Recommended Television Programmes

[jayne lee wilson]

In Treatment (Series 4 - over 10 years since S3). Sky Atlantic (108).

Drama direct as it gets, simply one-to-one therapy sessions, various people with problems, resentments hurt and anger sometimes hidden, sometimes immediate, bursting out from repression….in person and through the screen…each of three clients returns for recurrent sessions through the series. (All available on demand).

Brilliantly written, acted and directed in 30 minute episodes; excellently cast. Dialogue razorsharp and….well, analytical. Acute.
A little LA-glitzy and glossy when it deals with the therapist's own lovelife, her visits with an AA Counsellor (In her gorgeous, stylish 1960s house), but it can be very raw, and may ask you disturbing questions about your own fears and preconceptions….your very view of yourself…. who am I?

[vinteuil]

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... has no-one yet mentioned the superlative Mare of Easttown, with a magisterial Kate Winslet?

Similarities perhaps with the fillums Manchester by the Sea and Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri - but marvellous, just marvellous

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[jayne lee wilson]

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... has no-one yet mentioned the superlative Mare of Easttown, with a magisterial Kate Winslet?

Similarities perhaps with the fillums Manchester by the Sea and Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri - but marvellous, just marvellous

.

Yes - I enthused about Mare someway back here.... and IIRC, someone before me too.....some of Winslet's best work, showing her capacity for self-reinvention again....

With you on those cinematic references too, all the way....

[johncorrigan]

I don't think I've ever knowingly been to Hampshire, so I was not familiar with the territory, but I was very moved by 60 year-old Chris Packham's walk along the River Itchen to Winchester Cathedral on BBC2 earlier this evening. Packham displayed his usual honesty talking about what this path meant to him and the changes he noticed in it and himself over the years following it. Thought it was a great bit of TV.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/m000xqgp/chris-packham-the-walk-that-made-me

[johncorrigan]

At the start of the documentary series 'H2O: The Molecule That Made Us', the narrator, Kelly Ann McEvers, tells us that this three-parter uses a podcast approach to talk about water. After two episodes I'm still not sure what that means. There are also frustrations about the series. McEvers seems to take you to the edge of points of serious interest but somehow fails to finish the information off, and it often left me hanging. In episode two, for example, she talks about the control of water, and the proliferation of water dams that have happened across the world storing enormous weights of water and altering the spin of the planet - and then she left you with that bombshell (well it was for me anyway) and went somewhere else - I needed a bit more.

For all the frustrations, there's lots to be fascinated by in the programmes - the secret use of aquifers in Arizona by the Saudis was a great illustration of how humankind across the world is depleting its fresh water stores (fresh water accounts for just 1% of the water on the planet, by the way). I'll certainly be turning up for episode three, but I feel there is a really great series in there; I'm just not sure that this is it.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m000z2cw

[Bryn]

More a matter of bringing it to attention than a recommendation but if you fancy an hour's worth of wild speculation and some fiddling[sic] around with his string playing methods, Charles Hazlewood's Vivaldi Unmasked has just finished on BBC FOUR.

[AuntDaisy]

More a matter of bringing it to attention than a recommendation but if you fancy an hour's worth of wild speculation and some fiddling[sic] around with his string playing methods, Charles Hazlewood's Vivaldi Unmasked has just finished on BBC FOUR.

I missed it the first time round - quite entertaining & interesting to see the manuscripts. (Although cameras attached to bows & violins are not for the queasy.)

Rachel Podger is in the CD changer for later (to test my new-found lack of understanding), along with her Bach 'Cello* suites.

*One for Pedants corner, should cello be apostrophised? (And should -ized be preferred? But, can you start a sentence with And? )

[Serial_Apologist]

I missed it the first time round - quite entertaining & interesting to see the manuscripts. (Although cameras attached to bows & violins are not for the queasy.)

Rachel Podger is in the CD changer for later (to test my new-found lack of understanding), along with her Bach 'Cello* suites.

*One for Pedants corner, should cello be apostrophised? (And should -ized be preferred? But, can you start a sentence with And? )

For added emphasis to a just stated point, yes, in my opinion. It's more acceptable than "So...", I would say. As to "cello" I would assume the word has acceptably been in existence for a good long time now in preference to the long-winded, surely anachronistic "violincello".

[Bryn]

For added emphasis to a just stated point, yes, in my opinion. It's more acceptable than "So...", I would say. As to "cello" I would assume the word has acceptably been in existence for a good long time now in preference to the long-winded, surely anachronistic "violincello".

Ouch! Violoncello, please.

[Serial_Apologist]

Ouch! Violoncello, please.

Thanks.

[AuntDaisy]

Thanks Serial_Apologist & Bryn.

[jayne lee wilson]

This looks good for footie fans tonight.....

https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p09mqv7k/episodes/guide

.....it just had to be called that didn't it?

And.... its back, back, BACK!

FIRST DATES, C4 tonight at Ten.....with lovely Fred as Maître de once again...

[jayne lee wilson]

Extraordinary 90-minute documentary on Stoppard centring on Leopoldstadt, but in fact a thrillingly comprehensive Life Story of both the Work and the Life itself...

https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m000zhgd

The seeming-leisurely pacing is deceptive.... it was compelling and just flew by....
BBCTV Arts Programming at its best. Oh yes, it can still do it....very, very well....

[gradus]

Extraordinary 90-minute documentary on Stoppard centring on Leopoldstadt, but in fact a thrillingly comprehensive Life Story of both the Work and the Life itself...

https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m000zhgd

The seeming-leisurely pacing is deceptive.... it was compelling and just flew by....
BBCTV Arts Programming at its best. Oh yes, it can still do it....very, very well....

TS's 1975 adaptation of Three Men in a Boat on BBC4 this week, directed by Stephen Frears and with the great Stephen Moore, Michael Palin and Tim Curry. Just lovely.

[jayne lee wilson]

TS's 1975 adaptation of Three Men in a Boat on BBC4 this week, directed by Stephen Frears and with the great Stephen Moore, Michael Palin and Tim Curry. Just lovely.

BBC4 should really show the brilliant 1977 TV Play Professional Foul, starring Peter Barkworth as a philosopher at a Prague conference....on YT of course, but chopped up and unlicensed....
(Originally BBC2, later adapted for R4)....