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The Duke and Duchess of Cambridge recently met with survivors of national disasters. They were attending the launch of a new charity. The Duke made a short, supportive speech. But much more important was the private time he and the Duchess spent with the survivors. As Lord Dannatt, who was hosting the public meeting said: ‘Their empathy with those affected demonstrated the vital link between the royal family and people of this country.’ That vital link is indeed one of the key strengths of the monarchy. Countless (and almost always unsung) hours are spent every year by royal family members with people needing recognition or comfort, as they visit schools,

‘Here’s your new Sunday night obsession…’ the BBC announcer purred, overintoned and mini-orgasmed, like she was doing an audition for a Cadbury’s Flake commercial, ‘… a dazzling drama with a stellar cast.’ My hackles rose. Did no one ever mention to her the rule about ‘show not tell’? And my hackles were right. His Dark Materials has indeed become my Sunday night obsession: how can the BBC’s most-expensive-ever drama series possibly look, sound and feel so clunkingly, God-awfully, disappointingly flat? Yes, I know Philip Pullman’s trilogy is an extended, bitter rant against Christianity disguised as children’s entertainment. But I loved reading those novels, especially the first two, which may be

One of the many great things about The Capture was that we could never be sure whether the British authorities’ capacity for virtually blanket surveillance was a nightmare vision of the future or a nightmare portrait of the present. Celebrity Hunted, though, suggests a third possibility: that virtually blanket surveillance is simply proof of how marvellous the authorities are, and so untroubling that it can be played for laughs. This third series is, once again, part of Channel 4’s annual Stand Up to Cancer season, and features four teams of two, whose job is to go on the run for a fortnight and avoid capture by intelligence experts equipped with

I have never ever watched a TV series I have enjoyed more than Succession (Now TV). There’s stuff I’d put in the same league, maybe — Fauda, Babylon Berlin, Band of Brothers, Utopia, Gomorrah, Breaking Bad, The Sopranos, and so on — but absolutely nothing beats it. It is, quite simply, a work of pure, undiluted genius. Which wasn’t what I expected when my friend Toby recommended it to me a few weeks ago. ‘It’s about this media dynasty, a bit like the Murdochs. And the kids spend their whole time scheming and competing as to which one is eventually going to take over the company from the bullying patriarch

It’s possibly not a great sign of a Britain at ease with itself that the historical character most likely to show up in a TV drama now seems to be Oswald Mosley. But the week after his starring role in Peaky Blinders ended, there he was again, right at the beginning of BBC1’s next Sunday-night drama. World on Fire opened with Mosley addressing a 1939 Manchester rally, where he duly whipped up his supporters and reminded the rest of us of the dangers of extremism. Luckily, there were two people in the hall brave enough to protest: salt-of-the-earth northern lass Lois Bennett and her much posher and therefore much stiffer

Brassic (Sky One) feels like the sort of TV comedy drama they last made about 15 years ago but would never get commissioned now, certainly not by the BBC. Almost all of the main characters — apart from love interest Michelle Keegan — are white, male and heterosexual. And it’s set in the kind of Lancashire market town surrounded by rolling sheep country where the opportunities for plausible diversity casting are really quite limited. So how come it has been getting such glowing notices from all the previewers and reviewers? You’ll be depressed when I tell you. Well, it has depressed me anyway. The main character Vinnie — played by

Professor David Scheel, the presenter of a BBC2 documentary on Thursday, instantly brought to mind that American scientist in The Fast Show: bearded, bespectacled, softly spoken and willing to try an experiment just for the hell of it. A marine biologist in Alaska, Scheel has been studying octopuses (his own preferred plural, incidentally) for 25 years. But what, he whispered excitedly, ‘would I find out if I invited an octopus into my house?’ Well, one obvious answer we got from the starkly titled The Octopus in My House is that a TV film crew would be happy to show up and record what happened — which was essentially that he