“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.
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?
Like the drugs at the heart of the late Harvey Wratton’s empire, The Shadow Line has become addictive in a slow, almost sneaky manner. After an unhurried, take-it-or-leave it start, it has insidiously built up to the point where now, three episodes in, it has become impossible to break free of its grip.
As many of you will know, this is one of the episodes fandom has been awaiting with some internet-beating excitement. The very notion of a Neil Gaiman Doctor Who story seems so perfect that we wonder why it’s taken just so long for this union to happen.
Something that seems to connect a lot of Peter Davison era Doctor Who is some reasonably intelligent, grown-up science fiction, a surprising amount of guest stars, and an equally surprising lack of the Doctor himself.
ITV1’s new female-led detective series, starring Suranne Jones and Lesley Sharp as Rachel Bailey and Janet Scott, detective constables in the Manchester Metropolitan police, promises a great deal but – on the evidence of this opening hour, at least – delivers very little.
Now that it’s been firmly established that more people than you might have expected survived the events at the end of Series 1, things are settling into the routine (well, as routine as it ever gets around here) of ensuring that this time round, no-one is safe from a grisly dispatch.
The principal problem with The Shadow Line is its identity crisis. At times, it’s a fascinating noir-ish thriller; at others, it feels like an unwieldy Shakespearian melodrama that has somehow lost its way en route to the RSC and found itself on the telly instead.
If you grew up any-time between the late sixties and the early nineties, the chances are you may remember a curious clutch of kitsch science fiction shows under the stable of the prolific TV and film producer Irwin Allen. No? Well, how about the names Lost In Space, Voyage To The Bottom Of The Sea and this release, Land Of The Giants?