You’ll wish you were gay
To promote his new drama series about Aids in the early 1980s, Russell T. Davies insisted in an interview that…
Perfectly pointless
‘What the world needs now is a black and white pastiche of classic 1950s and 1960s sitcoms reviving two Marvel…
Superb but depraved
The Serpent is the best BBC drama series in ages — god knows how it slipped through the net —…
Pure genius
Of all the times and places to have been on the wrong side of history, I can’t imagine many worse…
Media Notes
Where are all the journalists? Please could someone just clarify a point of law for me: is theft no longer…
Drama gold or bullion dross?
Unlike with every other BBC period drama series these days, I didn’t have to sit through Small Axe: Mangrove grumbling…
The Crown’s depiction of Thatcher is grotesque
My favourite The Crown blooper so far was the one recently spotted by a Telegraph reader: ‘As Head of the…
Marriage of inconvenience
‘We have to stop it now!’ says Princess Margaret (Helena Bonham Carter), smoking another cigarette, obviously. She’s talking about the…
Spit and no polish
Thank you, Spitting Image, for the nostalgia trip! Your new series on BritBox has rekindled with almost Proustian fidelity those…
Mossad’s Lara Croft
If you love Fauda — and of course you do — you’re in for a long wait for season four,…
The boys are back in town
There’s a delicious scene in the new season of Amazon’s superheroes-gone-bad series The Boys. The chief superhero Homelander (Antony Starr)…
Who dares wins
‘Art is dead,’ declared Mark Steyn recently. He was referring to the new rules — copied from the Baftas —…
Bearing all
Few things better capture the crazed cognitive dissonance of our age than this: that while we cower behind masks for…
Illegal raves
Every time I read that Britain’s anti-coronavirus measures are being jeopardised by a ‘small minority of senseless individuals’ holding illegal…
Television Keep it in the family James Delingpole
‘By the way, my name is Max. I take care of them, which ain’t easy, because their hobby is murder.’…
Lockdown notes
A good war Who could ever have imagined that the greatest act of rebellion in the second decade of the…
Bonjour happiness
Soon, very soon now — even sooner than I imagined, if A Suitable Boy turns out to be as lacklustre…
Why I love the French
There’s a scene in the French espionage series The Bureau — about the DGSE, France’s equivalent of the CIA or…
Trump shouldn’t wear a mask
Next time Donald Trump poses for a photo call in one of those ridiculous, unnecessary and completely off-brand face masks,…
Pure poison
The big mistake people make with Alan Bennett is to conflate him with his fellow Yorkshireman David Hockney. But whereas…
Dystopian notes
Albion is toast Australia: will you take me? You’ve always been high on my list of escape destinations when everything…
Speak of the devil
Did Jeffrey Epstein kill himself or was he murdered — and frankly who cares? Actually, having watched the four-part Netflix…
Sex, drugs and disappointment
If I could live my life over again my plan used to be that I’d make my fortune very early,…
Lessons in terror
Sweden is now properly celebrated as the Land that Called Coronavirus Correctly. But in the distant past, those with long…
The great escape
When I lived briefly in Stamford Hill I was mesmerised by the huge fur hats (shtreimel) worn by the local…
