Arts Reviews

1. Fargo, Channel 4 In a particularly strong year for thrillers (Line of Duty, The Missing and Homeland ­among them) this was for my money the best of the lot, with a fantastically sinister central performance from Billy Bob Thornton, and story-telling that remained entirely sure-footed throughout, no matter how weird the events became. 2. Detectorists, BBC4 When it comes to sitcoms, the words ‘gentle’ and ‘idiosyncratic’ are often euphemisms for ‘not funny’ – but not in the case of Mackenzie Crook’s affectionate and affecting story of two metal-detecting friends in small-town Britain. 3. The Roosevelts: an Intimate History, PBS One for fans of old-school documentary-making: seven two-hour episodes covering

The New Year is a time for reflections as well as resolutions. So here is one of mine. In the art world, media and fashions come and go, but often what truly lasts — even in the 21st century — is painting. Over the past 12 months, there has been a series of triumphs for pigment on canvas, including the glorious Veronese exhibition at the National Gallery, and a demonstration by Anselm Kiefer at the Royal Academy that we still have painters of towering stature among us. What will 2015 hold? Well, as far as painting is concerned — both old master and contemporary — there are some extremely promising

1. The play of the year, by a mile, was Fathers and Sons at the Donmar adapted from Turgenev’s novel. Lindsey Turner directed Brian Friel’s harrowing and exhilarating script with immense visual aplomb. 2. Fings Ain’t Wot They Used T’Be Lionel Bart’s first musical was a sublimely witty look at the Cockney underworld starring Gary Kemp. 3. The Realness A new song-and-dance comedy at Hackney Downs Studio, approached the same material as Fings but with a punchier and more contemporary style. 4. I Can’t Sing! The exhilarating title melody of this musical set my nape tingling with static electricity and I was convinced that Harry Hill’s X-Factor spoof would stick around

1. Mr Turner Mike Leigh’s infinitely superior biopic starring a sublime, if grunty, Timothy Spall. 2. 12 Years A Slave Harrowing – you’ll be harrowed to within an inch of your life – but it’s unflinching look at American slavery will stay powerfully with you unlike, for example, Django Unchained or The Butler 3. Boyhood Richard Linklater’s epic, heart-warming observational chronicle explores  the banality of everyday life without ever being boring; a rare achievement in cinema. 4. Twenty Feet From Stardom A host of extraordinary women and a sensational soundtrack take this documentary about backing singers to another level, and will take you with it. 5. Paddington Funny, satirical, political, extremely

The Nutcracker, English National Ballet, until 4 Jan *** The Little Match Girl, Lilian Baylis Studio, until 4 Jan ***** Edward Scissorhands, Sadler’s Wells, until 11 Jan *** Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, Royal Ballet, until 16 Jan ** The Mad Hatter’s Tea Party, Linbury Studio Theatre, until 17 Jan ** Amazing, the change in the dance weather this Christmas. Where usually there is snow, fairies, tinkly celestas, a glut of Nutcrackers, traditions have turned topsy-turvy. At the Royal Ballet the sun has broken out (if mildly) in its Don Quixote, as I reported last week, and only the dependable English National Ballet is serving up a trad Nutcracker over Christmas, at the Coliseum. Yet I can’t remember a Christmas when there was so

For a film I’ve never seen, I really, really hate Frozen. For those who don’t have children and don’t look into shop windows and don’t buy toys and are oblivious to merchandise, it’s the blockbuster, Academy award-winning Disney film, the most successful animation of all time and apparently the source of unending annoyance in car journeys, on account of children’s habit of singing the songs out loud. (The director, Jennifer Lee, has just issued an apology to parents everywhere.) My own children loathe it without any encouragement from me but they can’t get away from it either. My son had to sing the songs from it with his choir at

It is cold, but not in a cheery, robin-redbreast kind of way. The sky is slate blue; the sun, a red ball, is slipping below the horizon, figures carrying heavy burdens trudge across the frozen water. Yet this far- from-festive painting, ‘The Census at Bethlehem’ by Pieter Bruegel the Elder, is one of the earliest — perhaps the very first — to set the Christmas story in a northern winter landscape. There is no attempt to pretend that this is the Holy Land. The setting is a village in the southern Netherlands. The houses are brick-built, one with a northern European crow-stepped gable. In the foreground, a pig is being