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If you want to measure how English football changed during the 1990s, listen to former Manchester United chairman Martin Edwards. In the final episode of BBC2's primetime Open University documentary 'Fever Pitch: The Rise of the Premier League,' Edwards notes that when he took over as the club's chair in 1980 it was worth £2 million. By the time he left Manchester United in 2000, it was valued at £1 billion. Adam Hopkins' four part Story Films production charts the birth of the Premier League in 1990 to its growth over the decade into a massive global brand.  But was it the moment when football sold its soul? The first episode does a good job setting the context of how the Premier League was born. Football fever had broken out again in England on the back of the national team's success at the Italia 90 World Cup after it reached the semi-finals. Rupert Murdoch's Sky satellite TV venture was looking for a magnet to draw subscribers in. After failing to woo ma

  Is it possible to admire a film but not really love it? Of course. Stanley Kubrick's 'Barry Lyndon' is one such film for me. The director's elegant 1975 adaptation of William Thackeray's tale of a charming Irish rogue climbing the social ladder of Britain's 18th Century aristocracy still looks fantastic to this day. A lot of that is down to its Academy Award winning cinematography, costume design and art and set direction from John Alcott, Milena Canonero, Ulla-Britt Soderlund, Ken Adam Roy Walker and Vernon Dixon. It also features a great Oscar winning score by Leonard Rosenman featuring The Chieftains and an amusing Leonard Rossiter performance as an Army captain. However the story leaves me cold. Among the other films that inspired my admiration but failed to secure my love include David Fincher's 'Mank' or Martin Scorsese's 'Kundun'  And then there's Terrence Malick's 'Tree of Life'. Say hello to a new addition to th

  Here we go again. There's plenty of running around and shouting at the start of World Productions' latest glossy Sunday night thriller on BBC1. A major star gets bumped off within minutes of appearing onscreen in 'Vigil' - a drama that reverberates to the swell of its bombastic music and which unashamedly plumbs new depths of ridiculousness. 'Vigil' is a submarine miniseries in the mould of  'Bodyguard,'   'Bloodlands' and, of course,  'Line of Duty' . Regular readers of this blog know comparisons to two of those three shows are hardly a compliment. Like all of World Productions fare, it's the kind of thriller for those who like their dramas to scream "sensation" at them every few minutes. It also has all the subtlety of a US Ryder Cup fan chant. There's showpiece action sequences a plenty, interrogations, uncooperative and backstabbing figures in authority and a grand conspiracy. However it's all mouth and no tru

   Every industry needs a trailblazer - a shining light to show others a career they might otherwise have discounted is possible. That is what Melvin van Peebles was to future generations of African American filmmakers and actors. Born in Chicago in 1932, the actor, director, playwright, novelist and composer was an inspiration to directors like Spike Lee, Ava Du Vernay and Barry Jenkins. He also understood the potency of the moving image. Born Melvin Peebles, his father was a tailor. A literature graduate from Ohio Wesleyan University, he joined the US Air Force where he served for over three years. After living for a period in Holland, he added "Van" to his surname. Initially employed as a cable car gripman in San Francisco, he drifted towards filmmaking on the recommendation of a customer. Van Peebles made his first short film in 1957 called 'Pickup Men for Herrick' and honed his skills on other short films. He would later laugh off his naivete, claiming he thought