10th December 2014
On Sunday at BFI Southbank the estimable programming strand Miss Believed Wiped presented a screening of the ground-breaking 1967 BBC Television satellite broadcast Our World. The strand usually showcases programmes that were once thought lost but have been recently
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27th November 2014
Just exactly one year ago, Illuminations, working with the Screen Plays research project, released a DVD box-set of the BBC's 15-part series from 1960, An Age of Kings. The series is an extraordinarily ambitious live studio production of all
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8th October 2014
Collective self-portraits from the BBC are always compelling. And that's exactly what the new video for BBC Music is, even as it features an all-star cast singing the 1966 Beach Boys hit 'God Only Knows'. There's already some good analysis
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9th August 2014
The Tate Britain exhibition Kenneth Clark: Looking for Civilisation closes tomorrow, Sunday 10 August. I remain thrilled to have contributed to this by curating the television extracts and writing a catalogue essay about the television programmes that Clark made for ATV
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6th August 2014
At 10.15pm on Wednesday 10 September 1952, just after an edition of the fortnightly film review show Current Release, BBC Television broadcast a 15-minute programme titled Shapes and Sounds. In its listing pages Radio Times described the transmission as 'an experiment
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25th May 2014
For all sorts of reasons, I'm really looking forward to tonight's BBC Four broadcast of The Duchess of Malfi recorded at the Sam Wanamaker Playhouse. First off, John Webster's revenge tragedy is one of my favourite plays (along
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21st May 2014
Tate Britain this week has opened the exhibition Kenneth Clark: Looking for Civilisation, which runs until 10 August. There is no sense that I can be impartial about the show, given that I contributed by curating the television
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16th April 2014
British Pathé has just published a wealth of new material on its wonderful YouTube channel (there is more about this from The Drum), and among the delights (only 5 views so far) is a newsreel spot about
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10th April 2014
Following on from the successful Screen Plays 'Classics on TV' seasons 'Greek Tragedy on the Small Screen' (June 2012) and 'Jacobean Tragedy on the Small Screen' (March-April 2013), the project is delighted once again to be working
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23rd March 2014
Every conference is a curate's egg, and you always hope that the good parts make up (and more) for those that are less so. A two-day gathering in Brussels this week dedicated to the films of more