BBC

The politics of email sign-offs

25 July 2020 9:00 am

I think Anne Applebaum is a friend of mine. I certainly hope so, since I have always admired her writing,…

The BBC's failure to report gender identity accurately

17 July 2020 8:14 pm

‘Blackpool woman accessed child abuse images in hospital bed’. It’s a good headline, in that it catches your attention. But…

Dysfunctional music for dysfunctional people: The Public Image is Rotten reviewed

4 July 2020 9:00 am

A star is born, but instead of emerging into the world beaming for the cameras, he spits and snarls and…

Why haven’t podcasts cracked the recipe for audio drama?

4 July 2020 9:00 am

In Beeb-dominated Britain, the commercial triumph of podcasting — epitomised by Spotify’s recent £100 million deals with Joe Rogan and…

Who watches the broadcast watchdog?

27 June 2020 9:00 am

At the beginning of April, I became so frustrated by the supine coverage of the government’s response to the coronavirus…

Why is Robert Burton’s masterpiece Anatomy of Melancholy being sold as self-help?

27 June 2020 9:00 am

The BBC has been having a good pandemic. Stuck at home, a generation raised on podcasts and YouTube has discovered…

The festivalisation of TV

27 June 2020 9:00 am

Televising Glastonbury has changed the festival, and in turn transformed television, says Graeme Thomson

The musical event of the year: Wigmore Hall BBC Radio 3 Special Broadcasts reviewed

13 June 2020 9:00 am

Remember when 2020 was going to be Beethoven year? There were going to be cycles and festivals, recordings and reappraisals;…

The real problem with Newsnight

6 June 2020 9:00 am

The Twitter feed of BBC Newsnight editor Esme Wren (remember, I read this stuff so you don’t have to) is…

The ferocious bias against Dominic Cummings

30 May 2020 9:00 am

At Dominic Cummings’s press conference on Monday, reporters tried two lines of attack. One was to behave like local detectives,…

The best Macbeths to watch online

23 May 2020 9:00 am

The world’s greatest playwright ought to be dynamite at the movies. But it’s notoriously hard to turn a profit from…

How Tom Stoppard foretold what we’re living through

9 May 2020 9:00 am

A TV play by Tom Stoppard, A Separate Peace, was broadcast live on Zoom last Saturday. I watched as my…

I've lost patience with podcasts and their presenters

24 April 2020 11:00 pm

‘To be recognised and accepted by a peregrine,’ wrote J.A. Baker in 1967, ‘you must wear the same clothes, travel…

Why do Radio 3 presenters adopt the tone stupid adults use when addressing children?

11 April 2020 9:00 am

Anyone who has listened regularly to Radio 3 over the decades — not to mention the Third Programme, which Radio…

Riveting documentary about a remarkable man: Harry Birrell Presents Films of Love and War reviewed

28 March 2020 9:00 am

First shown on BBC Scotland, Harry Birrell Presents Films of Love and War (BBC4, Wednesday) was the documentary equivalent of…

Letters: The BBC licence fee is an anachronism

14 March 2020 9:00 am

Musical inspiration Sir: The interview with Antonio Pappano was splendid  for those of us who admire him in Australia but…

How I fell out of love with the BBC

7 March 2020 9:00 am

One of the many technological things I don’t understand is, how come I’m paying to watch television? I know why…

Why the BBC licence fee makes sense

7 March 2020 9:00 am

A consensus seems to be forming that the BBC licence fee is for the chop. In a digital age, the…

Letters: How to really revitalise the North

29 February 2020 9:00 am

Devolved or decentralised? Sir: Paul Collier (‘Northern lights’, 22 February) conflates what devolution has come to mean, in UK terms, with…

Why are BBC dramas so obsessed with rewriting history?

26 February 2020 10:56 pm

If there was a Bafta award for Most Woke Television Drama, a BBC production would win every year hands down.…

The blindness of cultural Marxism

21 February 2020 10:00 pm

Words we are not allowed to use any more now include ‘cultural Marxism’. Suella Braverman, now the Attorney General, used…

How low can the BBC go?

21 February 2020 10:00 pm

Last weekend’s papers claimed that the government desires a ‘massively pruned back’ BBC. Former Conservative cabinet minister Damian Green and…

The BBC’s big problem is its obsession with itself

16 February 2020 7:00 pm

One reason people are disillusioned with the BBC is its obsession with itself. Here is the text of a question…

The last working-class people in the Labour party

15 February 2020 9:00 am

A couple of people in the Hornsey and Wood Green Labour party have come up with a fascinating suggestion —…

The BBC has much to learn from Japan’s national broadcaster

10 February 2020 10:59 pm

NHK is Japan’s version of the BBC – it was actually modelled after the Beeb way back in the 1920s.…