menu_open Columnists
James Walton

James Walton

The Spectator

We use cookies to provide some features and experiences in QOSHE

More information  .  Close

Certainly intriguing: Apple TV+’s Prime Target reviewed

Certainly intriguing: Apple TV+’s Prime Target reviewed
23.01.2025 10

The Spectator

James Walton

Television / Leavisites should stay away: Sky’s Bad Tidings reviewed

Reviewing Sky’s The Heist before Christmas last year, I suggested that all feature-length festive television dramas begin with credits announcing a...

28.12.2024 5

The Spectator

James Walton

We’re wrong to mock Do They Know It’s Christmas?

‘I hope we passed the audition,’ said an alarmingly youthful Bob Geldof at one point in The Making of Do They Know It’s Christmas? He was, of...

28.11.2024 4

The Spectator

James Walton

Too cautious and wildly over the top at the same time: Paddington in Peru reviewed

Toy Story or The Godfather? Which way would Paddington in Peru go? Would the third instalment of a much-cherished series prove even better than the...

07.11.2024 2

The Spectator

James Walton

A bit of a mess: Channel 4’s Generation Z reviewed

In the second of this week’s two episodes of Generation Z (Sunday and Monday), a teenage girl called Finn wondered why her friend Kelly was so...

31.10.2024 2

The Spectator

James Walton

Have today’s TV dramatists completely given up on plausibility?

In advance, Ludwig sounded as if it was aimed squarely at the Inspector Morse market. Set among spires of impeccable dreaminess (in a cunning...

03.10.2024 3

The Spectator

James Walton

More Airplane! than Speed: Nightsleeper reviewed

Earlier this year, ITV brought us Red Eye, a six-part drama set mainly on an overnight plane from London to Beijing. Displaying a heroic...

19.09.2024 2

The Spectator

James Walton

Books / An accidental spy: Gabriel’s Moon, by William Boyd, reviewed

When was the last time you described – or indeed thought of – someone’s face as ‘even-featured’, ‘angular’ or ‘refined’? If the answer is never, I...

02.09.2024 3

The Spectator

James Walton

Why are these dead-eyed K-pop groups represented as some kind of ideal?

On Saturday, Made in Korea: The K-pop Experience began by hailing K-pop as ‘the multi-billion-pound music that’s taken the world by storm’....

22.08.2024 4

The Spectator

James Walton

Ambitious, bold and confusing: BBC4’s Corridors of Power – Should America Police the World? reviewed

Narrated by Meryl Streep, Corridors of Power: Should America Police the World? announced the scale of its ambition straight away. Before the...

08.08.2024 2

The Spectator

James Walton

Clear, thorough and gripping: BBC2’s Horizon – The Battle to Beat Malaria

If you transcribed the narrator’s script in almost any episode of Horizon, you’d notice something striking: an awful lot of the phrases would end...

25.07.2024 3

The Spectator

James Walton

Utterly bog-standard: BBC2’s The Turkish Detective reviewed

A partly subtitled show set in Istanbul might sound like a brave departure for a BBC Sunday night crime drama. But in fact, if you strip away The...

11.07.2024 2

The Spectator

James Walton