Did you catch a glimpse of a truly horrible painting in the BBC's And Then There Were None?... I thought the BBC’s adaptation of And Then There Were None, shown over Christmas, was excellent – it successfully brought to the screen the sick imagination of its author. The mind of Agatha ... Read More...
Television
I’m always amazed that some people are content to live in places other than Bristol. Eejits. My dear friend Martin, for instance, has to come all the way from Cardiff (a poor imitation of Bristol with added delusions of Welsh grandeur, of all things) to get a decent night out ... Read More...
In the Autumn issue of the excellent literary quarterly Slightly Foxed, our own Henry Jeffreys writes about the late David Nobbs' novel The Death of Reginald Perrin... It was eerie the first time I watched the Fall and Rise of Reginald Perrin because it all felt so familiar. I’d bought a DVD ... Read More...
As new free TV channel Spike shows Breaking Bad from the beginning, Jon Hotten looks at why the tale of Walter White's transformation from mild chemistry teacher to terrifying crime lord is 'the great modern study of male mid-life resentment'... About ten minutes into the first episode of Breaking Bad, Walter White ... Read More...
How might history have turned out if Skippy the Bush Kangaroo had been called 'Googie' instead, asks Frank urgently.... Skippy The Bush Kangaroo might so easily have been called Googie. The eponymous marsupial heroine of the Australian television series, which ran from 1966 to 1968 and is still shown regularly on ... Read More...
If you're following the latest series of Spiral on BBC Four, or wondering whether to start watching from the beginning, here's Brit's introductory guide to the French cop show... The first thing to say about Spiral (in France: Engrenages, meaning not in fact ‘Spiral’ but ‘Gears’) is that it offers the ... Read More...
Watching Game of Thrones intently, Frank discovers an extremely useful rhetorical device... There is a scene in the second series of Game Of Thrones where Daenarys Targaryen and her raggle-taggle band of Dothraki followers, having struggled across the vast and desolate Red Wastes, their food and water supplies exhausted, seek entrance ... Read More...
'It ridiculed humour itself'...A week on from the untimely death of Rik Mayall, Professor Nick Groom pays tribute to that peerlessly stupid yet brilliant sitcom The Young Ones... In retrospect, it all seems so simple: a sitcom based in a dilapidated student house, showcasing upcoming young comedians. But that’s hardly recognisable ... Read More...
Continuing our 1970s theme, Steerforth recalls that decade's obsession with bizarre dance shows and other strange telly... The above picture shows the Easter story, expressed through the medium of dance. How anyone thought it was a good idea to tell the story of the crucifixion of Jesus through dance and mime, performed ... Read More...
Steerforth lifts the lid on Gerry Anderson's worst idea - an unintentionally grotesque show so awful that it traumatised a generation despite never even making it onto television... In 1966, at the height of his powers, "supermarionation" creator Gerry Anderson came up with a bold concept for a new television series. He ... Read More...
