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David Bowden
It’s not too late
to cross The Bridge
An autistic investigator, a grisly murder, sleek furniture: The Bridge has all you’d expect from Scandi thrillers.
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| Friday 11 May 2012 |
Patrick Hayes
Homeland: fear and
self-loathing in America
One of Homeland’s greatest strengths is that it shows how much modern terrorists now ape liberal Westerners.
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| Friday 4 May 2012 |
David Bowden
Getting by without a
little help from Friends
E4’s latest import, 2 Broke Girls, isn’t a patch on sadly-departed Friends. But its humour fits our times.
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| Friday 20 April 2012 |
David Bowden
So long Ceefax, I shall miss you
Despite the clunky graphics and slow-to-change pages, Ceefax and Teletext always offered unexpected pleasures.
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| Friday 13 April 2012 |
David Bowden
Getting off on TV dating shows
Take Me Out might be good fun on a Saturday night but The Undateables is the one you’d want to take home with you.
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| Thursday 5 April 2012 |
David Bowden
Farewell then, Heather Trott and Harry Hill
Soap-opera characters are dropping like flies, but the departure of TV Burp’s host is a much bigger loss.
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| Thursday 29 March 2012 |
David Bowden
Just a Minute,
radio isn't dead yet
If radio was really an outdated medium, desperate TV producers wouldn’t keep trying to rip off its ideas.
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| Friday 23 March 2012 |
David Bowden
TV’s struggle to live in the moment
As period dramas from Downton Abbey to White Heat show, it can be easier to tell a story by setting it in the past.
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| Friday 16 March 2012 |
David Bowden
Even dopey teens can be good parents
Pramface, a comedy about young people dealing with unwanted pregnancy, is one child of BBC3 worth keeping.
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| Friday 9 March 2012 |
David Bowden
Feeling too much at home with Homeland
If the new US drama induces a sense of déjà vu, that’s because it’s drawn from the same old post-9/11 script.
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| Friday 2 March 2012 |
David Bowden
Politics and TV: the odd couple
No modern political chat show, including ITV’s new one The Agenda, has a patch on The Wright Stuff.
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| Thursday 23 February 2012 |
David Bowden
D’oh! The rise and
fall of The Simpsons
The 500th episode, starring Julian Assange, proved the cartoon is no longer edgy but still kinda funny.
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| Friday 17 February 2012 |
David Bowden
The BBC and its misanthropic mates
A gushing documentary about the Earth Liberation Front was blind to the group’s many, massive problems.
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| Friday 10 February 2012 |
David Bowden
The boycottistas didn’t end Apartheid
At long last, a TV documentary on how South Africans, not PC Western shoppers, ended Apartheid.
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| Friday 3 February 2012 |
David Bowden
Adapting Birdsong and finding gay footballers
This week, the long-awaited TV version of Faulks’ war epic was trumped by a surprisingly sweet invective against footie fans.
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| Friday 20 January 2012 |
Patrick Hayes
Don’t give way to the Top Gear-bashers
What Clarkson’s audience understands that his shrill critics do not is that he is not to be taken seriously.
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| Friday 13 January 2012 |
David Bowden
The vices of post-holiday telly
Sex, smoking and drinking: the past week’s TV schedule was filled with investigations into simple pleasures.
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| Friday 6 January 2012 |
David Bowden
Hard times ahead: a whole year of Dickens
Over Christmas, TV got off to a flying start in celebrating the bicentenary of the author’s birth - with mixed results.
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| Thursday 22 December 2011 |
David Bowden
Young, gifted
and screwed up
Two films about an alcoholic writer and troubled painter suggest we’re more interested in artists’ pain than their art.
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| Friday 9 December 2011 |
David Bowden
A pig comes to Charlie Brooker’s rescue
If it wasn't for its piggish sex scene, The National Anthem would just be Martin Amis without the flair.
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