BBC1
Dramatic, urgent and intriguing: BBC1’s This Town reviewed
After conquering the world with Peaky Blinders (and before that by co-creating Who Wants to Be a Millionaire?), Steven Knight…
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…
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…
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,…
Well-meaning thriller with moments of implausibility: BBC1's Crossfire reviewed
Crossfire was a three-part drama in more ways than one. Running every night from Tuesday to Thursday, it brought together…
The political cunning of Elizabeth II: BBC1's The Longest Reign – The Queen and Her People reviewed
In all the tributes to Her late Majesty’s constancy, dignity, wisdom and devotion to duty, not enough has been said…
Are bankers really as bad as they're portrayed on screen?
Is the onscreen portrayal of investment bankers as monsters true to life? Martin Vander Weyer talks to the writers of Industry
A masterclass in evenhandedness: James Graham’s Sherwood reviewed
James Graham has made his considerable name writing political-based dramas of a highly unusual type: non-polemical ones. And this certainly…
The medical equivalent of The Responder: BBC1's This is Going to Hurt reviewed
According to the makers, This is Going to Hurt is intended as ‘a love letter to the national health service’.…
Shades of Tony Soprano: BBC1's The Responder reviewed
Older readers may remember a time when people signalled their cultural superiority with the weird boast that they didn’t watch…
A cut above TV's usual #MeToo fare: BBC1's Rules of the Game reviewed
As you may have noticed, it’s something of a golden age for TV shows about how invisible middle-aged women are…
Tells us more about today than the early 1960s: BBC1's A Very British Scandal reviewed
For people who like a good upper-class scandal (or ‘people’, as they’re also known), 1963 was definitely a vintage year.…
Amateurish and implausible: BBC1's Vigil reviewed
Tense, claustrophobic, gripping, thrilling, realistic: just some of the adjectives no one is using to describe BBC1’s Sunday night submarine…
When did Sunday night TV become so grim? Baptiste reviewed
There was, you may remember, a time when Sunday night television was rather a jolly affair: gently plotted and full…
Honest, faithful and fantastically enjoyable: BBC1's The Pursuit of Love reviewed
I’d been expecting the BBC to make a dreadful hash of The Pursuit of Love, especially when I read that…
A TV doc that is truly brave: BBC1's Ian Wright – Home Truths reviewed
Ian Wright: Home Truths began with the ex-footballer saying that the home he grew up in was ‘not a happy…
This Is My House has rekindled my love for the BBC
Here’s a thought that will make you feel old. Or worried. Or both. The poke-fun-at-celebrity-houses series Through the Keyhole —…
Watch Mark Kermode find 1950s political attitudes in 1950s films
The new series of Mark Kermode’s Secrets of Cinema began with an episode on British comedy films. As ever, Kermode…
Superb but depraved: BBC1’s The Serpent reviewed
The Serpent is the best BBC drama series in ages — god knows how it slipped through the net —…
A romcom with very little com: BBC1’s Black Narcissus reviewed
In Black Narcissus, based on the novel by Rumer Godden, five nuns set off for a remote Himalayan palace in…
What's an art form that feels unpopular and pointless, but isn't? Video art
How did the universe begin? Did the great god Bumba vomit us up, as the Kuba believe? Or did we…
Enough plotlines to power several seasons of The West Wing: BBC1's Roadkill reviewed
Like many a political thriller before it, BBC1’s Roadkill began with a politician emerging into the daylight to face a…
How on earth did Harold Pinter and Danny Dyer become such good friends?
Collectors of TV titles that sound as if they were thought of by Alan Partridge will presumably have spotted Danny…
Sumptuous and very promising: A Suitable Boy reviewed
Nobody could argue that Andrew Davies isn’t up for a challenge. He’d also surely be a shoo-in for Monty Python’s…
Michaela Coel's dazzling finale reminds me of Philip Roth: I May Destroy You reviewed
It might seem a bit of a stretch to see deep similarities between Michaela Coel (young, female, black and currently…
