Singing Ireland into being
In recent years there’s been a fashion for arts documentaries presented by celebs rather than boring old experts — presumably…
When pop gave way to rock
According to David Hepworth, the year he turned 21 was also the year when ‘a huge proportion of the most…
Good cop, bad cop
Which is better, British TV drama or American? A couple of years ago, merely asking the question would have had…
Just what the doctor ordered
Every now and then, a costume drama comes along that’s so daringly unconventional as to make us re-examine our whole…
Doomed youth
It’s often said that there are only seven basic plots in literature. When it comes to biographies of rock stars…
Night moves
The Night Manager (BBC1, Sunday) announced its intentions immediately, when the opening credits lovingly combined weapons and luxury items. ‘Blimey,’…
Marty’s way
Vinyl (Sky Atlantic) — the much-anticipated series, co-produced by Martin Scorsese and Mick Jagger, about the 1970s New York record…
Voices of St Joan
I don’t know if this counts as name-dropping, but I recently interviewed a boyhood friend of Elvis Presley’s in Tupelo,…
In excess
Judging from its website, Hebden Bridge’s tourist office considers the fact that BBC1’s Happy Valley is filmed in the town…
Weekend world
When the time comes to make programmes looking back on the 2010s, I wonder which aspects of life today will…
An inconvenient truth
On the face of it, the Netflix documentary serial Making a Murderer should only take up ten hours of your…
Compliance order
Never a man tortured by self-doubt, Derren Brown introduced his latest special Pushed to the Edge (Channel 4, Tuesday) as…
United States: Deep South, full strength
Explore Mississippi and the Delta before they’re rebranded, says James Walton
Losing the plot
On the face of it, ITV’s Peter & Wendy sounded like a perfect family offering for Boxing Day: an adaptation…
Beyond a joke
Let’s start this week with a joke: ‘You know Mrs Kelly? Do you know Mrs Kelly? Her husband’s that little…
Everything you always wanted to know about Sixties pop —and more
It might seem an odd choice, but after reading Jon Savage’s new book, I think if I had a time…
Why most four-year-olds deserve to be sectioned
The first episode of Let Us Entertain You (BBC2, Wednesday) definitely couldn’t be accused of lacking a central thesis. Presenter…
The Last Kingdom is BBC2’s solemnly cheesy answer to Game of Thrones
The opening caption for The Last Kingdom (BBC2, Thursday) read ‘Kingdom of Northumbria, North of England, 866 AD’. In fact,…
Was BBC1’s Rooney hagiography more scripted reality than documentary?
Close to the Edge (BBC4, Tuesday) feels very much like an idea conceived during a particularly good night in the…
Talk of the devil
For years, Ian Fleming was famously self-deprecating about the James Bond books. (‘I have a rule of not looking back,’…
Cock and bull
It’s hard to know whether the actor James Norton was being naive or disingenuous when he claimed in publicity interviews…
Will he was
In 2011, the Daily Mail carried a long story about how the Queen’s cousin Prince William of Gloucester, who died…
Sick and tired
When the link between tobacco and lung cancer was first established in the early 1950s, one obvious question arose: should…
Affairs in squares
On all those comic lists of the world’s shortest books (Great Italian War Heroes, My Hunt for the Real Killers,…
Institutional feminism
Some revelations, it seems, are capable of being endlessly repeated while still remaining revelations. Think of all the books, articles…
