Sky
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…
Dune: Prophecy is much worse than you will believe possible
Do you remember that nagging sense of mild disappointment as you sat through Dune 2? You’d been impressed by Dune:…
Spy-drama porn: Sky’s The Day of the Jackal reviewed
All the previewers have been drooling lasciviously over The Day of the Jackal reboot and, having seen the first three…
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…
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…
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…
Gratuitously twisty, turny nonsense: Sky Max’s Poker Face reviewed
Imagine if you had the power always to tell whether or not someone was lying. You’d have it made, wouldn’t…
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
On the brink of delivering something special: Sky's The Midwich Cuckoos reviewed
A youngish couple leave London and drive off excitedly to make a fresh start in more rural surroundings. They demonstrate…
If you want to avoid intrusive anachronisms on TV, you have to go foreign
The iron law of TV these days is that if you want to avoid series that are suffocatingly right-on the…
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…
Eddie Izzard is so bad I'm hoping he gets dismembered: Sky's The Lost Symbol reviewed
If it weren’t for this job I sometimes wonder whether I’d even bother watching TV at all. This mood strikes…
'You should see some of the other scripts that come through': Robert Carlyle interviewed
Robert Jackman talks to Robert Carlyle about Begbie, playing a Tory prime minister and the merits of keeping your head down
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…
Switch over to Eurosport: BBC's Olympic coverage reviewed
I’ve not been allowed anywhere near the TV remote control this week because of some kind of infernal sporting event…
The funniest current affairs show since Brass Eye: Into the Grey Zone reviewed
It was something a friend said to me about The Revenant, Leonardo diCaprio’s bloody-minded and brutal Oscar vehicle: ‘The problem…
How I fell out of love with the BBC
One of the many technological things I don’t understand is, how come I’m paying to watch television? I know why…
Netflix's Messiah is a great concept undermined by implausible politics
Sky’s latest bingewatch potboiler Cobra can’t quite make up its mind whether it wants to be an arch, knowing House……
Why Gomorrah could never have been made by the BBC
Boy often likes to rebuke me for having impossibly high standards when it comes to TV. ‘Why can’t you just…
The great Sky bundle boondoggle
Foolishly, I have this wild notion that one day, if the stars align in my favour, I might be able…
118 000 is, I now realise, the number of the beast
‘Orange 1-1-8 thousand how may I help you?’ said the cheerful voice. Carefree as you like, I asked for the…
I truly loved you, BT Broadband. I should never have reached for Sky
Don’t do it. Do not, whatever you do, even think about doing it. I was happy not doing it. And…
