Is Evan Davis the most modest man in Britain? In a recent Sunday newspaper Q&A he was asked whether he was too 'lightweight' to present the Today programme. His answer: I'm keen not to lose the things that made people say I was lightweight, but I'm also keen not to be seen ... Read More...
Television
It’s been 15 years since Jamie Oliver slid down a spiral banister and into our lives, and whilst he remains the same old scooter riding Peter Pan, decked out in his Kevin the Teenager garb, Jamie PLC has been busy carving out a serious business empire - what with the ... Read More...
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...
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...
While the music is performed, the cameras linger savagely over the faces of the audience [below]. What a bottomless chasm of vacuity they reveal! The huge faces bloated with cheap confectionery and smeared with chain-store makeup, the open, sagging mouths and glazed eyes, the hands mindlessly drumming in time to ... 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...
This 1950 film from the British Council, entitled simply ‘Cricket’ opens with actor Ralph Richardson announcing: “My name is Richardson and I happen to have been born in Britain” and maintains that level of excellence for the duration. In between bursts of Richardson, we get the unmistakable Hampshire tones – the ... Read More...
