Saturday Review
490 episodes - English - Latest episode: over 4 years ago - ★★★★★ - 67 ratingsPresenter Tom Sutcliffe and guests offer sharp, critical discussion of the week's cultural events
Homepage Apple Podcasts Google Podcasts Overcast Castro Pocket Casts RSS feed
Episodes
Van Gogh, Mondrian, Nicholson Baker, Hotel, The Dirties
June 07, 2014 19:00 - 41 minutes - 38.3 MBThe Dirties is a Canadian indie film about a couple of friends planning to make a film about a Columbine-style school massacre, where the bullies will be made to pay for what they've done. It begins to dawn on one of them that his best friend might actually be hatching a bloody murderous revenge. The main character in Nicholson Baker's latest novel "Travelling Sprinkler" is a poet who has fallen out of love with writing poems. Trying to become a songwriter, we see his personal life woven in...
Ken Loach's film, Joshua Ferris's novel, The Normal Heart on TV, Bakersfield Mist and The Whitstable Biennale
May 31, 2014 19:00 - 41 minutes - 38.3 MBBakersfield Mist at London's Duchess Theatre stars Hollywood actress Kathleen Turner in a play about a woman who's convinced she's turned up a Jackson Pollock original in a junk shop. Ken Loach's new film Jimmy's Hall tells the story of the only Irishman ever to be deported from his own country as an illegal alien. As the Irish Republic was struggling to be born, Jimmy Gralton ran up against the Church and State too many times and their solution was to send him to America. Irish history is f...
Tim Winton's Eyrie, Kenneth Clark at Tate Britain, Heli, Fings Ain't Wot They Used T'Be
May 24, 2014 19:00 - 41 minutes - 38.4 MBTim Winton's new novel Eyrie is set in Fremantle Western Australia and tells the story of a man down on his luck, who tries to sew his life back together with the help of a former neighbour and her mysterious son. Fings Ain't Wot They Used T' Be was the 1959 musical that Lionel Bart wrote before his mega success with Oliver! It launched the career of Barbara Windsor and is running at the Theatre Royal Stratford East. How does a revival of a play about nostalgia deal with its own reinterpreta...
David Hepworth; Andreas Gursky exhibition; Ned Beauman's new novel
May 17, 2014 19:00 - 41 minutes - 38.3 MBWhen Albert Einstein died in 1955, the pathologist performing his autopsy stole the brain , hoping to find out truths about the nature of genius. A new play by Nick Payne at London's Bush Theatre uses it as a starting point for an exploration of how our mind makes us who we are.Touchy Feely is the latest film from leading mumblecore director Lynn Shelton. It's the story of a masseuse who develops a loathing for skin and a dentist who seems to have extraordinary unprecedented gift for healing...
Arden of Faversham; The Thrill of It All; Frank; Sheezus; The Story of Women and Art
May 10, 2014 19:00 - 41 minutes - 38.3 MBJoseph O'Connor's novel The Thrill of it All is the story of 25 years in the life of an aspiring Anglo-Irish rock band who seem fated to never quite make the big time. How convincing and fascinating is his depiction of the 1980s music scene? The RSC's Roaring Girls season aims to bring lesser known works (especially those with strong female leads) by Shakespeare's contemporaries back into the spotlight. The latest play to open at The Swan in Stratford is Arden of Faversham, a revenge traged...
Comics at the British Library; Sunny Afternoon; the Kinks musical; Edward St Aubyn's latest novel; Tom Hollander as Dylan Thomas
May 03, 2014 19:00 - 41 minutes - 38.4 MBThe exhibition Comics Unmasked: Art and Anarchy in The UK at The British Library looks back at nearly 2 centuries of comic book art in this country. Looking at and reflecting the social mores of their time, they provide an insight into the society that created them. What insight will our reviewers gain? Edward St Aubyn's newest novel tells the story of the jury judging the Elysian Prize for Literature. If you've not heard of it, that's because it doesnt exist. The book includes extracts fro...
John Simm in Prey; Privacy at the Donmar; Simon Armitage's Troy; Exhibition; Chris Marker
April 26, 2014 19:00 - 41 minutes - 38.4 MBPrivacy is a new play at London's Donmar Warehouse, looking at the way we inadvertently give away valuable private information through our use of modern communication technology - phones, computers. Is this a surprise? Director Joanna Hogg's third film, Exhibition, continues her exploration of a very British awkwardness in the ways we relate to each other and our environment. It's a quiet film but does it have an important message? The Last Days of Troy is Simon Armitage's theatrical reima...
Matisse cut-outs at Tate; Locke, RSC's Henry IV; Fargo on TV
April 19, 2014 19:00 - 41 minutes - 38.3 MBIn 1941, following a life-threatening illness, Matisse decided to change the way he made his art; from painting on canvas to creating cutout shapes of painted paper and arranging them to create brilliant vivid images - he described it as "painting with scissors". A new exhibition at Tate Modern in London brings together a collection of these works, many of which haven't been seen together since their creation more than 5 decades ago. Locke is a film set entirely in a car driving down the mo...
Calvary, Birdland, Jamaica Inn, Teju Cole, The First Georgians
April 12, 2014 19:00 - 41 minutes - 38.3 MBJohn Michael McDonagh's film Calvary reunites him with Brendan Gleeson after their success together on The Guard in 2011. This time it's about a priest who is told in confession that - in one week's time - he will be killed. It has an allstar Irish cast and was rewarded with prizes at The IFTAs. Does the mix of serious subject matter and offbeat humour work? Simon Stevens is probably best known for his stage adaptation of The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time -which is about to ...
Noah, Olden Days, Kingston 14, Kamila Shamsie
April 05, 2014 19:00 - 41 minutes - 38.3 MBNoah is a film of biblical proportions. It's directed by Darren Aronofsky and stars Russell Crowe in the title role, and cost roughly $125m to make. The ambition is impressive, but the execution has left some film critics and religious groups underwhelmed. Is the film heaven-sent or horrible? Kamila Shamsie is a frequent contributor to Saturday Review, her new novel " A God In Every Stone" is set in pre-Partition India telling the story of a country taking part in the First World War while ...
Angela Lansbury in the West End; Kate Winslet in Labor Day; Sebastian Barry's new novel
March 22, 2014 20:00 - 41 minutes - 38.2 MBAt the age of 88, Dame Angela Lansbury returns to the West End theatre playing Madam Arcati in a revival of Noel Coward's wartime comedy Blithe Spirit. On Broadway it was widely acclaimed - how will a UK audience, traditionally less adulatory - receive her exuberant performance? Kate Winslet is an actress who can open and carry a movie; nobody denies her pull at the box office and skill on the screen. Her latest film 'Labor Day' is about an escaped prisoner (Josh Brolin) who ends up spendin...
Under the Skin; Cézanne; W1A new comedy
March 15, 2014 20:00 - 41 minutes - 38.3 MBUnder The Skin is the new film from Jonathan "Sexy Beast" Glazer. Starring Scarlett Johansson, it's the story of an alien on earth and her encounters with humans. It's been booed and cheered at film festivals around the world, what do our humanoid reviewers make of this unconventional almost- psychedelic spacey work? Henry Pearlaman was an American cold storage magnate and a collector of impressionist and post-impressionist art. A selection from his collection has come to the UK for the fi...
Grand Budapest Hotel; Ruins; Young Skins
March 08, 2014 20:00 - 41 minutes - 38.3 MBTom Sutcliffe chairs sharp, critical discussion of the week's cultural events.
37 Days; The Book Thief; Bark
March 01, 2014 20:00 - 41 minutes - 38.4 MBTom Sutcliffe is joined by Linda Grant, Tom Holland and Kate Williams to review the cinematic adaptation of The Book Thief. The young adult novel narrated by Death about growing up in Nazi Germany has sold eight million copies worldwide. How appealing will its screen incarnation be to audiences? 37 Days is the BBC's dramatic contribution to its season examining the causes of the First World War. With an impressive cast, including Ian McDiarmid as the Home Secretary Sir Edward Grey, does it ...
Nymphomaniac; True Detective; A Taste of Honey
February 22, 2014 20:00 - 41 minutes - 38.4 MBWill Gompertz is joined by this week's reviewers Ekow Eshun, Viv Groskop and Gillian Slovo. They've watched both parts, some four hours in total, of Lars von Trier's controversial film, Nymphomaniac. We hear what they make of the provocative director's latest offering which focuses on the sexual adventures of Joe, played by Charlotte Gainsbourg and Stacy Martin. True Detective is the latest TV series from HBO, the US network behind The Sopranos, The Wire and, most recently, Game of Throne. ...
Fleming; Her; Richard Hamilton
February 15, 2014 20:00 - 41 minutes - 38.4 MBTom Sutcliffe and guests - David Aaronovitch, Natalie Haynes and Dreda Say Mitchell, review the Spike Jonze's film Her. Released in time for Valentine's Day, it's a romantic tale of loneliness, desire and boy meets artificial intelligence set in the not too distant future. So will love blossom? Tate Modern presents the first major retrospective of the work of Richard Hamilton. A founding figure of pop art he continued to work into his eighties, exploring different media and engaging with co...
Dallas Buyers Club; Hanif Kureishi; Inside Number 9
February 08, 2014 20:00 - 41 minutes - 38.4 MBDallas Buyers Club is based on the real life story of Ron Woodruff who fought to make new treatments available to patients with HIV and AIDS. The film is nominated for six Oscars - but is it a winner? We discuss Hanif Kureishi's latest book, The Last Word. A tale of two men, an old novelist and his young biographer who comes to stay, so what does it reveal about writers and the art of writing? Abi Morgan's new play The Mistress Contract is based on the 30 year arrangement of one couple - s...
Paxman on WWI, Martin Creed and Beckett
February 01, 2014 20:00 - 41 minutes - 38.3 MBThe BBC series commemorating the centenary of the outbreak of World War 1 is presented by Jeremy Paxman. What fresh light or perspective does it shine upon our understanding of The War To End Wars? Juliet Stevenson is performing Samuel Beckett's Happy Days - buried up to her neck in a mound of earth - at London's Young Vic Theatre. What is fuelling London theatre's current revival of Beckett productions? Canadian author Dan Vyleta has just published his third novel set in immediately postw...
King Lear, Llewyn Davis, Jonathan Lethem
January 25, 2014 20:00 - 41 minutes - 38.4 MBThe role of King Lear is famously difficult - by the time an actor reaches an age where he has the gravitas, he may be too old to cope with the physical and emotional demands. Simon Russell Beale plays Shakespeare's monarch in the latest production at The National Theatre in London, but - at 52 years old - is he too young to be playing an old, deranged king? Inside Llewyn Davis is The Coen Brothers look at the folk music scene in New York's Greenwich Village, just before Bob Dylan came along...
Scorsese, Beckett, & Sons
January 18, 2014 20:00 - 41 minutes - 38.1 MBMartin Scorsese's new film stars Leonardo DiCaprio as a dodgy stock dealer in 1980s New York. The Wolf of Wall Street shows the life of wild excess and reckless financial and personal abandon that eventually came tumbling down. Usually we review one play per week on the programme, but this time it's 3 plays - and they take less than an hour all in. Samuel Beckett's Not I, Footfall and Rockaby are currently at The Royal Court Theatre and will be touring the country later this year. & Sons i...
New Bruce Springsteen album
January 11, 2014 20:00 - 41 minutes - 38.3 MBHilary Mantel's novels about Thomas Cromwell - Chief Minister to Henry VIII - have been garlanded with awards and now the RSC has adapted both of them for the stage in 2 three-hour-long plays. We'll tell you whether they're worth queuing up for return tickets for. 12 Years A Slave is directed by British film director Steve McQueen and tells the true story of free African American kidnapped from Washington into slavery in the Southern States. It has been praised as eye opening with stunning ...
Redford in All Is Lost, How to Be a Heroine, TV drama 7.39
January 04, 2014 20:00 - 41 minutes - 38.3 MBRobert Redford has given the performance of a lifetime according to many critics in his most recent film "All Is Lost". It's literally a one-man film set entirely at sea with about a page's-worth of dialogue over 100 minutes. Will our panel marvel at this bravura performance by the 77 year old Sundance Kid? How To be A Heroine (or what I've learned from reading too much) is a book looking at strong female characters in novels and how they've changed over the years and how readers' relations...
Love/Hate in 2013
December 28, 2013 20:00 - 41 minutes - 38.2 MBLove/Hate: what were the works that really divided audiences in 2013? What pushes us to extreme opinions? Comedian and writer David Schneider and the novelists Naomi Alderman and Kamila Shamsie join Tom and an audience for some lively heartfelt debate taking in the year's arts, from Nicolas Winding Refn's Only God Forgives starring Ryan Gosling to Donna Tartt's The Goldfinch. Producer Sarah Johnson.
New novel by Christos Tsiolkas; Stephen Ward the Musical; Death Comes to Pemberley; Anchorman 2; M R James ghost story
December 21, 2013 20:00 - 41 minutes - 38.3 MBAustralian novelist Christos Tsiolkas' previous book The Slap became an international best seller. His latest 'Barracuda' explores the mind of a young competitive swimmer who won't countenance the idea of failure; how does his obsession affect all those around him? Andrew Lloyd Webber's 'Stephen Ward The Musical' tells the story of 1963's Profumo Affair, from the point of view of the man who many believe was scapegoated to protect The Establishment - 50 years later transcripts of the court p...
American Psycho as theatre; Everything You Always Wanted to Know...; Mind Maps at the Science Museum
December 14, 2013 20:00 - 41 minutes - 38.3 MBMatt Smith (the almost-former Dr Who) takes his first post-timelord steps in a stage musical based on American Psycho, the quintessential yuppie novel. How will they deal with the rat? The Mind Maps exhibition at the Science Museum in London explores how mental health problems and other psychological disorders have been treated over the past 250 years. It includes objects from the museum's medical collection, archive images and art works, but how hard is it to show how the mind (rather than...
Emil and the Detectives at the National Theatre; Photorealism exhibition in Birmingham; Nebraska; The Dogs of Littlefield
December 07, 2013 20:00 - 41 minutes - 38.4 MBTom Sutcliffe and his guests Ellah Alfrey, Craig Raine and Rosie Boycott discuss the following - Nebraska is the latest work from film director Alexander Payne, it's set in and carrying the name of his home state. Best known for his roles as menacing heavy characters, here Bruce Dern plays a old man who believes he has won a large cash prize and sets off to collect it, causing problems for his family and creating tension among his friends. It has been extremely warmly received in the USA, b...
Saving Mr Banks; Eimear McBride; This American Life
November 30, 2013 20:00 - 41 minutes - 38.3 MBNew film Saving Mr Banks tells the story of Disney's courting of PL Travers - the woman who wrote Mary Poppins. It wasn't an easy courtship as she didn't want any animation, any songs or even anything that was the colour red in it. Eventually she relented and this film shows her reconciled to the Disney-fication of her work. But is this version anything like reality? And could one expect Disney Studios to make a film about their founder that showed him in anything other than a flattering lig...
Blue Is the Warmest Colour; Dylan Thomas; No Place to Go
November 23, 2013 20:00 - 41 minutes - 38.3 MBPalme d'Or winning film Blue is the Warmest Colour has proved controversial, in part because of its subject matter - it's a story of two young lesbians who fall in love. The author of the original bande dessinee has described the film as porn, and the lengthy explicit sex scenes have caused consternation. And since its release the two actresses have said that they feel exploited. So it's a prize-winning film mired in problems but is it worth paying money to go and see? Have you ever wondere...
Mojo revived; The Counselor; Paul Smith at the Design Museum
November 16, 2013 20:00 - 41 minutes - 38.1 MBThe coincidence of a really hot cast and the restaging of a play by a writer whose most recent work was lauded and awarded should be a guarantee of a hit. Jez Butterworth's Mojo was originally staged at The Royal Court in London 18 years ago. His stratospheric success with Jerusalem and a cast that includes Ben Wishaw and Rupert "Ron Weasley" Grint (making his West End stage debut) means there is a lot of press attention and positivity towards "Mojo" at the Harold Pinter Theatre, but is ther...
Gravity; Stanley Spencer; nut; Rustication
November 09, 2013 20:00 - 41 minutes - 38.2 MBLife in space is impossible, Gravity is a film about surviving out there. Sandra Bullock and George Clooney play astronauts working on a space shuttle when their lives are threatened by space shrapnel - a disintegrating satellite sends million of pieces of potentially murderous debris hurtling at them. Directed by Mexican director Alfonso Cuaron, it cost $100m to make and has taken more than $400m at the box office already, but will our reviewers be impressed by the scale of its reach and it...
The Scottsboro Boys; Arcade Fire; Russell Banks' short stories
November 02, 2013 20:00 - 41 minutes - 38.1 MBThe new musical from Broadway composers John Kander and Fred Ebb tells the story of a group of 9 young African Americans who- in 1931 - were imprisoned on trumped-up rape charges. They've previously created singing Nazis (Cabaret), loveable mobsters (Chicago) and created the ultimate love song to a city (New York, New York). Have they turned a historical miscarriage of justice into a hit musical? Philomena is a film starring Judi Dench as the mother of an illegitimate child born in 1950s Ir...
Morrissey; The Selfish Giant; From Here to Eternity
October 26, 2013 19:00 - 41 minutes - 38.2 MBA new film, The Selfish Giant, loosely based on an original Oscar Wilde fairy story, brings the story up to date and follows the lives of a couple of teenage boys who bunk off school to go trading scrap metal. It's director Clio Barnard's second film set in the north of England; what sort of performances has she got from the two main leads who have never acted before? From Here to Eternity, a new musical based as much on the 1951 novel by James Jones as it is on the 1953 film (which starred...
David Tennant as Richard II; The Goldfinch; Enough Said
October 19, 2013 19:00 - 41 minutes - 38.3 MBTom Sutcliffe and guests Sarfraz Manzoor, Natalie Haynes and Peter Kemp discuss David Tennant's starring role in Richard II, in Gregory Doran's first production as Artistic Director at the Royal Shakespeare Theatre in Stratford, following on from David Tennant's successful performance as Hamlet in 2008. Richard II is the first in a cycle of Shakespeare's history plays which will be performed over subsequent seasons. Donna Tartt's long awaited third novel is The Goldfinch, published 11 years...
The Commitments musical; Le Week-End
October 12, 2013 18:59 - 41 minutes - 38.3 MBRoddy Doyle's The Commitments, the Dublin-set musical arrives at the Palace Theatre in London. With Killian Donnelly as lead singer Deco, will it win the public's hearts as the book and the film did? Lindsay Duncan and Jim Broadbent are a long-married couple who go to Paris for Le Week-end to celebrate their 30th anniversary - in a trip that soon puts the marriage to the test. Scripted by Hanif Kureishi and directed by Roger Michell, it's their third feature film collaboration. The Circle ...
Filth and Masters of Sex
October 05, 2013 18:59 - 41 minutes - 38.4 MBIrvine Welsh's book Filth hits the big screen with a bang - and bagpipes - as James McAvoy takes on the role of Scotland's bad lieutenant. It is directed by Jon S Baird and also stars Imogen Poots, John Sessions and Eddie Marsan. Richard Eyre directs a new production of Ibsen's controversial masterpiece Ghosts starring Lesley Manville at the Almeida Theatre in London. Shunga: sex and pleasure in Japanese art at the British Museum and The Night of Longing at the Fitzwilliam Museum in Cambri...
Blue Jasmine, Serpentine Sackler Gallery
September 28, 2013 19:00 - 41 minutes - 38.2 MBCate Blanchett stars in Woody Allen's Blue Jasmine - new territory for him as much of it's set in San Francisco. He's rumoured to be back on form: will the West Coast and a plot that owes a debt to A Streetcar Named Desire inspire a great film? Back in New York, Thomas Pynchon, author of V, Gravity's Rainbow and Mason and Dixon, has always divided readers between those who are geekily entranced by his vision and wordplay and those who just can't work out what's going on. Bleeding Edge is th...
Eleanor Catton's The Luminaries and A Midsummer Night's Dream
September 21, 2013 18:59 - 41 minutes - 38.3 MBA Midsummer Night's Dream is the latest star-studded production in the Michael Grandage season at the Noel Coward theatre in London. Starring Sheridan Smith and David Walliams, one of its aims is to bring a fresh audience to Shakespeare. Eleanor Catton's novel The Luminaries is on the Man Booker shortlist. At 27 she's the youngest ever writer to be in that position. It's an intricate account of extraordinary interwoven happenings around the goldfields of 19th century New Zealand. Austral...
Rush; Science Britannica
September 14, 2013 18:59 - 41 minutes - 38.4 MBFasten your seatbelts as the Formula 1 rivalry of the Seventies between James Hunt (Daniel Bruhl) and Niki Lauda (Chris Hemsworth) comes to the big screen. Ron Howard directs Peter Morgan's screenplay in Rush. There's a double bill of science as Richard Dawkins' memoir An Appetite for Wonder details his early life in Africa and at Oxford, until the publication of The Selfish Gene; and Professor Brian Cox looks at the history and future of British science in the BBC2 series Science Britannic...
The Great Beauty; Peaky Blinders
September 07, 2013 18:59 - 41 minutes - 38.4 MBPaolo Sorrentino's film The Great Beauty starring long-time collaborator Toni Servillo was nominated for the Palme d'Or at Cannes. It opens with a tourist swooning at the beauty of Rome: will audiences too fall for it? Mark Ravenhill's take on Candide for the RSC is time-hopping and visually rich and offers a view for our own times on optimism and its dangers - how successful a response is it to Voltaire's classic? Jhumpa Lahiri's novel The Lowland illuminates an era of Indian history thro...
Upstream Colour; The Story of the Jews on BBC 2; new Margaret Atwood book Maddaddam
August 30, 2013 19:00 - 41 minutes - 38.1 MBSimon Schama explores The Story of the Jews, in a big new history strand on BBC 2. Does his personal approach work for this massive subject? Margaret Atwood's latest novel, Maddaddam, follows a group of survivors after a man-made plague has swept the earth. In Blue Stockings, Jessica Swale's new play, the year is 1896 and Tess Moffat and her fellow first years are determined to win the right to graduate from Girton College, Cambridge, the first college to admit women. Upstream Colour, Shan...
Edinburgh Festival special
August 24, 2013 19:00 - 41 minutes - 37.8 MBSaturday Review from the Edinburgh Festival Theatre: Leaving Planet Earth. Old Earth has nothing left for us, so it's time for a new beginning. The audience is transported to a New Earth for this site-specific 'out of this world' theatre production by the award winning theatre company Grid Iron. Following the story of humanities first migration into space, it asks questions about our connection to this planet. Should we leave this world, and if so, who will endure and at what cost? The fil...
2 Guns; Chimerica; What Remains
August 17, 2013 19:00 - 41 minutes - 38.1 MB2 Guns, Baltasar Kormakur's new film, stars Denzel Washington and Mark Wahlberg as a DEA agent and a naval intelligence officer who find themselves on the run after a botched attempt to infiltrate a drug cartel. While fleeing, they learn the secret of their shaky alliance: neither knew that the other was an undercover agent. Lucy Kirkwood's latest play Chimerica was sparked by the Tiananmen square protests in China 1989. As tanks roll through Beijing and soldiers hammer on his hotel door, J...
Alan Partridge: Alpha Papa; Big School; The Same Deep Water as Me
August 10, 2013 09:41 - 41 minutes - 38.2 MBSteve Coogan is back and stars in the film Alan Partridge: Alpha Papa; which portrays the events of the greatest low-to-high ebb spectrum in Alan's life to date, namely how he tries to salvage his public career while negotiating a violent turn of events at North Norfolk Digital Radio. Had an accident at work? Tripped on a paving slab? Cut yourself shaving? You could be entitled to compensation. In Nick Payne's new play The Same Deep Water As Me, Andrew and Barry at Scorpion Claims, Luton's ...
The Guts; Only God Forgives; Southcliffe; Titanic; Mass Observation
August 03, 2013 18:59 - 41 minutes - 38.4 MBDanish director Nicolas Winding Refn's film Only God Forgives has already divided critics: five stars for some while others booed it at Cannes. Set in Bangkok, it's ultraviolent, awash with red, and has an extraordinary soundscape. It stars Ryan Gosling, Vithaya Pansringarm and Kristin Scott Thomas. Roddy Doyle returns to the territory of the much-loved The Commitments - which will become a musical in the autumn - in his new novel The Guts. Jimmy Rabbitte is now 47 and has just been diagno...
Cameron Mackintosh takes on Barnum; new film Frances Ha
July 27, 2013 19:00 - 41 minutes - 38.4 MBChichester Festival Theatre's main stage is currently undergoing building works so a large temporary tent-like structure has been built outside - surely the perfect setting for a production of Barnum. Cameron Mackintosh co-produces the story of the extraordinary American showman. Frances Ha is a new film co-scripted by its star, Greta Gerwig, and directed by Noah Baumbach. It's a funny and touching coming-of-age story for Frances, a 27-year-old living in New York who can't quite bring herse...
The World's End; A Season in the Congo; Burton and Taylor reimagined on BBC4
July 20, 2013 18:59 - 41 minutes - 38.2 MBSimon Pegg and Rosamund Pike star in the film The World's End, the last of the so-called Cornetto Trilogy following Shaun of the Dead and Hot Fuzz, directed by Edgar Wright. Can Gary King make it through the pub crawl he failed to finish as a teenager in his home town of Newton Haven? Joe Wright directs Chiwetel Ejiofor in A Season in the Congo at the Young Vic, a powerful political play by Aime Cesaire charting the rise and fall of Patrice Lumumba in the early days of Congolese independenc...
Top of the Lake, Blancanieves
July 13, 2013 19:00 - 42 minutes - 38.5 MBJane Campion's Top of the Lake comes to BBC2 starring Elisabeth Moss of Mad Men fame - here playing a detective investigating what's happening to a 12-year-old girl in a small New Zealand community. Also starring Holly Hunter and Peter Mullan and with influences from David Lynch to The Killing, will it hold UK audiences in its grip? The Spanish silent black and white film Blancanieves has been winning great acclaim for its intensity and beauty. Pablo Berger's film is a surreal take on the ...
Kenneth Branagh in Macbeth
July 06, 2013 19:00 - 41 minutes - 38 MBKenneth Branagh and Alex Kingston star in a much-anticipated production of Macbeth at the Manchester International Festival. The venue has been kept from ticket holders until almost the last moment... will the production live up to the expectation? Also from the Festival, intense music meets powerful documentary and extraordinary visuals in Massive Attack v Adam Curtis. And do it 2013: an art exhibition in which instructions - some to be done there in the gallery, some to be carried out lat...
Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, LS Lowry
June 29, 2013 19:02 - 41 minutes - 38.4 MBSam Mendes' production of Charlie and the Chocolate Factory has been years in the making and had to be juggled with his Skyfall directing duties. Now at last the musical has arrived at the Theatre Royal, Drury Lane with Douglas Hodge taking the role of Willy Wonka. Lowry and the Painting of Modern Life at Tate Britain is something of a response to critics in recent years who have suggested that the gallery should show more of the Lowrys it owns. He's a painter who divides art lovers: some s...
Conor McPherson's play The Night Alive; new film Before Midnight
June 22, 2013 18:59 - 41 minutes - 38.4 MBConor McPherson's new play The Night Alive opens at the Donmar Warehouse, months after his extraordinarily successful work The Weir - written when he was only 26 - was revived there. The play reunites McPherson with Jim Norton and Ciarán Hinds. Before Midnight is the latest in Richard Linklater's sequence of films charting the relationship between Jesse and Celine - in the form of Ethan Hawke and Julie Delpy. Formerly it's been will they-won't they; now they have, but can their relationship...