WORTH A LOOK?: *****
WHEN?: 9pm Sunday 4 April 2021
WHERE?: Sky Arts
RUNTIME: 90 minutes
When the National Theatre announced that Josh O’Connor and Jessie Buckley were set to star in Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet at the venue in summer 2020, it was set to be 1 of the season’s highlights.
It’s not easy being a band with a 40-year history that wants to write new material when the fans are familiar with hits as glorious as Digging Your Scene, It Doesn’t Have To Be This Way and Wait. The trick is to write material as memorable as the songs that broke you and the Blow Monkeys played a blinder with Time Storm, a song of the week for us last year. The follow-up More Than A Miracle out 16/4/21 is in a similar vein, doesn’t disappoint and sits well with the best of the band’s back catalogue. Album Journey To You follows in September. Tickets are on sale for UK dates in October including a London gig at 229. Read our interview with Dr Robert on this site in April.
WORTH A LOOK?: *****
WHERE?: Netflix from 15/11/20
There can be few women more associated with the 80s than Princess Diana and Margaret Thatcher – they are so iconic that it was always going to be difficult to know how one of the most popular series on TV would cope with their arrival.
Box sets and binge watching have highlighted how much brilliant TV there currently is but this series, written, co-directed and starring Michaela Coel has actually benefitted from a dripfeed release of 2 30-minute episodes per week. Give it a chance because we really weren’t sure about it until episodes 5 and 6 (aired in the UK Monday 22/6 and Tuesday 23/6/20) which drew on some rather complicated strands and pulled them tight to devastating effect. There’s 6 episodes to go and all are aired on the next 3 Mondays and Tuesdays on BBC1 and available at BBC iPlayer. We should’ve known it would be good because we last saw Coel dancing on stage at one of our favourite gigs.
It’s almost Christmas and what would the festive season be without some recognition of the best of 2019? Over the next week we’ll shortlist five nominees in each of 14 categories for our Oscars, or monstas if you will, of 2019.
WHERE? BFI & Radio Times Television Festival
WHEN? 13/4/19 The Durrells airs on ITV at 8pm on Sundays, finishing 12/5/19
Josh O’Connor plays Prince Charles in the next series of Netflix’s The Crown and if he met the royal he would want to compare ear stories.
When we raved about film There’s Nothing Like A Dame we never thought we’d see Dame Maggie tread the boards again but she returns to London for the 1st time in 12 years in a new one-woman play called A German Life based on the actual testimony of Brunhilde Pomsel, who once worked for Joseph Goebbels. Runs 6/4 to 11/5/19. Tickets The Downton Abbey film is expected to be released in September.
WORTH A LOOK?: *****
WHERE: Greenwich Picturehouse
WHEN: 1/9, released 1/9
Yorkshire sheep farmer Johnny Saxby (Josh O’Connor) is binge drinking and having one night stands when he’s not keeping the farm running for his ill father.
