Homeland (US, 2011)

Although Homeland included some longueurs in its 12 parts, they were more than justified by the gripping feature-length final episode. But what was particularly extraordinary about the programme, co-produced by Rupert Murdoch’s News Corporation’s Fox 21, is that it actually dramatised why someone might become a terrorist. Whether the character of the conflict-full antagonist, Brody, [...]

The Secret Diaries of Anne Lister (UK, 2010)

Broadcast on BBC2, The Secret Diaries of Anne Lister dramatised one of those women ‘hidden from history’. I first came across her in a ‘publicity piece’ in The Observer for the BBC dramatisation. A fascinating woman she sounds however this drama focuses almost wholly on her sexuality. It’s as if the defining characteristic of a [...]

Red Riding Trilogy (UK, 2009)

Being a bloke whose formative years were before Gazza cried at the 1990 World Cup Finals, tears are something that are a foreign land to me (except when my dad died). So when I found a tear trickling down my cheek at the end of the final part of this trilogy, based on four David [...]

Sex Traffic (UK-Canada, 2004)

Channel 4′s brilliant two-parter lays bare the mechanics of sex trafficking through three intertwined narratives: John Sim’s do-gooder NGO; a victim (brilliantly played by Anamaria Marinca); the capitalist ideology that creates the conditions for thousands of women being entrapped into sex slavery. If the ending is slightly pat, at least the ‘happy-ever-after’ is compromised by [...]