On Expenses, BBC Four

Brian Cox as Speaker Michael Martin: not even tribal loyalty could save him

Satirical drama about the Commons expenses scandal has Swiftian overtones

As one of the opening captions put it, "you couldn't make it up",  and this sprightly drama about the House of Commons expenses scandal duly tacked its way skilfully up the channel between satire and slapstick. Concluding correctly that wallowing in moral outrage was not the way to handle a subject whose full ramifications have yet to land on us (and them) with their full crushing force, writer Tony Saint instead deftly depicted the Commons as a kind of Swiftian monstrosity, ludicrous yet malevolent.

Van Doesburg and the International Avant-Garde: Constructing a New World, Tate Modern

The future is square in Tate Modern's mammoth survey of Dutch movement

Modernist art movements are a lot like totalitarian regimes. They produce their declaratory manifestos, send forth their declamatory edicts, and, before you know it, a Year Zero mentality prevails: the past must be declared null and void. Seeking to overturn 1,000 years of Western civilisation with a universal aesthetic utopia of brightly coloured squares and boldly delineated lines, a confident Theo van Doesburg, founding member and chief theorist of the Dutch movement De Stijl, wrote, “What the Cross represented to the early Christians, the square represents to us all.

The Virtual Revolution, BBC Two

The Virtual Revolution: Dr Aleks Krotoski provides a lucid and thought-provoking overview of the internet

The internet - a force for good or ill?

If I wanted to be solipsistic about this, I could say that the opening episode of The Virtual Revolution, the new BBC Two series about the changes wrought by the internet, is also the story of theartsdesk.com. It certainly felt personal at times. But then we print journalists, now launched together into cyberspace, are but one (very important, naturally) sub-atomic particle of what is variously described here as "the fastest change since the Industrial Revolution" and "the most exciting development since Gutenberg".

The Boys Are Back

Clive Owen gives us Father's Day in January

Clive Owen pours on the charm in a film that shuts out the females

Boys will be boys, and, eventually, grown boys as opposed to men. That's the cheerful (depending on how you look at it) message of The Boys Are Back, in which Clive Owen pours on the not inconsiderable charm as a father suddenly left having to care for his two sons. That  women barely enter into the scenario - and when they do, emerge as so many killjoys - will appeal to the eternal adolescent in a movie that aims to make eternal roustabouts of us all. Let's face it:  wouldn't you rather sit on the bonnet of dad's very, very speedy car instead of - ugh! - doing the dishes?

The Cultural Highlights of the Decade, BBC Online

A decade when professionals were elbowed out by the public

This week the BBC News online magazine is running a Portrait of the Decade. Each day has brought a consideration of the words, the events, the people, the objects and, today, the cultural highlights of the decade. I was invited to consider those highlights.

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