Any drama serial being broadcast over five consecutive nights has to work very hard to hook the viewer immediately and maintain a decent level of either excitement, intrigue or both from the opening credits onwards.
The Walking Dead is a perfectly admirable stab at attempting to transfer superlative source material to our screens in as entertaining a way as possible, yet it just can’t compare to the comic.
Three episodes into Series 2 and Psyschoville shows absolutely no sign of slowing down, with a healthy lack of respect for its own cast of characters, meaning that anybody runs the risk of being bumped off to further the story along.
Have a trawl on YouTube and you’ll find an old clip of Jon Pertwee taking umbrage with the answer of a competition question, namely ‘Who invented the Daleks?’ While the usual names fly around, it comes as something of a surprise to learn that if anyone has a claim, it may as well be Tony Hancock.
Treme is one of the greatest TV shows that you don’t watch but really should do. The brainchild of David Simon, creator of The Wire and Generation Kill, Treme is a sprawling ten-part series focusing on the good folks of New Orleans in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina.
One of the most truly entertaining shows of recent years, Spartacus: Blood And Sand is a blood-soaked boob fest from US cable channel Starz (new home to Torchwood) which mixes the best elements of sandals and swords in a gladiatorial arena.
BBC Two’s increasingly fascinating police drama reaches and passes its halfway stage in this episode, yet neither DI Jonah Gabriel (Chiwetel Ejiofor) nor Joseph Bede (Christopher Eccleston) appear much closer to accomplishing their respective goals than they were in the hours after the death of gangster Harvey Wratten.
After two episodes of stories written by new writers to the show, Life On Mars/Ashes To Ashes co-creator Matthew Graham returns to Doctor Who with a two-parter featuring some familiar faces. Question is, will we be asking for a double?
“Cancer is not a gift; cancer is not a passport to a better life.” So says Laura Linney as Cathy, the lead in the US channel Showtime’s new dark sitcom, The Big C. Kinney’s line, in rebuke to some happy-clapping Bible support group members, could also be taken as a rejection of possible preconceptions about this show.
It may seem like sacrilege to some devotees of the late author, but not everything Douglas Adams produced was of the high quality as witnessed in the earlier instalments of The Hitch Hiker’s Guide To The Galaxy.