Tim Stanley, Author at Catholic Herald

Tim Stanley

Television: Hogarthian dregs on a package tour

January 28, 2016

Benidorm (ITV, 9pm, Mondays) confirms that the English really shouldn’t go out in the midday sun. Think a funny Eldorado with fat, pale and perpetually drunk residents in a Costa Blanca-based sitcom – looking like Hogarthian dregs on a package tour. A transvestite barman dolls out pink cocktails to Yorkshire swingers. The handyman is a

Can Donald Trump win over Catholics?

January 21, 2016

The hard-charging billionaire has revolutionised American politics while hardly spending a dime. But he is surprisingly elliptical about his Christian faith

Television: Germany will never be a happy place

January 21, 2016

Poor Germany. All that money, all that power. And yet it doesn’t seem quite at home with itself. Deutschland 83 (Channel 4, Sundays, 9pm) returns us to a time when the country was divided in two. It’s the height of the Cold War and Martin Rauch, a 24-year-old border guard, is sent by the Stasi

Can Donald Trump win over Catholics?

January 21, 2016

What should the thoughtful Catholic make of presidential candidate Donald Trump? Love him? Loathe him? Laugh at him? Or gaze in awe at his ageless hair? Somewhere, buried deep inside it, Raquel Welch is probably battling a dinosaur. In the middle of a rally last year, Trump invited a woman onto the stage to prove

Television: Tolstoy saves us from phony Downton

January 14, 2016

Holiday TV was a mixed bag. Doctor Who and Sherlock were interchangeable: the characters obnoxious, the direction epileptic. Downton Abbey ended as things never do in real life – happily. Mrs Bates, the cringeworthy servant girl, gave birth in her ladyship’s bedroom. As she held the newborn in her arms, I so wanted one of

A new faith awakens

December 22, 2015

The Church of Jedi reports that more than a thousand people a day are signing up to its online community, thanks to hype surrounding the release of Star Wars: the Force Awakens. Daniel Jones, one of Jediism’s founders, told The Daily Telegraph: “We’ve been rushed off our feet!” All very impressive for something that started

TV: I’m a hapless viewer… get me out of here!

December 10, 2015

Dame Edna Everage once said: “A celebrity is a nobody who got lucky.” So, are the people being pelted with scorpions on ITV’s I’m a Celebrity… Get Me Out of Here! unlucky or lucky? On the one hand, they are being humiliated on television. On the other, they are on television. And that’s where the

Television: Doubt and despair from a junkie genius

December 01, 2015

I hate sharing good things with other people. I was into Hannibal and Arrested Development long before anyone else was, and I felt a pang of regret when the rest of the world caught on. So I’m in two minds about Amazon’s new series The Man in the High Castle (viewable on amazon.co.uk). On the

Television: Doubt and despair from a junkie genius

December 01, 2015