FeaturesTV review: Vicious; The Job Lot
Rape offers such a rich vein of comic potential that I am bewildered as to why the world of sitcom has overlooked the subject for so long.
TV review: How to Win Eurovision; The Fall
Woody Allen once famously declared Nazis in shiny boots as being beyond satire. For esteemed comic musician Tom Lehrer, it was the awarding of the Nobel Peace Prize to Henry Kissinger. For the rest of…
Radio review: Tony and Rose; Jungle of Cities; Love, Etc; Dead Man’s Suit
A tender but bruising account of dementia is filtered through an architect’s view of the world in Nicola Baldwin’s Tony and Rose. But all the design mantras in the world can’t help a son faced…
TV review: Murder on the Home Front; Life of Crime
“Those bastards have bombed my crime scene,” exclaims maverick police pathologist Dr Lennox Collins (Patrick Kennedy). The bastards in question being the Luftwaffe, the crime scene being the terraced house where a young woman’s body…
Radio review: Bernard Who?; Private Passions; The Gatsby Factor
A career spanning 70 years is cause for celebration, especially when it has been notched up by one of our most cherished character actors, Bernard Cribbins. In the two-part Bernard Who?, veteran radio producer Martin…
Radio review: Love, War and Trains; Before the Fact; Cash Cow
The moon has many a sail-on part in Ian McMillan’s deliciously quirky and poetic paean to his parents, Love, War and Trains – so much so that it’s a wonder it doesn’t get a mention…
TV review: Watson and Oliver; The Wright Way
Comedy duo Watson and Oliver are back with a second series of sketches, despite the somewhat lacklustre reception their first outing received. So all credit to BBC Comedy for keeping faith with the duo, rather…
Radio review: Coronation Strasse; Ella in Berlin; And Calm of Mind; Prisoner Soul
In 1982, German film director and producer Hans W Geissendorfer became fascinated by the effect soap opera, and in particular Coronation Street, had on its viewers. Indeed, he felt so inspired that three years later…
TV review: Britain’s Got Talent; Playhouse Presents… Hey Diddly Dee
Britain’s Got Talent returned to serve up more of the same meticulously stage-managed emotional manipulation disguised as a talent show, with Simon Cowell, David Walliams, Alesha Dixon and Amanda Holden once more sitting in judgement….
Radio review: Present Laughter; The Flea; A Girl in Winter
If Noel Coward’s Present Laughter is, as generally agreed, drawn from his own life, he goes beyond self-portrait and self-caricature into unflinching self-laceration. Pier Productions’ new radio version, directed by Celia de Wolff, is a…
TV review: Off Their Rockers; The Village; The Security Men
God forbid I am ever diagnosed as terminally ill, but if it happens I shall be buying the complete series of Off Their Rockers and watching it on an endless loop. It wouldn’t actually make…
Radio review: Palace of Laughter; Trevor Noah – The Racist; The Butterfly Effect
A whole generation of comedians started out at the Windmill Theatre in Soho – Peter Sellers, Harry Secombe, Tony Hancock, Frankie Howerd, Dick Emery et al. In many respects it was the Comedy Store of…
TV review: Jonathan Creek; It’s Kevin; Life’s Too Short
You’d think that after 16 years and 28 episodes, Jonathan Creek might itself creak a little – how many more variations on the locked-room mystery can there possibly be? – but nothing could be further…
Radio review: A Larkin Double – Jill; Lost in Mexico; Hombre; The Water Babies – A Modern Fairy Tale
It’s ironic that Philip Larkin’s first novel, Jill, written at 21, features a bumbling young protagonist in a series of embarrassments, when he later declared the work itself a juvenile ‘indiscretion’. Actually, it is much…
TV review: Wodehouse in Exile; Our Girl; Plebs
“He doesn’t have the background knowledge to be a traitor. He was just trying to be funny,” protests Ethel Wodehouse (Zoe Wanamaker) on behalf of her husband, the world renowned writer, humourist, man of letters,…
Radio review: I Dressed Ziggy Stardust; The Arthur Cravan Memorial Society; Johnnie Walker’s Long-Players
One programme that didn’t really do what it said on the tin was BBC Radio 4’s I Dressed Ziggy Stardust. But if the title turned out to be a brazen red herring, the angle it…
TV review: In the Flesh; The Lady Vanishes; WPC 56
If the prospect of yet another zombie thriller makes you want to dig your own grave, lie in it and pull a duvet of earth over your head, let me immediately reassure you that BBC3’s…
Radio review: The Startling Truths of Old World Sparrows; Hedda Gabler; Esther Waters
Greek economist and tragedian Vicky Pryce was photographed looking at cheap radios the weekend before being imprisoned, along with ex-Lib Dem MP Chris Huhne, for perverting the course of justice over the driving-licence points fiasco…
TV review: Shetland; Bluestone 42
Shetland. I ask you. What a mind-numbingly boring and unimaginative title for a drama. It would be dull enough if the subject matter were a pony or a pullover, but naming a police procedural after…
Radio review: Radio 2’s History of British Comedy; The Meaning of Liff at 30
Chuckle muscles at the ready, I prepared to be simultaneously tickled and enlightened by David Mitchell’s History of British Comedy. Sadly, however, it turned out to be an all-too-familiar trawl through the early days of…
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