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The final episode of Banished delivered an emotional punch as the show went out with a howling bang rather than a whimper. Honour and virtue were the watchwords as Mrs Johnson realised she had been duped, Tommy met his end, Captain Collins engaged in some soul searching and the authorities struggle to keep control of … >
This week’s episode saw Banished finally hit its stride. For the first time really, the full episode was packed with dramatic tension and intrigue. There were still issues involving some poorly written dialogue and some questionable character choices – Catherine’s volte face where her feelings for Major Ross were concerned felt unconvincing. If admitting that … >
After a somewhat frustrating wait, this week’s episode finally delivered some of the drama and tension that previous instalments have only hinted at, and yet three dimensional characterisation and a sense of consequence were still vexingly absent. The episode opened with Freeman contemplating his new life in the pay of the Governor. His fellow convicts … >
The latest episode of Jimmy McGovern’s Banished once again raised some interesting issues, but again failed to capitalise on them by allowing any drama and tension mustered to dissipate almost immediately. Part of the problem is that, as Freeman discovered in this episode, the colony camp is a small canvas on which to paint. In … >
If you are to believe Jimmy McGovern’s version of the first British colony in Australia, it truly is a miracle that a modern civilisation emerged from these unpromising beginnings given the amount of time the commanding soldiers spent with nothing on their minds but where their next sexual encounter was going to come from. It’s … >
‘More than just a penal colony, what we have here ladies and gentleman is the birth of a nation.’ So says the idealistic yet unflappably pragmatic Governor Phillip in the second instalment of Jimmy McGovern’s new convict drama and yet moments before making this pronouncement Phillip is telling us that ‘England does not give a … >
The BBC have been on a good run recently when it comes to original historical drama, what with the excellent The Village and the equally good Peaky Blinders, not to mention the exquisite Wolf Hall. To continue the run they have enlisted the reliable talents of Jimmy McGovern, he of Cracker and The Lakes fame, … >
European police procedurals are very much in vogue at the moment following the surprise success of Denmark’s The Killing, but where this Paris-set series suffers somewhat from a surfeit of characters and plot lines.
It’s a wonder there are still new crimes to cover now that there are exactly 108 (a complicated lab test involving iodine was used to determine this number) variants of the CSI franchise.
In comparison to the likes of The Wire, The Shield and The Sopranos, 24 is beginning to look like a format that has had its time.