After a run of Doctor Who episodes which have made a play of character riddles and tricksy story twists, ‘Cold War’ represents something of a thaw in proceedings.
There are no paradoxes here to send you hurrying to the internet to speculate about what you have seen and why. There’s probably less subtext than in last week’s, altogether more awkward, instalment.
Spartacus doesn’t do filler episodes. Yes, ‘The Dead and the Dying’ may be the penultimate instalment of the show but that hardly means it’s an uneventful one.
This is an episode that is all about consequences, catharsis and remembering the dead. It’s a tribute to Crixus that develops into a tribute to all who have fallen in the war against Rome, masterfully executing numerous resonant moments while doing significant work building for what is sure to be an epic series finale.
TV of a quality like Broadchurch doesn’t come along very often. And in an age when telly is an elastic experience – something which can be paused, rewound, and watched whenever we demand it – it’s rare for a show to command such attention that it becomes an appointment: an hour that millions cannot afford to record or download, because it would leave them behind.
With most of the ground-work for Season 3 laid down in last week’s opener, this week finds Game of Thrones on surer footing. ‘Dark Wings, Dark Words’ is a more exciting episode and a more interesting one.
One of the wonderful things about Broadchurch is that it has made water cooler detectives of us all. Heck, even Ant & Dec were jabbering on about it on their Saturday evening entertainment trough; a sure sign that Chris Chibnall’s drama has deservedly reached the point of cultural supersaturation. The Geordie finger puppets suspected Reverend Paul Coates of murder, and Episode 6 doesn’t do anything to disprove that theory.
Ahh, 1983. M*A*S*H, the moonwalk, ‘Mawdryn Undead’. Oh, and Mutually Assured Destruction. Good times.
But a bad time for The Doctor and Clara to land aboard a stricken Russian nuclear submarine. At the helm is Liam Cunningham, being all authoritarian and troubled, just as he was in BBC One’s short-lived space oddity Outcasts; while in the hold is David Warner, toting naught but a Walkman and a loveable grandfatherly nature.
You know that feeling you got as a child when you had to sing a song in front of the whole school? Well, they’ve gone and made a Doctor Who episode about it.
It’s a truism that Doctor Who inspires playground re-enactment; but rarely has an episode so obviously been designed with Monday morning playtime in mind. So much of the story is imitable: from the alien who barks like a dog to the fact that the monster is defeated with an autumn leaf. A psychically-charged, totemic sort of leaf, but a leaf nonetheless.
While the bodies have been steadily piling up over the course of this season (particularly in last week’s episode), ‘Separate Paths’ is the first episode that really hammers home just how damned the central characters of Spartacus are.
‘Every great magic trick consists of three parts’, says Michael Caine in Christopher Nolan’s gaslight and handsomeness extravaganza The Prestige. Someone forgot to pass the message on to Jonathan Creek.
Ah, Westeros. It’s good to be back.
This first slice of Season 3 is primarily an establishing episode, settling some loose ends from the previous season’s epic climax, while setting up some new threads for the many characters. With so many locations, characters and plots, it’s inevitable that at certain points the show has to slow down and stage a piece-moving episode like this, but Game of Thrones still makes them hugely enjoyable.