Wow. We’ll get to that final moment in a minute, but first let’s look back to where it all began.
In our review of the first episode we called Tommy Shelby ‘the conquering Alexander wearing a crown of razor blades’ (We did. Honest), and over the past six weeks we’ve watched as Tommy the Great has expanded his Brummie Empire through cunning and violence to the point where he’s a legitimate power in every sense of the words.
It’s not surprising that Scandinavian culture-clash cop show The Bridge has been adapted. What is surprising is that more dramas haven’t been based around The Channel Tunnel. The 31 mile subaquatic claustrophobia pipe filled with hurtling metal and disparate lives is a big concrete sausage of stories, yet to date the most dramatic thing to have happened in it was the denouement to Mission: Impossible. And that was 17 years ago.
After the horrific events of last week’s house party, viewers of Downton Abbey will have tuned in this week to see how sensitively Julian Fellowes dealt with the fallout, and whether any kindness could be restored if not to Anna then the programme as a whole.
Episode 3 of Atlantis begins with some amusing banter on the subject of Hercules’ affections for Medusa, but this is soon interrupted. In the act of stepping up to defend an old man, Jason lands the trio in front of King Minos.
Just like that, Orphan Black has gone and snatched Paul away from the sidelines of the drama and into a position where he’s genuinely interesting.
When is a show’s finale not its finale?
Peaky Blinders‘ penultimate episode has the dramatic neatness of a conclusion, cemented by the ominous sensation of finality as Tommy Shelby dramatically commutes through a graveyard (he’s always walking, even though he owns one of the few motorcars around), and yet we haven’t reached the end quite yet.
After interrogation scenes with the gleefully uncooperative journalist, who was caught last time cooking something suspicious, his presence in photos led the team to raid an illicit dining club.
So – rape as entertainment. Well, it’s a debate to be had, isn’t it?
When ITV denied the press access to a preview of last night’s episode, we assumed it was for some trivial reason: a CGI backdrop of London that had yet to be painted in, while Edith bumped into Virginia Woolf in the foreground. That sort of thing.
Opening with a pounding forest action scene, this second episode of Atlantis exists primarily to introduce a further addition to the cast; Jemima Rooper makes her first impression with a slow turn to camera and a terrific scream.
‘Effects of External Conditions’ is all about the chase. Orphan Black wastes no time in getting the police on the trail of the mysterious clone introduced towards the end of the last episode. Meanwhile, Sarah continues to use her connections with Alison and Cosima to assist her deceit as they both help her out in different ways.