When Paul McGann joined Big Finish in 2000, their first task was to devise him a companion. Charlotte Espleth Pollard, Charley to her friends, joined the TARDIS as a self-styled Edwardian adventuress with a joie de vivre to match the Doctor’s own. Played by India Fisher, familiar to many for her voice over work on … >
Now that’s how you do a surprising death. In this episode, Dr Leekie goes from being potentially Sarah’s greatest enemy, to threatened by Rachel after she learns the truth, and then to… murdered, accidentally, by Donnie. You don’t get much more unpredictable than that. Last week it seemed natural to theorise that Rachel’s reaction to … >
Most episodes of 24 feature their share of action – it is, after all, an action show – but every now and then you get one that steps things up a notch, and this is certainly one of them. After quickly establishing that her daughter is in custody, Margot coldly decides to turn on her … >
Doctor Who has a proud tradition of taking classic monster stories and doing its own spin on them. This was especially prevalent in the early gothic influenced Tom Baker era and ‘Last of the Colophon’ is a tale consciously cut from that cloth. Continuing his adventures with Leela, the story begins with the Doctor looking … >
For the penultimate Companion Chronicles story, we return to an old favourite. Continuing from where 2010’s ‘Find and Replace’ left off, Jo Jones (née Grant) is off on an adventure with the irrepressible Iris Wildthyme. For those not acquainted with Ms Wildthyme, the trans-temporal adventuress, suffice to say that she is a sometime ally, sometime … >
Amidst the sounds of swords clashing and giants growling, between the swells and blares of the insistent ominous soundtrack, there were some moments of particular quietness in this week’s Game of Thrones. In one, two Wildling giants methodically attached ropes to the four inches of cold-rolled steel protecting the passage through the Wall and began … >
The second story in the current Fifth Doctor and Nyssa trilogy finds the pair arriving on a spaceship that serves as a floating tomb. As the resting place of the Arrit God-King, from a society the Doctor suggests had the potential to rival the Time Lords, it is a place full of complex trials and … >
‘The best way is to do it with scissors’. That’s what Alfred Hitchcock said, once upon a movie murder. Mind you, Hitch never had to kill a zombie. But for our 21st century warm bodies, decades of Pop-Horror has heuristically ingrained in us a variety of ways to do away with the undead. If the … >
Since 24 rose phoenix-like from the ashes, it’s been on something of a roll. The streamlined episode order means that the plot has moved along at a snappy pace, and many of the pitfalls and traps that usually derail a season that has twenty four episodes to fill have been excised. Unfortunately Hour Six sees … >
Musicals based on movies are quite the norm now, with huge successes such as The Producers and Legally Blonde, but how does this Michael Caine/Steve Martin screen romp from 1988 hold up on a London stage in the 2010s? Like those two aforementioned adaptations, Dirty Rotten Scoundrels: The Musical also expands and illuminates its source … >