Adrian Hodges’ adaptation of Alexander Dumas’ novel occupies the post-Sherlock Sunday evening slot on BBC One and it looks the part. Prague doubles for a lived-in Seventeenth Century Paris, and the fight scenes are stylish and kinetic. A strong and charismatic cast delivers, though ultimately the end product is solid rather than exceptional.
As Mr Selfridge opens his department store doors for a second series, we are taken four years on from the events of Series 1’s finale, though the ramifications of it can still be felt.
Lord and West End legend Andrew Lloyd Webber is back with a brand new musical that revisits one of the biggest scandals of the Sixties.
Enlisting the help of Oscar-winning wordsmiths Christopher Hampton (Dangerous Liaisons) and Don Black (Born Free), Stephen Ward tells the story of the Profumo Affair which rocked the Conservative government of the time.
The final entry of this anniversary collection is a reprint of a larger, more mature story. First published in 2012, the novel pits the Eleventh Doctor, Amy and Rory against the Ice Warriors and predates Series 7’s ‘Cold War’.
Those of a certain age may remember the 90s show Breaking the Magician’s Code, wherein a chap in a mask and gaudy suit debunked a series of magic tricks, including falling from a great height, being shot, and getting rid of an elephant from a room…
Anything sound familiar, Holmes fans? For the audience it was a dual draw: fun to see the illusions performed, and equal fun to see how they were accomplished.
American Hustle is acclaimed director David O. Russell’s follow-up to the Academy Award-winning Silver Linings Playbook. And even though he took on that film’s two co-stars once again — Bradley Cooper and Jennifer Lawrence, the latter fresh off The Hunger Games — Russell went in an entirely different direction with the two of them and the plot itself.
He’s abandoned his more of-the-time approach, with help from co-writer Eric Warren singer, and transported audiences back the late ’70s/early ’80s for a comedy-crime film. But does it work? Absolutely.
You remember how it was a few years ago. When the BBC announced that they were going to update Sherlock Holmes to the modern age, complete with mobile phones and blogs. It was all a bit worrying, wasn’t it?
‘I think, sir,’ a boatman from Cornwall famously once remarked to Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, ‘when Holmes fell over that cliff, he may not have killed himself, but all the same he was never quite the same man afterwards.’
So, the turkey corpse has been devoured, it suddenly sinks in that The Snowman’s Aled Jones is now 42 and presenting ITV’s Daybreak. Things are getting bleaker by the minute and it soon becomes apparent you need something to help you through these dark days. You need a Big-Ass Spider.
‘Marriage changes people’, Mrs Hudson coos in ‘The Sign of Three’, oblivious to the fact that, in the very books she sprang from, marriage was always but a footnote in John Watson’s adventures with Holmes.