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Feast of Our Lady of Pompeii and anniversary of foundational stone laid at famous shrine
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Feast of Our Lady of Pompeii and anniversary of foundational stone laid at famous shrine
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Feast of Our Lady of Pompeii and anniversary of foundational stone laid at famous shrine
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Tim Stanley

Television: Spy comedy does the French no favours
July 14, 2016
The success of a joke is in the telling – so maybe A Very Secret Service (Netflix) shouldn’t be judged too harshly by English-speaking audiences. It’s a subtitled comedy about spies in Sixties France, and a viewer might wonder if he’d find it far funnier if he hadn’t flunked French GCSE. Yet the 2006 movie
Television: The unseen agony of charmer LBJ
July 07, 2016
When Lyndon Baines Johnson stepped down as US president in 1969 he was regarded as a calamitous monster by American liberals. His reputation was tarnished by Vietnam; his own party preferred to forget him. So the flattering portrait in the TV movie All the Way (Sky Atlantic) reflects a recent change in attitudes – and
It’s not Confession that’s torture
June 30, 2016
Pope Francis likes to remind us that the confessional is not supposed to be “a torture chamber, but rather an encounter with the Lord’s mercy”. Who would disagree? Who has known different? It’s very rare nowadays for priests to turn into the Spanish Inquisition. In my experience, the biggest problem is a confessor who insists
Television: Who won the debates – Punch or Judy?
June 30, 2016
I know, I know: the last thing you want to think about now is the EU referendum. But I write this column before the week to come… so this is the first (and I promise) the last chance I’ll have to comment on the referendum TV. Then we shall never speak of it again. It
Television: Agatha Christie for the Age of Corbyn
June 23, 2016
Anthony Horowitz is not only one of our best living writers but also one of our finest observers of Englishness. Foyle’s War and Midsomer Murders might not be groundbreaking, but they have become staples of homemade TV, full of eccentric, middle-class melodrama, which sells nicely abroad. So New Blood (BBC One, Thursdays, 9pm) feels like
Television: Versailles makes me want to leave the EU
June 16, 2016
Versailles: a Disneyland version of history
Television: Versailles makes me want to leave the EU
June 16, 2016
I counted four separate sex acts in the first 23 minutes of an episode of Versailles (BBC Two, Wednesdays, 9.30). That works out at roughly one fumble every five minutes. In addition, a tax collector had his hand cut off and a spy was chopped to pieces with an axe. A doctor casually dissected a
Television: Top Gear stalls without Clarkson
June 09, 2016
Ooo, it’s bad. I refer, of course,  to the new series of Top Gear (BBC Two, Sundays, 9pm) – rebooted because the former presenter, Jeremy Clarkson, punched a producer. When the show started way back in the 1970s – co-hosted, surprisingly, by Angela Rippon – Top Gear was a consumer affairs programme. Under Jeremy Clarkson
Television: Sewing? It’s hardly a matter of life and death
June 02, 2016
Want to understand the difference between America and Britain? Compare Project Runway and The Great British Sewing Bee. America’s Project Runway pits 16 designers (all gay) against each other in an outlandish, outrageous battle of the hemline. It’s hosted by the German supermodel Heidi Klum and Tim Gunn, a fashion consultant who weighs up the
Television: Royals satire is vulgar – but it hits the spot
May 26, 2016
The Windsors (Channel 4, Fridays, 10pm) has a natural advantage over its comedy rivals. Most sitcoms take a series or two to establish character. At the centre of The Windsors, however, is a family we’ve been laughing at for years. With a few pantomime exaggerations. Prince Charles, the show speculates, is a simpleton who finds
Television: This is cynical, cheap TV – but I’m hooked
May 19, 2016
Choose the Right Puppy for You (Mondays, 8pm, BBC2) has the wrong approach to its subject. It should be called Choose the Right Owner for You. “What kind of human are you looking for?” the narrator should be asking a pug from High Wycombe called Mike. The dog would say: “Plenty of energy, obedient, low
Television: Peaky’s sordid world is far too beautiful
May 05, 2016
Peaky Blinders (Thursdays, BBC Two, 9pm) is Scarface with a Brummie accent. I won’t compare it to The Godfather: it’s too low-rent. As season three opens, Tommy Shelby and his gang of Birmingham thugs have risen so far in the world that he’s able to marry his girlfriend in a mansion, beneath a gaudy oil
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