After fifteen years off-screen, a move to a new channel and the widening variety of decidedly more brash comedy filling our television screens these days, the return of fan favourite Brit-com Birds of a Feather was always going to be something of a gamble.
It’s fascinating to see how a show treats its final ever episode. Some revel in nostalgia. Some look to the future. Some go big before they go home, while others try for a more intimate personal story to wrap things up.
In its final hour Misfits manages to tick almost off all of the above by reciting its greatest hits – time travel, violence, moving deaths, and enough crudity to fill a septic tank.
About halfway into Episode 9 of The Tunnel our reviewing notes on the episode just stopped. No, we hadn’t hit our drinking-grade Boîte de Vin earlier than usual and passed out. We were so wrapped up in hoping that Laura Roebuck wasn’t smithereened into a fine red mist that we forgot we had hands. Good grief, that was tense. That was bloody tense.
With the seventh episode of Ripper Street Series 2 tonight came both the first half of a thrilling two-part finale and – as we found out last week – the penultimate episode EVER.
Lawrence Rickard + sarcasm. That’s basically all you need to know about this week’s Yonderland. It’s time for Rickard and Jim Howick to get more screen time as the Chamberlain and King Bernard respectively.
After the dramatic events of ‘Pandora’s Box’ culminating in Medusa’s transformation into the snake headed monstrosity of legend, we had hoped Atlantis might maintain some momentum. Instead, tonight’s ‘The Price of Hope’ was a transitory piece, appearing principally to introduce two characters for later in the saga.
So far this series we’ve held off giving any episode of Misfits the full 5 stars. Partly because none of them have been perfect. Partly because we knew deep down in our tummyguts that there’d come an episode that would nudge just a head above the rest to truly deserve them. And guess what? Our tummyguts were right.
It’s Episode 8 of this ten-part cross-country endurance murderthon and finally we can start to see the light at the end of The Tunnel. It’s about time. We’ve been stumbling around in the dark for what feels like ages.
If the theme of last week’s Ripper Street was love, then this week it was faith.
In another brilliantly sharp and tragic episode, the second series of BBC One’s period crime drama continued to entertain on the one hand, whilst quietly investigating what it means to be human on the other – this time through the lens of religious faith.
A slight dip in laughs tonight is counteracted by a slightly darker tone (relatively speaking), with sinister undercurrents afoot in Elf’s behaviour and in the mysterious goings-on in Ennythingos. While there’s still a lot of imagination on display, there’s perhaps more reliance on bawdy humour here than previously.