Question. If Doctor Who has such a flexible format, why does it revisit its own ideas so often? Conjecture. Because ideas breed ideas – just not necessarily new ones. For the bulk of its running time, ‘Time Heist’ plays – as it intends to – like a sassy, spacey variation on the heist thriller. However, … >
It’s a brand new story in this week’s Chasing Shadows episode, and whilst ITV’s latest crime drama continues to underwhelm, it’s still oddly enjoyable, much like last week. The first of part a two-part tale, this time writer Rob Williams moves away from the obvious teenage runaway shtick that dominated the opening story, and instead … >
Bankers, eh? You know the drill. Boo, hiss, etc. Since the real-world economic crisis (now also canon in Doctor Who thanks to ‘The End of Time’) they’ve become besuited bogeyfolk. Like The Silence, but with champagne corks. Still, after ‘Listen’ it’s not like you can keep your savings under the bed. Callous, calculating, and ruthless, … >
Watching a nostalgia-fest with plenty of popular tunes and cobbled streets is, frankly, about as ITV as you can get. And so it is with Cilla, a three-part biopic all about – Surprise, Surprise (come on, it’s best we get that joke out of the way sooner rather than later) – Cilla Black, starring Sheridan … >
Back in 2007’s Season 3, Steven Moffat submitted the script for ‘Blink’, an episode of Doctor Who directly inspired by a story he had written for the previous year’s Doctor Who annual, which sought to explore the creepy possibilities of monsters inspired by nightmares and neuroses. Now, seven years later, he’s crafted ‘Listen’, an episode … >
Clara Oswald’s on a first date with Danny Pink. It’s maybe the most important date in all of Time and Space. More important even than 26/06/10. Or maybe it’s not. Or maybe it’s simultaneously significant and inconsequential. Just like how the episode that it’s centred around is all at once a good story told well … >
There’s a marked improvement in the second of instalment of Chasing Shadows, which, whilst only slight, definitely bodes well for the rest of ITV’s new crime series. Yes, the dialogue is still clichéd, unoriginal and rather clunky in a couple of places. But unlike last week’s underwhelming opening episode, this time there’s a much faster … >
Finales always have a lot to wrap up, and usually not a lot of time to do it in. Very often they have to tie up many dangling plot threads whilst enticing us with reasons to stay watching incase these characters should return. In the final episode of Kay Mellor’s maternity comedy dama, In The … >
Which stories are more real? Those where their authenticity is proven, or the ones we have retold in our heads, where literal truth has given way to poetic meaning? It’s the single big idea at the heart of ‘Robot of Sherwood’, and if it sounds pretentious, really it isn’t. It is, in fact, as comic … >
Another month, another new ITV crime drama. Chasing Shadows is the latest cop show to hit our screens, boasting an interesting cast and a premise that promises something slightly different from the usual police prodedural. Following the investigations of a Missing Persons Unit that operates to find the missing before they become the victims of … >