Winner took 25% of the vote, with Doctor Who in second place and Line of Duty and Sherlock tying in third
Call the Midwife has been voted the best show of the last 25 years in a poll.
The BBC period drama, which is loosely based on real events, follows a group of midwives working in the East End of London in the late 1950s as they cope with the pressures of their everyday lives as well as the changing times they are living through.
Continue reading...Continuing our series on a year of bumper pandemic viewing, our critics finally watch the shows that had passed them by, from Downton to Twin Peaks
As with my experience of so many modern cultural touchstones, I first came to 24 via a Simpsons parody. Being only seven years old in 2001, when the 24-episode “real time” thriller first aired, my knowledge of Kiefer Sutherland’s exhausting counter-terror mission to stop the assassination of a presidential hopeful came from a 2007 Simpsons episode starring Lisa and Bart in a split-screen chase to hold off the detonation of a powerful stink bomb at Springfield Elementary.
Continue reading...Her ‘hot and crazy’ novels about feisty women bedding rakish aristocrats have become a Netflix sensation. The writer talks about literary snobs, colour-conscious casting and the curse of Jane Austen
“People look down on romance novels,” says Julia Quinn. “We’re the ugly stepchild of the publishing industry – even though romance novels make so much money for publishers that they’re able to take chances on poetry, literary fiction and other things that don’t really make money.”
This is why Quinn never dreamed that any of her novels – Regency romances in which smart, witty women fall for handsome titled men – would ever make the leap to TV. She was happy with her regular slot at the top of the bestseller lists, if a little irked at the way the genre is looked down on by more literary types. “I dream big, I do,” says Quinn, speaking from her home in Seattle. “But nobody had ever done it, nobody had ever shown any signs of wanting to. And not just my books, but the genre as a whole. If somebody wanted to do a period piece, they wanted to do Jane Austen again.”
Continue reading...The Regency drama has become one of Netflix’s biggest shows of all time. Four writers explain the secrets of its success – from colourblind casting to equal-opportunities undressing
Where’s Mad Men? How did The Sopranos do? Does The Crown triumph? Can anyone remember Lost? And will Downton Abbey even figure? Find out here – and have your say