Stephen Poliakoff | the m0vie blog

A Month on the BBC Global iPlayer

Posted on March 30, 2012 by Darren

The kind folks over at the BBC were nice enough to give me access to the iPlayer for a month in order to review it. So I’ve spent to past month watching various BBC productions on my iPhone in a variety of circumstances. I’ve streamed them at home, I’ve downloaded and watched them on the bus; I’ve used the iPhone’s speakers and I’ve listened with my headphones; I’ve tried old and new and various types of programmes and shows. I have to admit to being quite impressed with the product, even if I do have some slight reservations.

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Filed under: Months in Review | Tagged: bbc, BBC iPlayer, Damian Lewis, Dennis Potter, Handhelds, iphone, iPlayer, Kinect, Michael Palin, Microsoft, monty python, Smartphones, Stephen Poliakoff | Leave a comment »

Gideon’s Daughter (Review)

Posted on March 27, 2012 by Darren

The wonderful folks at the BBC have given me access to their BBC Global iPlayer for a month to give the service a go and trawl through the archives. I’ll have some thoughts on the service at the end of the month, but I thought I’d also take the opportunity to enjoy some of the fantastic content.

Stephen Poliakoff’s companion piece to Friends and Crocodiles, airing just a month after that original drama film, Gideon’s Daughter feels like it owes a lot to a bunch of fascinating central performances. While Robert Lindsay provides the only on-screen evidence of a link between the two projects, reprising his role as an embittered old writer here, Poliakoff’s two stories are thematically linked, as the author focuses a lot of his frustrations on meaningless celebrity culture. This time, however, he sets the stories in the late nineties, allowing him to explore what he undoubtedly sees as the vulgarity of the millennium celebrations and to subtly examine the national outpouring of grief offer the loss of Princess Diana, while telling a rather simple story of a father and his daughter.

All tied up...

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Filed under: Television | Tagged: Arts and Entertainment, bbc, bbc global iplayer, BBC iPlayer, bill nighy, britain, Diana Princess of Wales, Emily Blunt, Gideon, ITunes, kenneth branagh, Mark Thompson, Nighy, novel, Poliakoff, Robert Lindsay, Stephen Poliakoff | Leave a comment »

Friends & Crocodiles (Review)

Posted on March 27, 2012 by Darren

Stephen Poliakoff is regarded as one of the best British film, theatre and television writers working today. In 2006, the writer and director produced two television movies linked by character and by theme. While Gideon’s Daughter is perhaps the more successful of the two, Friends & Crocodilesremains an interesting – if not consistently satisfying – viewing experience. While it doesn’t have as strong a cast as its companion piece, I think it covers more interesting ground, and feels a tad more ambitious, even if it does succumb to the same awkwardness in places.