All posts tagged: lovely

BritBox’s Lovely Jane Austen Spinoff

BritBox’s Lovely Jane Austen Spinoff

Published by Daniella Wilson

To hear Mary (Ella Bruccoleri) tell it, she is no one special. She is not “the beautiful one” of her sisters, nor “the quick-witted one,” and she is certainly not “the ones who are good at games and full of youthful energy.” If she is anything, she is the odd duck, seemingly doomed to a future of getting overlooked by suitors and dismissed by her family. It is both ironic and entirely appropriate, then, that this very ordinariness is precisely what makes her such a striking heroine in The Other Bennet Sister, BritBox’s wildly charming effort to reframe the resident frump of Pride & Prejudice. With its refreshingly grounded tone, generous sense of empathy and, above all, absolutely marvelous lead, the series pulls off the neat trick of convincingly expanding on Jane Austen while standing proudly on its own two feet. The Other Bennet Sister The Bottom Line Grounded yet enchanting. Airdate: Wednesday, May 6 (BritBox)Cast: Ella Bruccoleri, Indira Varma, Dónal Finn, Laurie Davidson, Ruth Jones, Richard E. Grant, Richard CoyleCreator: Sarah Quintrell, based on …

A lovely name for watching night fall | Mental health

A lovely name for watching night fall | Mental health

Published by Jenni Sidey

Rachel Dixon’s piece about “dusking” (‘All you need is a chair and a view’: could daily ‘dusking’ make us healthier and happier?, 1 March) gave a lovely name to something I having been doing all my life, beginning as a child in the company of my Nanna, in a gas-lit kitchen in Wembley in the 1940s, with no view to speak of – just a back yard. I can see Nanna clearly, sitting on a chair wedged between the dresser and a table, the gas mantle yet to be lit by a taper that stood in a clay pot on top of the range. “Let the night take you and you will sleep all the better for it,” she used to say. And I was always a night-long sleeper – still am as I approach my 82nd birthday. Now the view is a back garden in Beeston; I sit and watch, as the night draws in, in an Ikea chair bought for £9 in 1996, and warm thanks to central heating. If only my Nanna …

Small Prophets and A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms share one lovely trait

Small Prophets and A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms share one lovely trait

Published by Daniella Wilson

On the face of it, similarities between Small Prophets and A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms are few and far between. Mackenzie Crook’s BBC Two series is a modern day, suburban-set sitcom about a man growing homunculi (miniature humanoid creatures with the ability to predict the future) in his garden shed. The Game of Thrones spin-off, in stark contrast, is set in 209 AC (roughly a century before the first season of Thrones) in the greens of Ashford, where a lowly hedge knight crosses paths with a young boy concealing his noble dynasty. No, there aren’t many comparisons to speak of, aside from some well-deployed tonal acrobatics, a handful of quirky characters and a touch of the absurd. But they do have one notable thing in common, and it warms the cockles of one’s heart in these most divided of times: their celebration of unexpected friendships. In both series, we find two people – Michael Sleep and Ser Duncan the Tall, also known as Dunk – who are, when we first meet them incredibly lonely. …

Anthony Chen’s Lovely Singapore Story

Anthony Chen’s Lovely Singapore Story

Published by Daniella Wilson

After two features set far from home — respectively Drift in Greece and The Breaking Ice in China — Anthony Chen returns to Singapore with the minor-key magical We Are All Strangers (Wo Men Bu Shi Mo Sheng Ren). As flavorful and satisfying as the Hokkien noodles seen being stir-fried, seasoned and served with a cold beer at various intervals, the film is a hypnotic conclusion to what the writer-director calls his Growing Up trilogy — preceded by the poignant domestic drama Ilo Ilo and the melancholic intergenerational romance Wet Season. What these movies have in common is their fresco-like attention to the ebb and flow, the minute details, the disappointments and rewards of ordinary lives and imperfect families, both biological and chosen. We Are All Strangers The Bottom Line An unpolished gem. Venue: Berlin Film Festival (Competition)Cast: Yeo Yan Yan, Koh Jia Ler, Regene Lim, Andi LimDirector-screenwriter: Anthony Chen 2 hours 37 minutes Shot with unflashy elegance (this time by Teoh Gay Hian) and imbued with a strong sense of place, they are intimate …

The pub that changed me: ‘It had some nefarious characters – but with lovely shoes’ | Pubs

The pub that changed me: ‘It had some nefarious characters – but with lovely shoes’ | Pubs

Published by Sam Flores

The Glory, east London (closed 2024) In a packed pub, revellers chat, sip lager and look at their phones. Suddenly a side door crashes open, and in walks drag sensation John Sizzle, dressed as a hair-raisingly accurate Diana, Princess of Wales. She saunters demurely to a halo, fashioned from tinsel and coat hangers and stuck to the wall, stands under it, and starts lip-syncing to Beyoncé’s Halo. The crowd erupts. Just a regular Tuesday night at the Glory, the Haggerston pub that had a decade of debauchery from 2014 to 2024. I worked at a nightlife magazine at the time and was there for most of it. I loved the fact that it offered an alternative to the ripple-muscled mainstream of London gay clubbing. Nothing wrong with rippled muscles of course, but sometimes you just want something a bit more inventive – like the saucy Spanish-inspired night “Gayzpacho” (underwear-wrestling in a passata-filled paddling pool, anyone?). I was there when they randomly decided to paper the pub’s entire exterior in gold foil. I was there for …