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James DelingpoleThe Spectator |
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...
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...
The Diplomat bears the same relationship to 21st-century ambassadorial geopolitics as Bridgerton does to the salons and social mores of early...
All the previewers have been drooling lasciviously over The Day of the Jackal reboot and, having seen the first three episodes, I quite understand...
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...
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...
The Perfect Couple is an exemplar of that genre sometimes cynically known as ‘poverty programming’: dramas that train all of us non-billionaire...
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...
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...
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...
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...
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...
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...
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...
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...
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...
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...
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...
Guy Ritchie only does one thing but he does it very well: slick, violent, sweary, black comedy capers about the unlikely intersection between toffs...
Here’s a frightening thought for those of you who remember the original Shogun (1980), starring Richard Chamberlain as the Elizabethan navigator who...
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...
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,...
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,...
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...
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...
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...