TV and Brian Donaldson

Glasgow-set Lip Service may have more than just homophobes turning it off

Is new BBC3 drama just The L Word with rain?

17 Feb 2011

A recent poll by the BBC found that one in five people felt ‘uncomfortable’ or ‘very uncomfortable’ with gay people having their stories told on television. A mere 16 years after the ‘Brookside kiss’, such a stat can either be read as slow progress or…

US drama Revenge suffers from an absence of likeable characters

The drama stars Emily VanCamp and Madeleine Stow

22 May 2012

Now here’s a new US show that might well have ideas way above its station with an on-screen quote from Confucius hinting at the multiple tragedies which lie ahead. Revenge (E4, Mon 28 May, 9pm) is populated by characters who take boats down to Haiti for…

Tracy Beaker Returns

7 Jan 2010

Anyone who tunes in to CBBC from time to time might not know it, but it’s five years since the last new episode of the show featuring the abandoned and shouty Tracy Beaker. But that constant loop of archive 20-minute snapshots of life within the…

US TV comedy reviews - 2 Broke Girls and Suburgatory

Two sitcoms let down by overt product placement

18 Apr 2012

There could be a theme developing here. In the pilot episode for New Girl, scatty teacher Zooey Deschanel discovered her live-in man was cheating on her and left to wind up rooming with three guys. In the opening episode of 2 Broke Girls (E4, Thu, 9pm…

Merlin

18 Sep 2008

DRAMA It would perhaps be unfair to describe this new BBC1 post-teatime ‘is it ok to let the kids watch?’ show as ‘Robin Hood meets Doctor Who’, but you can see what the schedulers were going for when they plopped this fresh take on the Arthurian…

The Bridge continues the Scandinavian trend for top-quality television crime drama

The series follows in the footsteps of The Killing and Borgen

23 Apr 2012

Those crazy Scandics are at it again with yet another astonishingly addictive TV drama. After the success of The Killing and Borgen, The Bridge (BBC Four, Sat, 9pm) keeps up the momentum albeit with a show that is a far more raw affair. There’s almost…

Perfect Vagina

Channel 4, Sun 17 Aug, 10pm

14 Aug 2008

Get set to cross your legs and grit your teeth as Lisa Rogers fronts a very different kind of scrapheap challenge as part of Channel 4’s The G-Spot strand. We’ve all read the headlines and overheard the news that women are literally queuing up round the…

The Hot 100 2011 - No. 56: Freya Mavor

Moving on after being Mini McGuinness in Skins

16 Dec 2011

All good things, they say, must come to an end. So with the Skins policy of changing casts every two series, Freya Mavor may well be currently filming her final scenes of the popular E4 show. ‘I feel petrified of leaving my baby behind,’ Edinburgh’s…

Fist of Fun

Stewart Lee and Richard Herring's debut TV appearance given a DVD outing

28 Feb 2012

‘It’s not as good as I remembered’. Thus sprach Stewart Lee about the first series of Fist of Fun, the BBC Two show which first introduced the bequiffed comic and Richard Herring, his cohort of many years, to a TV audience. While it might not be…

Derren Brown: The Specials

13 Nov 2008

(4DVD) 196min Almost five years ago to the week that Jonathan Ross and Russell Brand were threatened with being burnt at the stake, another witch-hunt was conducted for another man merely seeking to thrill us. In October 2003, Derren Brown asked a…

13 Kids and Wanting More

22 May 2008

DOCUMENTARY Channel 4, Thu 22 May, 9pm When is enough really quite enough? The subjects of this film clearly don’t believe in the concept, as they churn out child after baby after offspring, some for reasons of faith, others simply because they love…

Curb Your Enthusiasm

Larry David's groundbreaking sitcom stays at the top of its game for an eighth season

16 Sep 2011

After the high watermark of season seven’s Seinfeld-reunion storyline, Larry David brings us dragging and cringing back into his world of petty obsessions, chronic misunderstandings and friendships permanently teetering on the brink of abrasive…

TV: Rab C Nesbit: Christmas Special

11 Dec 2008

BBC2, Tue 23 Dec, 9pm With his dishevelled demeanour and manky string vest, Rab C Nesbitt may look exactly the same as he did when we last eyeballed him staggering from our screens in the summer of 1999, but the wise old nutter fae Govan is a…

US drama Homeland treads familiar territory

The series, starring Clare Danes and Damian Lewis, bears some resemblance to 24

28 Feb 2012

Damian Lewis seems to be the go-to guy for US dramas about tortured souls with a secret past. In Life, he played Charlie Crews, a detective released from prison after 12 years for a crime he didn’t commit, and in Homeland (Channel 4, Sun, 9.30pm), he’s…

Channel Hopper: The Hour

Taut, Abi Morgan-penned period news drama starring Ben Wishaw, Romola Garai and Dominic West

21 Jul 2011

Let’s get this straight: here we have a modern BBC drama about a 1950s BBC news programme called ‘The Hour’ with each of its six episodes lasting an hour? Yes, The Hour (BBC2, Tue, 9pm) may originate from a confusing place, but through the spandex-tight…

We need new ‘gritty’ American cop show Southland like a hole in the head

Channel Hopper

24 Jun 2010

Imagine The Wire hadn’t been created through years of painstaking research and sweat-filled toil by David Simon. Imagine, instead, that Jerry CSI/Cold Case Bruckheimer had ordered every writer he has ever known (dead or alive) to come up with a shiny…

The Shooting of Thomas Hurndall

2 Oct 2008

DRAMA In January 2004, British photography student Tom Hurndall died after being left in a coma for nine months, the victim of a bullet fired by a member of the Israeli Defence Force. The fact that the killer, Taysir Hayb, was handed an 11-year…

Hidden Palms

4 Oct 2007

Hidden Palms certainly starts with a bang with a gruesome fatality kicking proceedings off. But Kevin Williamson’s latest bash at teen drama after previous scripted glories such as Scream and Dawson’s Creek eventually fades to black with a whimper.

The Diana Years

Sky One, Sun 5 Aug, 9pm

1 Aug 2007

As the tenth anniversary of Diana’s violent death roars into view, the memorial overload is being cranked up on TV and in the papers. Amid the raft of paperback biographies, we’ve even had a couple of novels which dramatise her death.

Noel Fielding's Luxury Comedy

The Boosh performer's latest TV effort abounds in surrealism but lacks coherence... and jokes

2 Feb 2012

Ahead of his new gaudily-coloured clutter-fest, Noel Fielding admitted that making this solo series left him feeling a bit unhinged. After ingesting just a few minutes of Noel Fielding’s Luxury Comedy (E4, Thu, 10pm) only the most avid Boosh fan will…

The Hot 100 2011: 100-50

The definitive list of Scottish creative talent

16 Dec 2011

100: Gordon Ferris. Kilmarnock crime author makes good. The already packed Scottish crime writing field has finally found a bit of elbow room for another burgeoning talent. Joining the likes of Rankin, Brookmyre, McDermid and co is this Ayrshire-born…

Channel Hopper - Top Boy

Affecting urban ensemble drama starring Ashley Walters and Kierston Wareing

17 Oct 2011

Vaulting ambition and its often dire consequence are at the heart of London-set Top Boy (Channel 4, Mon 31 Oct–Thu 3 Nov, 10pm) just as it is inherent in every drama from Macbeth to The Sopranos. Some observers will no doubt draw parallels between this…

Mafia drama Romanzo Criminale - preview

The Italian crime series follows in the footsteps of Wallander, The Killing and Spiral

19 Sep 2011

A trio of tough guys beat up an old man with a full wallet. Except they picked on the wrong pensioner as his immediate act of bloody retribution proves, before we are swept back in time to 1977 and to a Rome burning with political murders, bombs…

The Larry Sanders Show - complete series on DVD

Garry Shandling's sitcom, starring Jeffrey Tambor and Jeremy Piven, gets new lease of life

24 Mar 2011

(Mediumrare) In the summer of 1998, the final episode of a beloved, long-running American sitcom was aired but with a conclusion hated by so many that continuous talk of a reunion seemed fuelled purely by a desire to right some terrible wrongs. That…

Boardwalk Empire gets chance to live up to ‘new Sopranos’ tag

TV series features Martin Scorsese, Terence Winter, Steve Buscemi and Kelly Macdonald

8 Feb 2011

With the ballyhoo of its pilot being the most expensive in the history of TV and with Marty Scorsese at the directorial helm, Boardwalk Empire (Sky Atlantic, Tue, 9pm) now gets a chance to settle into its Prohibition groove and show whether it is indeed…