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 … >
Big Finish’s latest boxset release takes us back to 1982, for a reunion of Peter Davison’s original TARDIS team of Nyssa, Tegan and Adric. The participation of Matthew Waterhouse, who has stayed away from audio up until this point, allows access to an unexplored era of Doctor Who’s chronology. Comprised of two four-parters, the stories … >
Across eight instalments last year, from March to May, the nation was gripped with the mystery surrounded the murder of eleven year old Danny Latimer. Delivering a slow burn and achieving rare ‘appointment TV’ status, the drama kept us guessing right up until the end when 9 million viewers tuned in for the finale. Working … >
‘Have you been watching the TV?’ Sir Hugh Hayden-Hoyle (Stephen Rea) asks with mock good cheer as the penultimate part of The Honourable Woman builds to a crescendo. ‘It’s really very exciting.’ Not half. The last six weeks have been enthralling, plotted tighter than an Edwardian corset and as tense as a gazelle at a … >
It’s always interesting to see how an ensemble show like In the Club will balance storylines for such a large cast and what priority the characters, and indeed the actors playing them, will have as the stories develop. Luckily, Episode 2 does a fine, and in some cases surprising job, of serving the whole cast, … >
If recent weeks have taught us anything, Humanity’s big fear isn’t terrorism or nuclear war. It’s getting sick. Ebola is the latest spectre. Before that it was SARS, Swine Flu, Avian Flu. We’re terrified of our demise being delivered by a sneeze. We fear sickness, because we fear a lack of control. We like to … >