Category Archives: Television

BSkyB doubles its culture shows with Sky Arts 2

Posted on August 19, 2008 by admin

By Ray Bennett LONDON — Classical music and opera will be front and centre on a new channel called Sky Arts 2 being launched Oct. 20 by British Sky Broadcasting featuring new shows from performers such as Vanessa Mae (pictured). … Continue reading →

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‘English Patient’ director Anthony Minghella dies

Posted on March 18, 2008 by admin

By Ray Bennett Oscar-winning British film director Anthony Minghella, whose epic “The English Patient” won nine 1997 Academy Awards including best picture, has died. He was 54. Minghella’s agent said he died Tuesday morning of a brain hemorhage. “He was … Continue reading →

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TV REVIEW: ‘Moving Wallpaper’ / ‘Echo Beach’

Posted on January 10, 2008 by admin

By Ray Bennett LONDON — Comedies set behind the scenes at television shows have met with varying success in the past, but Tony Jordan’s “Moving Wallpaper”/”Echo Beach” goes one step further by combining backstage antics with the finished product. “Moving … Continue reading →

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TV REVIEW: Dickens’s ‘The Old Curiosity Shop’

Posted on December 26, 2007 by admin

By Ray Bennett LONDON — Far from chestnuts roasting and choristers singing, Charles Dickens’ “The Old Curiosity Shop” is a curiously bleak tale for Christmas. Famous for the death scene of a most sympathetic character, it’s a sorrowful story of … Continue reading →

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Joni Mitchell still has that ‘Shine’

Posted on December 2, 2007 by admin

Cigarette in hand, Joni Mitchell was in fine form on the BBC’s Sunday morning public affairs program “The Andrew Marr Show” today. Speaking from Los Angeles, Mitchell was unapologetic about releasing “Shine,” her first album in about 10 years, through … Continue reading →

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TV REVIEW: Judi Dench, Eileen Atkins in ‘Cranford’

Posted on November 16, 2007 by admin

By Ray Bennett LONDON – As pretty as an English village green in summer and as bracing as a winter’s meadow brook, the BBC-TV’s new five-part period drama “Cranford”, which starts on Sunday, is an instant classic. Starring some of … Continue reading →

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TV REVIEW: ‘A Room With a View’ by Andrew Davies

Posted on November 3, 2007 by admin

By Ray Bennett LONDON – The best thing about the new television adaptation of E.M. Forster’s novel “A Room with a View” is the music by Gabriel Yared. It’s not clear why the Beirut-born, Paris-based composer chose to do a … Continue reading →

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Feat of clay: Terracotta Army marches on

Posted on October 9, 2007 by admin

By Ray Bennett The exhibition of China’s 2,000-year-old terracotta warriors at the British Museum is everything it’s cracked up to be. Some 100,000 tickets were sold in advance of the six-month display of a small group of the immense army … Continue reading →

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TV REVIEW: Billie Piper in ‘The Secret Diary of a Call Girl’

Posted on September 27, 2007 by admin

By Ray Bennett Chrissy Skinns, producer of the new Billie Piper series “Secret Diary of a Call Girl,” which debuts tonight on ITV2, insists that the show’s depiction of prostitution as something fun, glamorous and relatively carefree is an accurate one. In … Continue reading →

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‘The Larry Sanders Show’ is a big plus on Sky

Posted on September 13, 2007 by admin

By Ray Bennett A big thank you to Sky Plus and ITV4 for making it possible to have a dozen episodes of “The Larry Sanders Show” ready and waiting after a lengthy trip on the road. The show, which aired … Continue reading →

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