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 … >
With episodes lost to the mists of time, as expensive videotape was routinely reused, a mere two full episodes exist from the first series of The Avengers. Of course, we are not talking about the popular Marvel franchise here, but rather the British 1960s television series of the same name which focussed on the exploits … >
Occasionally a Doctor Who story comes along with such a great premise that you cannot believe it has not been tackled before. ‘The Abandoned’, despite its somewhat generic title, has just that. While it has been repeatedly established over the years that the Doctor stole his TARDIS from Gallifrey, or it stole him, we have … >
Maybe it’s joke fatigue – the audience’s funnybones worn down by a lathe of relentless puns – but it tends to be the case with A Touch of Cloth that the second half feels a little less punchy and fresh than the first. It happened in Series 1, it happened more so in Series 2 … >
The Honourable Woman is hardly a light-hearted comedy romp at the best of times, but the sixth episode – which opens with a rape and ends with a young boy shooting himself – is bleaker than a Dartmoor funeral. Like a spindle of black cotton unravelling, ‘The Mother Line’ is dark from the first and … >
Kay Mellor (Playing the Field, Fat Friends) returned to our screens this week with In the Club, BBC One’s new comedy drama about a group of pregnant women from various walks of life whose lives intersect at a Parent Craft class the women attend. Whilst juggling their pregnancies, the women’s outside lives provide even more … >