Newsnight: the London Mayoral debate
I’m all in favour of elected Mayors. They really brighten up a city’s politics. Last night’s Newsnight debate between the three top candidates was a democratic treat but also really good, knockabout...
View ArticleNick Cave & The Bad Seeds
Here he is, like a priapic Max Wall. Fascinating and dark and sexy in a sort of seedy Edwardian way. You wouldn’t want him in the house, though, would you? He might pee on the carpet or drink all the...
View ArticleUnder Night Streets: BBC4
I haven’t seen enough pre-1960s british documentaries to say how widespread this might be, but the use of voiceover in Under Night Streets, a 1958 documentary about the Underground’s 800 night shift...
View ArticleLondon to Brighton Side by Side
If there was a channel that showed only speeded-up movies filmed from the cab of a train I would watch it. Here are two films from thirty years apart (1953 and 1983), screened side-by-side, and both...
View ArticleShopping for England
What a lovely, fascinating, useful programme. Proper scholarship (from Mica Nava, a clever historian who was once, in the distant past, my boss for a short while), great stories and really interesting...
View ArticleLondon to Brighton in four minutes
A TV classic, these little films pop up on BBC4 from time to time, in far better quality than the youtube versions. Good to see iplayer access for them.
View ArticleMichael Smith’s Drivetime
“We shape our technologies, then they shape us.” After enjoying the repeats of Michael Smith’s Citizen Smith series, he’s been commissioned on another journey round the UK, this time focussing on cars,...
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Lionel Bart: Reviewing the Situation
This is one of those proper BBC Four documentaries. If it was cheap, it sure didn’t look it. Lionel Bart *was* 1960s London. The ultimate cockney chancer. “A proper mensch“. Yet in the midst of the...
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