Adam Sweeting

5 days ago | theartsdesk.com | Adam Sweeting

Netflix’s new detective-noir is a somewhat cosmopolitan beast. It’s written and directed by an American, Scott Frank, derived from a novel, Mercy, by the Danish crime writer Jussi Adler-Olsen, and set in Edinburgh (as well as other flavourful Scottish locations). There are plenty of Scots in the cast too, although it’s the very English Matthew Goode (Downton Abbey, The Crown etc) who takes the lead role of DCI Carl Morck.

1 week ago | theartsdesk.com | Adam Sweeting

As this two-part documentary vividly illustrates, it has been a wild ride for Baroness Mone of Mayfair, the self-made businesswoman who emerged from Dennistoun in Glasgow’s East End in the Nineties and created the Ultimo Bra. This revolutionary undergarment ingeniously enhanced the wearer’s cleavage, using a silicon gel to mimic the feel of real breast tissue.

2 weeks ago | theartsdesk.com | Adam Sweeting

It’s not what he says, it’s the way he says it. Few filmmakers have bent the term “auteur” to their own ends more boldly than Wes Anderson, whose arresting visual style, oblique wit and skill in picking actors who can mould themselves to the unique demands of Wes-world is surely unequalled.

2 weeks ago | theartsdesk.com | Adam Sweeting

Whether it is or isn’t the final Mission: Impossible film, there’s a distinct fin-de-siècle feel about this eighth instalment, and not only because of its title. An early scene brings a nostalgic recap of highlights from the series’ history (which stretches back to 1996), with a voice-over from Angela Bassett’s President Sloane (pictured below) pleading with Ethan Hunt to return to save the world one more time.

2 weeks ago | theartsdesk.com | Adam Sweeting

The appalling destruction of Pan Am’s flight 103 over Lockerbie in 1988 was put under the spotlight in January this year in Sky Atlantic’s Lockerbie: A Search for Truth. This focused on the dogged and agonising search for truth by Jim Swire (played by Colin Firth), whose daughter Flora was killed in the attack, and raised a host of possibilities and theories about who did it and why. The BBC’s new six-part series takes a different tack.