Of all the actors to star in a gritty action film, Owen Wilson is probably pretty far down the list. His lackadaisical comic timing is perfectly suited to comedy, but he’s never really shown that he has many more strings to his bow than that. No Escape might not prove that he’s a brilliant dramatic … >
It has been a number of years since Captain Jack Harkness last stood in a flappy greatcoat looking pensive on a Cardiff rooftop, but ‘The Conspiracy’ drags us straight back to the early days of Torchwood. While the television programme could be wildly uneven in tone from week to week, David Llewellyn’s audio tale is … >
When is the right time for a young man to introduce his older transgender girlfriend to his family? That is a question broached fairly early into the second episode of BBC Two’s new sitcom, Boy Meets Girl. It’s awkward and it shows the fragility of this complicated relationship. While last week’s opening episode was maybe … >
A busy month for Big Finish started with the release of The Third Doctor Adventures: Volume 1. In the absence of Jon Pertwee, Tim Treloar takes the part of both a narrator and the Third Doctor, alongside Katy Manning as Jo Grant and Richard Franklin as Mike Yates. The boxset consists of two 2-CD stories. … >
The latest audio revival from Big Finish is a series that enjoyed just a single ten-episode run on BBC One in the summer of 1979. The Omega Factor followed the story of journalist Tom Crane, whose psychic abilities brought him into contact with the secretive Department 7. Staffed by a team which included physicist Dr … >
Back for a fifth season, and embracing a zippy new format (as trialled in ‘The Worlds of Big Finish’), the Number 22 to Putney Common has returned. For the uninitiated, her driver is the erstwhile Iris Wildthyme, trans-temporal adventuress, bon viveur and occasional sparring partner of the Doctor. For these stories, she is accompanied by … >
Former Coronation Street actress Suranne Jones headlines BBC One’s Doctor Foster, an edgy and intriguing new five-part nail-biter from Laurence Olivier and BAFTA Award-winning playwright, Mike Bartlett. Jones plays GP Gemma Foster, who falls into an unsteady path of confusion and paranoia when she finds evidence that her husband, Bertie Carvel (Jonathan Strange and Mr … >
‘The Magician’s Apprentice’. When an episode wears a title as Harry Potterish as that, you’d expect its characters to be shrouded in an invisibility cloak. There’s an element of that – it’s called a BBC embargo. However, if you’re looking for wizardiness or witchcraft, look elsewhere. The Doctor’s magic sonic screwdriver may have its part … >
The Trials of Jimmy Rose is the kind of frustrating television that leaves me shouting at the people in it for making such terrible decisions. Jimmy (Ray Winstone) is frustratingly stubborn and, in spite of having had the living crap kicked out of him, seems to struggle mightily to learn anything from his experience. Somehow … >
Welcome back, Inspector Reid. Having recovered surprisingly quickly off-screen after his waking last episode, Reid finally returned to H Division for a bottle episode that incorporated a simple yet engrossing central mystery. Almost all of ‘The Incontrovertible Truth’ is set inside H Division over the course of one night, but this limited setting never once … >