Television
Incomprehensible and epically anti-climatic: Netflix’s Bodies reviewed
Bodies is another of those ‘ingenious’ time-travel apocalypse mash-ups so tricksy and convoluted that by the time the ending comes…
Riveting and heart-wrenching: BBC1’s Time reviewed
‘Only with women’ is a phrase used by more cynical TV types for a show that takes something that’s been…
Surprisingly addictive and heartwarming: Netflix’s Beckham reviewed
If you’re not remotely interested in football or celebrity, I recommend Netflix’s four-part documentary series Beckham. Yes, I know it’s…
Only goodwill will get you through this reboot: Paramount+’s Frasier reviewed
Remember the groans of dismay, possibly including your own, which greeted John Cleese’s announcement in February that he was reviving…
I watched it so that you didn’t have to: ITV2’s Big Brother reviewed
Big Brother is Nineteen Eighty-Four rewritten by Aldous Huxley. The detail that George Orwell got wrong is that far from…
Shocking: Channel 4’s Partygate reviewed
If there were special awards for Most Subtlety in a Television Drama, Tuesday’s Partygate would be unlikely to win one.…
Arresting visual spectacle and superb fight scenes: Netflix’s One Piece reviewed
What would you say is the most successful comic-book series in history? If you’re thinking Tintin you’re not even close.…
A Picasso doc that – amazingly – focuses on how great he was
Earlier this year, the Guardian took a break from arguing that ‘cancel culture’ is a right-wing myth to ask the…
Why I’m addicted to Australian MasterChef
Why is Australian MasterChef so much better than the English version? You’d think, with a population less than a third…
Subtle, psychologically twisty drama: BBC3’s Bad Behaviour reviewed
Bad Behaviour is a decidedly solemn new Australian drama series with plenty to be solemn about. It was billed in…
Enthralling: BBC4’s Colosseum reviewed
In the year 2023, the Neo-Roman Empire was at the height of its powers. A potentially restive populace was kept…
Bags of charm and a gripping plot: Netflix’s The Chosen One reviewed
Some years ago, Mark Millar (the creator of Kick-Ass, Kingsman, etc.) hit on yet another brilliant conceit for one of…
Much of the mysteriousness is inadvertent: ITV’s The Reunion reviewed
The Reunion opened in 1997 with some young people being carefree: a fact they obligingly signalled by zipping around the…
A welcome antidote to UK crime drama: Netflix’s Kohrra reviewed
It has been quite some time since I’ve been able to bear watching UK crime drama. All right, I do…
University Challenge deserves Amol Rajan
I wish I could say that Bamber Gascoigne would be turning in his grave at what has happened to University…
Rewriting history
If you don’t subscribe to every last detail of the LGBTQ+ agenda, then basically you are a Nazi. This was…
Too in thrall to today’s dogmas: ITV1’s A Spy Among Friends reviewed
In 2014, Ben Macintyre presented a BBC2 documentary based on his book A Spy Among Friends: Kim Philby and the…
Ugly, mechanical, soulless: Apple TV+’s Hijack reviewed
Idris Elba would have made a perfect James Bond. Not the James Bond that we knew and loved when he…
Time to take your meds, Kanye
No one does agonising quite like Mobeen Azhar. In several BBC documentaries now, he’s set his face to pensive, gone…
Netflix has struck gold: Tour de France: Unchained reviewed
I’m ideologically opposed to bicycles for all the obvious reasons: they don’t have lovely big nostrils which you can blow…
One of the best (if not the jolliest) TV dramas of 2023: BBC1’s Best Interests reviewed
In the opening minutes of Best Interests (Monday and Tuesday), an estranged middle-aged couple made their separate ways to court,…
