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I value writing this column partly because I am a lazy TV viewer. I watch plenty of television but not, left to myself, many programmes. Instinctively unadventurous, I show intense [...]

At his coronation as the new chairman of the BBC, Michael Grade said he was not interested in arguments about the quality of television that were conducted by reference to [...]

The best, most ambitious drama of the year was The Second Coming on ITV1, in which Russell T Davies resurrected Christ. JC was returned to modern-day Manchester as a video [...]

Big Ideas That Changed the World (Five) To 'do what it says on the tin' is the growth cliche of the year. In a media landscape crowded with trickery, the [...]

ANDREW BILLEN thinks we should see even more of Jonathan Ross On Radio 2 on Saturday morning, Jonathan Ross did an unusual thing - unusual for him and unusual for [...]

wonders at the spate of time-starved dramas Brevity, as we know, is the soul of wit. A development in TV drama worries me, however. In the past fortnight, three prestigious [...]

ANDREW BILLEN finds Babyfather all washed out and wayward The website setup to help turn Babyfather (Wednesdays, 9pm, BBC2) into more of a cult than it will ever be makes [...]

ANDREW BILLEN savours quality work by the new history men History is the new rock'n'roll -- and who would have thought it? Certainly not I, who, with customary infallibility, suggested [...]

ANDREW BILLEN on a timely drama of racist assault and germ warfare Into these dark days, Channel 4 decided a little rain must fall - well, anthrax, actuU ally. As [...]

ANDREW BILLEN on a costly portrayal of heroism that is being undersold If you had to summarise the difference between British and American attitudes to the Second World War, you [...]

ANDREW BILLEN worries about social-realist drama getting into the wrong hands There was a time when I feared dispossessed Britain was never going to get a shout in television drama. [...]

relishes the writing in a drama of gay meets straight The second episode of Bob and Rose (Mondays, 9pm, ITV1) had our odd couple preparing for a second date. Their [...]

finds it hard to believe in the psychic detective The engaging thing - the only engaging thing - about Keith Charles, the so-called psychic detective featured on ITV's Real Life [...]

ANDREW BILLEN on the talentless who, one way or other, are bound to be stars A decade ago, John Guare wrote Six Degrees of Separation, a comedy in which sophisticated [...]

Could the BBC's populism be the cause of ITV's woes? ANDREW BILLEN doubts it The measure of how brilliantly ITV' s director of channels, David Liddiment, did with his MacTaggart [...]

ANDREW BILLEN is fascinated and horrified by the lives of modern celebs In my day job, I'm a celebrity interviewer. The first part of Rupert Smith's merciless Celebrity: the rise [...]

holds up well under interrogation There's so much detective fiction on television that we should be experts already. BBC2's documentary series Catching the Killers (Fridays, 9pm) shows how little we [...]

ANDREW BILLEN feels a mild stirring of the spirit on watching Alpha In 1963, David Frost was the hottest, wickedest thing on television, the Chris Morris of his day. Early [...]

ANDREW BILLEN on America's first prime-time gay sitcom Frasier is a comedy about two brothers with gay sensibilities who happen to be straight. With their effete love of fine wines [...]

ANDREW BILLEN unearths a gem on dead-end office life in Slough The Office (Mondays, 9.30pm, BBC2) is the funniest comedy since Marion and Geoff. The office in question is located [...]

ANDREW BILLEN on a BBC series focusing coolly on a spot that's still too hot Endgame in Ireland (BBC2, Sundays, 8pm) is too guileless a piece of work to go [...]

With actors of this calibre, the cliches pale You are much more likely to have seen the trailers for The Cazalets than to have seen The Cazalets. In them, no [...]

ANDREW BILLEN hails Channel 4's Picasso series as a total triumph What nonsense it is, Robin Day used to say, this guff about getting tutored in television presentation skills. Have [...]

ANDREW BILLEN on the strange allure of a crime drama set in Las Vegas With the hysterical teacher from Big Brother and the eventually cured optimist from Tory Central Office [...]

Andrew Billen on how a Dimbleby got muddled and the Bell suit crumpled The were-you-still-up-for-Portillo moment came tolerably early. At 1.45 am, Peter Mandelson, sporting a boy band fringe, delivered [...]

ANDREW BILLEN looks at our fascination with real-life breakdowns In drama, there is nothing so compulsive as watching a human being crack up. Think Medea, Lear, Macbeth and Gabler. But [...]

sizes up two 'urban' dramas set in Leeds For 'gritty', realist dramas about life on a council estate in Leeds, Penny Woolcock's two Tina films are extraordinarily ungritty and unrealistic. [...]

On a politely lavish drama a little lacking in grit I am always slightly surprised at just how much work the writer and director Stephen Poliakoff gets from our national [...]

ANDREW BILLEN on a painfully funny sitcom that shows the family as war zone The wonderfully funny new American sitcom Malcolm in the Middle presents the world from the perspective [...]

ANDREW BILLEN enjoys the drama of two shows, but not their formats A mathematician recently proved, writing in the Daily Telegraph, that the dearth of good new tunes could not [...]

ANDREW BILLEN looks at how women have clawed their way to the top It was the contention of Ballbreakers on the Box that women had a tough time getting from [...]

BBCl's new series is flash and filmic, but is it truthful, wonders ANDREW BILLEN There is no BBC God slot as such any more, but in the old days being [...]

ANDREW BILLEN likes the realistic touches in a new series, but it's not top league Teachers (Wednesdays, 10pm, Channel 4) is Down With Skool for the common room, a schoolboy [...]

ANDREW BILLEN is less than happy with Paul Whitehouse's new comic creation British television is going through a patch of being not at all bad. Comic Relief (BBC1, mainly), which [...]

The Holocaust Memorial Day coverage packs pathos, but fails to convince ANDREW BILLEN I don't think I have ever been left feeling so ambivalent about a piece of television as [...]

It may be Channel 4 without the worthy bits, but ANDREW BILLEN loves E4 for its US imports The colonisation of television's digital future by the great powers of the [...]

Ignore the republican rebellion and enjoy the romance If the Telegraphs and tabloids were hoping for screams of horror from their readers over Ronan Bennett' sRebel Heart (Sundays, 9pm, BBC1), [...]

TELEVISION ANDREW BILLEN loses the plot...but finds he can't forget In a Land of Plenty In art, obscurity is not a crime, but it can be irritating. BBC2's prestige-chasing new [...]

ANDREW BILLEN settles down on the sofa for a surfeit of Christmas drama and comedy Were we led all the way to Christmas 2000 for a birth or for a [...]

ANDREW BILLEN on how the cameras have a strange effect on our political leaders Late in the evening on the day before Tuesday's Ask the Prime Minister on ITV (12 [...]

A channel devoted to culture has been launched. But how highbrow is it. I had real nerves switching to Sky Digital's channel 199 last Saturday afternoon and finding there an [...]

TELEVISION ANDREW BILLEN wonders if Kingsley Amis provides enough substance for a BBC drama The fascination of costume drama lies in appreciating the humanity that lies beneath the corsetry. The [...]

Rory Bremner's winter special on life under new Labour charms Satire, when it works, never needs an excuse, but it can have several worthwhile, socially redemptive functions. Its instinctive ridiculing [...]

ANDREW BILLEN laments the last night of Chief Inspector Morse On ITV on Wednesday 15 November 2000, Sergeant Lewis turned to his prime suspect with anger in his eyes. 'Inspector [...]

ANDREW BILLEN welcomes a writer as he comes into his own with a superb drama Ivy, a fossilised crone with hair like bleached candyfloss, is making a royal departure from [...]

TELEVISION ANDREW BILLEN on how we are living through boob-infested days Not since News at Ten in the early 1980s freeze-framed Diana Spencer walking upstairs to check if a nipple [...]

ANDREW BILLEN sizes up two new dramas for weekday evenings What have we here? I do believe it is a fully functional Channel 4 drama series. Somehow, the best bits [...]

ANDREW BILLEN is reduced to tears by the changing face of the BBC's Sunday nights We are at the birth of BBC l's not-the-Nine O'Clock News schedules, and the very [...]