Television
Scenes of domestic bliss, chez Liddle
I was sitting on the stoop with a cigarette after dinner while my wife browsed the television channels to see if there was anything we might want to watch. Eventually… Continue reading
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At home with the Balls family
Do you recall The Politician’s Wife by Paula Milne? It was a TV drama that aired in the dying days of the Major government. Milne recognised that Major’s government was more… Continue reading
10 CommentsMaggie Won’t Jump
A remarkable clip from an interview with Swedish television. No-one asks Margaret Thatcher to “jump” and gets away with it. One does rather think that some of her successors… Continue reading
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Newt Gingrich’s Downton downtime
Newt Gingrich has a new love. ‘It’s a great study of plot,’ the failed Presidential runner and former Speaker of the House told Slate magazine. He was not referring to… Continue reading
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Michael Dobbs tight lipped on House of Cards plot
It was a gamble that seems to have paid off. American online entertainment giant Netflix commissioned their first ever original series with a Washington adaptation of Lord Dobbs’s classic, House of… Continue reading
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In praise of Plum
This blog post is not going to say anything original. You’ll have read it all before. Its sole purpose is to convince you that P.G. Wodehouse is the master so… Continue reading
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Borgen and Scotland: A Love Affair Founded on Self-Congratulation
Borgen – the title refers to the Danish equivalent of Holyrood or Westminster – has been terrifically popular amongst those people interested in sub-titled political dramas from Denmark. I fancy… Continue reading
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Thank you, Christopher Martin-Jenkins
The children who grew up when Christopher Martin-Jenkins began to commentate on cricket (both in print and on the air) have got old. CMJ’s 40-odd year career has been brought… Continue reading
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The future of the trivia book
It is, if Noddy Holder is to be believed, Christmas. And so those of us who pen trivia books listen for the ring of tills or, as is increasingly the… Continue reading
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Meeting J.G. Ballard
In the programme Frost on Interviews that was recently rebroadcasted by BBC Four, the distinguished journalist, David Frost, attempted to understand what makes a compelling interview. Frost’s programme concentrated primarily… Continue reading
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Nadine Dorries prepares for burial
Nadine Dorries sidled back into view last night on ‘I’m Celebrity … Get Me Out Of Here.’ The show is a parody of transportation. A gang of well-known show-offs are… Continue reading
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The complexity of the war on free speech
Free speech in Britain is being pulled in two completely opposite directions. On the one hand, thanks to the increasingly tortuous mission-creep that is the Leveson Inquiry, there are a… Continue reading
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Goodbye Nadine Dorries, hello Louise Mensch
Let me salute Nadine Dorries’s principled ambition to bring I’m A Celebrity Get Me Out of Here to a wider audience. For too long this edifying documentary series, which sheds… Continue reading
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My BBC sex hell
For years I have kept this to myself; a damaged individual, bottling it all up inside. But now that others have spoken out I’ve found an inner strength, a sort… Continue reading
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Derren Brown’s Apocalypse faked?
If you didn’t watch Derren Brown’s Apocalypse, then the following will be meaningless… I suppose all television is a kind of charlatanism, a usually agreeable deception to which the rest… Continue reading
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Shelf Life: Anton du Beke
Stalwart of Strictly, winner of Rear of the Year 2011 and author of B is for Ballroom: Be Your Own Armchair Dancefloor Expert, dancer Anton du Beke is on this… Continue reading
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Jobs for the girls
Unless you’re a twenty-something year old woman, you probably have no idea who Lena Dunham is. Well you will soon. Until now Dunham’s cult followers have been downloading her HBO… Continue reading
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Downton on the down-turn
Downton Abbey has come crashing down. No, it’s not Lord Grantham’s ruinous investments but rather the uncomfortable fact that the world has finally realised that the show is overhyped tripe. Julian Fellows… Continue reading
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Andrew Marr very sorry for that ‘awful’ photo
So who was that woman with Andrew Marr in Soho? In tomorrow’s Spectator, he reveals all. Blaming ‘utter exhaustion’ from completing his new History of the World series after ‘two… Continue reading
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Robert Hughes – The novelty of the shock
The real shock of the new came in 1991. It was sobering, and it was reverent, which aren’t exactly the first words one would associate with The Shock of the… Continue reading
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