‘Psychoville’: Series 2 Episode 1 review
BBC Two’s Psychoville returns for a second series and, judging by the first episode, it’s as smart and confident as ever.
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BBC Two’s Psychoville returns for a second series and, judging by the first episode, it’s as smart and confident as ever.
It takes a television series of exceptional quality – and daring – to satisfy its audience without answering almost any of the questions posed in the preceding episode of a two-part story. Yet this is precisely what Doctor Who achieves in ‘Day Of The Moon’.
Created by Paul Abbott (Shameless) and written by Danny Brocklehurst (The Street, Clocking Off), BBC One’s Exile is a three-part psychological drama concerned with the impermanence of remembrance and the persistence of memory.
‘Three years in Seine-Saint-Denis would make any policeman corrupt,’ says Crime Squad Superintendent Brémont (Bruno Debrant) in this week’s double-episode of police drama Spiral, but it’s highly unlikely it takes anyone in the French justice system that long.
Doctor Gabriel Monroe (James Nesbitt), the titular and principal character in Peter Bowker’s entertaining ITV1 drama series, is a neurosurgeon at St Matthew’s Hospital in Leeds. His wit is as incisive as his scalpel and his private life is as messily traumatic as the injuries of the people upon whom he operates.
Steven Moffat is the finest writer in British television. There – we said what you were already thinking. His episodes of Doctor Who are as densely packed as Imelda Marcos’s holiday shoebox, each story brimming with inspiration, emotion and an endless stream of mind-boggling moments.
Based on a bestselling book of the same name by Kate Summerscale, ITV1’s The Suspicions Of Mr Whicher recounts the true story of a tragic murder in a Victorian household in Wiltshire.
After Steven Moffat and Matt Smith’s first season of Doctor Who became more of a wild success than even they could perhaps have hoped, any fears of a second year slump should be quickly erased by this extremely accomplished opener. While RTD’s Who was certainly a more straight-forward monster-of-the-week affair, dealing primarily with monsters and aliens … >
If there’s any chance you haven’t heard the of the name Jack Rosenthal, then you really should have. As a TV writer, he should be mentioned in the same breath as Harold Pinter and Dennis Potter, who also made their names on the halcyon days of one-off plays for television.
Both the best and worst thing you can say about Secret Diary Of A Call Girl is that it’s exactly the kind of thing you’d expect to find screening on ITV2. Whether you think that’s a positive or a negative will dictate how you feel about the programme itself.