The Repair Shop Wednesday, BBC1 Rating: Hitmen Wednesday, Sky One Rating: The one show we all really need right now, at this most difficult time, has to be one of my personal favourites, The Repair Shop. Gosh, it’s lovely. It’s like immersing yourself in a warm bath of kindness and goodness. It’s as if people … Read more
Belgravia Sunday, ITV Rating: The English Game Netflix Rating: This week not one but two new series from Julian Alexander Kitchener-Fellowes, Baron Fellowes of West Stafford, and you do wonder if he can be stopped. I’m not prepared to come out of self-isolation to do it, but maybe you have a strong immune system and … Read more
An official on the White House coronavirus task force says the group is tracking whether the virus could disappear in the summer and return in the fall. Dr Deborah Birx, the response coordinator for the task force, told CBS This Morning that the Trump administration has been creating models that show coronavirus behaving like the … Read more
Crazy Delicious Tuesday, Channel 4 Rating: Avenue 5 Wednesday, Sky One Rating: White House Farm Wednesday, ITV Rating: I watch a lot of cooking shows. I don’t know why. It’s not as if I like to cook that much. I suppose it’s easy on the eye and, like the police procedural, is narratively satisfying with … Read more
The late Deborah Orr’s excellent memoir, Motherwell, charts her vexed relationship with her parents in impassioned yet tender prose By Anthony Quinn Published: 22:02 GMT, 25 January 2020 | Updated: 16:11 GMT, 26 January 2020 Motherwell Deborah Orr … Read more
Auschwitz Untold: In Colour Sunday & Monday, More 4 Rating: The Windermere Children Monday, BBC2 Rating: The Windermere Children: In Their Own Words Monday, BBC4 Rating: This week, quite a few people told me they would not be watching any of the programmes that had been commissioned to commemorate Holocaust Memorial Day and 75 years … Read more
Next In Fashion Netflix Rating: Baghdad Central Channel 4, Monday Rating: This week, a new thriller and a competitive reality show seeking a hot new fashion designer that, in its first moments, comes over as a cross between The Great British Sewing Bee and The Apprentice, which is not what we want. ‘I’m not nervous … Read more
The Pale Horse BBC1, Sunday Rating: Home Channel 4, Wednesday Rating: The screenwriter Sarah Phelps has been taking liberties with Agatha Christie murder mysteries for quite some time. Plots are revised. Characters are redrawn or may be ejected. Language is updated – here we had one ‘raddled arse’ and also one ‘F*** off!’ – and … Read more
MEMOIR MOTHERWELL: A GIRLHOOD by Deborah Orr (Weidenfeld £16.99, 304 pp) Deborah Orr, a leading Fleet Street columnist who died of breast cancer last October aged 57, has left behind this memoir of growing up in Lanarkshire that is searing, candid, magnificently perceptive and lingeringly tragic — tragic because the story is full of conflict, … Read more
The Pale Horse Sunday, BBC1 Rating: (but could be five stars if you can tell me what happened) This Country Monday, BBC1 Rating: Dear Readers, I know we haven’t always got along. I know you would prefer it if I liked Endeavour more, and also Call The Midwife. But I still hope that in my hour … Read more