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James Delingpole

James Delingpole

The Spectator

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Most-read 2024: How did Wolf Hall escape the attentions of the BBC’s diversity commissars?

yesterday 10

The Spectator

James Delingpole

Dune: Prophecy is much worse than you will believe possible

Do you remember that nagging sense of mild disappointment as you sat through Dune 2? You’d been impressed by Dune: bit of a recondite plot if you...

05.12.2024 40

The Spectator

James Delingpole

How did Wolf Hall escape the attentions of the BBC’s diversity commissars?

Wolf Hall is one of the few remaining jewels in the BBC’s tarnished crown. Presumably that’s why it was allowed to get off relatively lightly from...

21.11.2024 20

The Spectator

James Delingpole

Top tosh: The Diplomat reviewed

The Diplomat bears the same relationship to 21st-century ambassadorial geopolitics as Bridgerton does to the salons and social mores of early...

14.11.2024 10

The Spectator

James Delingpole

Spy-drama porn: Sky’s The Day of the Jackal reviewed

All the previewers have been drooling lasciviously over The Day of the Jackal reboot and, having seen the first three episodes, I quite understand...

07.11.2024 8

The Spectator

James Delingpole

You’ll even hate the cat: Disclaimer, on Apple TV+, reviewed

Sometimes spoilers can be your friend. For example, I have just cheated and looked up on the internet the shocking final plot twist in Disclaimer and...

24.10.2024 20

The Spectator

James Delingpole

Television / A fashion series made by people who hate fashion: Apple TV+’s La Maison reviewed

I’m a bit disappointed – déçu, as we Francophiles like to say – with La Maison. When French TV drama is good it can be very, very good, as we...

10.10.2024 9

The Spectator

James Delingpole

Easy-on-the-eye tosh: Netflix’s The Perfect Couple reviewed

The Perfect Couple is an exemplar of that genre sometimes cynically known as ‘poverty programming’: dramas that train all of us non-billionaire...

12.09.2024 10

The Spectator

James Delingpole

Television / Sick, cynical and irresistible: Netflix’s Kaos reviewed

Kaos is a new Netflix gods-and-monsters black-comedy blockbuster that will scorch your screen and fry your brain like a thunderbolt from Zeus. It’s...

05.09.2024 5

The Spectator

James Delingpole

Must-watch TV: Apple TV+’s Pachinko reviewed

Pachinko is like an extended version of the Monty Python ‘Four Yorkshiremen’ sketch (‘I used to have to get out of shoebox at midnight, lick...

29.08.2024 10

The Spectator

James Delingpole

About as edgy as Banksy: Joe Rogan’s Netflix special reviewed

My resolution this summer was to see how far into the Olympics I could get without watching an event. It’s harder than you think. Especially when...

15.08.2024 10

The Spectator

James Delingpole

Netflix has massacred The Decameron

Unless you did English A-level and shoehorned a mention of it into your Chaucer paper to try to get extra marks, you probably haven’t even heard of...

01.08.2024 10

The Spectator

James Delingpole

Am I slightly psychopathic to be so obsessed with gangster TV?

Most of my favourite TV shows seem to involve gangsters in one way or another: The Sopranos, Breaking Bad, Top Boy, The Offer (that brilliant series...

18.07.2024 10

The Spectator

James Delingpole

If you can stand the stress, The Bear is still possibly the best thing on TV

The Bear has been called ‘the most stressful thing on TV’ and I think that’s probably a fair description. It’s set in a Chicago restaurant and...

04.07.2024 10

The Spectator

James Delingpole

Why you should never watch sci-fi series on streaming channels

Jason Dessen, the hero (and, as you’ll discover shortly, anti-hero) of Apple TV’s latest sci-fi caper Dark Matter, is a physics professor at a...

20.06.2024 10

The Spectator

James Delingpole

How a TikTok dance craze turned into a brainwashing cult

Because you don’t – I hope – use TikTok you will never have heard of the Wilking sisters. But back in the day (2020) they were huge, their...

06.06.2024 9

The Spectator

James Delingpole

BBC1’s new Rebus is the kind of TV detective they just don’t make any more

Imagine a new series of Morse in which the real-ale-quaffing, jag-driving opera buff is turned into a speed-snorting mod on a pimped up Lambretta. Or...

23.05.2024 50

The Spectator

James Delingpole

Television / Why did C.J. Sansom approve this moronic Disney+ Shardlake adaptation?

What would C.J. Sansom have made of the Disney version of his novel series about 16th-century crookback lawyer Matthew Shardlake? Sadly, because he...

09.05.2024 80

The Spectator

James Delingpole

Sordid, ugly and threadbare: Jimmy Carr – Natural Born Killer reviewed

Here’s an offensive joke: ‘Jimmy Carr gets paid to do a Netflix special.’ All right, it’s not original – I nicked it from an online chat...

25.04.2024 10

The Spectator

James Delingpole

Fans of torture, dolly birds and fat lines of cocaine will love The Gentlemen

Guy Ritchie only does one thing but he does it very well: slick, violent, sweary, black comedy capers about the unlikely intersection between toffs...

28.03.2024 30

The Spectator

James Delingpole

Lavish, graphically violent swashbuckling: Disney+’s Shogun reviewed

Here’s a frightening thought for those of you who remember the original Shogun (1980), starring Richard Chamberlain as the Elizabethan navigator who...

14.03.2024 6

The Spectator

James Delingpole

A turkey: Netflix’s Avatar – The Last Airbender reviewed

Blimey, Avatar: The Last Airbender is a load of tripe. And I really didn’t want it to be. There’s nothing I like more than trawling the networks...

29.02.2024 20

The Spectator

James Delingpole

Evocative and immaculate: Netflix’s One Day reviewed

One Day is a bestselling novel with a simple but effective premise: a delightful, made-for-each-other couple meet on their last day at university,...

15.02.2024 8

The Spectator

James Delingpole

Television / The unique hell of being a wartime bomber pilot

Some years ago I did a short series of interviews for The Spectator with war veterans about their combat experiences. Most had found them exciting,...

04.02.2024 7

The Spectator

James Delingpole

Gladiators was never good TV

I’m sure there’s a Portuguese word which describes ‘enforced nostalgia for a thing you never enjoyed in the first place’. Whatever it is, it...

18.01.2024 9

The Spectator

James Delingpole

CBBC’s The Famous Five shows you can update a classic without trashing it

The new Doctor in Doctor Who has blond hair, blue eyes and a firm handshake, dresses in a splendid red coat and has an exciting catchphrase: ‘Hounds...

04.01.2024 30

The Spectator

James Delingpole

Still the best thing on TV: Apple TV+’s Slow Horses reviewed

Slow Horses is the best thing on television. And it’s now so successful and popular it can afford to launch series three with a sequence worthy of...

07.12.2023 40

The Spectator

James Delingpole

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