The Saint and the Hanged Man
I think this must be the state-of-the-art in contemporary feature making. A layered mix of animation, dramatisation, funky music, clever talking heads, whizzy video techniques and a fair amount of cheeky supposition. It’s all about the sanctification of a middle-ranking medieval bishop called Thomas Cantilupe and it involves the miraculous resurrection of a twice-hanged Welsh [...]
White Gospel
Beautiful, moving Southern voices, two-hundred year-old harmonies, fire-and-brimstone (including a sixteen-foot wooden Satan), racial harmony (and disharmony)… and Elvis. Absolutely lovely middle-of-the-night music doc from BBC4.
The Curse of Steptoe
Taking its cue from the 2002 C4 documentary; When Steptoe met Son and buying completely into the notion that Brambell and Corbett were as trapped/typecast and tragic on screen as off, this BBC4 biopic was a great hour of misery. Corbett never ever managing to fulfill his promising pre steptoe career as a talented stage [...]
Masterpieces of Vienna
Thirty minutes of television about a sofa: and it’s a repeat, too.
Masterpieces of Vienna is an arts documentary series of the old school. Don’t expect expensive looking camerawork, CGI reconstructions or Andrew Graham-Dixon buzzing around in a mini; you’ll be getting some nice solid rostrum work, talking heads, a smattering of archive footage and a [...]
The Cult of The Onedin Line
Its hard to believe they are the same man; those two images of the late Peter Gilmore as either the cheeky young hospital portal eying up Nurse Barbara Windsor in the Carry On Films but also as Captain James Onedin SHOUTING his way through the seventies. THAT theme tune (Spartacus by Aram Khachaturian) was [...]
Portillo on Thatcher: The Lady’s Not for Spurning
Or how we all learned to love Portillo. Gradually he’s become the Brian Walden of his day. Shining on the Moral Maze, on the underrated This Week and making documentaries on seemingly anything he fancies. He was also the best thing in last years celebrity trial drama-doc; The Verdict keeping Archer in check.
And finally [...]
Magnetic North
God bless Jonathan Meades. First time I saw him I was a bit alienated. Another man in a suit, I thought, talking to camera. But no, he’s anything but. His programmes are an amazing combination of high-brow and low-brow - lots of big words and high-falutin’ ideas that end in spectacular revelations about the commonplace. For [...]
Caledonia Dreamin’
The impressive production line of music docs from BBC4 (Stiff records, Jacques Brel, and of course Pop Britannia being recent high spots) continues with a canter through 30 years of scottish pop. Given that C86 was year zero for me and I spent many a year trying to grow the perfect fringe then the [...]
Legends: Jacques Brel
My Dad used to play Jacques Brel LPs when I was a kid. No one in the house spoke French but you could tell that there was something going on there, something dark and clever. He was skinny and intense and unafraid. We learn from this edition of Legends, which is animated by a lot [...]
Citizen Smith: Corby
I really don’t know why this terrific series about being English works. It’s very unassuming. Presenter/writer Michael Smith is opinionated but modest, setting out with no assumptions. He travels around the country talking to people. In the end, there’s no resolution. He didn’t figure it out: being English is just complicated. The final sequence of [...]
