Saturday Review - 18/12/2010
Tom Sutcliffe and his guests the writers Kevin Jackson and Bidisha and the historian Kathryn Hughes review the cultural highlights of the week including Tron: Legacy
In Tron: Legacy Jeff Bridges reprises the role of computer buff Kevin Flynn that he played in the original 1982 film. His son Sam (Garret Hedlund) goes looking for his Flynn inside the game where he's been trapped all these years. Daft Punk provide the soundtrack.
Ours Are The Streets is Sunjeev Sahota's first novel. Its narrator - Imtiaz - is a second-generation Pakistani lad living in Sheffield. When he travels to Pakistan to bury his father he takes the first step on a journey which leads to his radicalisation and to his decision to become a suicide bomber.
Richard Eyre's production of Feydeau's farce A Flea In Her Ear at the Old Vic in London stars Tom Hollander as a respectable businessman - Monsieur Chandebrise - whose wife suspects him of infidelity. Her attempts to prove her suspicions lead to a spiralling series of complications, compounded by the fact that Chandebrise's doppelganger (also played by Hollander) works as a porter in a very disreputable hotel.
Upstairs Downstairs was a hugely successful ITV costume drama which ran from 1971 to 1975. It now reappears on BBC1 starring both of its creators - Jean Marsh and Eileen Atkins. The action has moved on from the Edwardian era to the 1930s and 165 Eaton Square has new occupiers, but former lady's maid Rose (Jean Marsh) is persuaded to return and take up the role of housekeeper.
Norman Rockwell's America at the Dulwich Picture Gallery in London assembles all 322 of the covers which the celebrated illustrator created for the Saturday Evening Post from 1916 to 1963 along with other pieces. It is the first time that these original works by the man described as "the Dickens of the paintbrush" - the archetypal chronicler of smalltown America - have been shown in the UK.
Producer: Torquil MacLeod.
Published on Saturday, 18th December 2010.
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