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Showing posts from February, 2024

CAPTIVE HEARTS (ALICE AND JACK)

© Channel 4, PBS & Fremantle If you're still recovering from ' One Day ,' do you really need another romantic drama right now? 'Alice and Jack' boasts Andrea Riseborough and Domhnall Gleeson as lovers struggling to properly connect. If its lead actors' pedigree isn't enough to woo you, the Channel 4 and PBS miniseries also has Aisling Bea, Sunil Patel and Aimee Lou Wood on board. But while the casting is all well and good, is Victor Levin's writing strong enough to avoid unfavourable comparisons with David Nicholl's Netflix epic? © Channel 4, PBS & Fremantle Riseborough plays Alice, a loner who works in the world finance with a sharp mind and an equally sharp tongue. Gleeson's Jack is a reserved, Uber nerd who works in biomedical science laboratory hoping to find a cure for various diseases. The couple meet in a London bar via a Tinder style dating app and immediately hit it off. So successful is this first date that Jack ends up accompan

SAINT BOB (BOB MARLEY: ONE LOVE)

© Paramount Pictures Ask people to name a reggae artist and the chances are the vast majority will say Bob Marley. No reggae performer has had the global reach of the Jamaican singer-songwriter, who passed away in 1981 from cancer at the age of 36. In fact, few artists of any genre have had his impact. A lot of that is down simply to the strength of his songs. © Paramount Pictures ' No Woman, No Cry ,' ' Three Little Birds ,' ' One Love (People Get Ready) ,' ' Buffalo Soldier ,' ' Exodus ,' ' Redemption Song ,' ' Jammin ',' ' Get Up Stand Up ' and ' I Shot The Sheriff ' are all classics whose popularity was sealed by the huge success in 1984 of the 'Legend' compilation album which sold 29 million copies worldwide. Marley's reputation as a live performer is also the stuff of legend. However it is his lyrics that retain their power to this day, combined with an iconic image of Marley on t-shirts, post

RICH MAN, POOR MAN (THE SOPRANOS, SEASON TWO)

© HBO With each season of 'The Sopranos' comes new threats. James Gandolfini's Tony Soprano may have put paid to his mother's scheming in Season One  but, as we will see in subsequent seasons, the perilous world of the Mafia means there's always new menaces lurking in the shadows. In Episode Three that menace comes in the form of David Proval's Richie Aprile. Richie is released from prison after 10 years and enters the show like a whirling dervish, immediately wreaking havoc on New Jersey's streets. The brother of former New Jersey Mob boss Jackie Aprile, whose death in Season One led to an uneasy peace between Tony and Dominic Chianese's Corrado 'Uncle Junior' Soprano, Richie is riddled with petty insecurities about his diminished status within the Mob. © HBO Despite taking up yoga and meditation, he has a propensity for violence. He's a bully who revels in inflicting pain on those who he perceives as weak and he is also extremely thin skinn

THE IRON FIST (MINERS' STRIKE 1984: THE BATTLE FOR BRITAIN)

© Channel 4 & Swan Films Over your lifetime there are moments where national and international events are so momentous, you know they will reverberate for decades to come. The 1984 Miners Strike and the "Battle of Orgreave' was one such event. Margaret Thatcher's determination to break the National Union of Mineworkers' (NUM's) strike had a massive impact on industrial relations. It would leave deep psychological scars on communities split during the strike - many of whom slid into deprivation after the closure of pits. However it was the scale of the violence at Orgreave and the shocking images of police batoning strikers that seemed like the turning point. © Channel 4 & Swan Films News footage mostly shot from behind police lines showed an iron fist being deployed against flying pickets at the coke works near Rotherham. Yet the narrative that the police had come under attack first that day became the accepted line. This was a source of dispute. The miners

FAMILY FORTUNES (HERE WE GO, SERIES TWO)

© BBC So after a promising, if not entirely convincing first series  and a Christmas special, BBC1's 'Here We Go' has returned to our screens. The Jessops are back for another series of family mishaps. But can Tom Basden's suburban sitcom find the teeth it clearly lacked in the first series? Katherine Parkinson and Jim Howick return as Rachel and Paul Jessop, a couple whose every move seems to be recorded on video by their teenage son, Jude Collie's Sam as part of his GCSE project. © BBC In series two, Rachel has returned to university and is trying to ingratiate herself with her fellow, younger students. Paul, a former Olympic archer, is training to be a police officer. Their daughter, Freya Parks' Amy is obsessed with all things Norwegian, having lived in the Scandinavian country. She likes to regularly rail against how poor England is by comparison. Alison Steadman's Liverpudlian granny and Paul's mum, Sue has decided to downsize and is living with th