The Great Fire experiences a major shift in focus this week as we enter the third episode of ITV’s mini-series. The fire element is all but forgotten, yet what it is replaced by is a greater emphasis on character development and the advance of their individual stories. Game of Thrones star Rose Leslie continues to … >
Tommy Shelby is dead! No, no, not the one that looks like a skull stuffed into a gym sock. The goaty one. The ceremonial sacrificing of the four-legged ‘Tommy Shelby’ for Passover (seems to come earlier every year, dunnit?) is the red flag to signal a full-blown revolution against the Shelby clan’s power; a swift … >
“I am the spirit of dark and lonely water,” the spooky, black-robed ghoul in a notorious public information film of the 1970s once intoned. “Ready to trap the unwary, the show-off, the fool…” The Twelfth Doctor should have listened. In his short life so far, he’s been careless, conceited and crass. Yes, there’s been heroism, … >
Recent statistics have said that a child is reported missing every 5 minutes. It’s hard to know how to feel when you hear that; the numbers and scale are just too huge to comprehend. What BBC One’s new eight-part drama The Missing tries to do is bring that down to an individual level and focus … >
Big Finish will release their third Dorian Gray boxset in November with Alexander Vlahos (Merlin’s Mordred) returning to the title role. Directed by Scott Handcock (who wrote the final two stories) this is a collection of eight brand new, half hour episodes with a full disc documentary. Scott has taken care to ensure that this … >
Intruders has a really solid conceptual foundation, a strong cast and a clear vision from X-Files writer and creator Glen Morgan, but nothing about the first two episodes makes it feel like unmissable television. It’s a little too overwrought, so relentless in its deployment of mythology that it barely takes a second to think about character. It’s hard to … >
Wizards vs Aliens makes a welcome return to CBBC with ‘The Secret Of Room 12’, the first two-part adventure of the show’s third season, penned by co-creator Phil Ford. Our story begins (after a teaser in which sinister forces cause an innocent teacher to make a mess of his shirt) with a report on What … >
Mr. Bates didn’t do it! What a relief. His search for Anna’s button box turns up Lady Mary’s contraceptive device and instruction manual instead, and he assumes that Anna thinks he murdered Mr. Green and has been trying to prevent a pregnancy. Accusations ensue and they finally hash it all out. Everything appears rosy until … >
Well, you might complain about the result, but you can’t criticise Doctor Who for attempting something new. Branching out, even. You’ve got to keep things fresh and green somehow. And while potentially dangerous plant-life is nothing new to Who, (the Krynoids, Meglos, and the genit-alien Vervoids have created a veritable garden centre of horror) the … >
Jean-Luc Godard once said: ‘It’s not where you take things from, it’s where you take them to.’ Recent episodes of Doctor Who have demonstrated a raft of originality but also embraced much from the show’s past – yet whatever has been appropriated from the old days is always successfully synthesised into something fresh. The gothic … >