The Courier & Advertiser (Angus and Dundee)
CHILDREN IN NEED: GOT IT COVERED
Earlier this year, 10 well-known British actors assembled at the legendary Abbey Road Studios in London to record an album for Children in Need. Under the tutelage of a team including hit-making songwriter and producer Guy Chambers, these warbling novices were asked to choose songs that have personal meaning to them. Hence this rather pleasant and mercifully nonluvvie documentary in which we’re treated to the unlikely spectacle of Jim Broadbent doing a countrified version of Blue Moon, Olivia Colman performing Portishead’s Glory Box with her Fleabag co-star Phoebe Waller-bridge on ukulele, and genuinely touching versions of Yellow by Coldplay and Sunshine on Leith by The Proclaimers performed, respectively, by Doctors Jodie Whittaker and David Tennant.
GET RICH OR TRY DYING: MUSIC’S MEGA LEGACIES
Hosted, with commendable dedication to maximum archness, by Ana Matronic from Scissor Sisters, this depressing, number-crunching documentary explains how the estates of superstar music artists continue to rake in billions posthumously. We meet a financially secure roster of producers, publicists, lawyers and family members. Deceased legends and born again ‘brands’ under review include the Ramones, David Bowie, Bob Marley (“Sustainability was so important to him,” smarms the American businessman in charge of his estate), Prince and Elvis Presley, who laid the lucrative blueprint for the entire so-called legacy industry. The King has been dead for 42 years and currently has over 14 million followers on Twitter. It’s what he would’ve wanted.