finished airing on BBC3, attracting a respectable but hardly earth-shattering half a million viewers and a few approving reviews. </p> Features Sat, 21 Nov 2009 00:00:01 +0000 http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/tv/features/cast-offs--time-to-cast-a-new-light-on-disability-1823710.html http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/tv/features/cast-offs--time-to-cast-a-new-light-on-disability-1823710.html ]]> <p>Just because Stephen Hawking – a famously disabled spastic – created black holes while sitting in his wheelchair, it doesn't mean you will be able to." These were the opening lines in Campus, the improvised sitcom pilot by Green Wing creator Victoria Pile that began Channel 4's new Comedy Showcase season earlier this month. They were delivered to a disabled student by the vice chancellor of Campus's fictional (it would have to be) Kirke University, and were supposed to establish the character as a thoroughly un-PC mix of David Brent and Malcolm Tucker from The Thick of It. They were also presumably intended to shock the audience. But did they?</p> Features Fri, 20 Nov 2009 00:00:01 +0000 http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/tv/features/observations-in-line-for-the-skins-revolution-1823830.html http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/tv/features/observations-in-line-for-the-skins-revolution-1823830.html <p> It's 10 o'clock on a damp Sunday morning in the Lower East Side of Manhattan and the area, formerly home to bums and punks and most recently colonised by young professionals, hipsters and the odd celebrity, has today been taken over by a long line of chattering teenagers. </p> Features Fri, 20 Nov 2009 00:00:01 +0000 http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/tv/features/rupert-penryjones-its-nice-not-to-be-chasing-a-bad-guy-1819456.html http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/tv/features/rupert-penryjones-its-nice-not-to-be-chasing-a-bad-guy-1819456.html ]]> <p>Rupert Penry-Jones, alias Adam Carter, the unflappable spy from Spooks, alias Richard Hannay, the unflappable and bounderish spy from last Christmas's 39 Steps remake, alias Donald Maclean, the unflappable, bounderish and real-life spy from the BBC drama Cambridge Spies – in short, television's most conspicuous undercover agent – is sitting stiffly in the Royal Court's bar trying not to be seen or heard by the gaggle of female pensioners having a pre-matinee lunch on the next table. He looks uncharacteristically unheroic today, in an outfit which subtly screams "rehearsing actor" – floppy tracksuit bottoms, innumerable, indefinable woolly layers and one of those heated, lavender-scented neck warmers draped delicately around his shoulders. He's about to open in The Priory, his first play since landing the career-rocket of a role in Spooks seven years ago, and his back has gone. "It always happens," he sighs. I nod sympathetically. A tricky on-set stunt? A hardcore gym session? "Stress," he winces and turns, painfully, pitifully even, to ask what the soup of the day is. "But it's nice not to be carrying a gun and chasing a bad guy, you know?"</p> Features Fri, 13 Nov 2009 00:00:01 +0000 http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/tv/features/the-week-in-radio-when-poetry-becomes-an-adventure-1818836.html http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/tv/features/the-week-in-radio-when-poetry-becomes-an-adventure-1818836.html <p>If I had a fiver for everyone I've heard say, "I never watch any television apart from the news and David Attenborough", well, it would probably cover my licence fee. But while there being Nothing on TV has been a staple moan of British cultural life for some time now, radio is in far happier shape. The Rajar figures for the third quarter of the year were good for the BBC, especially Radios 3, 4 and 5 Live. There were all sorts of explanations, including the Ashes and the Proms and global economic meltdown to explain why people were reaching for the radio. Yet perhaps it comes down to the fact that radio simply does some things better. </p> Features Thu, 12 Nov 2009 00:00:01 +0000 http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/tv/features/the-couch-surfer-matt-damons-green-zone-is-bourne-again-but-this-time-in-baghdad-1817171.html http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/tv/features/the-couch-surfer-matt-damons-green-zone-is-bourne-again-but-this-time-in-baghdad-1817171.html <p> Matt Damon has either the best taste in Hollywood, or the best agent. </p> Features Mon, 09 Nov 2009 00:00:30 +0000 http://www.independent.co.uk/news/media/tv-radio/a-fictional-trial-of-life-and-death-for-gary-glitter-1817213.html http://www.independent.co.uk/news/media/tv-radio/a-fictional-trial-of-life-and-death-for-gary-glitter-1817213.html ]]> <p> It's 6.30am and my crew are setting upfor the first location shoot for The Execution of Gary Glitter. </p> TV & Radio Mon, 09 Nov 2009 00:00:20 +0000 http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/tv/features/collision--anatomy-of-an-accident-1815520.html http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/tv/features/collision--anatomy-of-an-accident-1815520.html ]]> <p>What do the following dead people have in common: Albert Camus, Jackson Pollock, James Dean, Jayne Mansfield, General George Patton and Princesses Grace and Diana? Diana's inclusion in the list should be the killer clue that this is a roll call of celebrities who departed this life in a car crash, although road traffic accidents are a common-enough experience for us civilians, too – and not just from rubber-necking motorway pile-ups. I have personally known two people who have died in their cars and I imagine that is a fairly average tally.</p> Features Fri, 06 Nov 2009 00:00:01 +0000 http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/tv/features/the-week-in-radio-keep-taking-a-trip-down-memory-lane-1814763.html http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/tv/features/the-week-in-radio-keep-taking-a-trip-down-memory-lane-1814763.html ]]> <p>There are times when the whole of BBC radio seems in the grip of one vast, unstoppable wave of reminiscence, like some garrulous granny of the airwaves whom no one likes to interrupt. Nostalgia is the order of the day. Here's just a small list of things people have been nostalgic about this week. The Berlin Wall. The M1 motorway. The BBC's Maida Vale studios. Victorian photography. Izal lavatory paper. Yes, lavatory paper! The nasty, hard, shiny kind. Incredibly there was an entire programme about this on Radio 4, Now Wash Your Hands, which examined how Izal was made, how it was good for writing on and playing with a comb. What it actually felt like on the skin. What feelings were aroused by its coal tar aroma. You can keep your madeleines, Marcel Proust. Here in Britain, we get misty-eyed over medicated loo roll. </p> Features Thu, 05 Nov 2009 00:00:01 +0000 http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/tv/features/should-we-switch-off-the-x-factor-1814767.html http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/tv/features/should-we-switch-off-the-x-factor-1814767.html ]]> Features Thu, 05 Nov 2009 00:00:01 +0000 http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/tv/features/spooks-a-drama-that-sees-the-future-1813576.html http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/tv/features/spooks-a-drama-that-sees-the-future-1813576.html ]]> <p>Call it sixth sense. The makers of Spooks, BBC1's hit MI5 drama, which begins its eighth series on Wednesday, seem to have an uncanny knack of knowing what's about to happen in the news. </p> Features Tue, 03 Nov 2009 00:00:01 +0000 http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/music/features/the-agitator-i-have-deceived-my-friends-and-i-had-millions-of-them-1813550.html http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/music/features/the-agitator-i-have-deceived-my-friends-and-i-had-millions-of-them-1813550.html ]]> <p> The 2nd of November, like each of its 364 essential cousins of calendar, is almost inevitably twinned with an historic anniversary snoozing somewhere in the catacombs of history </p> Features Mon, 02 Nov 2009 17:50:50 +0000 http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/tv/features/the-couch-surfer-if-political-parties-insist-on-invading-pop-culture-they-wont-reengage-anybody-1813058.html http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/tv/features/the-couch-surfer-if-political-parties-insist-on-invading-pop-culture-they-wont-reengage-anybody-1813058.html <p> There's always something a trifle silly about a political party trying to attract young voters. What I really mean is, there's always something a trifle silly about the Conservatives trying to attract young voters. </p> Features Mon, 02 Nov 2009 00:00:01 +0000 http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/tv/features/how-tv-drama-became-university-challenged-1811485.html http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/tv/features/how-tv-drama-became-university-challenged-1811485.html ]]> <p>From Brideshead Revisited to Lucky Jim, CP Snow to David Lodge, and Howard Jacobson to Howard Kirk, universities and their sometimes insalubrious employees form a fruitful and well-established genre of British literature. Our television drama and comedy, on the other hand, seem strangely averse to higher education, as if the subject opposes the medium's demotic instincts. I would hazard a guess that the vast majority of people in TV are graduates. However it's as if the gonk-wielding swots on University Challenge have reinforced a very British stereotype of the intellectual and persuaded generations of commissioning editors – probably against their own experience – that academia is deeply uninteresting and fit only for an occasional snigger.</p> Features Fri, 30 Oct 2009 00:00:01 +0000 http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/tv/features/small-world-how-television-ate-itself-1811071.html http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/tv/features/small-world-how-television-ate-itself-1811071.html ]]> <p>Once, there were two Jerry Seinfelds. There was Jerry Seinfeld, now 55, a stand-up comedian from Brooklyn, New York and the creator of his own self-titled sitcom, Seinfeld – one of the most popular TV shows of all time. And then there was "Jerry Seinfeld", a just-about-fictional stand-up comedian from Brooklyn, New York and the creator of his own eponymous sitcom, Jerry – which was cancelled after a single episode. "Jerry", as played by Jerry, was the protagonist of Seinfeld, and ceased to exist when that show wrapped for the last time in 1998.</p> Features Thu, 29 Oct 2009 00:00:01 +0000 http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/tv/features/can-tv-be-radical-again-1810368.html http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/tv/features/can-tv-be-radical-again-1810368.html ]]> <p>How's this for an unlikely scenario? The 30th anniversary of Margaret Thatcher coming to power is being marked this autumn by a publicly-funded arts body. Not that the British Film Institute's United Kingdom! season is a direct anniversary salute to the prime minister who so drastically altered the broadcasting landscape in this country – it's more a handy peg on which to hang an overview of the proud tradition of radical British television drama, from Cathy Come Home to Shameless.</p> Features Wed, 28 Oct 2009 00:00:01 +0000 http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/tv/features/the-couch-surfer-im-not-proud-of-any-of-this-but-i-hope-it-doesnt-make-me-a-weirdo-1809340.html http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/tv/features/the-couch-surfer-im-not-proud-of-any-of-this-but-i-hope-it-doesnt-make-me-a-weirdo-1809340.html <p>I did it again. I swore I wouldn't. But I did it again. This time, it happened when I was watching Spiderman, as a crowd of New Yorkers hurled detritus at the Green Goblin from the Brooklyn Bridge. "You mess with Spidey, you mess with New York!" one of them cried, showing real pluck for someone who had just wanged a plank of wood at a grenade-toting lunatic squatting on a hoverboard.</p> Features Mon, 26 Oct 2009 00:00:01 +0000 http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/tv/features/log-on-to-see-the-last-days-of-tortured-turing-1808404.html http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/tv/features/log-on-to-see-the-last-days-of-tortured-turing-1808404.html <p>A fictionalised account of the final moments in the life of Alan Turing is to be premiered via The Independent website from today. In the first collaboration of its kind between a national newspaper and an independent production company, the radio drama features Samuel Barnett, star of History Boys and Desperate Romantics, as the Bletchley Park code breaker. He died in 1954, eating an apple laced with cyanide after being convicted of gross indecency. The shame meant Turing was dropped from sensitive government work.</p> Features Sat, 24 Oct 2009 00:00:01 +0100 http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/tv/features/how-jack-bauers-sidekick-turned-nemesis-1807225.html http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/tv/features/how-jack-bauers-sidekick-turned-nemesis-1807225.html ]]> <p>Off screen, Carlos Bernard and Kiefer Sutherland, the actors who play Tony Almeida and Jack Bauer, the apparently un-killable counter-terrorism agents in 24, are the best of friends. With that slow, almost whispered drawl familiar to the squillions of 24 fans around the world, Bernard describes their relationship: "Let me put it this way. I had a party at my house the other night, and Kiefer was the last person to leave, at five in the morning."</p> Features Fri, 23 Oct 2009 00:00:01 +0100