The Week’s best film, TV, book and live show on this weekend, with excerpts from the top reviews.
TELEVISION: Reggie in China
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“On the same night that BBC1 unleashed its impressive adaptation of The War of the Worlds, Reggie In China, a three-part look at the country's economic and social transformation began with the presenter and documentary maker visiting a city that bore more than a passing resemblance to one of HG Wells’ visions of the future…As always, he was a natural at putting his interviewees at their ease. Which produced some revealing comments, highlighting Chinese people’s pride at their country’s economic transformation, despite the lack of corresponding democratic reforms.”
Episode 2 airs Sunday 24 November, 8pm on BBC2. Episode 1 on BBC iPlayer.
MOVIE: I Lost my Body
Peter Debruge for Variety
“In its finished form, director Jérémy Clapin’s peculiar undertaking (adapted from the novel “Happy Hand,” by Guillaume Laurant) is even stranger than it sounded to me half a decade earlier, and yet, there’s no question he’s pulled it off. In fact, I’d hazard to say it’s one of the most original and creative animated features I’ve ever seen: macabre, of course — how could it be otherwise, given the premise? — but remarkably captivating and unexpectedly poetic in the process.”
Released 22 November
BOOK: From Russia with Blood by Heidi Blake
Leonid Ragozin for NPR
“The book is worth reading for its recap of more than a dozen murder and suspicious death stories that happened over two decades. It also provides a fascinating glimpse into the life of Russia's most illustrious oligarch-turned-anti-Putin-rebel and his ragtag band of business associates, shady fixers, Chechen fighters, former security agents and spin doctors.”
Published 19 November
STAGE: The Season
“[Song] Under the Mistletoe astringently deconstructs the cliches of wintry hits, and two-tone duets, with the singers taking starkly different parts, emerge as a Barne-Buchan speciality…While a warm but smart show with a performing payroll of two seems set to be a Christmas gift that keeps on giving for theatrical accountants, there will be nothing parsimonious about the pleasure for audiences. Inevitably, fake snow falls at the end, but, by then, it’s clear that, in the often barren genre of British musicals, Barne and Buchan are the real thing.”
At the Royal & Derngate theatre, Northampton, until 30 November
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