25 May, 1965. The day Sonny Liston fought Cassius Clay in one of boxing’s most famous and controversial fights. And in the world according to Mad Men, that same day was filled with its own spectacular confrontations, some verbal, some physical. As Peggy and her fellow ad creators struggle to come up with the perfect pitch for their new client, Samsonite, episode seven soon reveals its central theme: toughness. It’s a brilliant, brilliant episode, perhaps the best we’ve yet seen of Mad Men, its effortless dialogue sliding seamlessly between tragedy and mordent wit....

The series kicks off two weeks into Peter Parker’s career as Spidey. How early is it? He’s still wearing the sweatsuit/homemade costume for most of the first two episodes, a fun bit of synergy with what we just saw on the big screen in Spider-Man: Homecoming (don’t worry, he eventually gets into the classic threads). There’s no origin story (nobody needs another refresher), although Uncle Ben appears in flashback, and there’s a neat new twist on “with great power comes great responsibility....

Kirkman knows that the shock has passed. The humour and horror of heroes eating heroes has been spent and he needs to try something different. In #1 of Marvel Zombies 2, the plot flashes forward to forty years on from when the Galactus-fuelled zombies left Earth. A grey-haired Black Panther is King of what little remains of humanity and is trying desperately to keep a grip on the whole thing....

But Mega Man isn’t the only star of his self-titled adventures. There are plenty of memorable villains along for the ride, all ready to end the Blue Bomber’s journey at the end of each diabolical level. Of course, they’re not always memorable for the right reasons. While some of these bosses are fun to fight and are cool designs, there are some bad guys that don’t quite reach that level of creativity....

5.3 The Death Song Of Uther Pendragon As ever, let’s begin with a short recap of this week’s events. After an unproductive day hunting, Arthur and Merlin find a village where a woman is about to be burnt at the stake and our heroes can rush in to risk their lives, despite the protests of the villagers who believe the woman is a witch and responsible for nefarious happenings. Setting out on another quest, Arthur and a rather reluctant Merlin head to the Great Stones of Nematon, which look remarkably like Stone Henge, in order for Arthur to use the horn to call upon the spirit of his father....

Like the Led Zeppelin classic, there’s a whole lotta love going on in the latest episode of Misfits. Our favourite chav, Kelly, has her tattoo retouched, while cheeky-boy Nathan stares aghast at a picture of a tattooed willy. As they leave the parlour though, Nathan suddenly wants to get to know Simon more intimately, a move that will launch a thousand slash fanfics by Saturday morning. But there’s something distinctly fishy about Nathan’s new tattoo… No longer the shy wallflower, he calmly explains that he’s come back from the future to ensure events take place as they should, and offering a small glimpse of what’s to come....

That’s more like it! After five weeks of feeling generally sluggish and out of ideas, Misfits has brought back the old creativity, whacky powers, and mixture of funny/gruesome/scary that made the show so special in the first place. While there’s still an imbalance between soap opera-ish relationship drama and the genre elements that set it apart, we at least get a surprising and compelling underlying threat to complement the characters’ various mishaps....

There are too many romantic comedies. Coming from someone who was dearly in love with Aziz Ansari’s Master of None, as far as I’m concerned, Love completely knocks it out of the water. It comfortably finds a tone somewhere between Ansari’s series and Netflix’s BoJack Horseman. As a fan of the network’s darker programming, this is a very good thing, and it’s Love’s brutally honest, unflinching point of view that is the series’ strongest asset....

Coach, asks Cece out and she agrees, both looking to move past their break-ups. At first, Schmidt consents to Coach taking Cece out, saying that we “might be able to get another Tiger Woods out of this situation.” However, as Coach talks to Schmidt about the date, Schmidt freaks out. While the scene with Damon Wayans Jr. and Max Greenfield repeatedly high-fiving was supposed to be awkwardly funny, it was just awkward....

In response to his rapidly fading masculinity, Nick plans an outdoor Thanksgiving—which Schmidt and Winston are less than enthusiastic about. Nick tries to remind them how splendidly our ancestors and the Native Americans got along. Schmidt retorts, “Sure, yeah, the first chapter in a proud history of cooperation.” Nick soon reveals that he has brought no food and instead planned to catch and forage for sustenance because we’ve “gone soft” as a society....

And yet all the ingredients are there: it’s an original property with built-in sequel potential, a cast full of all those people you like off the TV, and a set-up designed for impropriety, awkwardness and slapstick. It makes good use of all these, and does a deft job of giving enough screen time to a pretty big, and deserving, cast. Starting well with a Jason Bateman we’ve seen a few hundred times before – nice guy with something missing in his life – it then throws up some treats....

Outcast Episode 10 At first glance the season one finale of Robert Kirkman’s horror series Outcast may be viewed as a disappointment. On the one hand, no major questions receive answers, the show’s protagonist appears to be running away from the story’s principal conflict leaving behind those who have helped him in the past and those who clearly need his intercession now, and we’re no closer to understand what’s really going on than we were when the series began....

The very last episode of Outcasts? Given the way events have panned out over the past few weeks, it was always bound to be frustrating. Because, by the time the end credits rolled, it was clear that there was a plan in place for a second series, with a major thread left dangling in the air. Yet, there’s no chance whatsoever of that second series being commissioned, and we’ll never see just why Julius looks quite so smug at the end, and who is on the transporter ship that’s finally landed on Carpathia....

This is one of the most enjoyably daft films I have seen in a long time, and if it lacks the edge of Q The Winged Serpent or Tremors, it can sit comfortably with them, deserving a place on your DVD shelf and possibly even a trip to the flicks. The ‘appropriation’ from a hundred other sci-fi and horror flicks begins almost immediately with a practically shot-for-shot recreation of the orbital sequence that starts John Carpenter’s The Thing, as surprisingly human alien Jim Caviezel crash-lands his wounded craft in Norway in 709....

Turning a gym around is all well and good, but that’s not enough for Lugo and his friend Adrian Doorbal (Anthony Mackie), a fellow bodybuilder who is feeling the repercussions of years of steroid abuse. To treat his erectile dysfunction, he needs money. Lugo needs money, too. Fortunately, they have an appropriate mark in the obnoxiously rich half-Colombian half-Jewish Victor Kershaw (a delightfully slimy Tony Shaloub). The plan: take Kershaw for all he’s worth, with the help of Paul Doyle (Dwayne Johnson), a recently paroled ex-con who has turned to AA and religion to temper his penchant for incredible violence....

Now, though, it seems to be going from strength to strength: the sixth series has been commissioned even before the current fifth series has finished. Judging by what we’ve seen of the fifth series, though, they’ll be no problem with maintaining the current standard of exceptional comedy. Part of the credit has to go to the writing team: Sam Bain and Jesse Armstrong clearly know their characters exceptionally well and, just as clearly, take plenty of guilty pleasure from placing them in a series of awkward situations....

It never ceases to amaze me just how strong the scripts are in each and every episode and this one was another belter, delivering yet more classic lines to add to the canon. “You can’t stop someone from jamming. That’s against jam law.” “That’s not jam. That’s just total, fucking, marmalade!” “Can babies go by shredders?” “Yes, of course. Safest place for him.” Just a couple of choice examples there, but, as ever, this was full of eminently quotable dialogue....

3.9 Schwanzkopf Schwanzkopf was another solid entry for Preacher, which is a show that excels at small moments and close confines. Some of its best moments have taken place in small environments (especially the fight scenes), and this week’s episode is no exception. It’s as close as this show comes to a bottle episode; Jesse and Starr in Grail HQ, the bus to hell, and of course the vampire rec room....

Matt Reeves, for the record, comes off very very enthusiastic; very keen to talk, very eloquent, and very expressive, putting on voices and waving his hands. He starts stories, backtracks to add more detail, and then returns to the story; he recounts conversations, raising and lowering his voice where appropriate – he’s actually almost as fun to watch in action as the movie. Sadly, some of that expressiveness is inevitably lost in transcription, but you’ll get the gist....

1.5 Undone But it’s not long before the creature does appear, a small canine-like Lycaenops, a dog-sized descendent of the Gorgonopsid, the very first creature to appear in the original Primeval. It’s not long before, in horror tradition, the naïve blonde girl is running across campus, chased by the foe, activating panic points but not actually answering them to get security over, instead deciding to half-heartedly whimper for help as she locks herself in a bike storage facility before the creature tries to make an attack for her but fails....