“I’m not a mummy’s boy any more!” proclaims Justin. “You never were!”, counters his mother Margaret. Justin, aged 32, is leaving home for the first time. He has Down syndrome and he and two others who…
The Canadian production company Trembling Void has just successfully crowdfunded a new television series called The Switch. The project is a comedy tracing the lives of an ensemble of trans characters…
Consider the last three major films gracing our screens that explicitly deal with HIV/AIDS – the Academy Award-winning, highly acclaimed Dallas Buyers Club in 2013, followed by Ryan Murphy’s much-hyped…
Family Feud returns to our television screens tonight as part of Ten’s desperate scramble to remain a viable entity, and is scheduled to compete with Seven and Nine’s main news bulletins at 6pm. For those…
Just before a critical World Cup game against Spain in Rio de Janeiro, scores of ticketless Chile fans broke into the expensively rebuilt Maracana Stadium at its least secure point – the media centre…
I was at the Matisse exhibition at the Tate Modern this week (Yes, I know, top show-off metrosexual). I was with my mate JJ, who had travelled in from the artistic meta-centre of Norfolk to see these pictures…
The fourth season of Game of Thrones has gripped scores of people with its epic story of warring factions in a strange and changing landscape, dragons and dire wolves, incursions and sieges, plots and…
A siren sounds in the workroom and the contestants, still in their street clothes, stop their conversation. “Oooh, girl! You’ve got She-Mail,” says a shrill voice. For those of you just tuning in, you’re…
Death is a funny thing. It creeps up on us all, or surprises us if we are unlucky (or lucky, depending on the circumstances). For a writer, especially a self-confessed solipsist such as Clive James, the…
At 6.30pm tonight, Scotland will lay down a milestone in one of the key debates in television: will local television become a successful and profitable part of the UK’s media scene or remain one politician’s…
If you’re a fan of the American reality TV show RuPaul’s Drag Race, currently airing on Foxtel’s Lifestyle You channel in Australia, you’re likely aware of the ongoing storm that has surged around how…
Y Gwyll, the Welsh title of the recent BBC drama Hinterland, translates as “The Dusk”: perhaps programmers were worried that viewers would mistake it for Twilight? Vampires and zombies certainly feature…
In the last year there’s been a resurgence of media engagement with the Suffragettes, the most militant wing of the first wave feminist movement between 1890 and 1919. It began with two television programmes…
Although awards shows are all about the excitement of the moment – that’s why they’re live – this year’s Bafta television crop is more about continuity than revolution. There was mild controversy because…
With the centenary commemorations continuing, all things World War I have been filling our screens, pages and radio waves. The latest of these was the BBC’s The Crimson Field, a drama set in a field hospital…
Modern Family, ABC’s sitcom juggernaut, is adept at capturing the zeitgeist without ruffling too many feathers. Unashamedly conservative in its family-sitcom structure, it also excels at moments of quiet…
Chris Lilley has long been a high maintenance love object. Last night, the first episode of Jonah From Tonga was broadcast on ABC1. Critics have had an easy time finding humour in socially “well-placed…
What happens when an actor who has built an amazing persona is called upon to reveal a truer self? When Stephen Colbert, host of The Colbert Report, discards his right-wing talk show host persona and takes…
Due to Australia’s small population and high concentration of few media voices, public broadcasters play a pivotal role in shaping the media ecosystem and cultural landscape. With the ABC and SBS under…
The recent torrent of complaints about the “inaudible dialogue” in the BBC’s adaptation of Daphne de Maurier’s Jamaica Inn have prompted a debate about actors’ speech. The cause of the problem was variously…