http://www.independent.co.uk/opinion/columnists/thomas-sutcliffe/?service=Rss http://www.independent.co.uk/opinion/columnists/thomas-sutcliffe/thomas-sutcliffe-the-critic-870365.html http://www.independent.co.uk/opinion/columnists/thomas-sutcliffe/thomas-sutcliffe-the-critic-870365.html <p>I went for a bicycle ride the other day &ndash; not a particularly noteworthy event, although this one had a higher cultural content than most of my trips. Indeed, it reversed the usual rule, which is that time in the saddle is one of the few periods that can be absolutely guaranteed to be culture free. Travel by Tube and you feel an obligation to crunch a few pages of the latest Philip Roth, or read a catalogue essay about the exhibition you've just attended. On a bike, on the other hand, all you can do is think &ndash; and most of my thoughts are taken up with how I can best avoid adding to the year's accident statistics. </p> Thomas Sutcliffe Fri, 18 Jul 2008 00:00:01 +0100 http://www.independent.co.uk/opinion/columnists/thomas-sutcliffe/thomas-sutcliffe-sexist-racist-ndash-and-absolutely-brilliant-870840.html http://www.independent.co.uk/opinion/columnists/thomas-sutcliffe/thomas-sutcliffe-sexist-racist-ndash-and-absolutely-brilliant-870840.html <p>Fifty years ago it was cowboys that stood tall in American television. Three out of five Emmy nominations for Best Dramatic Series were cowboy shows and virtually all the top rated series at the time were westerns. These days, if the latest Emmy nominations are any guide, office politics is the new frontier. With Mad Men picking up 16 nominations, 30 Rock scooping 17 and Damages and the American version of The Office also in the running for America's top broadcasting awards, the definition of watercooler television increasingly describes programmes for which the props department have to go out and find a watercooler.</p> Thomas Sutcliffe Fri, 18 Jul 2008 00:00:01 +0100 http://www.independent.co.uk/opinion/columnists/thomas-sutcliffe/thomas-sutcliffe-knife-crime-sensitivity-or-broad-indifference-867647.html http://www.independent.co.uk/opinion/columnists/thomas-sutcliffe/thomas-sutcliffe-knife-crime-sensitivity-or-broad-indifference-867647.html <p>I saw a dispiriting newspaper placard the other day. "Yet another knife killing" it read... and this was before the weekend had added more deaths to the running total. And what struck me as depressing about that poster, one of those used to sell the late edition of a London daily, wasn't just the information it contained, but the suggestive ambiguity of the phrase that had been chosen to publicise the fact. </p> Thomas Sutcliffe Tue, 15 Jul 2008 00:00:01 +0100 http://www.independent.co.uk/opinion/columnists/thomas-sutcliffe/thomas-sutcliffe-how-not-to-end-it-with-a-bang-864379.html http://www.independent.co.uk/opinion/columnists/thomas-sutcliffe/thomas-sutcliffe-how-not-to-end-it-with-a-bang-864379.html <p>I can't tell a joke to save my life, so please don't complain to me if I've mangled this one... which has been, in any case, pieced together from unlabelled fragments in my memory. </p> Thomas Sutcliffe Fri, 11 Jul 2008 00:00:01 +0100 http://www.independent.co.uk/opinion/columnists/thomas-sutcliffe/tom-sutcliffe-would-the-bma-deny-bond-his-martini-862012.html http://www.independent.co.uk/opinion/columnists/thomas-sutcliffe/tom-sutcliffe-would-the-bma-deny-bond-his-martini-862012.html <p>Some people, it seems, just don't quite understand how drama works. First we had the head of the Bar Council suggesting that Criminal Justice, Peter Moffat's excellent series for BBC One, should be struck from the record as inadmissible evidence. It was not, he explained, in an indignant letter to a newspaper, "the basis upon which one can draw any sound conclusions about our system of justice".</p> Thomas Sutcliffe Tue, 08 Jul 2008 00:00:01 +0100 http://www.independent.co.uk/opinion/columnists/thomas-sutcliffe/thomas-sutcliffe-no-tv-is-not-the-novel-of-today-859383.html http://www.independent.co.uk/opinion/columnists/thomas-sutcliffe/thomas-sutcliffe-no-tv-is-not-the-novel-of-today-859383.html <p>The BBC's controller of fiction, Jane Tranter, picked a good week in which to suggest that television had supplanted the role of the novel in addressing the big social issues of the day, an argument she made in a speech to the Royal Television Society on Monday night. Not very long after she finished speaking, BBC One began transmitting Criminal Justice, Peter Moffat's ambitious five-part series about a young man who finds himself on remand for murder after a one-night stand goes badly wrong. And if the essential subject matter here wasn't startlingly original, the manner of its transmission was &ndash; stripped through every night of the week so that those hooked by the excellent opening episode didn't have to wait too long for their next fix. There have been weeks in which Tranter's jab at the established cultural hierarchies could have looked a bit unsubstantiated &ndash; but in this one, at least, she was solidly backed up by the Radio Times. </p> Thomas Sutcliffe Fri, 04 Jul 2008 00:00:01 +0100 http://www.independent.co.uk/opinion/columnists/thomas-sutcliffe/thomas-sutcliffe-the-perilous-joys-of-middleaged-sex-857675.html http://www.independent.co.uk/opinion/columnists/thomas-sutcliffe/thomas-sutcliffe-the-perilous-joys-of-middleaged-sex-857675.html <p>Do you remember herpes? You'll need to be of a certain age to conjure the particular memory I have in mind, which is of the spasm of sexual anxiety that went round when the disease first really made it into the public consciousness, after the incidence of infections leapt in America. Yikes, I can remember thinking. Weeping sores (routinely described as "agonising"), no prospect of a cure, the perpetual moral duty, ever after, to inform prospective sexual partners of your potentially hazardous condition. </p> Thomas Sutcliffe Tue, 01 Jul 2008 00:00:01 +0100 http://www.independent.co.uk/opinion/columnists/thomas-sutcliffe/thomas-sutcliffe-if-only-theyd-listened-to-me-854746.html http://www.independent.co.uk/opinion/columnists/thomas-sutcliffe/thomas-sutcliffe-if-only-theyd-listened-to-me-854746.html <p>Artists and writers justifiably hate it when critics review the work they wished they'd seen, rather than the one they actually did. It's understandable, really. Just imagine it. You spend months carefully crafting a table and then you open the paper to find that someone is moaning that the seat is too high for comfort and there are no arm rests. "It's not meant to be a chair!" you would shriek, "It's supposed to be a bloody table!" And one of the things that aggravates the artist's irritation, rubbing salt into the paper cut, is the sense that critics are betraying themselves at such moments &ndash; revealing their envy for the act of creation. </p> Thomas Sutcliffe Fri, 27 Jun 2008 00:00:01 +0100 http://www.independent.co.uk/opinion/columnists/thomas-sutcliffe/thomas-sutcliffe-whats-wrong-if-these-cameras-stop-crime-852861.html http://www.independent.co.uk/opinion/columnists/thomas-sutcliffe/thomas-sutcliffe-whats-wrong-if-these-cameras-stop-crime-852861.html <p>The difference between a police state and a well policed one is notoriously blurry and itself requires careful policing. It's all too easy for the pursuit of the latter to edge, slowly and almost imperceptibly, into the creation of the former. But there are times when it's worth remembering that there is actually a difference &ndash; and that a well-policed state has quite a lot of things going for it.</p> Thomas Sutcliffe Tue, 24 Jun 2008 00:00:01 +0100