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James Walton

James Walton

The Spectator

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We’re wrong to mock Do They Know It’s Christmas?

‘I hope we passed the audition,’ said an alarmingly youthful Bob Geldof at one point in The Making of Do They Know It’s Christmas? He was, of...

28.11.2024 10

The Spectator

James Walton

Too cautious and wildly over the top at the same time: Paddington in Peru reviewed

Toy Story or The Godfather? Which way would Paddington in Peru go? Would the third instalment of a much-cherished series prove even better than the...

07.11.2024 7

The Spectator

James Walton

A bit of a mess: Channel 4’s Generation Z reviewed

In the second of this week’s two episodes of Generation Z (Sunday and Monday), a teenage girl called Finn wondered why her friend Kelly was so...

31.10.2024 8

The Spectator

James Walton

A hit – but please don’t pretend it’s feminist: Disney+’s Rivals reviewed

For most of my adult life, clever, well-read, feminist women have told me how much they love Jilly Cooper. It therefore came as a bit of shock when I...

17.10.2024 10

The Spectator

James Walton

Have today’s TV dramatists completely given up on plausibility?

In advance, Ludwig sounded as if it was aimed squarely at the Inspector Morse market. Set among spires of impeccable dreaminess (in a cunning twist,...

03.10.2024 10

The Spectator

James Walton

More Airplane! than Speed: Nightsleeper reviewed

Earlier this year, ITV brought us Red Eye, a six-part drama set mainly on an overnight plane from London to Beijing. Displaying a heroic indifference...

19.09.2024 10

The Spectator

James Walton

Books / An accidental spy: Gabriel’s Moon, by William Boyd, reviewed

When was the last time you described – or indeed thought of – someone’s face as ‘even-featured’, ‘angular’ or ‘refined’? If the...

02.09.2024 4

The Spectator

James Walton

Why are these dead-eyed K-pop groups represented as some kind of ideal?

On Saturday, Made in Korea: The K-pop Experience began by hailing K-pop as ‘the multi-billion-pound music that’s taken the world by storm’....

22.08.2024 10

The Spectator

James Walton

Ambitious, bold and confusing: BBC4’s Corridors of Power – Should America Police the World? reviewed

Narrated by Meryl Streep, Corridors of Power: Should America Police the World? announced the scale of its ambition straight away. Before the opening...

08.08.2024 8

The Spectator

James Walton

Clear, thorough and gripping: BBC2’s Horizon – The Battle to Beat Malaria

If you transcribed the narrator’s script in almost any episode of Horizon, you’d notice something striking: an awful lot of the phrases would end...

25.07.2024 10

The Spectator

James Walton

Utterly bog-standard: BBC2’s The Turkish Detective reviewed

A partly subtitled show set in Istanbul might sound like a brave departure for a BBC Sunday night crime drama. But in fact, if you strip away The...

11.07.2024 10

The Spectator

James Walton

Can Douglas Is Cancelled hold its nerve?

Like many sitcoms, W1A featured a middle-aged man convinced that he’s the only sane person left in the world. Usually, of course, this merely goes...

27.06.2024 10

The Spectator

James Walton

When piracy meets protest

Sometimes there are advantages to being ill-informed. Knowing embarrassingly little about why 30 Greenpeace activists were jailed in Russia in 2013,...

13.06.2024 8

The Spectator

James Walton

I worry Romesh Ranganathan might not have enough work

Let’s say, for the purposes of this joke, that I was recently staying in a hotel and kept hearing through the wall a voice shouting, ‘Yes! Yes!...

30.05.2024 10

The Spectator

James Walton

Nowhere near as miserable as I remember it: The Beatles – Let It Be reviewed

16.05.2024 30

The Spectator

James Walton

How can anyone resist The Piano?

One challenge facing any novel, drama or film about the Holocaust is to restore its sheer unimaginability. In Thomas Keneally’s Schindler’s Ark...

02.05.2024 40

The Spectator

James Walton

Danny Dyer’s new C4 programme is deeply odd

Who do you think said the following on TV this week: ‘I love being around gay men – seeing a group of men expressing themselves the way they do is...

18.04.2024 9

The Spectator

James Walton

Dramatic, urgent and intriguing: BBC1’s This Town reviewed

After conquering the world with Peaky Blinders (and before that by co-creating Who Wants to Be a Millionaire?), Steven Knight was last seen on British...

04.04.2024 10

The Spectator

James Walton

Was Carrie Fisher really ‘a genius’?

‘People throw the word “genius” around a lot,’ said a talking head on BBC2 this week, ‘but she was a genius, truly.’ If it wasn’t for...

21.03.2024 9

The Spectator

James Walton

Workmanlike romp / Sky Atlantic’s Mary & George reviewed

If there’s such a thing as a workmanlike romp, then Mary & George might be one. This drama about political and sexual shenanigans during the reign...

11.03.2024 10

The Spectator

James Walton

A neat fantasy that asks why Britons don’t revolt: BBC1’s The Way reviewed 

‘The British don’t revolt, they grumble,’ said someone in the first episode of The Way. But what if we ever reversed this policy? That was the...

22.02.2024 10

The Spectator

James Walton

How does Larry David get away with it? Curb Your Enthusiasm reviewed

As Curb Your Enthusiasm begins its 12th and apparently final series, one key question remains: how does Larry David get away with it? While many...

08.02.2024 9

The Spectator

James Walton

Highly effective slice of old-school storytelling: ITV’s Born from the Same Stranger reviewed

With its tales of close relatives reuniting after years of separation, ITV’s Long Lost Family has been reliably jerking tears since 2011. Now, from...

25.01.2024 50

The Spectator

James Walton

Why has the BBC pulled its punches in this doc about the Indian super-rich?

The big finish to Streets of Gold: Mumbai, an excited look at the city’s ‘wealthiest one-percenters’, was an extravagant party hosted by ‘two...

11.01.2024 20

The Spectator

James Walton

The road to the final snow-gazing scene is tortuous / Sky Max’s The Heist Before Christmas reviewed

When it comes to one-off family dramas for Christmas, two things are pretty much guaranteed. They’ll begin with credits announcing a starry cast,...

21.12.2023 5

The Spectator

James Walton

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