Pomona for Facebook

The 2008 Booker Prize winning 'The White Tiger' is regarded as one of the finest nova ever written about India. A thrilling contemporary tale about the class system, globalisation, individualism and corruption, a screen version of Aravind Adinga's Booker Prize winning novel was in the works even before it made it to print. Such was the interest that the Mumbai-based film producer, musician and entrepreneur Mukul Deora snapped up the rights before publication. And it soon became a labour of love for his college friend, the Iranian American director Ramin Bahraini who has been mapping out a screen version, ever since he read early drafts of Adinga's story. Bahraini is probably best known for his 2014 Florida real estate foreclosure drama  '99 Homes'  with Andrew Garfield and Michael Shannon. But film buffs may also know his 2007 drama 'Chop Shop' about a street orphan living in Queens in New York, which the critic Roger Ebert claimed was one of the best fi

There's something wonderfully perverse about watching a sitcom based around video conferencing after spending the day video conferencing. Welcome to the second series of BBC1's lockdown sitcom 'Staged' in which Michael Sheen and David Tennant fret over Zoom about their professional reputations and encourage a host of other celebrities to send up themselves. The first series in June 2020  saw Tennant and Sheen engage Judi Dench, Adrian Lester and Samuel L Jackson as they rehearsed a Pirandello play 'Two Actors In Search of an Ending' which they intended to star in on the West End as soon as lockdown ended. It was a clever meta concept as Pirandello's play is about two actors rehearsing a play. In another meta twist, series two begins with Sheen and Tennant appearing on a BBC show hosted by Romesh Ranganathan via Zoom with Michael Palin to discuss the success of the previous series. Tennant and Sheen bask in the glory of their fans' enthusiasm for series o

The Sutton Hoo excavation in Suffolk in 1939 unearthed an amazing haul of Anglo Saxon artefacts from an ancient burial ground. But it also inspired the Daily Telegraph's TV critic, John Preston to pen a novel about it after he discovered his aunt had been involved. 'The Dig,' which was published in 2007, takes actual information about the find and builds around it a tale of loss, academic snobbery and regret. Now Preston's novel has been adapted for the screen by the playwright Moira Buffini. The result is a solid, workmanlike adaptation for Netflix in which Ralph Fiennes, Carey Mulligan, Lily James, Johnny Flynn, Ben Chaplin and Ken Stott get to huff and puff over an amazing archaeological find. Directed by Simon Stone, Fiennes plays Basil Brown, a local archaeologist who is engaged by Mulligan's widow Edith Pretty to lead a dig on some burial mounds on her Suffolk estate. With Britain on the brink of World War II, archaeologists are keen to complete their excavati

When Noel Coward's 'Blithe Spirit' opened in Manchester's Opera House in 1941 and transferred to the Picadilly Theatre in London's West End, it was a huge hit with audiences and it charmed most critics. With Margaret Rutherford in the cast, it also caught the eye of David Lean who adapted it for the big screen in 1945. Rutherford reprised her role as the psychic Madam Arcati, with Rex Harrison taking on the part of the struggling crime novelist Charles Condomine, Constance Cummings as his wife Ruth and Kay Hammond as Elvira, his deceased former wife whose spirit in conjured up at a seance. Lean's adaptation fell short of box office expectations despite decent reviews but it has over the years grown in stature to become a British classic. Coward's play has been a frequent fixture on the West End and Broadway and with touring productions too, drawing actors like Patrick Cargill, Beryl Reid, Maria Aiken, Joanna Lumley, Jane Asher, Simon Cadell, Twiggy, Penelope

  'It's A Sin' is the best miniseries Russell T Davies has ever written and that's saying something. After all, this is the man who created the groundbreaking Channel 4 drama 'Queer as Folk' in 1999. The five episode miniseries is better than 'The Second Coming' - his ITV drama in 2003 with Christopher Eccleston about a Manchester man who might be the second coming of Jesus. It is better than 'Cucumber,' 'Banana' and 'Tofu' - his three ambitious, simultaneous Channel 4, E4 and 4oD drama series in 2015 about LGBT life. It even tops his three-part miniseries on the Jeremy Thorpe affair  'A Very English Scandal'  for BBC1 in 2018 and his episodes of 'Dr Who' in the Christopher Eccleston, David Tennant and Billie Piper era. That's how good 'It's A Sin' is. Set between 1981 to 1991, the Channel 4 drama follows the lives of five 18 year olds as they navigate the harsh reality of AIDS at a time when societ