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David Bowden
Happy sanitised, overcautious New Year
Recent complaints about Big Fat Quiz of the Year and Miranda show the culture of offence is alive and well.
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| Thursday 20 December 2012 |
David Bowden
The timely death of The Killing
The Danish TV noir was groundbreaking in style, but rather conventional in its conspiratorial worldview.
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| Friday 14 December 2012 |
Niall Crowley
The sky won't be the same at night
RIP Patrick Moore, who took his audience seriously and believed his subject - astronomy - should be the star of the show.
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| Friday 7 December 2012 |
Emmet Livingstone
Is television upside down Down Under?
Benighted colonials they are not: New Zealand brings a refreshing quirkiness to its programming.
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| Friday 23 November 2012 |
David Bowden
Girls: don't believe (all) the hype
Lena Dunham’s show about self-absorbed Manhattan hipsters is funny, but not sparkingly original to UK audiences.
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| Friday 16 November 2012 |
David Bowden
I'm a Celebrity: still the kangaroo’s bollocks
While Big Brother survives on life support, ITV’s ratings winner thrives by deftly mixing meanness and niceness.
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| Friday 9 November 2012 |
David Bowden
Secret State: a conspiracy out of time
Channel 4’s new thriller serial is hard to swallow when our real-life politicians are too clueless to organise a decent plot.
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| Friday 2 November 2012 |
David Bowden
Our obsession with celebrity secrets
The Savile affair shouldn't be a shock to the BBC: it churns out dramas about the hidden lives of its comic stars.
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| Friday 12 October 2012 |
Emmet Livingstone
The actress who came in from the cold
Amid the naff plot and spy cliches, the reason to watch Homeland still shines through: Claire Danes.
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| Friday 5 October 2012 |
Emmet Livingstone
Breaking Bad: the best thing on the box
Incredibly, the moral descent of a drug-dealing chemistry teacher with cancer has been turned into sublime TV.
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| Wednesday 3 October 2012 |
Christopher Snowdon
A black market in booze fearmongering
Panorama has been caught out peddling dodgy alcohol stats, only the latest instance of junk-science moralising by the neo-temperance lobby.
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| Thursday 27 September 2012 |
David Bowden
Science theatre
on telly? No thanks
TV producers could learn from Carl Djerassi’s latest play, but should avoid the didactic nature of ‘science theatre’.
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| Friday 21 September 2012 |
David Bowden
The Thick of It: first as tragedy, then as farce
Armando Iannucci’s political sitcom has little profound to say about our bankrupt politics, but it is very funny.
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| Monday 17 September 2012 |
Patrick West
Latest Archers scandal: death of the author
The Archers poll was shocking not because it concerned abortion but because it asked listeners about narrative.
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| Friday 14 September 2012 |
Neil Davenport
Whatever happened to Teenage Kicks?
As a BBC4 doc revealed, the Undertones had more freedom growing up in 1970s militarised Derry than teens do now.
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| Friday 24 August 2012 |
David Bowden
A funny show on BBC3? How revolutionary
Far from being the usual liberal lecturing, a new satirical sketch show actually manages to stir up some laughs.
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| Friday 17 August 2012 |
David Bowden
A very conservative look at Conservative students
In its search for stereotypes, BBC2’s Young, Bright and on the Right seemed oblivious to how much politics has changed.
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| Friday 10 August 2012 |
David Bowden
Refusing to be a
digital-age victim
Try as they might, documentary makers couldn’t portray the star of The Girl Who Became Three Boys as damaged.
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| Friday 3 August 2012 |
David Bowden
An otherworldly,
alternative Games
Game of Thrones finds HBO back on top form, providing an elegant piece of escapist fantasy for grim times.
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| Thursday 26 July 2012 |
Tom Bailey
Reformation: so much more than Henry vs Pope
A BBC documentary illuminates how the Reformation turned the world upside down and ushered in the modern era.
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