BBC2
Leavisites should stay away: Sky’s Bad Tidings reviewed
Reviewing Sky’s The Heist before Christmas last year, I suggested that all feature-length festive television dramas begin with credits announcing…
Why are these dead-eyed K-pop groups represented as some kind of ideal?
On Saturday, Made in Korea: The K-pop Experience began by hailing K-pop as ‘the multi-billion-pound music that’s taken the world…
Clear, thorough and gripping: BBC2’s Horizon – The Battle to Beat Malaria
If you transcribed the narrator’s script in almost any episode of Horizon, you’d notice something striking: an awful lot of…
Utterly bog-standard: BBC2’s The Turkish Detective reviewed
A partly subtitled show set in Istanbul might sound like a brave departure for a BBC Sunday night crime drama.…
Danny Dyer’s new C4 programme is deeply odd
Who do you think said the following on TV this week: ‘I love being around gay men – seeing a…
Wonderfully naturalistic and intriguingly odd: BBC2’s The Gallows Pole reviewed
In advance, The Gallows Pole: This Valley Will Rise was touted as a radical departure for director Shane Meadows. After…
Alienatingly sweet and warm: BBC2's The Newsreader reviewed
When TV makes shows about TV, it rarely has a good word to say for itself. In the likes of…
Relentless and shouty: BBC2's Then Barbara met Alan reviewed
BBC2’s one-off drama Then Barbara Met Alan(Monday) told the true story of how two disabled performers on the cabaret circuit…
What’ll happen next – or what’s happened so far – is anybody’s guess: The Ipcress File reviewed
ITV’s new version of The Ipcress File began with a close-up of a pair of black-rimmed glasses just like those…
For all its absurdity, it delivers the goods: BBC2's Louis Theroux’s Forbidden America reviewed
In the latest episode of Louis Theroux’s Forbidden America, Louis asked a rapper called Broke Baby if ‘it’s important to…
Some jolly TV artifice and a rare moment of authenticity: C4’s Miriam and Alan – Lost in Scotland reviewed
Thanks to Covid, the days are gone — or at least suspended — when a TV travel programme meant a…
A highly polished exercise in treading water: Season 3 of Succession reviewed
At one point in an early Simpsons, Homer comes across an old issue of TV Guide, and finds the listing…
Blair & Brown: The New Labour Revolution should be called ‘The Tragedy of Gordon Brown'
Murder Island features eight real-life ‘ordinary people’ seeking to solve a fictional killing on a fictional Scottish island. What follows…
Bleak, unashamedly macho and grown-up: BBC2's The North Water reviewed
‘The world is hell, and men are both the tormented souls and the devils within it.’ This was the cheery…
A total mess: BBC2's The Watch reviewed
Last Sunday on Channel 4, a man called Eric Nicoli proudly remembered ‘the bravest thing I’ve ever done’. In November…
A very watchable doc cashing in on Line of Duty: BBC2's Bent Coppers reviewed
If you’re after an exciting, twisty programme about police corruption that doesn’t also feel a bit like sitting an exam…
John DeLorean: man of mystery – and full-blown psychopath
DeLorean: Back from the Future was one of those documentaries — for me at least — that takes a story…
Is The Undoing properly great or just a run-of-mill thriller with a brilliant casting director?
There must be some people somewhere who vaguely know their own spouses — but if so, they don’t tend to…
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…
Funny, tender and properly horrible: Channel 4’s Adult Material reviewed
A woman is eating a pie in her car as it gets an automatic wash. Careful to keep the pie…
What on earth has happened to Simon Schama: The Romantics and Us reviewed
‘You may think our modern world was born yesterday,’ said Simon Schama at the beginning of The Romantics and Us.…
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…
The real Rupert Murdoch, by Kelvin MacKenzie
The BBC documentary on Rupert Murdoch is pure one-sided bile, says Kelvin MacKenzie
