Chopin, Chopin!

Howard Goodall traces the story of music from the ancient world to the modern day
BBC2 has a late Christmas present for Goodall fans: six hours of him, charting the entire history of how the complex beast we now call music came to be. Every other modern presenter would fly around Europe at licence-payers’ expense to do links in lovely places — not Goodall. He stays in a sparse studio explaining why P�rotin, Guido of Arezzo and Dunstaple were great innovators and demonstrating triads on his keyboard. He thinks subject matter is more important than presentation. He’s right.

A typically harsh and sexually charged look at juvenile delinquency from Spanish provocateur Eloy de la Iglesia. Follow El Jaro as he creates havoc in the streets of Madrid, inciting the wraith of the police and the grown-up gangsters, set to a soundtrack mixing contemporaneous Spanish rock with Chopin and Tchaikovsky. Iglesia has a knack for bringing out the lonely emotions in his rough and tumble, lower class characters. José Luis Manzano carries the film as the sweet and tender hooligan caught in a self-destructive cycle of rage.