"…one of the most entertaining arts shows around…exactly what TV ought to be about"
(Michael Holden in The Guardian on Iconoclasts (Series 3), 3rd February, 2008)
[in the letters page as a response] "More channels certainly doesn't mean better programmes but, as an arts lover, I can look through the TV Guide - specially at a channel like Sky Arts, which has become the best cultural channel in the UK by far - and find a huge amount. It's lijke a visual library at my fingertips"
(Phil Grabsky in The Guardian, 19th January, 2008)
"Multichannel TV, and satellite in particlar, is often cited as a major contributor to a drift into superficial, short-attention-span programming, so there's a certain irony that niche satellite channel Sky Arts has has chosen to make a no-frills, low budget version of a classic stage play as its first period drama....As producer Averil Brennan points out, it's the type of project which the mainstream networks never do any more. "
(Paul Hoggart, Broadcast on She Stoops To Conquer, 18th January, 2008)
"What a cracking, cheeky idea for a series….Myatt, who gives us a concise precis of Hopper's work, is a spectacularly good teacher and a superb presenter"
(Radio Times on Mastering The Art, 3rd-9th of November, 2007)
“The best chat show host on TV right now is not Parky or Jonathan Ross, but Clive James. Visiting for a typically discursive conversation tonight is the actor Jeremy Irons.”
(The Independent, Tuesday 6th of November, 2007)
“Those who argue that British television has entered a period of terminal decline should either get a life or more practically a personal video recorder. Then you can have 40 hours of quality television just waiting for a viewing slot, including if you want, regular operas from the Metropolitan in New York from the Sky Arts channel. Is that serious enough?”
(Raymond Snoddy, November 5th '07 Independent's Media Weekly, p12)
“What a cracking, cheeky idea for a series...Myatt, who gives us a concise précis of Hopper’s work, is a spectacularly good teacher and a superb presenter.”
(The Radio Times on Mastering the Art, 4th of November 2007)
"With its powerful images of a country ravaged by napalm, I would count this as an artistic masterpiece that must have left audeinces spellbound."
(Daily Telegraph, Patricia Wynne Davies on Ave Maria, part of the Russian and Revolutionary season, 2nd November, 2007)
"As a new series of The Book Show returns to SkyArts, it has been expanded to 50 minutes, and it remains - shockingly, in my opinion - the only programme properly dedicated to books in the whole of British broadcasting. For all our self-congratulation about the quality of our television, this contrasts painfully with the on-screen books offerings of many other European countries."
(Jan Dalley, The Financial Times, 6th October 2007 )
"..viewing figures that can seem small when set against programmes that reach millions are still worth having. An audience of a few hundred thousand may be off the radar of ratings-chasing producers but it is far more than can ever see a performance at, say, the Royal Opera House (capacity just over 2,250) or the National Theatre's Olivier auditorium (around 1,120). Sky Arts may have an audience too small to register on Broadcasters' Audience Research Board ratings but it does a valuable job in broadening access to culture. Last night it had Eugene Onegin and Islamic music as well as Pete Doherty's poetry."
(The Guardian's Leader - "In praise of...arts television" 28th Aug '07)
"The excellent Friday Night Hijack slot is fast becoming unmissable viewing, with this week's guest curator, comedy writer David Nobbs (The Fall and Rise of Reginald Perrin), introducing another first-class selection of arts programming. His ecletic choices start at 8pm, with a portrait of the late playwright and author Arthur Miller. This is followed at 9.15pm by an exhilarating concert from the great American blues guitarist and songwriter BB King. A profile of the English painter David Hockney (10.10pm) and a biopic of the Finnish composer Jean Sibelius (11.10pm) round off the evening in style."
(Sloan Freer's 'Digital: Pick of the Day' in The Observer 5th Aug '07)
“The Book Show is the sort of show the BBC should be making and no one was more surprised than me that it was Sky who hired me. But they're clever people at Sky, and they realise the way that public taste is veering. People are sick of being fed patronising rubbish .. I've been arguing for 15 years that it should be all-embracing and that it's possible to talk about Bach and Arctic Monkeys in one breath. That's how people digest culture. I think it's to Sky's credit that they're making a programme that BBC television should be making”
(Mariella Frostrup comments on Hay-on-Sky in The Independent Media Weekly, 21st May 2007)
“Sky is dabbling in the arts. Indeed, it now has a channel called Sky Arts devoted exclusively to the cultural life of the nation. And not only that but Sky Arts will next week broadcast, to use a footballing analogy, the Premiership of all arts events, the Hay-on-Wye Festival .. Frostrup says arts on Sky is a sign of the times. “I think their involvement in it is phenomenal and they wouldn't be doing it unless they felt that audiences wanted it”
(David Stephenson in The Sunday Express, 20th May 2007)
"With its aerial photography, majestic tracking shots and languid close-ups of flowers, all shot in high-definition, watching Garden Treasures was a bit like being in horticultural heaven."
(Philip Wilson on National Trust: Garden Treasures in The Daily Telegraph; 16th April 2007)
"Given the bleak economic realities that govern commercial television these days, one can almost forgive Melvyn Bragg's South Bank Show for its emphasis on celebrity culture, but the continued existence of Alan Yentob's paltry Imagine as the only regular arts programme on the BBC's flagship channel is an insult to viewers from our sole licence-fee-funded public service broadcaster. Today's BBC1 would never screen such a coherent and educational documentary such as this [Artsworld's Frank Lloyd Wright], not that Frank Lloyd Wright would have cared."
(Victor Lewis Smith on the Artsworld programme Frank Lloyd Wright in The Evening Standard; 13th November 2006)
"...A TV books programme launches next Thursday on Sky's Artsworld channel. Presented by Mariella Frostrup, the studio-based Book Show will feature writers from across the spectrum... What a pity none of the terrestrial channels, or BBC4, has managed to sustain a book programme."
(The Literator, on The Book Show in The Independent; 27th October 2006)
"After a five-year break, Clive James returns to TV with a new show which is both high art and high-tech."
(James Silver, on Clive James: Talking in the Library in Media Guardian; 23rd October 2006)
"In Britain we have cutting-edge young dance-makers such as Wayne McGregor and Christopher Wheeldon working with the Royal Ballet. Last month Sky TV broadcast Ballet Rocks, a new work to the music of Bloc Party by English National Ballet's Jenna Lee."
(Luke Jennings, on Ballet Rocks in The Observer; 22nd October 2006)
"Breathtakingly filmed by Richard Hall, and made in partnership with the splendid...Artsworld channel, this was top-quality documentary-making..."
(Victor Lewis Smith on Love Letter to London in The Evening Standard; 30th August 2006)
"A remarkable new documentary."
(Kevin Maher on Iconoclasts in The Times; 27th July 2006)
"It pains every unexercised bitchy bone in my body to say it, but the Art Fund is magnificent and top marks to Artsworld for marking its centenary with a TV series."
(Grayson Perry on Saved for the Nation in Times2; 24th May 2006)
"Sky officially launched their [HD] system yesterday by transmitting National Trust: National Treasures, the first HD series to be commissioned by their excellent Artsworld HD channel... Not since the first time I visited an Imax cinema have I actually gasped out loud at the sheer clarity of an image, as I did last night when I saw this programme's opening aerial steady cam shots, sweeping low over Hardwick in Derbyshire... So despite all the arguments about the cultural necessity of the licence fee, High Definition enthusiasts can look to Sky not just for sport, but also for high quality arts and documentaries..."
(Victor Lewis Smith in TV Watch, Evening Standard; 23rd May 2006)
"...here are the treasures of the National Trust as you've never seen them before. This 10-parter is the first home-grown origination to be premiered in HD in this country, and the quality of the pictures of Hardwick Hall, Derbyshire is genuinely stunning...every fibre of the mansion's renowned tapestries shows up with complete clarity."
(Simon Horsford and Matt Warman on National Trust: National Treasures, The Daily Telegraph; 22nd May 2006)
"Saved for the Nation is heavy on the rostrum camera, with lots of lascivious shots of Velazquez's Rokeby Venus, Canova's Three Graces and Whistler's Nocturne: Blue and Gold - Old Battersea Bridge. It becomes clear early on that some things just aren't meant to be too closely examined. Under the pin-sharp gaze of HD, for example, Whistler's Nocturne...becomes a series of blue and yellow blobs. A sculpture of a Buddhist monk in the British Museum, on the other hand, is so perfectly reproduced, you could practically have stolen the thing."
(Stephen Armstrong, Sunday Times Culture; 14th May 2006)
"The BBC's pre-eminence as an arts broadcaster is under threat from Artsworld. And with HDTV, the BSkyB channel is about to raise the stakes even further."
(James Silver in Media Weekly, The Independent; 8th May 2006)
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