TV

Riveting and heart-wrenching: BBC1’s Time reviewed

4 November 2023 9:00 am

‘Only with women’ is a phrase used by more cynical TV types for a show that takes something that’s been…

Only goodwill will get you through this reboot: Paramount+’s Frasier reviewed

21 October 2023 9:00 am

Remember the groans of dismay, possibly including your own, which greeted John Cleese’s announcement in February that he was reviving…

I watched it so that you didn’t have to: ITV2’s Big Brother reviewed

14 October 2023 9:00 am

Big Brother is Nineteen Eighty-Four rewritten by Aldous Huxley. The detail that George Orwell got wrong is that far from…

Arresting visual spectacle and superb fight scenes: Netflix’s One Piece reviewed

30 September 2023 9:00 am

What would you say is the most successful comic-book series in history? If you’re thinking Tintin you’re not even close.…

Why I’m addicted to Australian MasterChef

16 September 2023 9:00 am

Why is Australian MasterChef so much better than the English version? You’d think, with a population less than a third…

Subtle, psychologically twisty drama: BBC3’s Bad Behaviour reviewed

9 September 2023 9:00 am

Bad Behaviour is a decidedly solemn new Australian drama series with plenty to be solemn about. It was billed in…

‘I disliked him intensely’: Richard Lewis on first meeting Larry David

26 August 2023 9:00 am

Curb Your Enthusiasm’s Richard Lewis talks to Ben Lazarus about addiction, his Parkinson’s diagnosis – and his friendship with Larry David

Bags of charm and a gripping plot: Netflix’s The Chosen One reviewed

19 August 2023 9:00 am

Some years ago, Mark Millar (the creator of Kick-Ass, Kingsman, etc.) hit on yet another brilliant conceit for one of…

University Challenge deserves Amol Rajan

29 July 2023 9:00 am

I wish I could say that Bamber Gascoigne would be turning in his grave at what has happened to University…

Rewriting history

22 July 2023 9:00 am

If you don’t subscribe to every last detail of the LGBTQ+ agenda, then basically you are a Nazi. This was…

Time to take your meds, Kanye

1 July 2023 9:00 am

No one does agonising quite like Mobeen Azhar. In several BBC documentaries now, he’s set his face to pensive, gone…

One of the best (if not the jolliest) TV dramas of 2023: BBC1’s Best Interests reviewed

17 June 2023 9:00 am

In the opening minutes of Best Interests (Monday and Tuesday), an estranged middle-aged couple made their separate ways to court,…

Gratuitously twisty, turny nonsense: Sky Max’s Poker Face reviewed

10 June 2023 9:00 am

Imagine if you had the power always to tell whether or not someone was lying. You’d have it made, wouldn’t…

Wonderfully naturalistic and intriguingly odd: BBC2’s The Gallows Pole reviewed

3 June 2023 9:00 am

In advance, The Gallows Pole: This Valley Will Rise was touted as a radical departure for director Shane Meadows. After…

Spooky, classy dystopian sci-fi: Apple TV+’s Silo reviewed

27 May 2023 9:00 am

Back once more to our favourite unhappy place: the dystopian future. And yet again it seems that the authorities have…

‘Netflix are incredibly conservative’: documentary-maker Nick Broomfield interviewed

20 May 2023 9:00 am

Adam Sweeting talks to the documentary-maker Nick Broomfield about the forgotten Rolling Stone

A Soviet version of Martin Parr: Adam Curtis’s Russia 1985-1999 –TraumaZone reviewed

29 October 2022 9:00 am

Russia 1985-1999: TraumaZone – even the title makes you want to scream – is Adam Curtis’s Metal Machine Music: the…

Touchingly free of cynicism: C4's Somewhere Boy reviewed

22 October 2022 9:00 am

At the start of Somewhere Boy, an 18-year-old boy is rescued from an isolated house by his aunt Sue following…

An enjoyable new Ageing Dad drama: Disney+'s The Old Man reviewed

15 October 2022 9:00 am

We men all think we’ve still got it, even when we’re well past 50 and young women look straight through…

The makers of Fauda have another hit on their hands: Sky Atlantic's Munich Games reviewed

1 October 2022 9:00 am

You’d have to pay me an awful lot more than I get for this column to review Monster: The Jeffrey…

The political cunning of Elizabeth II: BBC1's The Longest Reign – The Queen and Her People reviewed

17 September 2022 9:00 am

In all the tributes to Her late Majesty’s constancy, dignity, wisdom and devotion to duty, not enough has been said…

Will you be able to get through the ponderous aphorisms without giggling? The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power reviewed

10 September 2022 9:00 am

Amazon’s much-heralded Tolkien prequel The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power began by answering a question that has…