BBC2
Line of Duty thinks – rightly – that there’s drama in the subsections of police acts
Which is better, British TV drama or American? A couple of years ago, merely asking the question would have had…
Scandi noir reduces you to an exquisitely suicidal state
Some things I have learned about Iceland after watching six episodes of Trapped (BBC4, Saturdays). 1. They seem to feel…
Twenty things I will ban when I am elected your Dictator For Life in 2016
The two things I hate most about Christmas are a) Advertland showing me how sparkly and joyous my home and…
James Delingpole cringes at London Spy’s gay sex scenes
The main problem with being a TV critic, I’ve noticed over the years, is that you have to watch so…
Why most four-year-olds deserve to be sectioned
The first episode of Let Us Entertain You (BBC2, Wednesday) definitely couldn’t be accused of lacking a central thesis. Presenter…
The Last Kingdom is BBC2’s solemnly cheesy answer to Game of Thrones
The opening caption for The Last Kingdom (BBC2, Thursday) read ‘Kingdom of Northumbria, North of England, 866 AD’. In fact,…
Finally James Delingpole gets why women are so angry
Finally I realise why women are so pissed off. It all goes back to the first codified laws — circa…
Is medical screening bad for your health? Michael Mosley dons a pair of ‘dignity shorts’ to find out
When the link between tobacco and lung cancer was first established in the early 1950s, one obvious question arose: should…
Bohemian conformity can be just as suffocating as any other type: BBC1’s Life in Squares reviewed
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
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
For keen students of China, this week’s television provided yet more proof that Deng Xiaoping’s decision to open the country…
As blatant rip-offs go, this one is shaping up nicely: Odyssey, BBC2, reviewed
This week’s Imagine… Jeff Koons: Diary of a Seducer (BBC1, Tuesday) began with Koons telling a slightly puzzled-looking Alan Yentob…
Heroically unoriginal: Channel 4’s Humans reviewed
You’d think scientists might have realised by now that creating a race of super-robots is about as wise as opening…
BBC2’s Napoleon reviewed: does Andrew Roberts’s pet Frog need rehabilitating?
I adore Andrew Roberts. We go back a long way. Once, on a boating expedition gone wrong in the south…
Imagine if Are You Being Served? had starred Laurence Olivier: ITV’s Vicious reviewed
Monday saw the return of possibly the weirdest TV series in living memory. Imagine a parallel universe in which Are…
BBC2's Armada has something for everybody - including three yummy female historians
It has been a while since the BBC really pushed the boat out on the epic history documentary front. Perhaps…
Without Gallipoli, we’d have no Page 3
Some years ago I paid a visit to the site of the Gallipoli landings because I was mildly obsessed with…
W1A reviewed: so pitch-perfect as to be profoundly depressing
Ever since the days of Tony Hancock, many of the best British sitcoms — from Dad’s Army to Fawlty Towers,…
A review of three reassuringly unoriginal new travel programmes fronted by comedians
Who says British television lacks imagination? You might have thought, for example, that every possible combination of comedian and travel…
Poldark review: drama by committee
By my calculations, the remake of Poldark (BBC1, Sunday) is the first time BBC drama has returned to Cornwall since…
Could it be that Wolf Hall is actually the teeniest bit dull?
In January 1958, the British government began working on the significantly titled Operation Hope Not: its plans for what to…
We know that war is hell. But it doesn’t ever make us stop doing it
There’s a plausible theory — recently rehearsed in the BBC’s excellent two-part documentary The Lion’s Last Roar? — that our…
Hooray for Homeland - Carrie’s back blasting America’s enemies to pieces with drones
One of the more welcome and surprising things about television at the moment is that Homeland (Channel 4, Sunday) is…
Fellow saddoes rejoice: BBC4 has made a comedy-drama about metal detecting
Detectorists (BBC4) is a sad git’s niche comedy that would never have been commissioned if it hadn’t been written and…
Could the Kenyan mall atrocities happen here?
So you’ve just popped down to the supermarket for the weekly shop, toddlers in tow, when the grenades start to…
