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The Weekend's Viewing: Melancholy Isaacs prevents a case of cosiness

Mon, 20 May 2013 00:01:41 +0100

Never work with children or animals, said W C Fields.

Matt Butler: Now Strauss is making history in the commentary box

Sun, 19 May 2013 22:53:04 +0100

History was made on Friday, with the first televised crap at Lord's. Sorry, history was made on Friday, with the first televised "crap" at Lord's. And it was uttered by none other than a former England captain.

Sport On TV: Frankie Dettori leaves David Beckham in his shadow. That's no small feat

Sun, 19 May 2013 00:00:00 +0100

Channel 4 News seems to be losing its sense of perspective. Last week Fergie's retirement booted the Queen's Speech into touch, and this Thursday's bulletin led with Jon Snow declaring: "We are in the midst of racing's horrifying perfect storm."

TV review: Life of Crime - Best get your story straight, ma'am ...

Sat, 18 May 2013 20:15:00 +0100

Spanning three decades in total, ITV's three-part cop drama Life of Crime, lurched from 1985 to 1997 last week. The telly shorthand hasn't grown any more subtle: while the Eighties were cued with Culture Club and Maggie Thatcher on the radio, endemic sexism and racism throughout the Met, and the Brixton riots (and all filmed in a nicotine-yellow grimy hue), for the crisper Nineties we've got Blur and Oasis, chunky mobile phones and Diana dying.

Radio review: The Science of Music - The strange case of the singing Neanderthals

Sat, 18 May 2013 20:15:00 +0100

Music is more than mere entertainment, that much is clear. And I don't just mean that for every bit of fluff by Jedward or Psy there's a masterpiece by Janacek or Sibelius. It's more that music goes deep inside us, literally.

Last Night's Viewing: The Murder Workers, Channel 4 The Tube: an Underground History, BBC2

Fri, 17 May 2013 00:00:00 +0100

"Nice as you are, I wish I'd never met you," said one of the mothers in The Murder Workers. She was talking to Alli, a woman nobody would want to meet in a professional capacity, since Alli is a member of Victim Support's homicide team, a group of specialist social workers who help the relatives of murder victims negotiate the immediate aftermath of the crime.

Last Night's Viewing: The Apprentice, BBC1 Bankers, BBC2

Thu, 16 May 2013 00:00:00 +0100

I think The Apprentice may have peaked a little early this year. I'm not convinced we're going to get a better mission statement than the one delivered in the opening episode: "We're going to run like hell to sell those ukuleles", a line that to me cries out to be set to music.

TV review: Here Comes Honey Boo Boo (TLC) is certainly educational television

Wed, 15 May 2013 08:42:15 +0100

The richest irony about Here Comes Honey Boo Boo may be the name of the channel that brings it to us -- TLC, formerly The Learning Channel, which began life delivering educational content in the States but later discovered a far more prosperous existence as a feed-pipe for low-brow reality swill.

Last night's viewing - The Fall, BBC2; The Flying Archaeologist, BBC4

Tue, 14 May 2013 00:00:00 +0100

"No one knows what's going on in someone else's mind and life would be intolerable if we did," murmurs Paul to his wife soothingly. Paul knows what he's talking about. He's a therapist and bereavement counsellor and, apparently, a loving father, currently a little preoccupied, like his wife, by his daughter's recurrent nightmares. In fact, the two of them are in her bed, the little girl having been resettled in the parental room after waking up screaming.

TV review: Olivia Colman can do no wrong - But The Suspicions of Mr Whicher (ITV) was a mistake

Mon, 13 May 2013 08:22:02 +0100

It is the considered opinion of this column that Olivia Colman can do no wrong. It's also its considered opinion that she's just made a mistake, a rare one in a career that's so far been marked by what the X Factor crowd would call great song selection. Whether by happy accident or canny judgement, the shows Colman has appeared in have displayed her talents brilliantly, beginning with comedies that showed how vividly she registers, even when she's in the background, to dramas that revealed the intensity of her acting. But I'm not sure you can add The Suspicions of Mr Whicher to the list – a sequel to an earlier dramatisation of Kate Summerscale's book about a notorious case involving a real Victorian detective. If it's any consolation to her, she isn't the only good actor to have been led astray, since the excellent Paddy Considine is back as the moody Whicher, who has left the Met and now appears to take new cases on the basis of personal curiosity and serendipity.

TV review: Pride and Prejudice, Having a Ball - Miss Austen, shall we enjoy rapid motion?

Sat, 11 May 2013 19:10:00 +0100

Anyone out there who still thinks Jane Austen was a prim spinster who produced genteel portraits of Regency society? Watching Pride and Prejudice: Having a Ball, it occurred to me that the first revisionist pamphlet revealing her to be a sex-crazed nutbag probably came out the Tuesday after she died. As the presenters Amanda Vickery and Alastair Sooke reminded us, Austen wrote approvingly of "the felicities of rapid motion". Well, quite.

Radio review: It's My Story: Knowing Me, Know Autism

Sat, 11 May 2013 19:10:00 +0100

There were numerous strategies open to Robyn Steward for living with Asperger's syndrome. She decided on hers at an early age. "I wanted to be like Pink Floyd … and go on tours and stuff." And that's exactly what she has done, developing what is effectively an autism roadshow, giving us "neurotypicals" an insight into life on the spectrum.

TV review: Sex on Wheels (Channel 4) - a look at the carnal needs of four disabled individuals

Fri, 10 May 2013 08:52:43 +0100

It can’t be very often that a mother arranges for her son to be visited by a prostitute. But then desperate times called for desperate measures, reasoned Tracy in the documentary Sex on Wheels – her 26-year-old son John’s severe learning disabilities getting in the way of an active sex life, or indeed any kind of sex life.

TV review: Great Artists in Their Own Words, BBC4

Thu, 09 May 2013 00:00:00 +0100

"Sometimes I see wonderful and beautiful things on television, which I like and which interest me... but sometimes it's appalling." You and me both, Pablo.

First Night: I'm sick of clichés, says Lord Sugar as the The Apprentice returns

Wed, 08 May 2013 10:58:34 +0100

Summoning the latest assortment of 16 to the boardroom at midnight – a tactic which smacked more of the Mafia than modern business practice – Lord Sugar announced that he was “sick of the clichés”, before duly unleashing one of The Apprentice’s favourite clichés - the roll-call of insanely delusional braggadocio.

TV review - Hannibal (Sky Living) needs more bite

Wed, 08 May 2013 09:49:00 +0100

Psychological profile: Hannibal. Residence: Sky Living. Age: 32 (Bits of plot can be traced back to parts of Thomas Harris's Red Dragon). Motivations/desires: Using one of literature and film's most captivating psychopaths to put a bloody new spin on the hoariest of TV genres, the crime procedural. Conclusion: Needs more fava beans.

Matt Butler: Carragher's combative edge should sharpen up the studio

Mon, 06 May 2013 00:55:52 +0100

Sportspeople are wired differently from us mere mortals. Whether you watched Bradley Wiggins grunting his way round Ischia or Jamie Carragher throwing himself into tackles in his last Merseyside derby yesterday, it was plain to see that just taking part is not an option.

The Weekend's Viewing: In Russell Lewis, Endeavour has a writer who knows when to stop

Mon, 06 May 2013 00:01:26 +0100

Your affection for a television programme can sometimes boil down to the smallest things. I've fallen for Endeavour over the last four weeks, a classy bit of Sunday-night escapism that, on paper, had some prejudices to overcome. It's a spin-off for one thing, which always feels a little indolent as a commission. It's also two hours long, which needn't be a defect in a drama, but does put quite a high premium on it having some compensatory virtues. And it's a period piece, which raises the danger that a Bakelite telephone or a vintage Vauxhall Cresta will used as a substitute for the kind of qualities you can't simply hire from a prop house. But Endeavour has risen above all these disadvantages, largely because in Russell Lewis's hands it knows when to stop.

Christopher Maume on Jemima Khan and the Part-Time Wife: Please introduce me to all of your wives …

Sat, 04 May 2013 17:30:32 +0100

Polygamy in Islam: what a good idea. A man or woman can have up to four wives or husbands at any one time. I wouldn’t fancy it myself, but if everybody’s happy with the arrangement ....

Mike Higgins on Vicious: Forget the cast, where are the gags?

Sat, 04 May 2013 17:30:20 +0100

If the bitchy squabbles of ageing actors and civil service drudgery is the best ITV can offer, thank goodness for Ron Swanson…

Last Night's Viewing: The Repo Man, Channel 4 12-Year-Old Lifer (the story of Paul Gingerich), Channel 4

Fri, 03 May 2013 00:00:00 +0100

Feeling better because of the spring sunshine? Daring to hope that things are getting better at last? If so you might want to avoid Sean James. "We don't live in a civilized country at all," Sean said gloomily at the beginning of Arron Fellows' film about his work. "The human race is shit."

Last Night's Viewing: Scott & Bailey, ITV1 Dara O Briain: School of Hard Sums, Dave

Thu, 02 May 2013 00:00:00 +0100

Scott & Bailey, it is becoming increasingly clear, actually takes place in an alternative universe, broadly indistinguishable from the one its viewers occupy but given away by one significant inversion. In our universe senior police officers are mostly men. In theirs it looks as if promotion exclusively favours women.

TV review - Archaeology: a Secret History, BBC4

Wed, 01 May 2013 00:00:00 +0100

Some of the things you dig up from underground can be explosive, a point that Richard Miles was at pains to make at the beginning of Archaeology: a Secret History. "What we believe about the stories that they tell us can be very powerful indeed," he said, a point that hardly needs underlining for some BBC executives right now.

Vicious reviews round-up: 'A Greggs doughnut of a show' or 'nostalgic fun'? Critics divided over ITV sitcom

Tue, 30 Apr 2013 10:47:31 +0100

Vicious has attracted a few vicious remarks. It was too dated, too theatrical and too camp for most, aside from The Metro who called it “such nostalgic fun”. The reviewers ridiculed the canned laughter and claimed that the show put too much "com" into "sitcom", setting up each line as a punchline but with little punch to go with it. The first episode attracted a fair 5.7 million viewers, but Vicious has a long way to go to reach the ratings achieved by its previous slot Broadchurch.

TV review: Vicious (ITV) starring Sirs Ian McKellen and Derek Jacobi - The only laughter it provokes is canned

Tue, 30 Apr 2013 08:42:00 +0100

For the next six weeks, Monday evening on ITV is a study in comic contrasts, almost scientific in its clarity. At 9pm you can watch Vicious, a sitcom filmed in front of a studio audience in classic three-camera style. And then at 9.30 you get The Job Lot, a single-camera comedy set in a Midlands job centre. One is a star vehicle, featuring Ian McKellen and Derek Jacobi as an elderly gay couple, and offering regular slots to Frances de la Tour and Marcia Warren as female friends. The other is an ensemble piece, with several recognisable faces but no standout star. One of them is accompanied throughout by the raucous laughter of people so gripped by hilarity that they sound as if they're on the brink of being hospitalised. The other is actually funny.

TV review: The Village continues to be tough going for its audience treading an unrelentingly gloomy path

Mon, 29 Apr 2013 09:26:29 +0100

The Village is appointment television, but it's one of those appointments – as for a dental descaling, say, or a colonoscopy – that you can easily find yourself making an excuse to postpone. It happened to me last week. Fifteen minutes shy of transmission, I bottled it. It had been a long day.

Matt Butler: East German revelations more than a tasty soundbite

Sun, 28 Apr 2013 22:53:24 +0100

When the professional wrestlers "Road Dogg" Jesse James and Billy Gunn offered their opinions on Sky Sports News on "that guy from Liver... uh... the soccer player", it was safe to say that we had heard more than enough about Luis Suarez and his bite.

Broadchurch to The Politician's Husband: Tennant's extra... we just can't get enough

Sat, 27 Apr 2013 18:30:00 +0100

You do wonder how an actor must feel after a week such as David Tennant has had. No sooner had he cleared up the child murder in Broadchurch, than he was out of that shabby suit and off to the barber's for The Politician's Husband. From one unassailable hit to a classy fable of political hubris. From ITV to BBC. From ageing Bieber cut to silver fox.

Last Night's Viewing: The Politician's Husband (BBC2) - Paula Milne's entertaining drama is too fast and flimsy to reflect real life

Fri, 26 Apr 2013 09:00:00 +0100

The first woman you see in The Politician's Husband is vacuuming the floor of the Chamber of the House. The second is pushing a cleaner's trolley and the fourth is polishing the floor of a Westminster lobby.

TV review: Great Bear Stakeout (BBC1) opened my eyes to sociopaths in fun-fur overcoats

Thu, 25 Apr 2013 12:00:00 +0100

"You'll never think of bears in the same way again," promised Billy Connolly at the beginning of Great Bear Stakeout. Oh, come off it, Billy, I thought. That's just boilerplate puff, isn't it? I felt pretty confident that what I thought about bears before the programme began – not to be crossed lightly, big fans of salmon, touchy parents – was broadly going to be what I thought of them when it ended.

TV review - Ben Elton's The Wright Way (BBC1) is groan-inducing

Wed, 24 Apr 2013 09:00:00 +0100

Like Dr Frankenstein, Ben Elton appears to have created his new sitcom, The Wright Way – his first for more than 10 years – by exhuming the body parts of different comedies and stitching them together. The result is an odd, lurching affair, sometimes funny but occasionally so groan-inducing that you want to gather a mob with torches and pitchforks.

Last night's viewing - Panorama: Secrets of Britain's Sharia Councils, BBC1; Game of Thrones, Sky Atlantic

Tue, 23 Apr 2013 00:00:00 +0100

There is a good documentary to be made about Britain's Sharia courts and the paradoxes and problems that can arise when two legal systems overlap. Unfortunately, the Panorama film The Secrets of Britain's Sharia Councils wasn't it. Jane Corbin's report turned out to be a muddled affair, fudged and unclear about the difference between a voluntary arbitration system and an institution with legally binding powers.

Broadchurch TV review: The curtain comes down Britain's answer to The Killing (so who was the killer?)

Mon, 22 Apr 2013 23:06:45 +0100

After suspecting every single cast member in turn during the course of a compelling and occasionally brilliant crime thriller that has been widely-touted as Britain's answer to The Killing, viewers of ITV's Broadchurch had been steered rather sharply towards the chief suspect last week. Not least when he muttered the immortal words to his wife “you don't think it was me ?!”

Matt Butler: Concerned, sensitive and, thankfully, nothing like Madeley

Mon, 22 Apr 2013 00:16:01 +0100

Broadcasting after a disaster requires a balance to be struck. Presenters have to walk a fine line between saying too little or too much. And their choice of words is crucial as well. It is all too easy either to go all Richard Madeley and trample all over people's sensitivities, or become like a reality singing contest voiceover person and lay on the mawkishness too thickly.

The Weekend's Viewing: From post-war analgesic to novelistic complexity, anyone interested in the history of American TV would have enjoyed this

Mon, 22 Apr 2013 00:01:56 +0100

America in Primetime contained the single best thing I've ever heard said about great television drama – seven sentences as good as seven weeks of scriptwriting masterclasses. The speaker was David Chase, creator and writer of The Sopranos, and his subject was indirection. He was explaining how his dissatisfaction with the television he was watching shaped the television he made. “People in TV always said exactly what was on their mind, especially in a family situation. But people don't. We all know that. We've all been to Thanksgiving dinners. I would say that 90 per cent of what Tony said, or Christopher, or Paulie or any of them was not the truth. If Tony says 'yes' he means 'no', if he says 'no' he means 'yes'. If Tony says, 'No... I'm in a good mood', you know someone is going down in about four seconds.” In a film eager to exhort us into retrospective admiration, full of very good writers praising the writing that inspired them, that was the line that made the hair stand up on the back of your neck. That's The Sopranos encapsulated, a drama that trusted the audience to do something they do every day of their lives. Read between the lines.

TV review: Da Vinci's Demons - Raffish romp through the Renaissance

Sat, 20 Apr 2013 20:40:00 +0100

Did you know Leonardo da Vinci loved getting high on a bong now and then? And was, like, a totally ripped hottie? There he was, on the Fox channel's new series Da Vinci's Demons on Friday night, checking out the sweet babes of Florence and all but fist-bumping Lorenzo de' Medici. This is probably not the maestro you're familiar with, or any artist, as it happens. You might have seen Jack Vettriano on What Do Artists Do All Day? a couple of weeks ago, and if he's anything to go by, the artistic type grumps about in his vest, smoking and ignoring the phone.

TV review: Maureen Lipman: If Memory Serves Me Right, BBC1

Fri, 19 Apr 2013 13:46:00 +0100

I wonder how much of Maureen Lipman: If Memory Serves Me Right I will remember in a year's time. Some of it is going to blur, frankly, if only because of television's fatal weakness for pulling in the same old faces.

TV review: Syria: Across the Lines - Channel 4 Dispatches

Thu, 18 Apr 2013 10:00:00 +0100

A sharply defined border can be a cruel thing. Right now, the Orontes river in Syria is as sharply defined as they come, engineered at some point into an arrow-straight waterway that cuts through flat fields and farmland.

TV review - Royal Paintbox (ITV) was a show of painterly competence not brilliance

Wed, 17 Apr 2013 10:44:00 +0100

You could have predicted quite a lot of things about Royal Paintbox, Margy Kinmonth's film about the long tradition of monarchical artistic dabbling before seeing it, but I'm willing to bet that nobody would have guessed that it would contain an allusion to Stanley Kubrick's The Shining.

#Broadchurch: Joe Miller is prime suspect as Twitter is filled with theories on who killed Danny Latimer

Tue, 16 Apr 2013 10:25:36 +0100

Joe Miller, aka Ellie’s husband and Tom’s father, remains the prime Broadchurch suspect on Twitter.

TV review - Plebs, ITV2

Tue, 16 Apr 2013 09:00:00 +0100

I've caught up late with Plebs, Sam Leifer and Tom Basden's comedy about three also-rans in Ancient Rome, which turns out to be a likeable enough affair, though you never entirely feel that they get out of second gear when it comes to the writing.

TV review: Endeavour and the cosy pleasures of the antique

Mon, 15 Apr 2013 10:01:30 +0100

The past can traumatize or tranquillize.

Matt Butler: Eddie and Suzi, the newest odd couple of the F1 soap

Sun, 14 Apr 2013 22:47:31 +0100

The world was watching. There had been weeks of build-up and talk. Two volatile personalities, thrown together as part of a team in a ruthless, money-driven industry, were about to be shown together on live television. Just how would they interact?

TV review: Mad Men - That's a hell of a routine you've got there, Roger

Sat, 13 Apr 2013 19:30:00 +0100

There can't be many men on television less self-aware than Don Draper. In this double bill to begin series six of Mad Men, the first scene proper showed Don sweltering on Waikiki beach reading Dante's Inferno. Even in paradise, the wretched Don is in hell – but of course not a ripple of irony disturbs his furrowed brow.

TV review: The High Art of the Low Countries, BBC4

Fri, 12 Apr 2013 08:47:00 +0100

Golden ages. What a lustre they give off from a distance, what a solid gleam of 24-carat achievement. Get a bit closer, though, and you usually find that the gold is adulterated with a lot of baser stuff. There's usually quite a bit of lead and steel in there too.

Last Night's Viewing: Victoria Wood's Nice Cup of Tea, BBC1 The Century That Wrote Itself, BBC4

Thu, 11 Apr 2013 00:00:00 +0100

Crikey! For a moment, I thought she was going to do it. I believed that Victoria Wood was going to inhale opium on primetime TV. That's one up on Keith Allen and his live MDMA trip – all very late-night Channel 4 and self-consciously daring.

First Night: Mad Men, Season Six; Sky Atlantic

Thu, 11 Apr 2013 00:00:00 +0100

Was Matthew Weiner trying to tell us something with the opening shot of the season six premiere? Don, always a bookish type, is on the beach at Hawaii, countering the sunshine with a paperback translation of Dante's Inferno and those famous lines about finding yourself, halfway through the journey of your life, lost in a dark wood.

#gbsb: Your 140 character reviews of The Great British Sewing Bee episode two

Wed, 10 Apr 2013 10:25:07 +0100

There is a lot of Twitter love for BBC Two’s new programme The Great British Sewing Bee, in which contestants Tilly and Mark were sent home last night.

Last night's viewing - Keeping Britain Alive: the NHS in a Day, BBC2; Pop! The Science of Bubbles, BBC4

Wed, 10 Apr 2013 00:00:00 +0100

Keeping Britain Alive: the NHS in a Day – the results of a transverse biopsy on the National Health Service – has a very simple question at its heart: "If we could see what this institution does in one day, what would it make us think?" My guess is that the makers of the series pretty much know the answer to this question already.

#Broadchurch: Tweeters keep guessing whodunit in episode six

Tue, 09 Apr 2013 10:40:43 +0100

Ellie Miller’s husband has emerged as the lead suspect among tweeters. Susan and Nige remain questionable, but many have guessed that Tom and Miller’s husband were in some covert internet ploy with Danny.

TV review - Fit to Rule: How Royal Illness Changed History, BBC

Tue, 09 Apr 2013 08:28:00 +0100

Fit to Rule: How Royal Illness Changed History had a fairly interesting premise: that it wasn't the power and strength of our monarchs that determined British history so much as their frailties. "I'm going to reveal the chinks in the royal armour," promised Lucy Worsley, chief curator at the Historic Royal Palaces.

The Weekend's Viewing: Given that one plutocrat a day is dying, I would have thought the killings might have prompted the deployment of the Swedish army

Mon, 08 Apr 2013 00:01:22 +0100

Something very odd happened about 52 minutes into Arne Dahl: The Blinded Man, the latest Scandicrime drama from BBC4. Until then things had been proceeding pretty much as procedurals do. The storyline concerns the serial murder of Swedish financiers and money men, an event that prompts the creation of a special-investigation squad. Given that one plutocrat a day is pitching forward into their caviar, I would have thought that the killings might have prompted the deployment of the Swedish army – that's an impressive work rate even for a television killer – but the Swedish police didn't seem to be panicking, just pulling together a number of helpfully disparate officers to work the case, including a detective under a cloud for shooting a hostage-taker and a feisty Hispanic officer who suspects him of racism.

View from the Sofa: A Grand National main course, but none of the trimmings, thanks

Mon, 08 Apr 2013 00:00:12 +0100

Clare Balding didn’t last long with Harvey Smith, the husband of Susan, trainer of the Grand National victor Auroras Encore, in the winner’s enclosure. Smith was standing in costume straight out of central casting’s Yorkshireman department, doing that chest-out, chin-on-neck thing that rural types from the Dales can do to a tee.

TV review: Game of Thrones - Bring me a dragon... and make it snappy

Sat, 06 Apr 2013 19:00:00 +0100

As far as I can tell, watching Game of Thrones requires commitment. Not quite, perhaps, the eye-watering steeliness of the slave warrior towards the end of Monday's episode – he demonstrated his Spartan virtues by undergoing a gruesome version of the nipple twist without so much as an "Ouchy!" But still, this handsome adaptation of George R R Martin's fantasy novels takes a dim view of viewers such as me who have merely dipped in and out over the previous two series. (Nobody dips in and out of anything in the fantastic kingdom of Westeros – they usually arrive, quite emphatically, on horseback, with a dozen armed kinsmen.)

TV review: The Intern (Channel 4) and Dogging Tales (Channel 4)

Fri, 05 Apr 2013 08:34:00 +0100

"We are wasting so much talent," protested Hilary Devey at the beginning of The Intern, a new show that promises to deploy a "radical recruitment method" to get Britain's young jobless on the career ladder. As a top businesswoman and high-profile Dragon, Hilary dislikes waste and she has, I think, spotted something that other television presenters have missed.

TV review: Hillsborough - Never Forgotten, BBC2

Thu, 04 Apr 2013 08:44:00 +0100

One of the questions that ran through Hillsborough – Never Forgotten was whether the events it described had happened to Liverpudlians or just to people who happened to live in Liverpool.

Last night's viewing - The Great British Sewing Bee, BBC2

Wed, 03 Apr 2013 00:00:00 +0100

The Great British Bake-Off has been credited with boosting numbers in the WI to such an extent that the phenomenon has a name – The Mary Berry Effect. The latest entry into a genre I'll be henceforth referring to as "WI-fi" follows very similar lines. A pattern, if you will. The Great British Sewing Bee comes from Bake-Off makers Love Productions and follows a near-identical format to Bake-Off. However, instead of Mezza Bezza, we get the WI's May Martin. Already Martin has told the Telegraph what she thought of the comparison: "I've always been asked, 'Are you the Mary Berry of sewing?' and I say, 'No, I'm the May Martin of sewing.'" Good luck with that.

#Broadchurch: Your 140 character reviews of episode five

Tue, 02 Apr 2013 12:08:18 +0100

Broadchurch topped the Twitter TV leaderboard last night with 29,552 tweets about the fifth episode.

TV review: Jonathan Creek (BBC1) was a melange of highly watchable gobbledegook

Tue, 02 Apr 2013 09:00:00 +0100

"He's back in the saddle," proclaimed a colleague in Jonathan Creek, as if Alan Davies's veteran sleuth were a strutting young turk and not a grumpy mid-lifer in a plaid shirt. He is back, but the interregnum while he'd been off air (of nearly three years) had led to some disconcerting changes. We found him in a glass-encased office – getting ahead in advertising – in a city-slicker suit. His slide back to the sleuthy side of life didn't take long though: one whiff of mystery after a visit from the mischievous Sheridan Smith and he was left rummaging in his wardrobe for that shaggy old duffle coat.

TV review: The Village gives viewers – finally – a proper, grown-up period drama

Mon, 01 Apr 2013 08:01:31 +0100

Before its first airing, The Village had been billed as Britain's answer to Heimat, the monumental German drama that spans across a century of rural life in 30 episodes.

Matt Butler: Monthly special shines a new light on the Greene corn

Sun, 31 Mar 2013 23:39:16 +0100

Maurice Greene, the last great American sprinter, was not known ever to have suffered from a lack of self-belief. The GOAT ("Greatest of All Time") tattoo on his shoulder was evidence enough.

Radio review: Foot Notes - Are not stilettos just the thin end of the wedge?

Sun, 31 Mar 2013 00:00:00 +0000

As an average kind of bloke, I must admit I'm massively conflicted about high heels. Aesthetically – and, well, hormonally – I love 'em, but when I see someone tottering along like a drunkard I'm all too aware of the stiletto tyranny. Bound feet always come to mind, especially when I hear of women having toes shortened – or even removed – in order to wear them in comfort.

TV review: Doctor Who - The Doctor's back, with his snog box

Sun, 31 Mar 2013 00:00:00 +0000

The new season of Doctor Who began last night, introducing his new "assistant". We'll touch on the sexual politics of the Tardis later. In the meantime, I'm happy to report that Jenna-Louise Coleman seems, to me at least, an improvement on the rather stroppy presence of Karen Gillan, who played side-kick Amy Pond. Coleman, so far, plays Clara Oswald as a cutely poised complement to Matt Smith's breathless nerd.

DVD review: Parks & Recreation Season One

Sat, 30 Mar 2013 18:00:00 +0000

Available in the UK after a four-year wait, this American sitcom is heavily indebted to The Office and all its mock-doc stylings – there's a sideways glance to camera every 30 seconds – but it has a sweetness and richness all of its own.

Last Night's Viewing: Beyoncé: Life Is But a Dream - an Imagine Special, BBC1 James May's Man Lab, BBC2

Fri, 29 Mar 2013 00:00:00 +0000

Five years ago, when Alan Yentob got a rare chance to appear awkward in the company of Jay-Z, he was accused by one reviewer of delivering "interminable gushing guff" about the gazillionaire rapper.

TV review: Are You Having a Laugh? Comedy and Christianity, BBC1

Thu, 28 Mar 2013 11:00:00 +0000

There is, it appears, one person left in Britain still offended by The Life of Brian. Thankfully, and presumably in response to accusations of atheist bias in the BBC's comedy, someone has seen fit to grant an hour of TV to her for Are You Having a Laugh? Comedy and Christianity.

Last night's viewing - Keeping Britain Alive: the NHS in a Day, BBC2; The Mindy Project, E4

Wed, 27 Mar 2013 00:00:00 +0000

If, as Nigel Lawson said, the NHS is the closest thing the English have to a religion, then fly-on-the- wall documentaries about the NHS are the closest thing television commissioners have to Christmas Eve Midnight Mass. They are guaranteed crowd-pullers. As a result, one is rarely more than four hours away from the swabs, beeps and tears of a hosp-doc.

#Broadchurch: Your 140 character reviews of episode four

Tue, 26 Mar 2013 10:40:41 +0000

The fourth episode of Broadchurch continued to confuse the Twittersphere

TV review - Boris Johnson: the Irresistible Rise offered something more than just entertainment, BBC2

Tue, 26 Mar 2013 09:00:00 +0000

Eddie Mair might have pulled the trigger on Sunday morning, but Michael Cockerell fashioned the weapon and loaded the chamber. Boris Johnson: the Irresistible Rise, the latest of Cockerell's political profiles, would hardly have been a dull programme under any circumstances – its subject being incapable of opening his mouth without expelling a frivolity. But, with the help of Boris's cheerfully indiscreet sister, Rachel, it offered something more than just entertainment. The public will forgive a man who makes them laugh virtually anything. But whether Boris's political colleagues will care to test that proposition after this film is another matter.

TV review: Our Girl starring Lacey Turner, BBC1

Mon, 25 Mar 2013 15:01:43 +0000

I'm not sure about the propriety of BBC1 running a one-and-a-half-hour Army recruitment film on a Sunday night.

Matt Butler: Trouble sleeping? Here’s Gareth Barry with a bedtime story...

Mon, 25 Mar 2013 00:00:33 +0000

Hear about the Premier League footballer who liked books? He'd even coloured some of them in.

Sport on TV: Britain slow out of traps but it could be a hole lot worse

Sun, 24 Mar 2013 00:00:00 +0000

It's hard to watch Paul McGann without thinking of Withnail & I. A four-part history of British motoring evokes images of Richard E. Grant weaving in and out of the motorway traffic in his Mark II Jaguar. "What's going on?" demands "I" when he wakes up in the back seat. "I'm making time," shrieks a wild-eyed Withnail. So it was appropriate that the first part should be about speed – "like a dozen transatlantic flights without ever getting off the plane". Sadly, McGann is not lying in the bath eating saveloy and chips while presenting the programme The Petrol Age (Sky Atlantic, Thursday), but he gets to drive a lot of old bangers rather than eat them.

TV review: Youngers - Teenage kicks of the tamer kind

Sat, 23 Mar 2013 20:00:00 +0000

The trouble with any drama about teenage life that's shown in a slot explicitly for teenagers is, ironically, that it's unlikely to end up resembling even the most banal experiences of its intended audience. For Youngers, E4's latest youth offering, the burden of pre-watershed tameness was made heavier by its emphatically "urban" south London setting, which, rightly or wrongly, suggests there might be enough grit to pull in slightly older viewers too.

Radio review: Neverwhere - Let me introduce you to the Earl of Earl's Court

Sat, 23 Mar 2013 20:00:00 +0000

In the world of fantasy sci-fi, Neil Gaiman is a big shot. His Sandman graphic novel series is, by all accounts, a classic of the genre. (Disclaimer: the last fantasy I read was set in Narnia, so I'm no expert.)

Last night's viewing - The Syndicate, BBC1; What Do Artists Do All Day? BBC4; Edwardian Insects on Film, BBC4

Wed, 20 Mar 2013 00:00:00 +0000

Double lottery wins aren't completely unheard of, even though they do occasionally crop up. But the writers of television series quite regularly get the five-number payoff of a repeat commission. It happened to Kay Mellors, whose drama The Syndicate, about a group of Bradford supermarket workers scooping a big prize on the lottery, went down well enough to get another booking.

#Broadchurch: Your 140 character reviews of episode three

Tue, 19 Mar 2013 11:23:38 +0000

Broadchurch continues to cause frustration among tweeters.

Popular guesses about whodunit on the social media site included the vicar, Danny’s sister and Ellie Miller’s husband. According to the Twitter account “Broadchurch” the least suspected character so far is the editor of the local newspaper.

The ITV eight-part drama was still trending two hours after it was broadcast, with 880 tweets per minute according to Twitter analytics site Second Sync.

Ellie Miller’s quip to Alec Harding “with respect, sir, walk away from me now, or I will piss in a cup and throw it at you” went down a treat last night. But you were more wary of Will Mellor’s psychic means, and Pauline Quirke’s shady character.

Last night's viewing - The Challenger, BBC2; Paul Hollywood's Bread, BBC2

Tue, 19 Mar 2013 00:00:00 +0000

Those of us who can remember the 1986 Challenger disaster – the Nasa shuttle that exploded just 73 seconds after seven smiling astronauts waved to the world and took off for space – will recall the shock and bewilderment that followed this much publicised flight. The doomed moment was caught on television, including the suddenly silenced crowd of well-wishers down below who stared up at the plumes of smoke as the shuttle disintegrated. The astronauts included a school teacher making her first trip to space, and their bodies were recovered from the Atlantic after a protracted search that only extended the sense of national anguish.

The Weekend's Viewing: Kevin Eldon can make a dumb joke and a clever one simultaneously, a trick he pulled off more than once

Mon, 18 Mar 2013 00:01:48 +0000

Comedies are both the easiest and the hardest kind of programmes to review. On the one hand, it's really simple to tell whether it's worked, since there's actually an audible signal to register the fact. As with pornography, success is registered by a bodily response rather than a cerebral one. But, as with pornography, it's intimately a matter of personal taste. You can no more rationalise a third party into laughing than you can argue them into becoming aroused. From the involuntary wheezing noises that persistently interrupted my viewing of It's Kevin, I can be absolutely sure that it's my type of funny. The problem is that anything I write about it is doomed to be an elaborate paraphrase of “I just liked it”. All I can hope to do is explain why.

TV review: Her Majesty’s door still remains firmly closed to behind-the-scenes film-makers of Our Queen

Sun, 17 Mar 2013 22:00:18 +0000

“This is supposed to be like a secret door” said a palace functionary, pulling open the panelling of a Buckingham Palace reception room to reveal an ante-chamber. The hint was obvious. Our Queen, ITV’s feature-length documentary about the Diamond Jubilee Year, was going to grant us special access to the back rooms of monarchy.

Comic Relief review: Funny for money – or was it?

Sat, 16 Mar 2013 19:15:00 +0000

Obviously no moment in Comic Relief history can come close to Vic and Bob trying to down 75 pints of ale while singing Nilsson's "Without You" in 1995, but Friday night's telethon certainly had its moments, notably Ricky Gervais bringing David Brent back to UK screens. So what were the key moments of this record-breaking Red Nose Day 2013?

Radio review: I Dressed Like Ziggy Stardust - How Bowie let all the children boogie back in 1972

Sat, 16 Mar 2013 19:15:00 +0000

Seeing David Bowie as Ziggy Stardust doing "Starman" on Top of the Pops in 1972 was one of those moments when it felt as though, in some intangible way, life had changed forever. And countless thousands of teenagers up and down the country clearly shared my experience.

Last Night's Viewing: Horizon: The Creative Brain - How Insight Works, BBC2 Prisoners' Wives, BBC1

Fri, 15 Mar 2013 00:00:00 +0000

I sometimes wonder what our phrenology or phlogiston will turn out to be. There's bound to be one – a field of science that is all the rage for a time, but then turns out to be a bit of an embarrassment, even though it feints in the right kind of direction.

Last Night's Viewing: A Very British Wedding, BBC2 The Mimic, Channel 4

Thu, 14 Mar 2013 00:00:00 +0000

The title of A Very British Wedding is a bit of a tease. It relies on the assumption that most of us will read it with an unwitting cultural parochialism, sketching a picture in our heads of a country church, a bride in white and men in tailcoats. And then you watch and find that it's actually about a Punjabi wedding or an Eastern European one and you're meant, I guess, to do a slightly guilty double-take and say, "Oh... of course... the definition of British is so much more interesting than it used to be."

#butterybiscuitbase: Your 140 character reviews of MasterChef episode one series nine

Wed, 13 Mar 2013 11:06:19 +0000

#MasterChef was trending last night when the first episode of the ninth series was shown on BBC One.

Tweets mocked the judges’ overuse of the phrase “buttery biscuit base” with Gregg Wallace’s love of fattening food the subject of many an online joke.

There was disgust at the thought of a custard and courgette dessert, apathy towards contestant Dale’s potato fondant and comments that Emily’s thick date sauce resembled poo.

As for the introduction of the new palate test, many of you seemed confident you would excel in the round- while others said they were tiring of the show’s format.

MasterChef continues tonight, 8.30pm on BBC One

Last night's viewing - Planet Ant: Life Inside the Colony, BBC4; Heading Out, BBC2

Wed, 13 Mar 2013 00:00:00 +0000

Remember ant farms? Two sheets of glass filled with earth and topped off with a cartoon rendering of a Midwestern cattle ranch? In my experience, they seemed to offer a matchless way for a budding entomologist to study the process by which live ants turn into dead ones – or, just occasionally, how excitable human matriarchs can become when the ant colony breaks free and heads across the kitchen for the sugar bag. Having watched Planet Ant: Life Inside the Colony, though, I can see that these rudimentary affairs barely deserved the name of ant farm.

Last night's viewing - A History of Syria with Dan Snow, BBC2; America's Gun Addiction – Panorama, BBC1; Broadchurch, ITV1

Tue, 12 Mar 2013 00:00:00 +0000

"If you want to understand what's happening in Syria and this region at the moment," said Dan Snow, "there's only one place to start... the past." Do we want to understand, though? Really? Of course, we absolutely know we should – a grasp of intractable sectarian conflicts being a kind of secular obligation. In fact, it's quite likely that a fair proportion of those watching A History of Syria with Dan Snow had already gone through the ritual once already, in one way or another.

The Weekend's Viewing: If you could take the stuff about “shattering” preconceptions and “groundbreaking” work, this was moderately interesting

Mon, 11 Mar 2013 18:13:22 +0000

You might describe Shetland as the story of a detective's relentless hunt for a reliable mobile-phone signal. The spotty nature of coverage in the islands cropped up several times in the first half of David Kane's adaptation from Ann Cleeves' Shetland-based thrillers, with Douglas Henshall as Detective Jimmy Perez, exasperatedly trying to conduct modern police work through stuttering connections. At one point, he was even reduced to using a Post Office phone box, an instrument of communication that can't have featured in a contemporary television drama for many years. And it isn't the only hindrance to his work thrown up by the local geography. No reaching into the glove compartment for a blue-light here and no screeching tyres. When Jimmy is called to the scene of a murder he has to drive down to the harbour and wait for the ferry.

Countryfile: A Royal Appointment: Prince Charles wants to be just one of the farm lads, really

Mon, 11 Mar 2013 00:00:48 +0000

If you had to work out what Prince Charles was for, and the only evidence available was Countryfile: a Royal Appointment, you might conclude that he was some kind of revered national entertainer, so beloved by the people for his geniality that he was addressed with deference wherever he went. You’d guess he was reaching the end of his career, given his age, but also that it had been exceptionally good to him, given how much of Gloucestershire he now appeared to own. But comedy would definitely be at the heart of the thing.

Matt Butler: Bamma-lamma ding-dongs, with plenty of real blood

Sun, 10 Mar 2013 21:45:00 +0000

Normally, a series of fights in Newcastle city centre on a Saturday night would barely raise an eyebrow, let alone warrant a live TV crew. But what 5*, the Channel Five offshoot that occupies much of its airtime with ageing blockbusters and teleshopping, trained its lenses on was no ordinary brawling.

Radio review: Start of the Week - What women want – to know where it all went wrong

Sat, 09 Mar 2013 20:00:00 +0000

Betty Friedan's landmark book The Feminine Mystique came out 50 years ago, and although there's plenty of legislation in place that addresses issues of gender equality, on the ground, as it were, it sometimes seems little has changed, and this new hypersexualised world of ours doesn't seem to have done much to advance women's rights.

TV review: Broadchurch - Finally, ITV makes a Killing

Sat, 09 Mar 2013 20:00:00 +0000

You wait years for a credible home-grown answer to all those Scandinavian crime dramas, and then two come along at once. Both ITV's Broadchurch and the BBC's Mayday began this week, and both deal with missing children. Each has an impressive cast – the former features David Tennant, Olivia Colman, Jodie Whittaker and Vicky McClure, while the latter stars Sophie Okonedo and Lesley Manville. Weirdly, both are shot with a dreamy, bleached-out haziness, and while one is set in Dorset and the other Sussex, both are really about the close and layered relationships of those who live in small towns, and the ripples that spread through communities after a horrible crime is committed on their doorstep.

Last Night's Viewing: Michael Grade and the World's Oldest Joke, BBC4 Anna & Katy, Channel 4 Parks and Recreation, BBC4

Thu, 07 Mar 2013 00:00:00 +0000

Old Roman joke: "That slave you've sold me has just died." "My God, he never did that when he belonged to me!" Ah well...perhaps you had to be there...and by "there", I mean a tavern somewhere in the Suburra around 40BC, because the gag didn't exactly bring the house down in Michael Grade and the World's Oldest Joke.

Last night's viewing - Bluestone 42, BBC3; The Crash, BBC3

Wed, 06 Mar 2013 00:00:00 +0000

I think Bluestone 42, BBC3's new comedy about a bomb-disposal team in Afghanistan, may be unique. Of course, there have been other sitcoms that tried to see the funny side of a bloody war before now. M*A*S*H did it brilliantly, as did Blackadder Goes Forth. But neither of those series went out while the war in question was still underway.

TV review - Broadchurch, ITV: David Tennant's character seems to have been designed to look good on his fan website

Tue, 05 Mar 2013 09:00:00 +0000

You wonder whether the television production company Kudos had to set up some kind of Chinese wall operation when it was preparing for its current brief monopoly in the television crime-drama market.

The Weekend's Viewing: The clues had the semaphored clarity of a creakier kind of crime drama

Mon, 04 Mar 2013 00:01:47 +0000

"Why would my husband lie to me about walking the dog?" asked Gail at the beginning of Mayday. Gail was worried about Duke, carrying a lot more about the midriff than a dog should be. And Gail's vet had just suggested that his corpulence simply wasn't consistent with the two-hour daily walk Gail thought he was getting. Gail looked pensive, and she wasn't the only one furrowing her brow in the first episode of BBC1's new thriller. "Alan, where have you been?" asked Fiona, when she found her husband showering in the middle of the day, her confusion only increased when he screamed at her to get out of the bathroom. "Why aren't you at work, Dad?" asked Linus guilelessly, arriving home to find his father struggling to heave a large holdall into a padlocked cupboard. Linus's Dad was a bit testy too: "What you don't know won't hurt you," he snapped when Linus asked what was in the bag.

TV review: Heading Out - Pets, eh? They're enough to drive you to drink

Sun, 03 Mar 2013 00:00:00 +0000

At first glance, it might seem that Heading Out will be one of those cosy BBC sitcoms that neither offends nor raises laughs. Yes, the lead character Sara is gay, which may raise the frisson of hackles in more neanderthal households, but she's also a vet (possibly incompetent, certainly surrounded by incompetence), who's struggling to find the right partner and whose parents are out of touch. So far, so archetypal.

Last Night's Viewing: Hugh's Fish Fight: Save Our Seas, Channel 4 Bank of Dave: Fighting the Fat Cats, Channel 4

Fri, 01 Mar 2013 00:00:00 +0000

I hardly dare watch Hugh's Fish Fight: Save Our Seas anymore, and I certainly wouldn't do it while eating a fish supper. You just never know when he's going to knock something else off the ethical consumer's shopping list.

The Week in Radio: Comedy and radio do not mix - in fact they are sworn enemies

Thu, 28 Feb 2013 11:44:43 +0000

“And here on 4 we have a comedy coming up,” said the BBC continuity announcer. Oh God, I thought. Really? Must you? Must we? Isn’t it time to give it up? To admit defeat? To say to your listeners “Look, guys, we’ve given comedy our best shot, we’ve brought in the big guns, we’ve maxed out the budget, but it’s just not working.”

TV review: Lightfields, ITV Food Glorious Food, ITV

Thu, 28 Feb 2013 00:00:00 +0000

"It's all right... it's just a bird," Vivien says to her daughter Clare when a large raven clatters out of the fireplace at Lightfields farm. "No it isn't," we think at home. It is a sable-feathered harbinger of dread, and the first crumb in a cascade of the uncanny that is about to fall about your ears. Oh and Clare, when your Mum said, "There were squatters here once, but they got scared off", well, I don't think it was a sternly worded legal letter that had them scrambling for the door. We've got the soundtrack to help us, of course, signalling the moments at which an empty room suddenly becomes pregnant with menace. That and one of those triple-layered time schemes that is now pretty much a guarantee of unquiet history and unlaid ghosts.

TV review: Sue Perkins' comedy Heading Out, BBC2 was awkward for everyone involved

Wed, 27 Feb 2013 12:00:00 +0000

There really should be a way for all new comedies to start with episode three, the essential nature of the characters already bedded in and the spadework of establishing the situation out of the way. But the laws of physics being what they are, there's no avoiding episode one, whatever you decide to call it. And it's just awkward for everyone involved – a blind date at which we still can't really be sure whether we have anything in common.