Saturday Review - 17/09/2011
Tom Sutcliffe and his guests writer Miranda Sawyer, critic John Mullan and novelist Liz Jensen review the week's cultural highlights including Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy
Tomas Alfredson's film Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy is an adaptation of the classic John le Carre Cold War thriller. Gary Oldman stars (amongst a wealth of British acting talent) as George Smiley - a retired spook who is tasked with uncovering a mole at the very heart of MI6 or 'the Circus'.
My City is Stephen Poliakoff's first play for 12 years. Tracey Ullman stars as Miss Lambert - a retired primary school headmistress who is discovered lying on a London park bench by one of her former pupils. When they meet up a few days later a night of storytelling and revelation ensues.
Michela Murgia's novel Accabadora has won six literary prizes in Italy including the prestigious Campiello Prize. Growing up in rural Sardinia in the 1950s, Maria is taken from her impoverished family and given to her adoptive mother - Bonaria Urrai - who is ostensibly the village seamstress but also has a darker role.
The Channel 4 documentary series Educating Essex is set in a secondary school and focuses on pupils in their final year there. Sixty-five fixed cameras around the school recorded events without the intrusive presence of a film crew and the resulting footage has been edited to provide a fascinating portrait of life behind the school gates.
Degas and the Ballet: Picturing Movement at the Royal Academy brings together more than 80 of the artist's paintings, sculptures, pastels, drawings and prints of ballet dancers and presents them in parallel with the experiments his contemporaries were undertaking to capture movement with photography.
Producer: Torquil MacLeod.
Published on Saturday, 17th September 2011.
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