Rev is being adapted for the States and has already been given the green light for a third series, but such are the career trajectories of its leading players (Olivia Colman seems everywhere at the moment) that it will have to wait until 2014 to reach the screen. Meanwhile, the Series 2 DVD should keep [...]
This documentary of the photographer-to-the-stars and film-maker Anton Corbijn has its share of celebrities, but they are kept firmly in place and the real fascination is the human effect on Corbijn of a father who never quite approved of his craft. It opens with an exhibition of the work that made his name: striking monochrome [...]
The last few years have seen the rise of European detective series that give the genre fresh settings. Scandinavia has brought the UK some compelling dramas, but one that paces the plot particularly well is Sicily’s Inspector Montalbano (15). With feature-length murder mysteries based in an historic location and starring a maverick and slightly grumpy [...]
Within two minutes of watching this six-hour naturefest, I was starting to feel overwhelmed by the power of its stunning visual imagery. Whether the sight of many thousands of snowgeese rising from the water like a moving Magic Eye, or the eagle’s-back view of soaring over the edge of the Grand Canyon, the scenes shown [...]
Those who love travelling in the UK, but are fed up with the ‘usual aspects’ may want to investigate the recommendations from this BBC series. After asking for people’s favourite hidden gems of the British landscape, Secret Britain covers the length and breadth of the country, making sure that they are less secret than they [...]
By now, Radio 4 and Mock the Week star Milton Jones needs little introduction, and neither does his unique brand of absurd one-liners. Half the fun is guessing where his jokes are going to go and the other half is finding out how wrong you were, as his punchlines teleport from some parallel universe: “I [...]
Having challenged Dawn French for the honour of being the nation’s best-loved TV vicar – and he is certainly the most authentic – Tom Hollander’s first series of Rev gets a welcome DVD release. He plays Revd. Adam Smallbone, a vicar not quite ready for the cosmopolitan inner-London parish that he has been thrust into. [...]
“It’s testing what a choir is and testing it to the limit,” claims Gareth Malone in this documentary that follows his efforts at building a choir from scratch from among the wives and girlfriends of soldiers serving in Afghanistan. You would not go to Malone for fashion tips – he wears a tweed jacket, scruffy [...]
While a Russian version of Shakespeare classics may sound like a cultural anomaly, these two discs are well-worth investigating. Since their originally releases in 1964 and 1971, they have rightly gathered a reputation for being among the very best filmed accounts of these works. Because both stories are set in very old times, their monochrome [...]
It’s not often that a young actor in his first lead role matches the performance of a great, but Leonardo DiCaprio shines as brightly as Robert de Niro in this story of a rebellious teenager suffering at the hands of his step-father. Single mother Caroline (Ellen Barkin) moves around America in different relationships with her [...]
