The panel discussed:
The Boy Whose Skin Fell Off
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I have written about television for 20 years now and I have never seen anything quite like this.
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Ever since television was invented, one fear of the medium's detractors was that it would be used to show death: suicides or executions transmitted live. That hasn't happened so far but, more usefully,
a small group of brave people, including the writers John Diamond and Oscar Moore, chose to make documentaries about their terminal illnesses.
Even by such standards, though, a film being shown by Channel 4 next week is unusually bold in tone and frank in what it shows.
The Boy Whose Skin Fell Off - a stark title which alerts viewers to the images to expect - follows the last few months of Jonny Kennedy, a 36-year-old in the final stages of a condition called EB, in which the skin constantly sheds itself and the body remains stranded in childhood.
To publicise his charity seeking a cure, Jonny Kennedy decided that he would make his funeral arrangements - and then die - on screen.
The Boy Whose Skin Fell Off is on Channel 4, 25 March at 9pm.
Bill Brandt
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It is
so interesting to see so many
images that have become really
iconic collected together.
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A new exhibition features the work of a man who told elaborate lies about where he came from but who caught the truth about Britain in the 1930s and 40s more than any other photographer.
Bill Brandt was German but - traumatised by an unhappy childhood there and Hitler's rise - he moved to England and came to act and sound quite as English as his contemporary and rival Cecil Beaton.
Like Beaton, Brandt snapped toffs and celebrities but, as the 150-picture exhibition marking the centenary of his birth in Hamburg show, also had a much wider range: through surrealistic images and nudes to his famous photo-journalism depicting the Depression and the War.
The Bill Brandt retrospective opens at the V&A 24 March.
Gielgud's Letters
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Absolutely unspeakable emotional emptiness at the non-existent core of this.
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John Gielgud - the most beautifully-spoken classical actor of the 20th century - was always known in the theatrical skits on Spitting Image as "Dear Dear Johnny".
But the phrasing which puts the actor in the public eye again, four years after his death, is "Dear X.......Love, John".
The publication of the actor's letters reveals the actor's attempts to disguise his private life in a period when homosexuality was illegal and, because Gielgud lived to the age of 96, cover seven decades of theatre history.
Fear X
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This
is a film that surprises
you.
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The story of Mall security guard, Harry Cain, who's wife is mysteriously murdered in Wisconsin. Harry must find out why his wife was killed but he will soon learn that things are seldom what they appear to be. He begins his bizarre investigation, obtaining certain information that leads him to Montana, in search of the supposed murder.
Fear X is co-written by the author of Last Exit to Brooklyn, Hubert Selby Jr.
Opens 26 March.
On the panel were:
Newsnight Review, BBC Two's weekly cultural round-up, follows Newsnight on Friday evenings at 2300 GMT.
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