BBC One’s new Tuesday night drama focuses on communication, as it tells the tale of a family who learn their youngest member, five year old Joe, is on the autistic spectrum. Through this first episode, we meet the combined Scott and Hughes clan. Its patriarch Maurice (Christopher Eccleston) is a sprightly, newly retired widower. As … >
If we think of the second season of Grantchester as a book rather than a series, it starts to make more sense – and as we reach Chapter 4 we can see what it may actually all be about. It’s the story of Sidney; conflicted, flawed human Sidney (“I’m no saint” as he’s remarked more … >
After an impressive run of episodes that did a great deal to expand the show’s scope while allowing The Walking Dead to subvert its own formula, this week’s antepenultimate episode proved to be a disappointingly rote step down for the show. Perhaps the core issue with ‘Twice as Far’ is that it’s come after a … >
It’s the penultimate episode this week and there are a number of shocks in a tense, gripping and emotionally fraught instalment. As Roper’s team make their way to the Haven, the question of how Angela got hold of the incriminating documents hangs in the air. ‘Anyone can betray anyone,’ Roper tells Jonathan whose part in … >
I’m afraid that the cracks are beginning to show in ‘The Edge of Mystery’, this week’s episode of Agent Carter. I don’t just mean the eerie zero matter split across the face of Whitney Frost, but in the nuts and bolts of the storytelling as the season moves towards its climax. Unusually it’s an episode … >
In her introduction to Busman’s Honeymoon, Dorothy L Sayers makes the point that although for the reader it may seem like a detective novel interrupted by a love story, to the characters involved it is the other way around. Something of the same could be said for Grantchester, which continues to juggle Sidney’s detective adventures … >
Happy Valley is one of the best television programmes ever made. We always knew that following up the first season of Sally Wainwright’s impeccable series was going to be a tall order, but over the last six weeks we have been pushed through a gamut of emotions that has equalled anything the first year could … >
I’m shocked. And angry. And trying to find a way to compute exactly what it is that I just watched and how it fits into my feelings about this year’s X-Files mini-series as a whole. Writer/creator Chris Carter has now had a third opportunity to provide some closure to The X-Files, after the original series … >
The Walking Dead’s impressive hot streak of episodes continued this week with a taut, compelling bottle episode with a pared-down cast and an impressive thematic focus. ‘The Same Boat’ very much feels like the second half of a thematic exploration begun by ‘Not Tomorrow Yet’ – in the way it flips the perspective to the … >
We’re over halfway in to The Night Manager and there’s a sense that everything is slowly rumbling towards its conclusion. With Jonathan now closely embedded in Roper’s dubious dealings is he getting just a little bit too into the part? Following last week’s revelations, Jed disillusionment with her husband continues and it’s surely a ticking … >