After reality shows like Big Brother and its spawn, the new programmes that are denounced as representing all that is low in British television are The Only Way is Essex (now on the ITV Player), and Made in Chelsea (E4, Mondays 10pm). These programmes are "structured reality" and are meant to show real ... Read More...
Dabbler Review
Current TV and film
The Dabbler reviews the new three-part documentary All Watched Over By Machines of Loving Grace (BBC2, 9pm Mondays). First, we really should get one thing straight: our Western economies are being held hostage by a financial oligarchy. If you don't believe me, read this and this (to take two separate and convincing ... Read More...
The Dabbler reviews the first episode of The Apprentice 2011. Why does Lord Sugar (I preferred him when he was humble ‘S’ralan’) keep doing this? Is he perhaps relying on income from The Apprentice to prop up his business empire? Does he hope that continued exposure on telly will propel him ... Read More...
The Dabbler reviews new seven-part conspiracy drama The Shadow Line (BBC Two, Thursday, 9pm). The Shadow Line starts beautifully. We are in pitch darkness and then two pale lights (fireflies? flares?) trickle down the screen, eventually revealing themselves to be torches borne by policemen, viewed from directly overhead, as they approach ... Read More...
Drawings from the Gulag begins unexpectedly, with a headshot of a proud homo-sovieticus from one of the USSR’s eastern minorities. Wearing thick soviet spectacles and a soviet suit, and with impeccable posture, this man gazes at you, the reader, with firm resolve. Here is a stalwart Comrade-of-the-Month, whose portrait would ... Read More...
The third series of Spiral (in France: Engrenages, meaning not in fact ‘Spiral’ but ‘Gears’) is currently running on BBC Four and has received a modicum of hype as a replacement foreign crime series for the runaway Danish hit The Killing (reviewed by The Dabbler here). Now I’m not often ahead ... Read More...
The BBC’s adaptation of D H Lawrence’s Women in Love looked lovely (viewable on the iPlayer). There was a lot of white, from the white horses at the beginning to the sheets hanging in the garden, the tiles in the kitchen and the women‘s blouses and petticoats. There were muted soft ... Read More...
Scottish novelist, songwriter, musician and nuclear physicist, Doug Johnstone is currently writer in residence at Strathclyde University. He clearly also likes his Islay whiskies – the smokier the better. His latest novel, Smokeheads, relates the catastrophic whisky and cocaine-fuelled lad’s weekend of four Edinburgh friends on Islay. It’s unlikely to impress ... Read More...
On Monday four British athletes (sailors and rowers – we still rule the little waves) convened in Trafalgar Square to unveil a giant digital clock designed to count down 500 days to the start of the 2012 Olympic Games. Yesterday, at 500 days, 7 hours and just under 6 minutes, it ... Read More...
Sunday night on TV is Big Picture night. Professor Niall Ferguson (bottom) takes on the meaty subject of Civilization on Channel 4 at 8pm. However, he's trumped by Professor Brian Cox (top), who in the following slot takes on the biggest subject conceivable in Wonders of the Universe, BBC2, 9pm. They're both impressively ... Read More...