Cultural Capital: television

It's one thing to make drama out of big, splashy, life-changing events -- births and deaths and alien invasions -- but there's something special about a writer who can make life's tiny triumphs and disasters sparkle.

Peter Bowker is one of those writers. His latest outing, BBC's Eric and Ernie (broadcast on New Year's Day; available until 8 January on iPlayer read more

Amazingly, Channel 4's Red Riding trilogy (based on the novels by David Peace) has been released as a five-hour film in the US.

David Denby, writing in the New Yorker, finds it "an exhausting, morbidly fascinating, and finally thrilling experience", proving that while the export of television dramas across the Atlantic has been a one-way trade in recent years, it doesn't have to be.

Red Riding was part of a ... read more

An intriguing exchange of comments appeared in response to Paul Owen's final post on the Guardian's Thick of It blog just before Christmas. "Doesn't Yes Minister seem so innocent now?" proposed a commenter named "Socket". "I've heard people say, ‘They should do a new Yes Minister.' We've got a new Yes Minister. Long live The Thick of It."

"The thing about Yes Minister is that it involved politicians confronting the ... read more