Review
How I See It
Neighbours is dead – absolutely dead this time, with Ramsay St bulldozed into rubble. The final episode dropped three years after its previous final episode – after which it was rescued by Amazon Freevee for another 460 instalments. This got me...
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Turn on, tune in, bliss out
Agatha Christie’s Seven Dials/ Agatha Christie’s Endless Night Netflix, Jan 15/BBC, TBC Fifty years after Agatha Christie’s death, two of her lesser-known whodunits get the television treatment. For Netflix, Chris Chibnall takes on a country-house...
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How I See It
Coal-effect” electric fires were already on their way out when I was a lad in the ’70s. In fact, these quaint items – which in those days simulated a coal fire using a moulded mixture of cement and (gulp!) asbestos – are the first things that pop into...
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Gareth Roberts How I See It
We’ve just reached the end of the second consecutive very dull series of I’m a Celebrity... Get Me Out of Here! One was reasonable – the 2024 run provided some welcome calm after the storms served up by Matt Hancock/Nigel Farage/Boy George – but two?...
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How I See It
Regular readers will know that the usual spirit of Hinterland is to praise and not to blame. Well, not this week. None of us would be human if we had not, at some time, hearing yet more lauding of some artistic enterprise, not only disagreed, but...
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How I See It
Many years ago, I dated a Mormon. We didn’t get up to much. A few clothes might have come off, but I was certainly never in a position to find out whether or not he was wearing temple garments. That’s not necessarily his fault. A few years later I...
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How I See It
My brother is a restaurant critic. Every week for decades, he has written hundreds of pithy, witty, foodopinionated words for a newspaper – every single week, bar the odd holiday (and even on those, he eats). Before that, in a previous millennium, he...
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How I See It
Hallowe’en is over: your pumpkins have deflated, your wizard’s sleeves are folded away for another year, and you’ve finished tidying those last few mini Mars bars down your throat. But if you’re sorry to see the back of that festival, don’t worry! This...
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How I See It
In the blink of an eye – well, over the space of a few weeks – artificial intelligence has reshaped the landscape of creativity in ways that once seemed confined to science fiction. Tools such as Grok, the AI developed by Elon Musk’s xAI and integrated...
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How I See It
Reality TV is back in the news. There have been two big stories at opposite ends of the serious/silly spectrum; the removal of George Gilbert from the ITV revival of Big Brother for “comments”, and an emission of wind from Celia Imrie on The...
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How I See It
Amiddle-aged woman says to her husband: “When did I get bingo wings? My arms used to be so tight! And my appleshaped derrière is now all flabby! And my perky breasts are like a couple of windsocks!” “On the plus side,” her husband says, “your eyesight...
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How I See It
It is traditional to spend a honeymoon learning to grip effectively and to master holes, which is why, on mine, I had a golf lesson. Before you write to complain: I offer that opening joke in tribute to a certain magical writer who has just died, aged...
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How I See It
The other day, I read an interesting opinion piece in the Daily Mail about a TV review in the Guardian. All we need now is for the Daily Mirror to write a leader about me writing this column, and we’ll have an Only Connect round two sequence...
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How I See It
Emily Blunt’s near quartercentury on screen has encompassed everything from blockbusters to a Best Picture Oscar-winner. But the film that has hung over her entire career, she says, is one she made before she had much of a career at all. Blunt, now...
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How I See It
Finally, halfway through series three, And Just Like That is cheering up. A little bit. For now. I’m not saying that Sex and the City was daring, playful and positive while its sequel is gloomy, pessimistic and po-faced. But I will point out that...
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How I See It
Acouple of years ago, I announced to the nation that I had decided to write a murder mystery novel. Well, I say “the nation”. I said it to the viewers of Only Connect. So maybe 3 per cent of the nation. (The ratings are always lower if we start in...
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Gareth Roberts How I See It
The reviews for Alien: Earth, Disney’s new TV prequel to the Alien film series, have been ecstatic. It’s “stylistically bold and scary as hell”; it “breathes new life into a tired old franchise”; it’s “superb and nerve-shredding”. But while the art...
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How I See It
Recently, whenever life has seemed bleak and grey, I have deployed a method which is sure to bring consolation. I stare mistily into the middle distance and say to myself, “somewhere out there on the ocean wave, right this very minute, series 3 of The...
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How I See It
In the digital age, we’ve gone and cheapened everything. Almost all music ever recorded is available for free, if you can bear the advertisements. For a subscription or two, we can access a century of cinema in a couple of clicks. We’ve Deliveroo’d...
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How I See It
There is a very long tradition of American television getting Britain wrong. One of my favourite abominations is the 1972 Columbo episode “Dagger of the Mind”, in which – I kid you not – the scruffy but infallible LA detective is posted to London to...
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How I See It
We are living at the end of the Information Age. With just a few taps on a keyboard we can instantly access data on anything that takes our interest. With AI voice assistants improving hourly, we don’t even have to strain our weary fingers. We can ask...
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How I See It
When I first entered television, I thought it would be a jolly affair. So did everybody I knew (who didn’t work in television). That must be fun, people would say. And yes, it could be fun, and rewarding, and the money was very nice. But I soon...
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Gareth Roberts How I See It
Last week came the news that Hacker T Dog is to join the presenting team of Blue Peter. Hacker, for those of you unfamiliar with CBBC fare, is a gruff but extremely adorable puppet canine, given to dropping outspoken comments and mugging significantly...
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Victoria Coren Mitchell How I See It
On Monday night, a new series of gruelling BBC Two quiz show Only Connect hits our screens. I know. I don’t understand why they’re putting it on now either. Autumn is the time for gruelling quiz shows! This is July, and a lovely hot one at that; it’s...
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How I See It
Single-sex education was not for me. I’ve published a 150,000-word memoir on the subject of how and why I became a poker champion, but I can sum that book up in two sentences: “I wanted to meet boys. Then I met some.” Spending 13 years in an...
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Gareth Roberts How I See It
There’s been much attention paid lately to the original Quatermass sci-fi horror series, which went out in the 1950s in black and white on the BBC. And rightly so – they’re still enough to give you the sweats. But for my two cents, it’s the colour 1979...
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How I See It
Last week, I described enjoying a lightly-roasted lamb rack (garlic and rosemary crumb, Greek salad on the side) to accompany episode seven of The Four Seasons. This week: cucumber gazpacho and Squid Game. How the mighty are fallen. I mean, the...
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How I See It
On Tuesday this week, my Instagram feed started throwing me footage of the comedian Steve Carell dancing round a stadium in a billowing purple gown. On closer inspection, it turned out that Steve Carell had been giving the commencement address to...
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Art JENNY SAVILLE: THE ANATOMY OF PAINTING
Jenny Saville took the British art world by storm after her acclaimed degree show at the Glasgow School of Art in the early 1990s. Rupture (2020, below) is one of the 45 works on display at the National Portrait Gallery that trace the development of...
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Art RACHEL JONES: GATED CANYONS
The first ever contemporary solo show in the Dulwich Picture Gallery’s main exhibition space is dedicated to the 34-year old British artist, Rachel Jones. Her new body of work, Gated Canyons (below), appears alongside a painting from the gallery’s...
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Film
THE BALLAD OF WALLIS ISLAND In James Griffiths’s delightful comedy-drama, Wallis Island is the setting for a reunion of a long-sundered folk duo, Herb McGwyer (Tom Basden) and Nell Mortimer (Carey Mulligan, below with Akemnji Ndifornyen). The fan...
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Pop
WET LEG In 2022, the Isle of Wight five-piece turned witty, innuendo-laden lyrics into a Grammy-winning debut album with almost unprecedented levels of hype. Now, Wet Leg are back to prove they’re not just one-trick ponies, with a tour in support of...
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Pop
Having burst into the pop big league in 2023 with the viral hit Greedy, the Canadian singer-songwriter Tate McRae shows no sign of slowing down. The 21-yearold has been declared the heir to Britney Spears with her array of sexy singles, chart-topping...
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Opera
GLYNDEBOURNE FESTIVAL 2025 This year’s festival opens on Friday with a revival of Annabel Arden’s witty, surrealistic take on Rossini’s ever-popular The Barber of Seville. But the season’s big new production lands the following day: the first ever...
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Dance
BALLET TO BROADWAY: WHEELDON WORKS The Royal Ballet pays richly due homage to Christopher Wheeldon, who, over the past two decades, has done more than any other choreographer to furnish it with exciting, enduring new works. Fool’s Paradise – his...
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Opera
DIE WALKURE The turbulent, elemental passions of Wagner’s Ring are unleashed in this second instalment of the new cycle at Covent Garden, which began with Das Rheingold in 2023. The conductor Antonio Pappano makes a welcome return in partnership with...
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Film
SINNERS Ryan Coogler (Creed, Black Panther) lays on a riotously intense action romp, set against the cotton fields of 1932 Mississippi, that’s also musically savvy and stuffed to the brim with earthy period detail. Michael B Jordan (below) plays twin...
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ONE TO ONE: JOHN & YOKO
“If you want to know what 20 million Americans or Britons are talking about on Saturday night,” John Lennon once said, “it’s what they saw on Friday night on TV.” Kevin Macdonald and Sam Rice-Edwards’s concert film, built around Lennon and his wife...
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Dance
THE FORSYTHE PROGRAMME Born in 1949, William Forsythe is one of the great dance pioneers of the past half-century, and English National Ballet has tremendous form performing his work. Two years ago, William Forsythe’s Playlist (EP) was a huge hit, and...
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ED ATKINS
The 43-year-old Brit is known for his unsettling computer-generated videos and animations, but his first major UK exhibition will feature a wide range of media, including drawings from his ongoing series Children (below) which, Atkins says, were made...
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Classical
1945: A KIND OF HAUNTING The cataclysm of the Second World War burns through every note in this concert by the Britten Sinfonia. The Czech composer Bohuslav Martinů’s Double Concerto of 1938 shakes a fist at the threat of war with jazzy syncopations....
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Pop
The genre-bending, zeitgeist-shaping artist FKA Twigs (Cheltenham-born, 37-year-old Tahliah Debrett Barnett) blends the ethereal world-building of Björk with Bowie’s chameleonic creativity and the electrodrenched ecstasy of Grimes. Her third album,...
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Jazz
JAZZ AT LINCOLN CENTER ORCHESTRA No jazz big band has a more glowing reputation than the Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra. Wynton Marsalis (left), its charismatic music director, is on a mission to show that jazz is a civilising and ennobling...
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Dance
Created for the Royal Ballet, Kenneth MacMillan’s 1965 response to Prokofiev’s magisterial score remains the international goldstandard, and with good reason. The near-constant earthiness, inventiveness and expressiveness of the steps astonish still,...
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Reasons to Be Cheerful 1. Art 2.
RISE UP The Fitzwilliam Museum’s latest show sheds light on the fight to end transatlantic slavery between 1750 and 1850 by placing historic art “in conversation” with works by contemporary artists. David Martin’s unusual Portrait of Dido Elizabeth...
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Art
The second exhibition since the 2023 revamp of the former Museum of Childhood opens this week, on the theme of ancient Egypt. With more than 200 exhibits – some thousands of years old (and mostly amulet-sized), but many modern (including a Lego set of...
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Opera
Mark-Anthony Turnage turns his attention to the notorious 1998 Thomas Vinterberg film Festen, which has already become a stage play, and with the librettist Lee Hall transforms it into an operatic family reunion from hell. A wealthy hotel owner...
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Dance
OUR MIGHTY GROOVE Sadler’s Wells opens its east London venue (at Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park) with a jubilant bang. A new piece by Vicki IgbokweOzoagu is designed to make you “both the audience and club-goer”. The idea is that you start off watching...
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Classical
LSO FUTURES: HOMAGE TO PIERRE BOULEZ The London Symphony Orchestra celebrates the legacy of Pierre Boulez (left), the great French composer and conductor who was born 100 years ago. He was a die-hard modernist who suggested blowing up all opera houses...
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Film
A COMPLETE UNKNOWN From James Mangold (Walk the Line) comes an Oscarfancied biopic of Bob Dylan that takes an old-school approach to the genre, with a transformative star turn from Timothée Chalamet and a jukebox soundtrack. Chalamet’s Dylan (above)...
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Dance
MARY SKEAPING’S GISELLE English National Ballet gets the year off to what promises to be a superb start with a revival of this ravishing production of the 1841 Romantic classic. Created by the noted dancer-turned-dancehistorian Mary Skeaping for the...
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BOOKS
Prepare for a literary feast in 2025 – from genuinely pageturning memoirs from the Pope and Bill Gates, to a gripping history of the battle for North Africa. Personally, I’m looking forward to new fiction from Catherine Lacey and David Szalay,...
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Festive five Drama
Death in Paradise BBC One, tomorrow, 8.30pm Don Gilet debuts as the new Brit-abroad DI, Mervin Wilson, working the sunshine beat in Saint Marie. His first case involves three Santas, all seemingly shot at the same time with the same gun. All...
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THEATRE
Giant Royal Court Mark Rosenblatt’s superb imagining of Roald Dahl – a terrific John Lithgow – at the height of the 1983 anti-Semitism row. Catch it in the West End next year. The Artist Theatre Royal Plymouth Sensationally smart adaptation by the...
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Art
VERSAILLES: SCIENCE AND SPLENDOUR The lavish royal residence commissioned by Louis XIV is remembered as the home of entertainment and excess, but a new exhibition explores the scientific developments that took place within its mirrored salons. It...
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Pop
For every po-faced critic who insists that British rock music is dead, another pops up with the response: “But what about Idles?” The Bristolian post-punk quintet have cornered the market in the ‘spoken-word rock’ style also favoured by Yard Act and...
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Pop
This year, the Cambridgeborn hyper-pop star Charli XCX has been catapulted into the big league with her album Brat, transforming her from fringe icon to zeitgeist-definer (and multiple Grammy nominee). It became a totem for women around the globe, and...
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Pop BEABADOOBEE
One of few positives to emerge from the tedious lockdown period was the Filipino-English singer Beabadoobee, who, after her breakout single Coffee went viral on TikTok, established herself as one of indie-pop’s most exciting new voices. Now, three...
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Bright ideas for gloomy days
A Christmas Carol Handbells, fake snow and parachuted sprouts: Jack Thorne’s Tony Award-showered, carol-sprinkled adaptation, as directed by Matthew Warchus, returns for an eighth year. As sweet as a mince pie, with Scroogey sourness this year...
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Theatre
THE CURIOUS CASE OF BENJAMIN BUTTON Jethro Compton and Darren Clark’s beautifully realised musical adaptation of the F Scott Fitzgerald short story, about a man who lives life in reverse, finally gets the West End transfer it deserves, following...
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Pop
With 40 studio albums, a Nobel Prize and a new Hollywood biopic starring Timothée Chalamet, the life and career of Bob Dylan has become the stuff of musical legend. The world’s greatest living songwriter returns to the UK for the second leg of his...
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Theatre
OTHELLO The Royal Shakespeare Company’s new production of the Bard’s tale of jealousy and betrayal features John Douglas Thompson (left), one of the most respected classical actors of the American stage, making his RSC debut in the title role....
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Pop
Fresh from her fêted debut in the Glastonbury headline slot, Dua Lipa swaps the sweeping, fun-loving crowds gathered in front of the Pyramid Stage for a more sophisticated affair: playing the Royal Albert Hall for the first time. Performing with a full...
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Theatre
THE FEAR OF 13 A new production based on David Sington’s 2015 documentary details the extraordinary true story of Nick Yarris, the American who spent 22 years on death row after a routine traffic stop spiralled into a murder conviction. The Fear of 13...
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