The Fall seems dead set on setting itself apart from other crime shows. Not because we know who the murderer is – Columbo hung its raincoat on that particular chair 44 years ago – but because it’s so desperately grim that it makes its Danish contemporaries look as light-hearted as Murder, She Wrote. It’s a show so darned dark that it forces you to adjust the brightness settings in your own mind, as well as your telly.
The Cloister Bell will chime once more; The Doctor’s off to Trenzalore… Often, being a fan of Doctor Who, you have to park your fanboy gene somewhere the other side of Kasterborous. True, there’s no point loving the bones of a show if you’re not prepared to dissect it to death sometimes. But the critical … >
It’s almost cruelly emblematic really. That the most closely-guarded Doctor Who finale ever, one which concerns a great secret being discovered, should have its own secrets compromised. And by the ‘Great Intelligence’ that is the collective mind of the Internet no less, rather than the breathy malevolence of Richard E. Grant.
The pre-publicity for ‘Nightmare in Silver’ indicated that this episode was going to do for the Cybermen what 2005’s ‘Dalek’ had done for their metallic rivals: restore them to scary eminence after a period when they had lost their robo mojo.
The titular climb is unquestionably the centre-piece of this episode, but there’s plenty else going on in the world of Westeros.
We all love a bit of history, especially robot history, right? And there are few bits as fascinating as ‘The Turk’, an 18th century chess playing robot that amazed the folk of the time with its ability to beat a human at the game.
It was one of the first instances of man vs machine, and the concept of The Turk is something that writer Neil Gaiman clearly loves, for it’s embedded deep within ‘Nightmare in Silver’s’ programming.
Lawks a mercy! That was a camp confection and no mistake!
As a writer, Mark Gatiss doesn’t so much wear his influences on his sleeve as parade them like a popinjay. So it should come as no surprise that he is singularly suited to assembling such a preposterous patchwork of period pastiche.
The X-Files star Gillian Anderson returns to British TV, aided by Once Upon A Time‘s Jamie Dornan, in BBC Two’s brilliant new five-part investigative thriller, The Fall.
From writer Lucy Gannon (Soldier Soldier) comes Frankie, a new BBC One drama series set in the world of district nursing, starring Eve Myles (Torchwood) and Dean Lennox Kelly (Shameless).
A more sedate episode than last week’s barnstormer, ‘Kissed By Fire’ gives us a new insight into several characters, while the spectre of Ned haunts the Stark children.