Saturday Review
321 episodes - English - Latest episode: about 4 years ago - ★★★★★ - 67 ratingsPresenter Tom Sutcliffe and guests offer sharp, critical discussion of the week's cultural events
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Episodes
Heart of a Dog, Don DeLillo, Blue/Orange, Going Forward, Seeing Round Corners
May 21, 2016 19:01 - 41 minutes - 38.2 MBLaurie Anderson's film Heart of a Dog explores death and longing through the story of her terrier Don DeLillo's novel new Zero K explores death and longing and cryogenic suspension The revival at London's Young Vic of Joe Penhall's 2000 play Blue/Orange manages to deal in a darkly comic way with paranoid schizophrenia. Jo Brand returns to TV as Kim Wilde - a community nurse coping with financial cuts and family crises in Going Forward. It's dark but is it comic? Seeing Round Corners is a new...
Lionel Shriver, Everybody Wants Some!!, Green Room, The Complete Deaths, Gillian Wearing
May 14, 2016 19:00 - 42 minutes - 38.5 MBLionel Shriver's The Mandibles imagines a dystopian America of the future Richard Linklater's follow-up to his Oscar-nominated tour de force Boyhood is meant to be the spiritual sequel to 1993's Dazed and Confused. Everybody Wants Some!! looks at a group of baseball scholarship students settling-in at a Texas university Horror Thriller film Green Room has been making some audience members vomit and faint -how well will our reviewers cope? At the Brighton Festival: Spy Monkey's The Complete ...
Upstart Crow, Midsummer Night's Dream, Knight of Cups, Louise Erdrich, Mona Hatoum
May 07, 2016 18:56 - 42 minutes - 38.5 MBBen Elton has a new sitcom on BBC2; Upstart Crow starring David Mitchell as The Bard of Avon. Could it be a return to his golden form of Blackadder? A Midsummer Night's Dream is the first production by Emma Rice, the new Artistic Director at London's Globe Theatre. Does it auger well for her residency? Terrence Malick is a much-admired film director whose recent work has received very mixed critical responses. Will his latest, Knight of Cups, be admired or reviled? Novelist Louise Erdrich is...
Son of Saul, Mark Haddon, Kings of War, Love Nina, Pablo Bronstein at Tate
April 30, 2016 18:59 - 41 minutes - 38.4 MBSon of Saul is an award-laden Hungarian film dealing with the sonderkommandos at Auschwitz, Jewish inmates who were forced to prepare and mislead new arrivals. Mark Haddon's latest book is a collection of rather dark short stories which he hopes can "create empathy for unloveable people in difficult circumstances". Belgian theatre director Ivo van Hove has condensed several Shakespeare royal plays into Kings of War; four and a half hours in Dutch, telling English history. Nick Hornby has ad...
Arabian Nights, The Flick, Garth Greenwell, Sicily at the British Museum, All the World's a Screen
April 23, 2016 18:57 - 41 minutes - 38.4 MBPortuguese film director Miguel Gomes has created a trilogy based on The Arabian Nights. We've watched the first volume of the 6 hour epic The Flick is a transfer from Broadway to London's Dorfman Theatre. Set in a rundown movie theatre, it explores the dynamics of the relationships among an increasingly unmotivated staff Garth Greenwell describes his novel What Belongs To You like this; "I'm a queer writer writing in the queer literary tradition for queer people". Is it a straightforward ...
Eye in the Sky, Hotels of North America, The Suicide, Flowers, Conceptual Art in Britain 1964-1979
April 16, 2016 19:00 - 41 minutes - 38.4 MBHelen Mirren, Alan Rickman and Aaron Paul star in Eye in the Sky, a contemporary thriller set in the world of counter intelligence and drone warfare - is the life of a 9 year old girl acceptable collateral damage? Rick Moody's new novel Hotels of North America has an unusual narrative voice. It takes the form of a series of hotel reviews, as written by Reginald Edward Morse, one of the top reviewers on RateYourLodging.com, where his many reviews reveal more than just details of hotels -they...
Dheepan, X at the Royal Court, All That Man Is, Shakespeare at Compton Verney, The Five
April 09, 2016 18:58 - 42 minutes - 38.5 MBFrench film Dheepan won the 2015 Palme d'Or, with a tale of Tamil refugees fleeing Sri Lanka and arriving in France, finding a whole new set of opportunities and problems Alistair McDowall's newest play X is set on a space station on Pluto. It opens at London's Royal Court Theatre; will our reviewers think it's out of this world? David Szalay's was named as one of Granta's Best Young British Novelists in 2013. His new novel All That Man Is looks at 9 young men in modern Europe Shakespeare In...
Ran, Long Day's Journey into Night, Camping, 6 Facets of Light, Museum of Brands
April 02, 2016 18:59 - 42 minutes - 38.5 MBAkira Kurosawa's Ran,originally released in 1985, was - at the time - the most expensive Japanese film ever made. It won awards galore and is considered a classic. Is it still as breathtaking as on first release? Eugene O'Neill's play Long Day's Journey Into Night is at Bristol's Old Vic starring Jeremy Irons and Lesly Manville. It's directed by Richard Eyre. Julia Davis' newest TV comedy Camping follows several couples (with varying degrees of dysfunction in their relationships) as they spe...
Hamlet, Paul Strand, Hot Milk, Court, Undercover
March 26, 2016 20:00 - 41 minutes - 38.4 MBPaapa Essiedu is the first black actor to play Hamlet for the RSC in a new production opening in Stratford directed by Simon Godwin. Booker short listed writer Deborah Levy explores the complex emotional dynamics of the mother / daughter relationship in her new novel Hot Milk. Court is Mumbai born Chaitanya Tamhane's feature film debut - an Indian courtroom drama film which explores the limitations of Indian legal system through the trial of an elderly folk singer at a Sessions Court in Mumb...
Better Living through Criticism, High-Rise, Jane Horrocks, Charlotte Bronte, Russia and the arts
March 19, 2016 20:00 - 42 minutes - 38.5 MBA O Scott's book Better Living through Criticism looks at the very stuff of Saturday Review - who needs critics nowadays? Ben Wheatley's film High-Rise is an adaptation ofthe 1972 novel by JG Ballard - an urban dystopia set in a brutalist tower block. Jane Horrocks' newest production is a genre hybrid; "a theatrical experience with music" . If You Kiss Me, Kiss Me at London's Young Vic is her tribute to the music she loved as a teenager Charlotte Bronte came to London from Yorkshire five ti...
Motown the Musical, Anomalisa, Giorgione, Eileen, Art of Scandinavia
March 12, 2016 20:00 - 41 minutes - 38.4 MBMotown, The Musical - with one of the best pop songbooks to draw on; how could this stage show fail? Charlie Kaufman's latest film is a stop-motion tale of loneliness, isolation and the possibility of redemptive love: Anomalisa In The Age of Giorgione at London's Royal Academy, examines the development of The Venetian Renaissance, through works by Giorgione and his contemporaries such as Titian and Durer The central character of Ottessa Moshfegh's novel Eileen is a lonely self-loathing sec...
Hail Caesar, Don Quixote, Ta Nehisi Coates, Botticelli, Thirteen
March 05, 2016 19:59 - 42 minutes - 38.5 MBHail Caesar is the Coen Brothers' newest film - recalling the Golden Age of Hollywood: the scandal, the vice and the Studios' men who handled the catastrophes. The RSC has adapted Cervantes' masterpiece Don Quixote in a new production in Stratford. Can they do justice to a book, more than 4 centuries old, which is often hailed as the The Greatest Work Of The Spanish Language? Ta Nehisi Coates writes about the experience of young black America. His work is admired by the likes of Barack Obama...
Grimsby, Javier Marias, Mark Wallinger, Sarah Kane, Murder and Broken Biscuits
February 27, 2016 19:59 - 42 minutes - 38.5 MBSacha Baron Cohen's new comedy Grimsby tells the story of two brothers separated in childhood reunited as adults; one is a spy, the other a lazy git Thus Bad Begins is the latest novel from Javier Marias; one of Europe's finest writers Artist Mark Wallinger's recent work has focussed on religion death and William Blake. He has a new exhibition opening in London Sarah Kane's plays have always excited controversy: a restaging of Cleansed at London's Dorfman Theatre looks set to rouse familiar ...
Uncle Vanya, Triple 9, The Night Manager, Mend the Living, Delacroix
February 20, 2016 19:59 - 42 minutes - 38.5 MBa bunch of corrupt cops stage a bank heist in Triple 9; but can there honour among thieves in such a high-stakes job? Chekhov's Uncle Vanya at London's Almeida Theatre has been adapted and directed by Robert Icke giving it a fresh contemporary feel. John leCarre's 1993 novel The Night Manager has become a 6 part BBCTV series. Espionage, amoral weapons dealers, beautiful tragic women; all the best ingredients are there, what does it add up to? Award-winning French novelist Maylis de Kerangal'...
Hieronymus Bosch, OJ Simpson, North Water, A Bigger Splash, Battlefield
February 13, 2016 20:00 - 42 minutes - 38.5 MBThe biggest Hieronymus Bosch exhibition ever has just opened in Holland. 500 years after his death, Noordbrabants Museum has gathered together the largest collection of his bizarre, extraordinary work OJ Simpson's 1994 trial has been turned into a US TV drama. Does it have something new to show or say? Ian McGuire's North Water has garnered positive reviews from the likes of Hilary Mantel and Martin Amis. It's a whodunnit set on board an 18th century whaling ship. "A version of Captain Aha...
Trumbo, Ma Rainey's Black Botton, Vinyl, Martin Parr at Hepworth Wakefield, When Breath Becomes Air
February 06, 2016 20:00 - 41 minutes - 38.4 MBScreenwriter Dalton Trumbo's acclaimed career came to a crushing halt in the late 1940s when he and other Hollywood figures were blacklisted for their political beliefs. Starring Bryan Cranston as Trumbo, Jay Roach's film tells the story of the Oscar winning writer's relationship with the US government, studio bosses and Hollywood icons such as John Wayne, Kirk Douglas, Edward G Robinson and Otto Preminger. A new ten part Sky Atlantic / HBO tv series Vinyl, created by Mick Jagger, Martin Sc...
Spotlight, Youth, My Name is Shylock, Wit and Electronic Superhighway
January 30, 2016 20:00 - 41 minutes - 38.4 MBSpotlight starring Mark Ruffalo, Michael Keaton and Rachel McAdams and directed by Tom McCarthy tells the true story of the Boston Globe's Pulitzer Prize winning "Spotlight" team of investigative journalists, who in 2002 shocked the world by exposing the Catholic Church's systematic cover-up of widespread paedophilia perpetrated by more than 70 local priests. It has six Oscar nominations, including for Best Picture, Best Director and Best Original Screenplay. Booker prize winning novelist H...
AS Byatt and Russell Kane review The Big Short, Julian Barnes, Champagne Life, 4000 Days, HG Wells on TV
January 23, 2016 20:00 - 41 minutes - 38.4 MBOscar-nominated film The Big Short - a comedy about the financial crisis Julian Barnes' new novel The Noise of Time tells the story of Russian composer Shostakovich, coping as a creative artistic genius under the yoke of the Stalin's Soviet system Champagne Life - the Saatchi Gallery's exhibition of women artists. New play 4000 Days at The Park Theatre is about a man who emerges from a coma and discovers he can't remember anything from the past decade. Ray Winstone plays the author HG Wells...
The Revenant, Annie Leibovitz, Nicholas Searle, The Rack Pack, Give Me Your Love
January 16, 2016 20:00 - 42 minutes - 38.5 MBLeonardo DiCaprio stars as American pioneers-man Hugh Glass, in Oscar-contender The Revenant. It's graphic, visceral, epic in scope and could sweep the boards at the awards Photographer Annie Leibovitz has an exhibition of portraits under the title "Women", which will tour the globe. How does she tackle such an enormous subject? The debut novel by former civil servant Nicholas Searle "the Good Liar" is gaining a lot of attention but do our critics think it's a good book? BBC iPlayer's first ...
Hateful Eight, Guys and Dolls, Maigret, Crime Museum, Jericho
January 09, 2016 20:00 - 41 minutes - 38.3 MBQuentin Tarantino's film Hateful Eight - the work of a genius at the top of his game or more of the same? The Chichester Festival Theatre's revival of Guys and Dolls has transferred to London's Savoy Theatre George Simenon wrote 75 Maigret novels and they're all being republished - how well do they stand up nowadays? The Metropolitan Police's Crime Museum is usually closed to the public but The Museum of London has a temporary exhibition showing 600 of the 2000 items it contains; fascinating...
The Danish Girl, War and Peace, Deutschland 83, Angela Clarke Follow Me, Fallout 4 and Her Story
January 02, 2016 20:00 - 41 minutes - 38.2 MBThe Danish Girl is the remarkable love story inspired by the lives of Lili Elbe and Gerda Wegener, portrayed in the film respectively by Academy Award winner Eddie Redmayne (The Theory of Everything) and Alicia Vikander (Ex Machina), and directed by Academy Award winner Tom Hooper (The King's Speech, Les Misérables). Lili Elbe defied convention and pushed the boundaries of medical science to become the first transgendered woman. How will 21st century audiences react to this telling of her st...
Les Liaisons Dangereuses, Star Wars, Serial Podcast, Dickensian, Penguin Monarchs
December 19, 2015 20:00 - 41 minutes - 38.4 MBDominic West and Janet McTeer star in the first major London production for 30 years of Christopher Hampton's Les Liaisons Dangereuses. Star Wars is back. Unless you've been living in cave, it's been hard to avoid. But is it any good? Last year WBEZ, Chicago Public Radio created the astoundingly successful Serial podcast and now there's a new series unravelling the peculiar story of American soldier Bowe Bergdahl Dickensian is Tony "Eastenders" Jordan's mash-up of several Charles Dickens st...
Wonder.land, Grandma, Nureyev, Adam Roberts, V&A Europe Galleries
December 12, 2015 20:00 - 42 minutes - 39.1 MBwww.Wonder.land is Damon Albarn's re-imagining of Lewis Carol's tales of Alice, the White rabbit et al, transferred from The Manchester International Festival to London's National Theatre. Lily Tomlin plays the feisty Grandma who has to help her granddaughter find the money needed for an abortion Nureyev - Dance to Freedom, is a BBC4 drama-documentary which tells the story of the famous dancer's dramatic defection to The West in 1961 Adam Roberts' novel The Thing Itself deals with Emmanuel K...
Sunset Song, Funny Girl, Edna O'Brien, Big Bang Data, What a Performance
December 05, 2015 19:59 - 41 minutes - 38.4 MBSunset Song is Terence Davies' first film for a decade - telling Lewis Grassic Gibbon's tale of northern Scottish farming and family before and after the First World War. Sheridan Smith takes the role of actress Fanny Brice in the first London production of Funny Girl for 50 years. Made famous by Barbra Streisand on stage and screen, they're big shoes to fill and the current run of shows is already sold out, is it any good? Edna O'Brien's latest novel The Little Red Chairs places a major war...
Bridge of Spies, Carol, Little Eyolf, Michael Craig-Martin, Kenzaburo Oe
November 28, 2015 19:59 - 42 minutes - 38.5 MBSpielberg's latest film, Bridge of Spies, features Tom Hanks as a lawyer in 1950s America, hired to defend a Soviet spy. Does that combination of actor and director guarantee a great film? Todd Haynes' has adapted a Patricia Highsmith novel for Carol. Cate Blanchett plays a woman trapped in a loveless marriage of convenience who falls in love with a shop girl Rooney Mara. Complications ensue. Richard Eyre directs Ibsen's Little Eyolf at London's Almeida Theatre - difficult play dealing with ...
Love, Reacher Said Nothing, Waste, Capital, Imagined Museum
November 21, 2015 20:00 - 41 minutes - 38.4 MBGaspar Noe's film Love is so sexually explicit that it has been labelled as pornography by many reviewers. It is eye-poppingly graphic, but is there substance beneath the lengthy sex scenes? The subject of Andy Martin's new book is author Lee Child. He shadowed Child as he wrote his most recent Jack Reacher novel. It's a meta book about a writer and his craft. Banned by the censors in 1907, Harley Granville Barker's play Waste is being staged at London's National Theatre. It exposes a cut-t...
Steve Jobs, Branagh's The Winter's Tale, Vermeer, Verdi's Force of Destiny, The Great Swindle
November 14, 2015 20:00 - 41 minutes - 38.1 MBDanny Boyle directs Michael Fassbender in the title role of Steve Jobs - a biopic of the technology genius. Kenneth Branagh's Theatre Company launches with Shakespeare's The Winter's Tale. An exhibition Masters of the Everyday: Dutch Artists in the Age of Vermeer at The Queen's Gallery at Buckingham Palace allows the public a chance to see some Dutch masters from The Royal Collection. ENO is staging Verdi's Force of Destiny; great music (the Jean de Florette tune!), a chorus of 49 singers, a...
Brooklyn, Bob Dylan bootlegs, Mr Foote's Other Leg, Jonathan Coe, Blood at the Jewish Museum
November 07, 2015 20:00 - 42 minutes - 38.5 MBSaoirse Ronan in the film adaptation of Colm Toibin's novel Brooklyn has been touted by some critics as Oscar material; do our reviewers agree? Bob Dylan Bootlegs Vol 12 date from his most fecund period 1965-66. How much light does a collection of outakes and alternative versions throw upon his creative processes? Simon Russell Beale plays an 18th century cross-dressing satirist, impressionist and comedian in Mr Foote's Other Leg. It's now transferred to the West End Jonathan Coe's new nove...
Taxi Tehran, The Dresser, Cumberland Gallery, Slade House, Moderate Soprano
October 31, 2015 20:00 - 41 minutes - 38.4 MBEven though he's banned from making films in his home country, Iranian director Jafar Panahi's film Taxi Tehran won this year's Golden Bear at the Berlin Film Festival. Was this a largely political or aesthetic award? Ronald Harwood's play The Dresser became an award-winning film in 1983. A new version for BBC TV stars Anthony Hopkins and Ian McKellen Hampton Court houses just a few paintings from The Royal Collection in The Cumberland Gallery. It's a small sample of the glorious riches The ...
Magna Carta plays, Mississippi Grind, Mr Robot, Charles and Ray Eames, Beatlebone
October 24, 2015 19:00 - 42 minutes - 38.5 MBSalisbury Playhouse has commissioned 4 new plays to mark the octocentenary of Magna Carta. How do contemporary playwrights deal with the ideas behind an 800 year old document? Mississippi Grind is a film that follows 2 gamblers trying to beat the odds to turn their lives around as they head down the Mississippi river to the big game in New Orleans . The latest cult TV series from the USA is Mr Robot - turning the world of computer coders and hackers into nailbiting narrative The prolific an...
Suffragette, City on Fire - Garth Risk Hallberg, Wolf in Snakeskin Shoes, Periodic Tales at Compton Verney
October 17, 2015 19:01 - 41 minutes - 38.3 MBThe film Suffragette looks at the campaign 100 years ago to gain women the right to vote. It was made with an all-star largely-female cast and crew. How broad is the appeal of this historical retelling? City On Fire by Garth Risk Hallberg has been hyped by the publishers and lauded by many critics. It's a 944-page novel about New York City in the mid 1970s; does it justify the hoopla? Wolf in Snakeskin Shoes is a modern reworking of Moliere's Tartuffe at London's Tricycle Theatre. Set in a b...
Sicario, Teddy Ferrara, Jonathan Lee, Frank Auerbach, Black Roses
October 10, 2015 18:59 - 41 minutes - 38.2 MBThe American government's war on drugs is a familiar subject for a film. How does the latest - Sicario - advance the genre? The Donmar Warehouse's production of a play about LGBTQ politics on an American campus - Teddy Ferrara - has been reworked from its US origination. How will it work in London? Jonathan Lee's novel High Dive reimagines the story of the 1984 Brighton Bombing where the IRA tried to kill the Tory cabinet. How well does it meld fact and fiction? Frank Auerbach is often haile...
Medea, Jeanette Winterson, The Martian, Edmund deWaal's White at the RA, TV crime series
October 03, 2015 19:01 - 41 minutes - 38.3 MBMedea is the latest production in London's Almeida Theatre's Greek season. Written by Rachel Cusk it portrays Medea as a realist and a moralist not a maniac. The writer Edmund deWaal's interest in porcelain can be seen in an exhibition "White", at London's Royal Academy Library Jeanette Winterson's latest novel The Gap of Time retells Shakespeare's Winter's Tale, setting it in the modern day. Matt Damon plays an astronaut stranded on Mars in The Martian: how do you cope with life millions of...
Ai Wei Wei, Margaret Atwood, 99 Homes, Fake It 'til You Make It, Music for Misfits
September 26, 2015 18:59 - 42 minutes - 38.5 MBAi Wei Wei's new exhibition at The Royal Academy shows how his work continues to be a thorn in the side of The Chinese government. But does it make for a satisfying exhibition? Margaret Atwood's new novel The Heart Goes Last was originally published as a 4 part serial work online. 99 Homes is a film which takes what might sound like an unpromising premise - foreclosure of mortgages - and tries to turn it into a thriller. You might not expect a play about depression to use song and dance and...
Submission; Hangmen; The World Goes Pop; You, Me and the Apocalypse; Tangerines
September 19, 2015 19:00 - 41 minutes - 38.4 MBMichel Houellebecq's controversial sixth novel Submission is set in 2022 and depicts France ruled by sharia law under an Islamic president who has the stated aim of converting the whole of Europe to Islam. Part satire, part science fiction, does Hoeullebecq remain the "enfant terrible" of contemporary French literature? Oscar and Golden Globe nominated film "Tangerines" is a beautifully eloquent statement for peace and the futility of bloodshed over racial and ethnic division. Set in the 19...
Legend, Patrick deWitt, This Is England, Future Conditional, Drawing in Silver and Gold
September 12, 2015 18:59 - 41 minutes - 38.4 MBTom Hardy plays both Reggie and Ronnie Kray in Legend, the latest film to deal with the east end gangster twins Patrick deWitt's new novel Undermajordomo Minor is the follow-up to the Booker shortlisted The Sisters Brothers. It's a bizarre fable of sorts set in an unspecified country and time. This is England '90 is the fourth part of Shane Meadows' partly-autobiographical series. From the initial film, it has become a successful TV series for Channel 4 Rob Brydon plays a long-suffering teac...
Jonathan Franzen, People, Places and Things, Me and Earl and the Dying Girl, Lady Chatterley, Dulwich Picture Gallery
September 05, 2015 19:00 - 41 minutes - 38.4 MBJonathan Franzen's latest novel Purity deals with the intrusiveness of the internet and social media though a mysterious family history and hacking and whistleblowing. People Places and Things at The Dorfman Theatre is Duncan Macmillan's latest play, dealing with addiction, recovery and an individual's identity Me and Earl and The Dying Girl, is a film which sort-of delivers what the title says. It's a teenage cancer weepy, but does it have anything new to say or a new way of saying it? Lady...
Hamlet, Sensorium, 45 Years, Les Murray, Ascent of Woman
August 29, 2015 19:00 - 41 minutes - 38.4 MBBenedict Cumberbatch's Hamlet has been much-anticipated and every ticket was sold out a year in advance; will our critics be dazzled or disappointed? Sensorium at Tate Britain in London is a new exhibition which aims to stimulate all our senses as we view a selection of paintings. Can they enhance or distract us from the gallery experience? Tom Courtenay and Charlotte Rampling star in 45 Years, a British film about a couple celebrating their wedding anniversary when a long-forgotten event d...
Saturday Review: Best of The Fest
August 22, 2015 19:31 - 41 minutes - 38 MBIn Edinburgh for The Festivals: Ian Rankin, Louise Welsh and James Runcie review Theatre de Complicite's The Encounter, Robert LePage's 887 Ex Machina, Adam Mars Jones' book about his father and dealing with Alzheimer's, Netflix's series Narcos, a new film about drug lord Pablo Escobar. And also their own selections from the rich array available in the city.
A Little Life, Trainwreck, John Hurt, Scandalous Lady W, Bedwyr Williams
August 15, 2015 19:00 - 42 minutes - 38.5 MBHanya Yanagihara's novel A Little Life is an expansive novel about a group of male friends in New York. It has been shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize 2015. American comic actor Amy Schumer stars in Trainwreck as a hard-living young woman for whom love turns her life around Sir John Hurt plays the title role in Radio 4's adaptation of John Mortimer's 1989 play Jeffrey Bernard is Unwell; an entertainingly dissolute life spent in old Soho. The Scandalous Lady W on BBC2 tells the story of an...
Diary of a Teenage Girl, Splendour, Death by Video Game, York Art Gallery, Last Man on Earth
August 08, 2015 19:00 - 42 minutes - 38.5 MBControversial film Diary of a Teenage Girl deals with a 15 year old girl who looks for love and ends up sleeping with her mother's boyfriend. Abi Morgan's play 2002 play Splendour is revived at London's Donmar Warehouse - 4 women deal with an imminent civil war, separately and together Simon Parkin's book Death By Video Game looks ta the cultural significance and influence of the industry worth £3.9bn last year in the UK alone. York Art Gallery has reopened after a 3 year £8m refit. Housing...
Three Days in the Country, Richard Long, Iris, Last Sparks of Sundown, A Hand Reached Down to Guide Me
August 01, 2015 19:00 - 41 minutes - 38.3 MBPatrick Marber has re-imagined Turgenev's A Month In The Country as Three Days In The Country for The National Theatre - does his version do justice to a classic of Russian theatre? There is a retrospective of the work of Richard Long at the Arnolfini Gallery in his hometown of Bristol which includes new works created from the environment. 93 year old stylist Iris Apfel is the subject of a fashion documentary by Robert Maysles. Pulitzer Prize nominated author David Gates' collection of short...
Mack and Mabel, Inside Out, Life in Squares, An Account of the Great Auk, Alice Anderson
July 25, 2015 19:00 - 41 minutes - 38.3 MBThere's a revival of Mack + Mabel, starring Michael Ball at the Festival Theatre in Chichester. By the team behind Hello Dolly, it's a tale of the silent movie era as it began to fall apart. A flop on Broadway in 1974, how does the new production fare? Inside Out is the latest Pixar film. Set inside the head of an 11 year old girl some reviewer have praised it as the best children's film ever; will our reviewers agree? Life in Squares on BBC2, is a drama about the glamorous, bohemian world...
Volpone, The Wonders, Go Set a Watchman, Marc Quinn, Britain's Forgotten Slave Owners
July 18, 2015 19:00 - 41 minutes - 38.3 MBThe RSC's latest production is a contemporary setting of Ben Johnson's 17th century comedy play Volpone. Italian film The Wonders, is a film which won the Jury Prize at this year's Cannes Festival. It's about a family of beekeepers struggling to survive. Harper Lee is not a prolific author. Her first 'new' work in more than half a century is Go Set a Watchman. Can it possibly match the success of To Kill A Mockingbird (40 million sold) Marc Quinn's exhibition The Toxic Sublime at White Cube...
Dear White People, Citizen, Invisible, The Outcast, Soundscapes
July 11, 2015 19:00 - 41 minutes - 38.3 MBAmerican comedy film Dear White People takes a look at race relations on a US campus - between the black and white students and within each group Claudia Rankine's book Citizen deals with her own experience of everyday racism as well as the way white society deals with blackness Invisible is a new work by Oscar-winning playwright Rebecca Lenkiewicz at London's Bush Theatre. It's about the effect that removing legal aid will have on the justice system - how well can she breathe life into such...
Amy, Apple Music, The Book of Aron, As Is, Cornell at the Royal Academy
July 04, 2015 19:00 - 42 minutes - 38.5 MBAmy is Asif Kapadia's documentary telling the story of the short life of the talented singer Amy Winehouse. We look at the launch of Apple Music - is it an exciting brand new way to explore what's out there or just another option in an already over-serviced market? Jim Shepard's novel The Book of Aron is about a young boy in wartime Poland occupied by the Nazis. Does it manage to say something new about a familiar subject? There's a revival in London of the first AIDS play: As Is. It premie...
Educating Rita, Barbara Hepworth, Everyone's Going to Die, Book of Numbers, Not Safe for Work
July 01, 2015 11:22 - 41 minutes - 38.4 MBLenny Henry's career as an actor continues with Willy Russell's Educating Rita at Chichester's Minerva Theatre The first Barbara Hepworth retrospective exhibition in London for half a century has opened at Tate Britain. Does it do her career justice? Everyone's Going To Die is a small scale British dark comedy film about hitmen, relationships and reincarnation The author Joshua Cohen's latest novel is Book of Numbers about a writer called Joshua Cohen (not him) writing a biography of an inte...
Mr Holmes, The Household Spirit, Fighting History, The Brink, The Mother... With the Hat
June 20, 2015 19:00 - 41 minutes - 38.3 MBIan McKellan takes on the legendary role of Detective Sherlock Holmes in Mr Holmes, alongside a stellar cast including Laura Linney, Frances de La Tour and Roger Allam. A cantankerous 93 year old who has retired to the Sussex countryside with only his housekeeper and her ten year old son for company, Holmes becomes obsessed with his last unsolved case. How will McKellan's elderly Holmes appeal to cinema audiences so familiar with one of British literature's most iconic characters? The Mothe...
London Road, Louis de Bernieres, The Tribe, The Red Lion Carsten Holler
June 13, 2015 19:00 - 41 minutes - 38.1 MBLondon Road is a film of the groundbreaking musical play. Directed by Rufus Norris, it tells the story of a community in Ipswich recovering from a series of gruesome murders. Louis de Bernieres' latest novel The Dust That Falls From Clouds looks at the lives of those 'left behind' by the First World War Channel 4's The Tribe is applying the techniques usually used in programmes such as 24 Hours in A+E to a tribe in rural Ethiopia - lots of cameras, lots of microphones and unique access to a...
Oresteia, Listen Up Philip, Milan Kundera, Stonemouth, Duane Hanson
June 06, 2015 19:00 - 41 minutes - 38.3 MBA brand new interpretation of the classical story The Oresteia begins a Greek Season at London's Almeida Theatre. How well does it bring an ancient story up-to-date? Czech writer Milan Kundera has just published his first novel for 12 years The Festival of Insignificance Iain Banks' 2012 novel Stonemouth about a young man returning - under a shadow - to his Scottish hometown has been dramatised for BBC1 London's Serpentine Gallery has 2 portraiture exhibitions opening - Duane Hanson and ...