All posts tagged: wit

Rivals season two review: Wit, heart and relentless shagging as the residents of Rutshire return

Rivals season two review: Wit, heart and relentless shagging as the residents of Rutshire return

Published by Daniella Wilson

★★★★☆ Add Rivals season two to your watchlist He’s on the posters and in the trailer, so it’s not a spoiler to say: Lord Tony Baddingham lives! David Tennant’s malign media tycoon ended the first season of Disney’s ripping adaptation of Jilly Cooper’s novel bleeding freely onto his own office shagpile, eyes glassy, giving off rapidly-cooling corpse vibes. But Rivals spent its debut year lovingly building the fantastic world of Rutshire, a haven of the randy upper classes in the careless 1980s, with Tony at the centre. Full of surprises as the show is, killing off a main character isn’t its style. What were those surprises, when Rivals first roared up our long gravel drive in 2024? Perhaps that depended on how au fait you were with Dame Jilly’s books. If you knew them well, you knew they had wit and heart and deceptively deep characters to go with the flagrant excess, the relentless shagging and what are now the rich period trappings, faultlessly rendered in the TV version. If you didn’t know the books …

Tales of Love and Loss review – hauntings, tragicomedy and tweezer-sharp wit in Royal Opera triple bill | Opera

Tales of Love and Loss review – hauntings, tragicomedy and tweezer-sharp wit in Royal Opera triple bill | Opera

Published by Sam Flores

Tales of Love and Loss: the title made this triple bill of English-language one-acters from the Royal Opera’s Jette Parker Artists sound like something very serious. In fact, it sent us out laughing. Admittedly, after the first work the mood could only lighten. Elizabeth Maconchy’s 1961 two-hander The Departure, last staged in 2007, begins with a woman watching a funeral through her bedroom window; when her husband comes home she realises it is her own death that is being mourned, and that she is there to say farewell. Directed by Talia Stern, in a 1960s set designed by Ana Inés Jabares-Pita, it flirted with melodrama, especially in the flashing-light effects as she remembered the fatal car crash, and the ending, with the sound of a baby crying, felt mawkish. Still, Maconchy’s music, sombre yet lyrically expansive in a way that made it feel like the orchestra was bigger than the 14-strong Britten Sinfonia, made an impressive vocal showcase for the mezzo-soprano Ellen Pearson and baritone Sam Hird. Charlotte Bray’s Making Arrangements, which originated at the …

The Olympic wit and wisdom of an African skeleton racer : NPR

The Olympic wit and wisdom of an African skeleton racer : NPR

Published by Sam Flores

Ghana’s Akwasi Frimpong takes part in a training session for the men’s skeleton event in the 2018 Olympics. Kirill KudryavtsevAFP/via Getty Images hide caption toggle caption Kirill KudryavtsevAFP/via Getty Images For those not familiar with the sport of skeleton, where the solo sledder lies flat on their stomach, head first, Akwasi Frimpong sums it up: “You’re on a cookie sheet sled and it’s like ‘dude, good luck.’” Skeleton was actually the third sport Frimpong took up to chase his dream of becoming an Olympian. Born in Ghana, Frimpong moved to the Netherlands when he was 8 as an undocumented immigrant. He eventually got Dutch citizenship. He also took up track in the Netherlands, and later bobsled, then skeleton. In 2018, he became the first male Black African skeleton racer to compete in the Olympics. (That same year, Simidele Adeagbo became the first female Black African skeleton athlete in the Olympics, competing on Nigeria’s team.) NPR spoke with Frimpong about the challenges of being an African athlete in a predominantly white sport, his foundation called Hope …

Agatha Christie’s Seven Dials review – A country house mystery crackling with wit and escapist glamour

Agatha Christie’s Seven Dials review – A country house mystery crackling with wit and escapist glamour

Published by Daniella Wilson

Get the latest entertainment news, reviews and star-studded interviews with our Independent Culture email Get the latest entertainment news with our free Culture newsletter Get the latest entertainment news with our free Culture newsletter Agatha Christie’s Seven Dials is all about time running out. Clocks tick throughout: on mantelpieces, in pockets, and – most ominously – in a circle of seven around a handsome corpse. It’s a motif that haunts this adaptation of Christie’s 1929 novel: the sense that something precious is slipping away, that the Roaring Twenties won’t last for ever. That body, found the morning after a lavish country house party, belongs to Gerry Wade (Corey Mylchreest), suitor to Lady Eileen “Bundle” Brent (Mia McKenna-Bruce). The police call it misadventure. She calls it murder. What follows is playful and lighthearted, but deceptively shrewd. Fifty years after Christie’s death, Broadchurch creator Chris Chibnall mines this early work for something more spirited than her Poirot mysteries. Far from being another moustache-twiddling, drawing-room whodunnit, here her first venture into literary espionage crackles with wit and intrigue. …