Jimmy McGovern s new prison drama Time is full of captivating performances Sean Bean and Stephen Graham are utterly sensational in portraying two men trapped inside.
Cracker, of course, and I liked
The Lakes, starring John Simm as a badly behaved kitchen porter (or at any rate, I was completely
startled by
The Lakes, which seemed very naughty indeed to anyone who spent their childhood holidays by Ullswater, all those buttocks bobbing up and down in poor old Patterdale). But after that, the shows seemed to grow ever more sentimental and preachy. And there were so many of them! Somewhere along the way, the factories and the terraced houses, the Catholic priests and the shop stewards, all began to blur. In life, redemption is a magnificent thing. Forgiveness! I want a lot more of that. But on telly, an excess of it makes your teeth ache, as if you’ve been eating too many sweets.
Today is the seventh anniversary of the death of celebrated comedian Rik Mayall. I mention this only because Mayall was the mastermind behind the cult 1980s sitcom The Young Ones, a show about how ridiculous, outrageous and barely functioning students were in those days. This wasn’t a new idea. Nearly a decade earlier John Sullivan (of Only Fools and Horses fame) had written
At a shadow cabinet briefing David Lammy asked Michael Marmot, a health inequality expert, how Labour should communicate to voters the terrible impact of worsening poverty over 11 Tory years. Marmot answered it should tell the truth about serious problems and be bold on how to fix them. Comrades around the party’s top table whisper the shadow justice secretary’s own intentions will reveal whether he believes Labour can win a general election to solve the issues. The next London mayoral election is May 2024, six months before Boris Johnson must go to the country. Should Sadiq Khan pull back from a third run, my snout says, a Tottenham MP who lost out to him in 2016 fancies his chances. A capital job for Lammy would be evidence of Labour’s national woes.
The number of people being admitted to hospital with Covid-19 in the north-west of England is rising again, potentially heralding the start of a fourth peak in the region. However, unlike in previous waves, the age distribution of those being admitted is far lower this time around, providing evidence that vaccines are working. Younger people are driving the rise in Covid
In early 1302 Dante Alighieri was travelling back from Rome when he learned that he would never see his native Florence again. For the previous few months, he had been on a diplomatic mission to Pope Boniface VIII. Unbeknown to him, he had, during that time, been charged with extortion, bribery, election tampering and abuse of public office, as well as a litany of other