The opening titles montage for ‘One for Sorrow’ ends with a dead animal stuffed and returned to the approximation of life, as a masked Magpie is placed by the grave of a squirrel. It wouldn’t be much of a stretch to cynically claim this as an appropriate metaphor for Lewis, the improbable spin-off where a … >
Doctor Who, in recent years, has been obsessed with prequels: most of them online and most of them very entertaining – although actually prologues. Here, however, we get the real deal: a partner episode to last week’s ghostly opener that deliberately spools back in time to explain how its events came about. This much you’ll … >
Since its return, Doctor Who fans have been granted rather generous access to the behind the scenes workings of the show. As an audience, we’ve been able to follow the many talented people responsible for Doctor Who’s production with shows like Doctor Who Confidential and numerous in depth books like Russell T Davies’ Writer’s Tale, … >
What a long emotional journey it’s been, seven years in the lives of nine young people growing up in England in the 1980s. This Is England has been criticized by many as to the accuracy of its portrayal of youth culture amidst this green and pleasant land, with the question “Is this England” having been … >
Episode 3 revolves around the happy occasion of the wedding of Mrs. Hughes and Mr. Carson. Mrs. Patmore and Anna are horrified over Mrs. Hughes’ choice of her brown “day dress” as her wedding gown. We agree. Mrs. Patmore goes all modern and springs into action, ordering a dress from a catalogue. When it arrives … >
There is a rule stating all reviews of The Go-Between have to quote the opening line: “The past is a foreign country: they do things differently there.” BBC One’s recent adaptation of L.P. Hartley’s novel follows form and begins with Jim Broadbent sat on a train, reminiscing about the year 1900, when he was a … >
There’s a lot that’s familiar about ‘Under the Lake’. Apart from the transmission time of course. Remember when Doctor Who was on at teatime? But that’s a conversation for a time, when you (I) don’t have jim-jams on. And it’s nothing to do with this week’s writer, Toby Whithouse. In fact, the later start, with … >
After the bombshell ending to the second season of Orphan Black revealed the existence of a line of male clones, Season 3’s opener, ‘The Weight of This Combination’, doesn’t take long to start introducing us to them more formally. The Castor clones are, unfortunately, not as immediately distinctive or enjoyable to watch as the originals though, and … >
It’s the penultimate episode of Boy Meets Girl and Tony has the flu, or at least that’s what he’s protesting to the unsympathetic Pam. She goes off to work leaving him in the uncaring hands of James who seems more bothered about what Tony’s secretly searching for on the internet than actually caring for him. … >
A.L. Kennedy’s novel, featuring a lone Fourth Doctor, is an expanded version of ‘The Death Pit’, first published as an eBook in 2013 and then again as part of this year’s ‘Time Trips’ short story collection. To be honest, the original rather failed to grab our attention in a collection alongside rather smart tales from … >