Television

Was BBC1’s Rooney show more scripted reality than documentary?

10 October 2015 9:00 am

Close to the Edge (BBC4, Tuesday) feels very much like an idea conceived during a particularly good night in the…

Was BBC1’s Rooney hagiography more scripted reality than documentary?

8 October 2015 2:00 pm

Close to the Edge (BBC4, Tuesday) feels very much like an idea conceived during a particularly good night in the…

James Delingpole discovers the fons et origo of indie music

3 October 2015 8:00 am

I really hadn’t meant to write a postscript to last week’s column on my dark Supertramp past. But then along…

Independents’ day

1 October 2015 1:00 pm

I really hadn’t meant to write a postscript to last week’s column on my dark Supertramp past. But then along…

Middle-England Gothic: Anna Maxwell-Martin as Merrily Watkins in Midwinter of the Spirit

ITV’s Midwinter of the Spirit is a satisfying example of Middle-England Gothic

26 September 2015 8:00 am

For years, Ian Fleming was famously self-deprecating about the James Bond books. (‘I have a rule of not looking back,’…

Middle-England Gothic: Anna Maxwell-Martin as Merrily Watkins in Midwinter of the Spirit

Talk of the devil

24 September 2015 1:00 pm

For years, Ian Fleming was famously self-deprecating about the James Bond books. (‘I have a rule of not looking back,’…

An Inspector Calls is poisonous, revisionist propaganda - which is why the luvvies love it

19 September 2015 8:00 am

What a load of manipulative, hysterical tosh is An Inspector Calls. It wasn’t a work with which I was familiar…

Socialist Cluedo

17 September 2015 1:00 pm

What a load of manipulative, hysterical tosh is An Inspector Calls. It wasn’t a work with which I was familiar…

Novel romance: Richard Madden as Mellors and Holliday Grainger as Constance Chatterley

Guns, tools and toffee apples - but no nudity: BBC1’s Lady Chatterley’s Lover reviewed

12 September 2015 9:00 am

It’s hard to know whether the actor James Norton was being naive or disingenuous when he claimed in publicity interviews…

Novel romance: Richard Madden as Mellors and Holliday Grainger as Constance Chatterley

Cock and bull

10 September 2015 1:00 pm

It’s hard to know whether the actor James Norton was being naive or disingenuous when he claimed in publicity interviews…

Finally James Delingpole gets why women are so angry

5 September 2015 9:00 am

Finally I realise why women are so pissed off. It all goes back to the first codified laws — circa…

Lifting the veil

3 September 2015 1:00 pm

Finally I realise why women are so pissed off. It all goes back to the first codified laws — circa…

How many royal cliches can you fit into a single Channel 4 documentary?

29 August 2015 9:00 am

In 2011, the Daily Mail carried a long story about how the Queen’s cousin Prince William of Gloucester, who died…

Will he was

27 August 2015 1:00 pm

In 2011, the Daily Mail carried a long story about how the Queen’s cousin Prince William of Gloucester, who died…

Why does TV assume everyone is so thick they have to have everything explained?

22 August 2015 9:00 am

My favourite moment in The Scandalous Lady W (BBC2, Monday) was when the heroine played by Natalie Dormer was shown…

Poldark porn

20 August 2015 1:00 pm

My favourite moment in The Scandalous Lady W (BBC2, Monday) was when the heroine played by Natalie Dormer was shown…

Is medical screening bad for your health? Michael Mosley dons a pair of ‘dignity shorts’ to find out

15 August 2015 9:00 am

When the link between tobacco and lung cancer was first established in the early 1950s, one obvious question arose: should…

Sick and tired

13 August 2015 1:00 pm

When the link between tobacco and lung cancer was first established in the early 1950s, one obvious question arose: should…

A demonstrator is arrested during an anti-nuclear protest at Greenham Common air base in 1983. (Photo: D. Jones/Express/Getty)

All that postwar anxiety about being vaporised by a nuclear bomb was a complete waste of emotion

8 August 2015 9:00 am

When I was growing up in the 1970s, my three main fears were: being blown up by the IRA; being…

A demonstrator is arrested during an anti-nuclear protest at Greenham Common air base in 1983. (Photo: D. Jones/Express/Getty)

Nuclear overreaction

6 August 2015 1:00 pm

When I was growing up in the 1970s, my three main fears were: being blown up by the IRA; being…

Bohemian conformity can be just as suffocating as any other type: BBC1’s Life in Squares reviewed

1 August 2015 9:00 am

On all those comic lists of the world’s shortest books (Great Italian War Heroes, My Hunt for the Real Killers,…

Affairs in squares

30 July 2015 1:00 pm

On all those comic lists of the world’s shortest books (Great Italian War Heroes, My Hunt for the Real Killers,…

Lucy Worsley reveals - yet again - that there’s more to the WI than jam and Jerusalem

25 July 2015 9:00 am

Some revelations, it seems, are capable of being endlessly repeated while still remaining revelations. Think of all the books, articles…

Institutional feminism

23 July 2015 1:00 pm

Some revelations, it seems, are capable of being endlessly repeated while still remaining revelations. Think of all the books, articles…

Joanna Lumley is ‘thrilled’ by everything, even being spanked by a Mongolian shaman, in her new Trans-Siberian Adventure

18 July 2015 9:00 am

For keen students of China, this week’s television provided yet more proof that Deng Xiaoping’s decision to open the country…