Key characters take centre stage in the fourth episode of In the Club, as tensions run high, secrets are exposed and relationships show fractures when examined up close. Hannah Midgely and Katherine Parkinson are the stand outs this week. Midgely is given the most she’s had to do since Episode 1, but its piled on … >
Sir Roger Moore jokingly admits that he wanted to call this book ‘One Lucky Bastard’, but his publishers tutted, so it’s called Last Man Standing instead. There’s a poignancy to that title. As Moore admits, almost everyone he regales us with tales of is dead. He’s the one lucky bastard left to put pen to … >
Given the title, and perhaps surprisingly with their shape changing abilities, there is no disguising which classic villain stars this month. The popular monsters have rarely been brought to life on audio, but thanks to the recent DVD release of ‘Terror of the Zygons’ and their role in ‘The Day of the Doctor’; it seems … >
In 2005, Sin City burst onto the scene like nothing we’d seen before. Slick, stylish, brutal and toeing the line between pastiche and thriller with an unexpected lightness of touch, Robert Rodriguez and Frank Miller’s comic book thriller went on to inspire countless rip-offs and imitations. Nine years on, the long-awaited sequel has finally emerged, … >
Sometimes, a change is better than a rest. The closing triptych of Matt Smith’s tenure in the TARDIS promised a great deal but delivered only sporadically (‘The Name of the Doctor’ was mostly good, ‘The Day of the Doctor’ was mostly patchy, ‘The Time of the Doctor’ was mostly tedious) and while there’s always a … >
It’s the Trigger’s Broom Conundrum: is it still your favourite old broom if its handle and head have been replaced? How much can you change a thing before it’s no longer the thing it was originally was? The dozenth Doctor understands the principle all too well. He is the new broom. Different body, different head, … >
Into the Storm is, in many ways, a film that feels overdue. For years now it seems that every time you turn on the news, Mother Nature is battering some corner of the Earth, be it hurricanes in the U.S., typhoons in the Pacific or earthquakes and tsunamis in Japan. The footage that news reports … >
Imagine you took Limitless, stripped away the internal logic, cut it with an episode of Planet Earth, and force fed everyone involved a lot of crack cocaine. You would more or less have Luc Besson’s new film, Lucy. Our gal Lucy (Scarlett Johansson) is an American student in Taiwan who finds herself in hot water … >
After last week’s instalment, in which Hugo Blick ramped up the sex and death to Doorsian levels, one might be forgiven for thinking the final episode was more a coda than anything else: when the music’s over, turn out the lights. Yet while ‘The Paring Knife’ is less incendiary than its predecessor, it matches – … >
With an ensemble show, there is almost always the feeling that someone will be sidelined, either for a more central character or for the person playing the role being more high profile. Luckily, as we hit the halfway stage of BBC One’s In the Club, Kay Mellor’s wonderfully human writing and the skill of the … >