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Television / Radio

Great Lives/Arnold Bennett

Much as I criticise the BBC, I do consider that their arts broadcasting on Radio 4 are of high quality and worth the licence fee alone. Saturday Review presented by Tom Sutcliffe and Front Row are consistent in their critiques. Another programme I enjoy is Great Lives, presented by former Tory [...]

April 30, 2014 // 0 Comments

Jamaica Inn

Unless you were in the drama department of the BBC, you might have thought that audibility is a prerequisite of an actor. However in Jamaica Inn the publican of the Inn was incomprehensible with a combination of muffled diction and Cornish burrh. Given the success of Nordic noir, they might even [...]

April 23, 2014 // 0 Comments

Fingers crossed …

Previews and advance notices has begun appearing for Tommy Cooper: Not Like This Like That, a two-hour drama based upon the life of the comedian, written by Simon Nye and starring David Threlfall as Cooper, plus Amanda Redman and Helen McCrory, which will be transmitted on ITV at 9.00pm on Bank [...]

April 17, 2014 // 0 Comments

A tentative welcome to the BBC’s latest mock-umentary

This week W1A, the BBC’s new supposedly satirical drama-documentary series about itself, was launched on BBC1. It is produced by the same team – and involves some of the same actors – that came up with Twenty Twelve, an equivalent spoof on the organising of the London Olympics, written and [...]

March 21, 2014 // 0 Comments

Line of Duty reaches the end of the line

Last night the final episode of the second series of the police procedural series Line of Duty was aired on BBC2. As I have previously written, I originally came to this piece because of a favourable newspaper review and immediately became hooked. In recent weeks, I have found that many of those I [...]

March 20, 2014 // 0 Comments

Worthy recollections of WW1

In the early 1960s, the BBC made a documentary series called The Great War. Last week, on BBC2, as part of its WW1 centenary commemorations, the corporation put out a programme called I Was There: The Great War Interviews, featuring WW1 veterans talking about their experiences, many of them coming [...]

March 19, 2014 // 0 Comments

A lady who lived life to the full

It was announced yesterday that Clarissa Dickson Wright had died, aged 66. Although I shall leave full appreciations of her life to the media obituary writers, I noted that in the piece by Quentin Letts in the Daily Mail today that – according to Who’s Who – her recreations were listed as [...]

March 18, 2014 // 0 Comments

A glitch a day keeps the listener awake

As a habitual night-owl, I tend to spend the wee hours drinking black coffee whilst sitting at my computer and listening to the radio on my stereo earphones. Just occasionally, on Radio Five Live’s Up All Night [0100 to 0500 hours] show an historic news item breaks … or some unexpectedly [...]

March 12, 2014 // 0 Comments

It wouldn’t have happened in my day …

The technical quality of BBC television programme production has been plummeting this week and you don’t have to be a telly insider to notice it. On Thursday evening, the distinctly average The One Show on (BBC1, weekdays at 7.00pm) – a programme whose audience consists mostly of people [...]

March 8, 2014 // 0 Comments

The pitfalls of cause and effect

As an unhealthily-devoted television watcher, my sphere of interest does not normally extend to police procedural drama series – still less those of the currently-fashionable, high-class, Danish and Scandinavian origin. In that sense, I happily bow to my superiors who contribute to the National [...]

March 3, 2014 // 0 Comments

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