Tv

Some of the greatest minds of our generation have struggled to get to grips with the thorny conundrum of breakfast television. Should it be fluffy, should it be tough, should it do sofas or puppet rats or news? Back in the 1980s, many believed it shouldn’t do any of them, and shouldn’t exist at all. As Nick Ross, one of Frank Bough’s acolytes on the BBC’s pioneering Breakfast Time, put it, ‘television in the morning was outrageous – it was just decadence beyond belief.’ Judging by the opening salvo from Good Morning Britain, ITV’s latest revamp to the redeye slot kicking off this week, today’s state-of-the-art thinking is that it

When I was a boy I used to love the stories of the old kings of England, devouring book after book on the subject until I could rather involuntarily memorise all the dates (which has stuck with me, useless though this knowledge is, and stretches back before the Conquest, although once we get to the Edwys and Edwigs it gets a bit blurry). My fascination with this long, bloody tale was not just an early indicator that I was a massive social inadequate, although that may be part of it; I loved those stories because they were fantastic. And as Game of Thrones starts tonight I’m comforted by the fact that I

Always try to get the worst seats for the opera. Upper circle. Foyer. Toilet. The nearest bus stop. The further back the better. You’ll regret it if you don’t. There really is nothing more off-putting than being able to see the singers. Opera up close, as Princess Margaret once said, is just two fat people shouting at each other in a large room. And then there’s the clown make-up and trannie costumes to deal with. It all makes much more sense from afar, where it assumes a lovely dreamy abstract fuzz. Was that a smile? Or a stroke? Who knows. The words and music will carry you along. But even ‘good’ theatrical

‘Pshaw!’ That was my first reaction to news of the BBC’s new ten-part Sunday night adaptation of The Three Musketeers. After all, wasn’t it about a fortnight ago I was in the Gaumont in Redditch watching the classic 1973 movie version that had just come out with Michael York (and Oliver Reed and Roy Kinnear…)? And wasn’t it roughly the day before yesterday that I remember tut-tutting and refusing point-blank to go to see the 1993 Hollywood bratpack travesty with those upstarts Charlie Sheen and Kiefer Sutherland? This is what happens when you get old: time compresses; there’s nothing new under the sun; everything people younger than you do seems

Our legal system is pure theatre and always has been. Many barristers stand accused of being failed actors and vice versa. Judges love the dressing-up box and a chance to give their gavel a good bang. With murmuring galleries, shocking verdicts, swooning witnesses, cries of ‘all rise’ and ‘take him down’, the flummery and drama of the courtroom has always supplied a rich genre for film, theatre and telly. Now there’s a chance to see one of the more serious courtroom classics in the West End. Twelve Angry Men — originally written for the screen and directed by Sidney Lumet — is about a grumpy New York jury deciding on

The Tate Britain has recently undergone a ‘sorely needed’ rehang, which Andrew Lambirth explores in this week’s Spectator.  As a ‘welcome return to the great tradition of the chronological hang’ might have its detractors, but the BP Walk Through British Art is, overall, a fantastic display. Here’s the director of Tate Britain, Penelope Curtis (who was in charge of the reorganisation) talking about her highlights from the display. And here are Andrew Lambirth’s own highlights. Has sod you architecture finally ‘put on a lounge suit’ asks Stephen Bayley.  That, at least, was the dress code that Richard Rogers applied to the opening of his new retrospective, Inside Out, at the Royal

The thing that always used to bother me about M*A*S*H as a child was the lack of combat. You’d see the realistic film of choppers at the beginning and, obviously, the plotline would quite often include casualties coming in from recent scenes of action. But the exciting stuff always seemed to happen offstage, a bit like in Shakespeare where some character strides on and tells you what a terrible battle there’s just been and you’re going, ‘Wait a second. Did we just skip past the most exciting bit?’ This clearly isn’t going to be a problem, though, with BBC3’s new sitcom about a bomb disposal unit in Afghanistan, Bluestone 42