Legacy is one of the centre-pieces of the BBC’s Cold War season, and, after An Adventure In Space And Time, marks the second one-off film in a row that BBC Two have absolutely nailed. Legacy is a wonderful piece of work.
When Misfits ends two weeks from now, we’ll all likely have to go sit in a quiet room with a joke book, a rubber chicken, and a Morecambe & Wise VHS, in order to recalibrate our sense of humour. Because over the past five years Misfits has been dragging our idea of what’s funny steadily off course – like a magnet fucking a compass – to the point where taste and decency have fallen off the map.
Is anyone else watching The Tunnel? Or is that slight echo as we’re watching just something wrong with our TV? Never mind, you’re here now and that’s all that matters. And just in time to see the plot move incrementally forward!
These days Gareth Roberts is an established Doctor Who screenwriter, with five episode credits to his name, as well as having penned a host of The Sarah Jane Adventures. Although he was one of the first to tackle the resurrected show in prose he had form, having contributed to the Virgin books ranges in the 1990s. Last year he novelised the lost Douglas Adams tale ‘Shada’ for BBC Books and is soon to follow up with ‘City of Death’.
After last week’s disappointing effort, Series 2 of Ripper Street is firmly back on track with a brilliant episode inspired by the very relevant topic of gay rights. With tears, twists and a script frothing with delectable period dialogue, ‘Threads of Silk and Gold’ reminded us that at the heart of this rollicking police procedural is a series invested in the bigger picture.
It all started as a mild curiosity in a junkyard. Exactly fifty years later, that curiosity reached such frenzied levels of anticipation for the anniversary, it was like the Second Coming with a sonic screwdriver.
Yonderland is getting increasingly hard to review, because it’s so bloody consistent.
Four episodes in and we know what we’re going to get – inspired silliness, a constant stream of one-liners, great ideas, non-sequiturs, physical comedy and not much in the way of plot arc advancement. It’s very funny. It’s hard to describe an episode without spoiling a few of these, although as there are lots to go round, it’s not the end of the world.
So, did you have a good ‘Day’?
Millions of people across the globe just did. In fact, The Doctor probably just made their day. And yours too, in a TV event so big you’d have had to have viewed in from a couch on the Moon to take in the full scope of it.
The Family should be good. With the talent in front of and behind the camera, it really should be good.
It should be a smart, snappy and entertaining deconstruction of the gangster movie, providing laughs, knowing references and exciting action. The Family is none of these things, and provides none of these things.
Change. Regeneration. It’s the very thing that’s kept Doctor Who running for half a century and we take it for granted now. It’s exciting, partly because it’s expected. Doctor, companion, showrunner, whoever. The song ends, but the story goes on (to paraphrase an Ood). And we continue to huddle round the screen like kids in the ‘60s.