The best comedies, the greats, often feature people you wouldn't want to spend any time with if you were unfortunate to bump into them at a dinner party or a bus stop. The best recent examples are This Country and BBC Two's Mum. We loved those shows, but we'd cross...
REVIEW: ITV’s ‘Viewpoint’ is strong, but is it strong enough past the first episode?
Noel Clarke stars in ITV's newest police procedural Viewpoint. Playing against type, he is DC Martin Young, a quiet, methodical surveillance officer. His team are called in when Manchester school primary teacher Gemma goes missing, and all eyes are on her...
REVIEW: Unforgotten is becoming the best drama on television.
This series of Unforgotten has been one of the best ever and, perhaps because of that, the episodes have whizzed by. I cannot believe we’re nearly at the end of series four. The dark secrets of our surviving suspects are stacking up, and the past is about to...
REVIEW: ‘The Investigation’ takes a methodical approach but something is lacking.
The Investigation is a Danish drama based unusually for the genre we’ve come to know and love entirely on real events. It revolves around the work of two men - Jens Moller, the Head of Homicide for Copenhagen Police and Chief Prosecutor Jakob Buch, reuniting...
PREVIEW: It’s a Sin, unflinching, important and the drama RTD was born to write.
It’s a Sin is genuinely powerful and unflinching; a drama in the true sense of the word, with that delicious sweetness and vulnerability at its heart that’s a Russell T Davies hallmark. There’s glittering ambition, buzzy energy, naive innocence, and fates...
REVIEW: ‘The Great’ is the first our obsession of 2021.
The Great had me under its spell immediately, the cheeky footnote to the title promising an “occasionally true story”. It’s a playful comedic satire of power, gender roles and royalty set in 18th century Russia, from Tony Mcnamara the co-writer of Oscar-winning The...
REVIEW: Star power can’t save ‘thriller’ The Undoing.
I watched The Undoing on Now TV catch-up during a really busy week; as busy you can get in a Tier 2 lockdown. It was an awkward stop/ start way of doing things, which sometimes you've just got to do, to squeeze some prestige TV into your week, and I ended up...
REVIEW: BBC One’s ‘Roadkill’ has a lot going on but not much of it is interesting.
Roadkill is the new drama from playwright and screenwriter David Hare and it sets out its stall immediately as a terribly sophisticated Sunday night telly for grown-ups. The Saul Bass inspired Mad Men-style title sequence sets the mood and even casual TV viewers know...
REVIEW: ITV’s Sanditon is a bit of an odd show.
Well, this is an odd one. Andrew Davies has adapted Jane Austen’s final work for television. I was confused too as I thought Northanger Abbey was her final book, but it turns out that was published and done, and Sanditon was only just started when she died. Davies...
Our Favourite Netflix Original Series.
A strange thing is happening in the world of streaming services. The huge success of Netflix has meant other broadcasters want their own slice of the streaming space. Disney will soon be removing all of its content from Netflix and plonking it all on its own Disney +...
REVIEW: Trapped ends but something feels off.
This series of Trapped has been more about fire than ice, but despite how it all began with Gisli's self-immolation in such a public space I was not prepared for the horrific car fire at the start of episode 9. I was in denial. There's no way hat Asgeir could be dead,...
REVIEW: Trapped gets more engrossing.
Episode seven opens with the fairytale of Gutti the goat boy, his personal tragedy and how he gets trapped in a lost future. If it's meant to evoke any sympathy or understanding in steely Halla it falls flat. "Gutti was an idiot" she says. There are more myths and...
Trapped continues to thrill and confuse.
Welcome to this week's episodes of Trapped aka racist Lord of the Rings, well sort of. The Hammer of Thor group are in the ascendency, racing around in the north with various criminal enterprises, large and small. The director must have heard my complaints about...
Trapped – One of the finest foreign dramas returns
TrappedSeries 1 was an extraordinary bit of television, the first ever Icelandic drama broadcast on British TV. The first series was the highest rated series ever on RUV,watched by 86% of TV households in Iceland. In the UK it passed 1.2 million viewers on BBC Four....