Blood & Guts: Into The Brain
Part one of a very promising-looking history of surgery that seems to share only its name with Roy Porter’s excellent short history of medicine, published in 2002. Lots of excellent close-up brain surgery…
Maestro: Baton Camp
Peter Bazalgette, who runs one of the biggest producers of reality TV in Britain, said not long ago that whinging about reality TV is pointless: “it’s just one of the ways we do things now”. Here’s a good example: a really excellent slice of Reithian factual telly delivered as a gameshow using a reality format. [...]
Freeman Dyson: Let’s look for life in the outer solar system
Why didn’t I think of this before? At TED.com they’ve got hours of really good ‘long-form’ telly—brainy people explaining their passions, mainly, but also some passionate people explaining their brains. Here’s a favourite: Freeman Dyson talking about the obligation on humans to look for life in the outer solar system. Freeman, you had me at [...]
Horizon: Fermat’s Last Theorem
What a marvelous documentary and what a marvelous crowd of brainy mathematicians. They’re generous and funny and seem to take uncomplicated pleasure in the triumphs of their peers. And they’re just utterly… you know… brainy. I thought I was about half way to understanding what Fermat’s last theorem was until one of the brainy blokes [...]
Mark Lawson talks to Liz Smith
Lawson always seems passionless and dismissive to me but something about his style and the obvious care he puts into these interviews is persuasive. Liz Smith, who is 87 and died in all five of her most recent roles, is charming and funny and really lovable. A fascinating and genuinely revealing interview: at the end [...]
Last Choir Standing
Pretty much any choir will choke me up: school, church, gospel, especially coal miners, even the ‘Handbag of Harmonies’ ladies’ choir on The Last Choir Standing. Don’t tell me you’re any different. There’s something awesome about these massed voices: old men and teenagers, black and white, men and women. Something about lots of human voices, [...]
Nick 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 sherry and expose himself. Or maybe he’s as straight as a tax inspector. I don’t [...]
The Royal Academy Summer Exhibition
What I wanted to post here was the quite amazing edition of Classic Albums I saw last night about Jay-Z’s first album Reasonable Doubt, what with it being all topical and everything. But I can’t do that because somebody—most likely the record label’s Senior Vice President for Stupid—has forbidden the BBC from putting the show [...]
Women in Black: UK
Drum roll. This is our 100th post! Also, obviously, the 100th programme we’ve featured. So happy birthday to us! To mark the day, I’m taking the opportunity to feature a show for the second time. When I put up an earlier episode of this excellent documentary series in May it produced the largest number of [...]
Broken Flowers
Blimey. A Jim Jarmusch movie on iPlayer. I missed it when it went out so you’ve only got a couple of days to watch it. Still, it’s got to be better than Northern Irish tiger worriers. Jarmusch’s second proper movie, which was his big break, Down by Law, came out while I was (nominally) studying [...]
