Last week the first shrink-wrapped copies of Illuminations' DVD release of An Age of Kings arrived at our offices. The event marked the culmination of at least two years' work by my colleague Louise Machin and I, along with our more
Each time I return grumpily to the topic of today's post I feel the need to apologise to regular readers. I know that I have taken on several times before the vandalism represented by forcing 4:3 archive footage into contemporary more
Far be it from me to rain on the National Theatre's fiftieth birthday parade, but allow me to make a few slightly-less-than-gushing remarks about the recent two-part Arena documentary and tonight's compilation album of extracts. (The two films are on more
On Thursday evening Arena premiered the first of two films looking back at the history of the National Theatre. I am going to wait for the second to air before posting about them, but I do want to look today at more
We are thrilled to confirm that Illuminations is to release the BBC cycle of Shakespeare's History plays An Age of Kings as a 15-episode, 5-disc DVD set on 8 December. You can place your advance order here. An Age of more
At the end of last week, I posted about the Spaces of Television conference at the University of Reading. I greatly enjoyed the three-day event and I learned a lot from many of the presentations. One of the more
Rehearsals for the Royal Shakespeare Company's new Richard II with David Tennant start a week tomorrow, Tuesday (the cast get the Bank Holiday off too). And we deep in the preparations for the Live from Stratford Upon Avon broadcast to cinemas more
On Monday afternoon at BFI Southbank I am introducing two early films by Robert Vas (1931-1978) together with a television obituary of Vas made by Barrie Gavin and colleagues. (The obit is on YouTube but - more
Eugene O'Neill's remarkable play Strange Interlude opened at the National Theatre today to some strong reviews. Michael Billington for the Guardian praises the 'excellent' production (directed by Simon Godwin) and awards the evening 4 stars. Even at more
Yesterday, I thoroughly enjoyed the full seven hours of the BBC's 1953 Coronation coverage which BBC Parliament re-ran in (almost) its entirety. You can read the blog that I wrote here as well as see the numerous screengrabs more