[ad_1] It’s not easy to tell an entire story in just half an hour of television, but it’s certainly not impossible. Steve Pemberton and Reece Shearsmith are masters of it on dark anthology comedy Inside No 9; macabre drama The Twilight Zone managed to scare viewers out of their wits in just 30 minutes. Mark…
[ad_1] In the UK, we often celebrate the restraint of shows like Fawlty Towers that call it a day after a couple of series, and give cult status to the single-series efforts, like Garth Marenghi’s Darkplace, that only gained the fans they deserved long after original broadcast. Live studio sitcoms might be the exception. Not…
[ad_1] Within the crowded landscape of radio, the breakout star of 2023 has surely been the most unlikely one: veteran broadcaster Ken Bruce. The 72-year-old has this year found himself in the curious position of receiving obituary-level plaudits while still at the top of his game. Since he quit the BBC back in March in…
[ad_1] Michael Morpurgo had never set eyes on his father before that fateful Christmas (Photo: Getty) I saw the film Great Expectations, in black and white, way back in the 1960s, at a family Christmas. It was a life-changing experience. It doesn’t matter how many versions of the film I’ve seen, this is the one…
[ad_1] There are decent years in film, and then there are years like 2023: remarkable. Perhaps it’s that we are only now seeing the fruits of post-pandemic labour, as filmmakers have been able, finally, to ignite their wilder visions. In these past 12 months, there was the cultural phenomenon that was Barbenheimer (Barbie and Oppenheimer…
[ad_1] One of the most significant visual arts events of the year was not an exhibition, but a film. Laura Poitras’s brutal, heart-breaking, Oscar-nominated documentary All the Beauty and the Bloodshed paid tribute to the intimate work of the US photographer Nan Goldin, documenting her friends’ lives on the social margins. Poitras also followed Goldin’s highly effective campaign…
[ad_1] The writer and clergyman Rev Richard Coles recalls the giddy pleasure of watching a ridiculous film at Christmas with his husband David December 23, 2023 6:00 am Rev Richard Coles and his late husband, David (Photo: Rev Richard Coles) Christmas Day in the parish. After the last carol was sung, my late husband David…
[ad_1] Christmas Eve If you’re up bright and early on Christmas Eve, then Channel 4 will help you get into the Christmas spirit. From 7.25am, they’re showing a selection of their festive animations from over the years starting with 2019’s The Tiger Who Came to Tea, followed by The Snowman, Father Christmas and The Snowman…
[ad_1] 2023 was the year in which theatre did its utmost to shake off the long shadow of Covid. The cost-of-living crisis, as well as some over-ambitious ticket prices, were two of the factors that meant audience numbers were not quite back to pre-pandemic levels, but a raft of hit shows and star names –…
[ad_1] Channel 4’s animation of Mog’s Christmas – a gem of a film, which seems destined to become a seasonal classic – captures my mother Judith Kerr’s 1976 book with great faithfulness. Ingeniously, it manages to extend a 32-page picture book into a 22-minute film featuring the voices of Benedict Cumberbatch and Claire Foy, while…
