A House Through Time, Series 3, BBC Two review - Bristol under the microscope

★★★★ A HOUSE THROUGH TIME, SERIES 3, BBC TWO Bristol under the microscope

Slavery, piracy and satire at No 10, Guinea Street

David Olusoga’s A House Through Time concept (BBC Two) has proved a popular hit, using a specific property as a keyhole through which to observe historical and social changes. After previously picking sites in Liverpool and Newcastle, this time he’s chosen Bristol, the city where he has lived for over 20 years.

Album: Hodge - Shadows in Blue

★★★★ HODGE - SHADOWS IN BLUE Bristol techno-dub mainstay releases overdue first album

Bristol techno-dub mainstay releases his first album a full decade into his career

For underground music producers, there almost always comes a phase in life when they accept they're no longer young guns and embrace either massively complicated synthesisers, floaty new age music, or both. For Bristol-based Jake Martin aka Hodge it's the latter. This, his debut album after a decade releasing a couple of dozen EPs on connoisseurs' favourite labels and DJing around the world, has all the signifiers.

Cyrano, Bristol Old Vic review – comedy with emotional intelligence

★★★★ CYRANO, BRISTOL OLD VIC Tristan Sturrock's lead brings energy matched by depth

Tristan Sturrock's lead performance brings energy matched by depth

Tom Morris’s production of Cyrano starts with a procession of nuns, some of them bearded, chanting verses from the medieval mystic Hildegarde of Bingen. In this original and lively version of Edmond Rostand’s late 19th century classic, Morris has played fast and loose with the original text, translated here and brought up to date by the poet and theatre maker Peter Oswald.

Pride and Prejudice* (*sort of), Bristol Old Vic review - Jane Austen as shallow romcom

★★ PRIDE AND PREJUDICE* (*SORT OF), BRISTOL OLD VIC Jane Austen as shallow romcom

A tongue-in-cheek take on the beloved classic misfires

It is a truth perhaps not quite but almost universally accepted that Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice, beloved of GSCE English Lit examiners, and often adapted for the screen, is a part of the canon, waiting to be re-interpreted according to the fashions of the day.

Train Your Baby Like A Dog, Channel 4 review - an animal behaviourist tackles tantrums

Who's a good boy then? Children are just like dogs - or are they?

Animal behaviourist Jo-Rosie Haffenden, who lives in Spain, has some very good dogs (and a charming toddler, who knows how to sit). Can she transfer her training skills to three-year-old Graydon in Bristol, who has six tantrums a day, and 14-month-old Dulcie in Croydon, who has never gone to sleep in her cot? “Kids are more like dogs than people think,” she says in Train Your Baby Like a Dog, a new parenting programme called “dehumanising” in a Change.org petition asking the network to cancel the show, signed by nearly 25,000 people this week.

I Fagiolini, Hollingworth, St George's Bristol review - Leonardo and music, immortal, invisible

Brilliant polyphony of sound and image, matched and opposed

Having started their tour at the Barbican on Sunday, I Fagiolini descended on Bristol with their Leonardo da Vinci celebration on precisely the 500th anniversary of the great man’s death, a fact that earned them an extra round of applause from the proud but sometimes neglected Bristolians in St.George’s. 

Massive Attack, Steel Yard Bristol review - propaganda and pomp

★★★ MASSIVE ATTACK, STEEL YARD BRISTOL Music with a message shoots itself in the foot

Music with a message that shoots itself in the foot

Massive Attack have travelled a long way from the Dugout, the Bristol bar where the collective first tried their hand at spinning discs for a crowd whose cultural mix reflected the constant ferment of one of Britain’s most vibrant cities.

Imagine... Becoming Cary Grant, BBC One review - contemplative portrait of a star

★★★★★ IMAGINE...BECOMING CARY GRANT, BBC ONE Contemplative portrait of a star

Beautifully rendered depiction of the troubled life of a consummate actor

Mark Kidel has made a beautiful, ethereal film projecting his version of Cary Grant and as such it’s destined to be picked over by the actor’s legions of fans, each of whom will have a different version. But what would the man himself have thought if he’d lived to see Becoming Cary Grant?

Twelfth Night, Royal Lyceum Theatre, Edinburgh - a touch too sweet

Psychedelic Shakespeare feels rather too charming for its own good

“Well, that was really sweet,” one young audience member in front of me remarked on his way out of Edinburgh’s Lyceum Theatre. And yes, there’s no denying that director Wils Wilson’s colourful, psychedelic, summer-of-love-set Twelfth Night, the Lyceum’s season opener in a co-production with the Bristol Old Vic, is warm and generous, lovingly crafted, and – yes, touchingly sweet.