Mark Lawson

Northampton

Writer and Broadcaster at The Guardian

Using many words to consider questions which can be answered with one. Not really Mark Lawson: aiming higher. Clearly a parody.

Articles

Two Pints review - Roddy Doyle’s boozy banter is a masterclass in comedy

1 week ago | theguardian.com | Mark Lawson

While less dedicated or prolific writers were off boozing with their mates down the local, Roddy Doyle has spent almost a decade writing about it. From 2012-2019, he published three novels – Two Pints, Two More Pints, Two for the Road – in which two sixtysomething Irish men chatted over Guinness, their alcohol units far beyond those specified in the titles.
Baby Reindeer to Rivals: who will win the TV Baftas … and who should?

1 week ago | theguardian.com | Mark Lawson

Rarely has a Bafta TV awards ceremony taken place against such a background of industry anxiety: plummeting terrestrial ratings, aggressive streamer competition, a precipitous drop in UK production. Even sponsors P&O Cruises will rarely have seen such troublesome seas. Bafta voters (I am one, but don’t know any final results) will also have brought other external concerns.
Looking back through 80 years of Saturday night television

1 week ago | rts.org.uk | Mark Lawson

And on the sixth day the TV gods created entertainment! This spin on chapter one of the Book of Genesis was the publicity line for The Saturday Night Story, a 2015 ITV documentary. In one of the easiest TV scheduling decisions ever, it was run over two Saturday nights, offering a clips-and-quips history of the most significant peaktime of the week, especially for entertainment shows.
The Gang of Three review - inside an old boys’ club of Labour intrigue

1 week ago | theguardian.com | Mark Lawson

Denis Healey, Roy Jenkins and Anthony Crosland were all born between 1917 and 1920, then educated at Oxford before serving in Labour governments. This homogenous gang of three, as this play’s title identifies them, fail to claim the highest political prizes because they believe the inevitable winner is one of them.
The Government Inspector review - Tom Rosenthal stirs up Gogol’s political satire

2 weeks ago | theguardian.com | Mark Lawson

A satire by a Ukrainian-born writer in which Russians trust a chancer who cruelly tricks them has obvious topicalities. The programme for Gregory Doran’s revival of Nikolai Gogol’s The Government Inspector (1836) includes a letter from a Ukrainian academic bemoaning Putin’s attempts to claim Gogol as Russian, although the Kremlin dictator could not sit with any comfort through a play about the stupidity of rulers. Nor, though, could Donald Trump or most leaders.
‘You have to be taken inside Poirot’s brain’: Ken Ludwig on the secret to adapting Agatha Christie

2 weeks ago | theguardian.com | Mark Lawson

If you ever face a quiz question about the most performed theatre writers in the world, likely to have a play on somewhere every day, William Shakespeare, Andrew Lloyd Webber and Agatha Christie are all reliable answers but a fourth may surprise you: Ken Ludwig. He also has intriguing connections with the other three.
Much Ado About Nothing review - RSC boots the action to elite Italian football in a play of two halves

3 weeks ago | theguardian.com | Mark Lawson

Suggesting that spectacular visual metaphor is the Royal Shakespeare Company’s new house style, a Hamlet set on a cruise liner is followed by a Much Ado About Nothing based in elite Italian football. After the National Theatre’s Gareth Southgate bio-drama Dear England, this must be the first season that both big subsidised companies have filled stages with young men in replica club shirts and jockstraps.
Ghosts review - gasps and laughter greet this modern revamp of Ibsen’s shocker

4 weeks ago | theguardian.com | Mark Lawson

When Henrik Ibsen published Ghosts in 1881 – plays then were often released as texts with no production scheduled – the content (sexual transgression, venereal disease, suicide) so shocked many booksellers that they banned it. The book was reviewed in newspapers but with such fury that no Norwegian theatre would stage it; Chicago hosted the world premiere the following year. The playwright was so shaken that he wrote a great drama about ostracism, An Enemy of the People.
Ghosts review – gasps and laughter greet this modern revamp of Ibsen’s shocker

4 weeks ago | msn.com | Mark Lawson

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From chess to barrel jumping: the quirkiest sports in TV broadcasting history

1 month ago | rts.org.uk | Mark Lawson |Anya Taylor-Joy

With the range of games available across channels today, it seems extraordinary that sporting authorities were initially so resistant to cameras. Competition: 1955-1974, Asa Briggs’s fifth volume in the history of British broad- casting, records that a parliamentary restriction meant that, from 1955-57, the result of the Derby could be broadcast only over a still picture of the finish. In 1958 and 1959, BBC cameras were allowed to film the event – but only for use in news bulletins.