Island at War

Due to its beneficial tax breaks for filmmakers, the Isle of Man is being seen more and more on our screens of late. Island at War is the latest big-budget drama series to take advantage of the financial benefits offered by this location. Read more

Who Killed Saturday Night TV?

The generous yet increasingly-mocked surfeit of clip-based TV shows to which we’ve been treated over the last few years is no more a sign of bankruptcy in commissioning editors’ imagination than to ascribe the increasing number of Newsround bulletins on the CBBC channel or gardening spin-offs on BBC2 to laziness on the part of scheduling executives. Read more

50 Years of BBC TV News

The main purpose of television news is that of a window on the world, plain and simple – pointing a camera at what’s actually happening. Read more

55 Degrees North

Comparisons with Spender are perhaps inevitable for 55 Degrees North, with both series featuring detectives who have moved north following problems with their jobs in London and finding themselves working under a surly new boss and alongside indifferent colleagues. Read more

When Hitler Invaded Britain

23 years after he hung up Kessler’s jackboots for good, the magnificent Clifford Rose returned to the role of a German World War II officer in this odd contribution to the current vogue for all things war from ITV1. Read more

Mastermind

Here’s a programme that seemed pretty near unsalvageable upon its demise back in 1997, yet has managed to defy expectation and return in astonishingly better shape than anybody could really have dreamed. Read more

Big Brother

Mine wife has come up with the ultimate reality show concept. Read more

Election Night

It’d been a fair while since David Dimbleby had last helmed an election night from what, convention dictates, should be the biggest studio in Television Centre. Read more

England’s Dream Team

We have a saying in our house; every day’s a school day. And, thanks to England’s Dream Team, we learned that, but for the bizarre combination of the Munich Air Disaster and a dodgy enchilada, England would have won the World Cup in 1958, 1962 and 1970. Read more

Ten Days to D-Day

Given that Radio Times appears to have thrown its lot in with the swelling ranks of media commentators and topical quiz show panelists taking pops about the amount of television obsessed with World War II, we’re approaching another one of those cultural tipping points where the recurring throwaway observation becomes the ubiquitous punchline to never-funny jokes. Read more

Bodies

“I’ve been here long enough to know that it’s best not to say anything,” remarks one character during the course of Jed Mercurio’s new medical series Bodies. Read more

Jeremy Vine Meets…

“I’ve seen you 13 times in concert,” Jeremy Vine boomed to his guest by way of an introduction, “I should warn you – I don’t know if I need counselling!!!” Read more

Still Game

Choo! Choo! All aboard the Craiglang Express! Rockets, nuggets and bawbags step right up for another magical mystery tour penetrating deep into the heartland’s (and the badlands) of the modern, everyday working-class pensioner. Read more

The Simpsons

It was an ending, and that was enough. Read more

Win, Lose or Draw Late

The slide of the daytime quiz show from ubiquity to near-extinction is one of those TV phenomena to be lamented. Read more

Ramsay’s Kitchen Nightmares

Heavily trailed over the previous fortnight, Ramsay’s Kitchen Nightmares provided an hour of television so riveting it was difficult to watch, but impossible to switch off. Read more

Happy Birthday BBC2

An evergreen marker of a TV channel’s health is how it fares when trying to celebrate itself. Read more

Emmerdale

There was a delicious sense of irony apparent as the cast of Coronation Street collected their BAFTA t’other night. Read more

Without a Trace

Whilst we in Britain suffer the lamentably lame Murder in Suburbia and endure the dubious viewing pleasure of watching the risible Murder City, Jerry Bruckenheimer would appear to waging a one-man executive producer war to deliver as many quality police dramas on American television as he possibly can. Read more

The Alan Clark Diaries

Corridors of power are never brightly lit in television drama. They’re always enveloped in a dank fustiness, a fog of gloomy upholstery and even gloomier faces, both looking as if they’ve been trapped there for decades. Read more

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