Despite what Disney cartoons and breakfast cereals may have taught us, animals cannot talk.

It’s difficult to imagine how a film screening could go more wrong.

‘Good Hair’ is nominally a study of the multimillion dollar black hair industry, but has some deeply resonant things to say about the wider question of race in American society.

‘Eddie Izzard, Marathon Man’ follows the comedian as he attempts to run 43 marathons in 51 days. The Olympic sports doctors and trainers are aghast when he arrives at their centre for training. He’s never run a marathon before: “I’ve run for the bus.”

Few writers have created such a legacy of avid hero-worship and sycophantically fawning sentimentality as Hunter S. Thompson…

It’s hard to avoid Kenneth Clark’s 1969 landmark ‘Civilisation’ documentary series if you are doing a series on the history of civilisation…

There used to be a television clip series called ‘Best of British’. ‘British Film Forever’ is a modern, arch version of my old wet bank holiday friend. And that just makes it worse.

The history of modern Britain is a tale we think we already know…

The art of scheduling isn’t dead at BBC4, where they still know how to string together some programmes on a common theme and make a good season out of it…

Surprisingly restrained in its use of graphic violence the first episode of BBC One’s drama-documentary series ‘Ancient Rome – The Rise and Fall of an Empire’ boasted outstanding production values and an extraordinary central turn from Michael Sheen.

‘Blackbeard’ is a quintessentially BBC response to the ongoing pirate craze…

It was fundamentally wrong-headed for TOTP’s final edition to be an exercise in nostalgia: a compendium of material from the past, linked by ancient DJs…

As documentary film-making, ‘Murderball’ is an instance of impeccable timing: a production structured with consummate skill also enjoys sublime luck in terms of the events befalling its protagonists…

Even by BBC4 standards, Andrew Graham-Dixon’s ‘I, Samurai’ is self indulgent…

There’s late-night ghost tales and foggy fin-de-siecle crime on TV: it must be Christmas…

Another in our series of end-of-year reports on the state of British TV at the end of 2005…

The history of British pop is such a well-worn subject that new angles to assess it from are very welcome…

James Dean died in a fatal automobile accident fifty years ago this week.

For some reason Channel 4 has decided that the optimum time to broadcast Matthew Collings’ authored documentaries about art is early on a Saturday evening…

The term ‘reality TV’ doesn’t really mean anything any more…

The concept behind this programme is so catchily banal that it’s easy to see how it got commissioned…

I can easily imagine how exciting this would have been if I’d watched it when I was ten years old: I’d have taped it, and by the following afternoon I would have watched it at least three more times…

The Friedmans, a respectable middle-class family from Long Island, tear themselves apart when the father and youngest son are accused of systematically abusing schoolchildren during evening computer lessons.

Channel 4’s ‘back in time’ entries into the reality TV genre are certainly some of the best thought out, and they also produce some quite interesting results…

The notion that ‘history is the new rock and roll’ has always struck me as ignorant. What this series does is demonstrate that there have always been historical superstars and rock and roll is the real newcomer…

Congratulations to BBC2 for running the grand final of ‘The Big Read’ at nine o’clock on a Saturday night. Why was this a good thing? Simple – it means that ‘Harry Potter’ didn’t win…

It is perhaps slightly out of character for this site to review a clearly serious-minded and in depth cinematic documentary.

This is not a Terry Gilliam film. This is a film about the production of a Gilliam film that doesn’t exist. As such, it’s the perfect antidote to those 30 minute ‘making of…’ documercials shown on ITV…