Bbc

Think of an art at which the English have excelled and I doubt you would come up with the word ‘embroidery’. As I muttered when my agent asked whether I should like to make a film for BBC4 about the golden age of this forgotten but brilliant native art form: ‘Embroidery? What, like sewing?’ But no, not like sewing. Or, actually, only a little bit. During the ‘high’ Middle Ages, English embroidery was one of the most desired and costly art forms in Europe. It was known as opus anglicanum or ‘the work of the English’ — a generic name that instantly conjured notions of craftsmanship, beauty, luxury and expense

‘Somerset. Winter 877,’ said the subtitles below an arty, BBC-nature-doc style close-up of a coot paddling amid the reeds on the eerie black waters of the Somerset levels. ‘Yes!’ I went, mentally punching the air. ‘I’m in safe hands here, I can tell. Bet they’re going to get all the costume details totally right. There might even be battle scenes. Not crap three-men-with-shields-filmed-over-and-over-again-from-different-angles-with-a-shaky-camera like in the bad old days. But totally convincing CGI-enhanced ones. The Battle of Ashdown, done even more realistically than it was in 871. Yay!’ Then it got even better. The voiceover began mellifluously reading excerpts from the Anglo-Saxon chronicle about ‘se cyning Aelfred’ — and there

‘Shakespeare’s Globe’, as the theatre has been called since it was founded in 1997, is unusual for a theatre in that it makes a large annual profit, without receiving public funding. How? Its unique angle means it has no need to market itself – what’s more attractive to an American audience than Shakespeare, in London, in a reconstructed Shakespearean theatre? But its decision to put all Shakespearean productions on hold to make way for another dramatist is a decision which Lloyd Evans isn’t too sure about. Samuel Adamson’s Gabriel may be accompanied by some lovely Purcell music, but the actual play’s content leaves much to be desired. Theoretically, there’s nothing

I watched Top Gear (BBC2, Sunday) for the first time in my life last week (the rock under which I’ve been living is pretty large, practically a boulder). I thought I’d better plug this knowledge gap before it got too embarrassing, seeing that Top Gear is the greatest show on earth, the travelling Big Top de nos jours, a daredevil combo of acrobatic stunts, mechanical wizardry and freakery. Fakery too, apparently, as it’s emerged that in a recent episode scenes that looked spontaneous were actually staged. These involved flashes of watery chaos, upturned tables and angry diners shaking their fists as an amphibious vehicle hastily built and even more hastily

Wadjda is the first feature-length film to come out of Saudi Arabia, and was shot by the country’s first female director – but those aren’t the only things that are great about it, says Deborah Ross. It’s also ‘fascinating, involving, moving, and an entirely excellent film in its own right’. The story might be simple, but it’s the glimpses of how life might be for a woman living in Saudi Arabia make it ‘wonderful’. Deborah’s second film this week is the The World’s End, an attempt to be humorous that despite its cast (which includes Martin Freeman, Rosamund Pike and Simon Pegg) is completely unfunny, and ‘just boring’. Even the zombies