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Maybe it’s joke fatigue – the audience’s funnybones worn down by a lathe of relentless puns – but it tends to be the case with A Touch of Cloth that the second half feels a little less punchy and fresh than the first. It happened in Series 1, it happened more so in Series 2 … >
Holmes devotees will know that The Great Detective’s last canon adventure was ‘His Last Bow’, in which he foiled the German agent Von Bork on the eve of World War One. It ends with Holmes in an oddly reflective mood: ‘There’s an east wind coming all the same, such a wind as never blew on … >
Well if it ain’t broke don’t fix it, and no one’s taken the tool-kit to A Touch of Cloth. Charlie Brooker and Daniel Maier’s police procedural parody once more turns your television into a Naked Gun of puns and fires relentlessly at your face until you bleed laughter or your sense of humour is shot … >
While Series 2 has lost much of the obliqueness of its predecessor – and there is no doubt that Utopia this year has used its torture spoon to feed you plot rather than push perplexities in your eye – the fact there are fewer questions has left greater space to admire performance of its talented … >
If you’ve ever read Alan Partridge’s autobiography ‘I, Partridge’, you’ll remember the chapter where he details his detective series, ‘Swallow’. It’s a morass of cop cliches and odd ideas; a police procedural from the Monkey Tennis mind. BBC One’s pilot for the police comedy drama Walter seems to have come from the same place, but … >
You know Chekhov’s Gun, right? The dramatic principle that everything should have a purpose. Anton Chekhov explained it with a rifle – ‘If it’s not going to be fired, it shouldn’t be there’ – and Utopia loves to follow that rule. Hardly is a pistol pulled in Episode 4 without someone’s blood painting the wall. … >
Sherlock‘s next adventure might have been confirmed for Christmas 2015, but that still feels oh-so-far away. So what’s the devoted Sherlock fan to do to pass the time? Here are five ways you can fill that gap and honour the first man in history to give the Deerstalker sex appeal… Practice the fine Art … >
What’s a modern conspiracy thriller without some hacking? Nothing. Since humanity first hooked its TV up to an Atari to play Pong, ‘hacking’ has been an entirely misrepresented but convenient techno-obfustication to leapfrog plot difficulties faster than the speed of typing. It’s the wi-fi Expelliarmus. A deus.exe machina. And it’s no different in Utopia, where … >
It’s summer; time to book your holiday! But where to head? Well, the planet Sol 3 – designated by its indigenous species as ‘Earth’ – has long been a popular destination for visitors from around the universe, who flock to it for the sights, the food, and the quality target practice provided by the Human … >
Making last night’s Episode 1 feel increasingly redundant, the second instalment of Utopia 2 brings us up to speed on where everyone is since we last left them aaaaaages ago, and does little else. But only in a show like this could that not really matter. Because Utopia is so abrasively bonkers it manages to … >