The Two Popes gives us the behind the scenes story of how one Pope stood aside for another in a move not seen for more than 700 years. The pair – Pope Benedict (Anthony Hopkins) and Cardinal Bergoglio (Jonathan Pryce) – didn’t see eye to eye on several issues and yet had mutual respect. One…
Sassy and darkly humourous, the stage musical Chicago circa 2019/2020 remains a sordid tale of corruption, given new life by headliners Natalie Bassingthwaite, Alinta Chidzey, Casey Donovan and Jason Donovan. With lyrics by Fred Ebb, music by John Kander and a book by Ebb and Bob Fosse, the time frame is jazz-age Chicago. The musical is…
Gritty realism at its ugly best. That’s Ken Loach’s latest working class, slice of life film. As painful as it is to watch the struggles of the family at the centre of it, it is another beauty. It is a story about decent folk who get a bad deal in life, which keeps on delivering….
A crowd pleaser based around sea shanties. That is Fisherman’s Friends, set in the picturesque fishing town of Port Isaac in Cornwall. Danny (Daniel Mays) is one of a group of four lads from London who work in a music talent agency. They decide to spend a stag weekend in Port Isaac and rock up…
English author Aldous Huxley wrote about a brave new world in a dystopian novel first published in 1932. I wonder what he would have thought of the world of artificial intelligence circa 2020 (well we are almost there). Let me put it this way, we have a long way to go before robots or artificially…
Supernatural hazing. Is there such a thing? I think not, but there is according to this festive season horror – a remake of the 1974 and 2006 killer chiller features. Hawthorne College is quieting down for the holidays. But as Riley Stone (Imogen Poots – Green Room) and her sorority sisters prepare to deck the…
Talk about fighting fire with fire. A small company of brave, resilient and resourceful specialist firefighters – known as smokejumpers – are no match for the three brave, resilient and resourceful orphan children they rescue. I should explain that smokejumpers are highly trained men and women who provide the initial attack on wildfires by parachuting…
What a super professional, highly entertaining, up tempo show for the festive season from a boy band that has been doing just that – keeping crowds entertained – for more than 30 years! Not just here, of course, but in Las Vegas, where they have been headliners in residence for upwards of a decade. Human Nature,…
Ask Dr Ruth Dr Ruth Westheimer is a force of nature. A pocket dynamo (at four foot seven), her straight talk about sex has made her a household name in the US. In the engaging documentary Ask Dr Ruth, we learn about her background and the experiences that shaped her. Born in Germany to Jewish…
Being a teenager … trying to make your way in the world can be challenging and scary. So it is for this group of seven Year 12 students at a high achieving Stockport (a town near Manchester, where playwright Simon Stephens grew up) grammar school, who are about to sit their end of year exams. A…
