Highs and lows of 2008 in view

2:21pm Tuesday 23rd December 2008

Among a film critic’s duties, as another year draws to a close, is to assess the trends that have shaped our viewing habits over the past 12 months. Among the notable aspects of 2008 has been the number of classic pictures that have been revived for theatrical release.

Comments (0) | Have your say »

Carol's tears at final Countdown

3:02pm Wednesday 17th December 2008

So farewell Countdown (Channel 4) – at least, as we have known it for many years. The programme will reappear in January but without Carol Vorderman – and Des O’Connor. On last Friday’s show, which was the 59th final of the contest, Carol bid a tearful farewell to the series. The tears were understandable, as Carol was saying goodbye to a programme she has appeared on for 26 years – not to mention bidding farewell to the near-million pounds she was reportedly getting for 40 days’ work per year: doing sums and picking out letters of the alphabet.

Comments (0) | Have your say »

The island free of allergies

4:04pm Wednesday 10th December 2008

What’s special about Tristan da Cunha? Well, it calls itself “the world’s remotest island" – at least, in the South Atlantic. But it’s also distinguished by having a population of 266 people, nearly half of whom have asthma. Allergy Planet (BBC2) was a serious Horizon documentary (for once) studying the mysterious increase in the number of people suffering from allergies. It started by saying of allergy that “50 years ago it barely existed” but it was more than 50 years ago when, as a child, I was diagnosed as being allergic to eggs (which give me asthma). People can be allergic to all sorts of things, including nuts, dogs, cats, dust, milk, shellfish and chocolate. Allergens can induce distressing reactions and even cause death.

Comments (0) | Have your say »

Looking back on the sixties

3:42pm Wednesday 3rd December 2008

Bob Dylan said: “People today are still living off the table scraps of the sixties.” This is certainly true of Sex, Drugs and Rock 'n' Roll: The Sixties Revealed (Five), which looked back nostalgically at the 1960s, using scraps of films that the late Bernard Braden made 40 years ago. Braden interviewed sixties’ celebrities with the intention of filming them again every three years. The film footage was never used but Channel Five has now made a three-part series by showing snippets from the interviews to some of the interviewees and watching their reactions.

Comments (0) | Have your say »

Stars shine in tale of science

3:13pm Wednesday 26th November 2008

Einstein and Eddington (BBC2) proved that there is still intelligent drama on TV. It mapped the relationship between Albert Einstein and Arthur Eddington around the time of the First World War. As a stolid defender of Isaac Newton’s theory of gravity, Eddington had been appointed Director of the Cambridge Observatory but he became increasingly fascinated by the work of Einstein, who had been lured from Zurich to Berlin with the offer of a professorship. The drama showed both men rebelling against their superiors’ chauvinism, and refusing to get involved in the war. Eddington was a Quaker, and Einstein later said “I am an absolute pacifist . . . It is a feeling that possesses me, because the murder of men is disgusting.”

Comments (0) | Have your say »

Good Idea but clumsily done

3:38pm Wednesday 19th November 2008

I wish I had read Reg Little's article about Martine Brant in this newspaper last week before I watched The Devil's Whore (Channel 4), co-written by Brant and Peter Flannery. It is one of those historical dramas which expects viewers to know their history in some detail. It started with people dressed in period costume (but looking rather modern), doing mystifying things explained in badly-enunciated dialogue, further obscured by a noisy background. It made history a mystery. Who was who, and what were they doing?

Comments (0) | Have your say »

Questioning the Glory of War

10:18am Thursday 13th November 2008

Early November is the time when “Dulce et decorum est pro patria mori” (the saying described by Wilfred Owen as “the old lie”) is brought home to us with added force. Nearly everyone on television suddenly starts wearing a red poppy and we are bombarded with programmes about war. This year, because it is 90 years since the Armistice was signed to end the so-called Great War, TV channels have given us plenty of features on the subject, although they contained mixed messages.

Comments (0) | Have your say »

Confusing roles in new Dickens

2:45pm Thursday 30th October 2008

Little Dorrit (BBC1) was the latest in a long sequence of TV adaptations by Andrew Davies of classic novels. This is probably one of Dickens's lesser-known works, so Davies had a hard job to introduce us to a large number of characters and situations. In fact he left us with too many mysteries. Who were those two blokes in a prison cell, speaking incomprehensibly in foreign accents? Why is Tattycoram so volatile? I don't know if I can face the effort of watching the remaining 13 episodes to discover the answers.

Comments (0) | Have your say »

Smug Stephen stating the obvious

10:48am Wednesday 15th October 2008

Was ever a nation such the subject of as much Barnum-esque cultural rubbernecking as the US? Roll up and ogle the crazy Southerners parading their guns and redneckery! Marvel at the Pacific Coast inhabitants with their freakish plastic bodies! Be astonished by the religious Mid-Westerners and their Bibles! Shunning a Louis Theroux caricature-fest, but failing to provide substantial analysis either, Stephen Fry in America (BBC1) was as bland as its title. Fry, ostensibly driving a ‘London’ taxi to give the first of this six-part series a suitably rakish air, trod on Bill Bryson's metaphorical toes as he traversed New England.

Comments (0) | Have your say »