Make it so! Star Trek: The Next Generation remains radically hopeful television | Television

Gates McFadden (right), with Marina Sirtis and Whoopi Goldberg.

In the 1992 comedy Wayne’s World, Wayne Campbell makes a wise observation about the comparisons made between sparkling wine and champagne. “It is a lot like Star Trek: The Next Generation,” he notes of sparkling […]

‘My kids’ friends wear Smelly Cat T-shirts’: TV insiders on creating unforgettable onscreen songs | Television

Five boys in matching NYC style jackets strike a hip-hop pose

Taylor Jenkins Reid’s 2019 novel Daisy Jones & the Six was practically made for television: charting the rise and fall of a 70s rock band that bears more than a little similarity to Fleetwood Mac, […]

A tale of too many remakes: why we never need to see a Dickens novel on TV ever again | Television

Olivia Colman and Shalom Brune-Franklin in Great Expectations.

Television needs to stop rolling out Charles Dickens adaptations – and this is coming from someone whose lockdown project was writing an Oliver Twist prequel about Nancy (binned after three chapters due to insufficient oom-pah-pah). […]

Tinkling the ivories and tugging the heart strings: is The Piano the most uplifting TV talent show ever? | Television

‘It’s impossible not to wonder how many of those train travellers are seeing something that looks like fun’ … The Piano.

Is there an instrument with more emotional range than the piano? Sometimes, it is tough to believe that the same collection of wood and wires can make you stamp your feet with delight one minute […]

‘An icon for goth girls everywhere’ – thank you, Lisa Loring, for making Wednesday Addams great | Television

Lisa Loring pictured in 2019.

There have been many incarnations of Wednesday Addams since Charles Addams first published The Addams Family cartoons in the New Yorker. In those first cartoons, she never even had a name. It was not until […]

Wolf Pack review – Sarah Michelle Gellar’s TV comeback is mind-bendingly bad | Television

Armani Jackson as Everett Lang.

Wildfires in California are just the sort of peace-shattering, visually intimidating force of nature that dramas like to use as a starting point. What happens to the people who share the terrifying experience of being […]

Total wipeout: ‘Netflix curse’ strikes tennis players at Australian Open | Television

Félix Auger-Aliassime

One by one, they dropped their heads, smashed their rackets. One by one, they slung their bags over their shoulders in defeat, exiting the court in bitter disappointment at shock results. They are the victims […]

‘A modern-day fairytale’: the joyful Japanese food and friendship drama you should never watch hungry | Television

Natsuki Deguchi as Sumire in The Makanai: Cooking for the Maiko House.

With a Netflix Top 10 that, in the UK at least, features Ginny & Georgia, Vikings: Valhalla and Emily in Paris, you might be forgiven for wondering if there is much left on the streaming […]

The Rig review – prepare to drill down into Martin Compston’s spooky North Sea drama | Television & radio

Over a barrel … Mark Bonnar as Alwyn in The Rig, Prime Video’s six-part thriller.

It’s hard these days to isolate your characters enough for high drama to play out. You have to rely on uncharged mobile phones, social media refuseniks or go big like The Terror or The North […]

Robert Forster: Venus by Television is the most perfect song of all time | Music

Black and white shot of the band on stage with Verlaine singing

How could the perfect song be anything else? I was 19 years old, living in suburban Brisbane, writing my first half-decent songs, when Television released their debut album, Marquee Moon. I had been following the […]

Willow review – Warwick Davis’s fantasy reboot is lots of fun … until he appears | Television

Actors on horseback with a wagon in a landscape with grass and rocks

Who remembers Willow, the magical quest-in-a-forest film with Warwick Davis in it? It was released in 1988 and hasn’t spawned a spin-off screen universe since – when it has been mentioned, it’s usually in brackets […]

From Tampongate to the Bashir bombshells: will King Charles III finally hit back at The Crown? | Television

Imelda Staunton as Queen Elizabeth II and Jonathan Pryce as Prince Philip.

The Prince of Wales invites prime minister Sir John Major to a secret meeting to explore the possibility of becoming Charles III in 1991 not 2022. The Princess of Wales seduces heart surgeon Hasnat Khan […]

‘I think I can improve greatly’: James Corden on inadequacy, nerves and his return to TV acting | Television

Jez Butterworth and James Corden on the set of Mammals.

Even before James Corden and Jez Butterworth made Mammals, their suspenseful six-part comedy-drama series, the actor and the playwright already had a lot in common. Both have won a Tony award, and recognition from the […]

‘Irish people have faced centuries of discrimination’: why are Lord of the Rings’ accents so offensively bad? | Television

Owain Arthur as Prince Durin IV, a dwarf, in The Rings of Power.

‘What is this, famine cosplay?” asked Ed Power in the Irish Times after glimpsing the harfoots wandering around Middle-earth in The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power. In the weeks since then, he […]