James Delingpole

Heist drama with a novelty spin that isn’t very novel: Netflix’s Kaleidoscope reviewed

Kaleidoscope is a fairly routine eight-part heist drama with a supposed novelty spin: apart from the beginning and the end, you can view the episodes in any order, meaning that each viewer has a slightly different experience. If I sound mildly…

A Turkish dystopia that eludes western censors: Netflix’s Hot Skull reviewed

A strange new virus has infected half the world but the cure is worse than the disease: authoritarian tyranny, in which the populace lose most of their freedoms, are subject to endless testing and are corralled into gated communities. I’m talking, of…

The Spectator’s best TV shows of the year

The Offer (Paramount Plus) Even when you know the ending, this ten-part drama about the making of The Godfather, seen from the perspective of novice producer Albert S. Ruddy (Miles Teller), is outrageously gripping, gorgeously evocative of louche,…

Detectorists Christmas Special is a triumph

They’re tricky things to get right, Christmas specials. Ideally, they should capture in one perfectly judged episode the very essence of everything you found wonderful about your favourite classic sitcom, be it The Royle Family, Father Ted or Peep…

The Recruit might be the worst show on Netflix

The Top Gun series received generous support from the US Navy because it was such an effective recruitment tool. I wonder if something similar went on between the CIA and Netflix’s new series The Recruit, this time as an exercise in reputation…

Fascinating, plausible ideas undermined by Netflix: Ancient Apocalypse reviewed

Graham Hancock’s Ancient Apocalypse has been described by the Guardian as ‘the most dangerous show on Netflix’. What? More dangerous than the undigested, neo-Malthusian eco-propaganda that it serves up in its collaborations with Sir David…

A Soviet version of Martin Parr: Adam Curtis’s Russia 1985-1999 –TraumaZone reviewed

Russia 1985-1999: TraumaZone – even the title makes you want to scream – is Adam Curtis’s Metal Machine Music: the one where he frightens off his fans by abandoning the trademark flourishes that made him so entertaining and instead goes all…

An enjoyable new Ageing Dad drama: Disney+’s The Old Man reviewed

We men all think we’ve still got it, even when we’re well past 50 and young women look straight through us and every time we get up or sit down or lift something off a shelf we sigh or grunt with the effort. But sure, if push came to shove and we had…

Does House of Dragon hate its male viewers?

Mark Millar, creator of series including Netflix’s forthcoming American Jesus, has a theory that movie and TV fashions work in 11-year cycles and that we’re just starting a new one now. If he’s right – and I think he is – then it would explain a lot…

House of the Dragon: so far, so rubbish

The good news – apparently; I haven’t seen it yet so this may just be a false rumour – is that House of the Dragon episode 6 is really exciting, full of incident and drama and intriguing, well-drawn characters. But the bad news, as I can personally…

The Rings of Power

Three episodes in I think I’ve worked out the thing that’s most annoying about . It isn’t the gratuitously diverse casting. It isn’t the saccharine tweeness of the hobbity Harfoots. It isn’t the ‘You go girl!’ tediousness of the relentless female…

Amazon’s The Rings of Power is a betrayal of Tolkien’s vision

I had been so looking forward to seeing The Rings of Power. For all the wrong reasons, of course. In the months leading up to its release on Amazon, it had been hailed – largely on the basis of rumours and trailers – as an epic disaster, perhaps the…

Shaping up nicely for some truly epic bloodletting: House of the Dragon reviewed

This prequel to Game of Thrones could do with some of the light relief, however House of the Dragon got off to a pretty uninspirational start, I thought: no major characters brought to a shocking and premature end; no bone-chilling spookiness like…

House of the Dragon: So far, so unexciting

About halfway through the first episode of House of the Dragon I found myself squirming in my chair, covering my eyes and muttering ‘Why the hell am I watching this vile schlock?’ I think this is probably a good sign. One of the main attractions of…

Identity politics is in retreat in Hollywood

CommentsShare ‘Diversity is woven into the very soul of the story.’ If those words of praise from a rave review in a left-leaning journal sound to you about as inviting as a cup of cold sick, then my advice would be to stay well clear of The Sandman.…

Fascinating but flat: Amazon Prime’s Thirteen Lives reviewed

CommentsShare About ten minutes in to Thirteen Lives, Boy came in and asked me whether it was any good. I said: ‘Well, it’s quite interesting, actually. I think they’ve got the actual cave divers playing themselves, so the acting is really dull and…

The making of The Godfather was almost as dramatic as the film: Paramount+’s The Offer reviewed

It’s hard to imagine in the wake of GoodFellas, The Sopranos and Gomorrah but there was a time, not so long ago, when the very existence of the Mafia was widely dismissed as an urban myth. What changed was Mario Puzo’s 1969 bestselling novel The…

Why we should all be dropping acid

Many years ago a man on the end of my cigarette stole my soul. Mr Migarette (for such was his name) wore a tall hat like the one in the Arnolfini Marriage portrait, he smoked a pipe and no matter how often I tried to flick away the glowing fag ash,…

The sad decline of my one-time favourites

CommentsShare I don’t think it’s my imagination: it really is getting harder and harder to find anything worth watching on TV. But then, why should it be otherwise? Entropy has afflicted every aspect of our culture from holiday flights to the supply…

Ricky Gervais is an achingly conventional Millennial posing as a naughty maverick

Just how edgy and dangerous is Ricky Gervais? There is no one more edgy and dangerous, we learn from no less an authority than one R. Gervais. He keeps reminding you of this at intervals in his latest stand-up special, for which he was reputedly paid…