3.9 Head One of the more interesting aspects of this week’s episode of American Horror Story is behind the camera, and I’m not talking about another great, demented script from Tim Minear. I’m talking about the presence of director Howard Deutch. The name won’t be familiar, but for most people who grew up in the 80s, you know his movies. In three years, he did three classic John Hughes movies: Pretty In Pink, Some Kind of Wonderful, and The Great Outdoors....

5.6 Room 33 Lady Gaga’s got a thing with her fans. She calls them her little monsters. It’s a great fandom nickname, akin to the Kiss Army in terms of recognizability. After all, there’s a whole episode of The Simpsons based around Gaga’s schtick. It’s the worst episode The Simpsons has ever done, but that’s not the point. It’s a known quantity, and I have no doubt it’s been one of the inspirations for Countess’s collection of creepy children, alongside The Shining and Village Of The Damned....

This review contains spoilers. We’re not grown-up enough to be cool about sex in the UK. Unlike our pals in continental Europe, where Apple Tree Yard’s consensual sex scenes might be met with a ‘bof’ and a shrug, they turn us into Eric Idle in the Nudge Nudge sketch. “Dr Yvonne Carmichael, eh? Is she a sport? I bet she is, I bet she is, say no more”. The ears of some papers in particular have pricked up with even more prurience at Apple Tree Yard’s depiction of a woman decades past the legal age of consent (or as they might prefer, use-by-date) enjoying sex....

Worst of all, Pam is still eating all the Florida snow like its yogurt. Literally, she’s placing it in her cups of yogurt as if she’s auditioning to replace Jamie Lee Curtis in an Activia commercial. Hence, this week’s Archer Vice, “House Call,” is about the group knuckling down and sorting out its problems in a professional, clear-eyed manner: they send Krieger after Pam and a kidnapped Cheryl with his personal arsenal of tranquilizers that’s large enough to arm the whole of Grenada....

Arrow: Season 6 Episode 10 This episode had a lot of work to accomplish, and yet somehow also very little that’s fun or flashy to mix in with it. No big reveals, almost no humor, returning to old villains but not for the first time, so it’s not even exciting. One highlight is letting a bunch of bad guys obliterate each other in battle, because who cares? They’re all throwaway nobodies....

1.1 The Earth Bull Robin Hood may have been a tad pantomime in places, whilst Merlin took a few series to become an impressively dark show with a great sense of humour. Both series were really there to fill in the gap between series of Doctor Who and whatever reality show the BBC chose to throw at us. Robin Hood fell apart when the lead actors departed, whilst Merlin soldiered on and overcame its critics....

1.4 Half Dead Is Better Than All Dead Before we get to that, there’s the welcome return of Hoon Lee’s Job – still Lucas Hood’s go to guy when he’s in a jam. That jam happens to be finding himself locked in a local museum while trying to steal a painting. Why Hood is still pulling jobs when he’s supposed to be masquerading as the head of Banshee’s law enforcement doesn’t really add up but we’re starting to realise that some of what makes Banshee so compulsive each week is these character’s abilities to surprise us with their actions....

1.5 The Kindred On the surface it seemed like The Kindred was going to be Banshee’s first filler episode – a biker gang, The Kindred, descend on the town like a bunch of Harley-driving locusts and chaos ensues – but scratch beneath the surface and once again, there was an awful lot going on here, least of all the chance for Trieste Kelly Dunn’s Deputy Siobhan Kelly to come properly into the light for the first time....

This review contains spoilers. Jason Statham comes in for a fair amount of praise on this site, and rightly so. It was with a huge grin, then, that I welcomed a Statham-inspired thug to the Being Human universe. Said vampire thug was obsessed with action movies and with his Stath-like physique and genuinely laugh-out-loud put downs and pre-kill lines, he was a comedic gem. In any other episode, his brand of comedy might have sat awkwardly but it fit in perfectly here, given that the order of the week was big laughs all round....

2.2 Cobbler The key to this is the return of Chuck McGill. Last year we saw just how much Jimmy idolised and adored his older brother, and the care they seemed to share in the early episodes was in fact one of the things that first differentiated Jimmy from Saul. This was a man who had made mistakes, sure, but he was decent, kind and selfless when it came to the wellbeing of the brother he admired....

Even in the microcosm of Den Of Geek, it has its fans and its…not fans. One reviewer here was only just recently championing the film, comparing it favourably to another sci-fi flick released around the same time, but another is historically on the other, more disappointed side, giving it two stars in their review and later publishing a “what went wrong?” piece that is still very much worth a read....

So there was one pressing question hovering this week: was it going to get any better? The team captains were the same.At least I recognised them. They were joined by Sherrie Hewson (er…nope) and – ah! – Joe Pasquale! Well, I knew him, but he said he knew nothing about birdwatching and was there because he needed the money and exposure. Except, he didn’t put that last bit into words....

1.5 The Good Life The big issue at hand here is that, just five episodes in, Billions is already re-using plays from its pretty shallow bag of tricks. I was impressed with the interplay between the two previous episodes: YumTime and Short Squeeze. In the former, Axe muscled his way onto YumTime’s board to influence decision-making. In the next episode, Short Squeeze, Axe used his position at YumTime to end their distribution relationship with the company, CrossCo and subsequently makes a killing short-selling CrossCo stock....

Richter is a seemingly ever-present modern cultural force with his music appearing in the theater, film and television. Very little of his output, however, could be described as “happy.” He created the score for HBO’s The Leftovers, one of TV’s most brilliant but also most relentlessly bleak shows. Richter’s score fits it perfectly – a haunting piano dirge that flirts with becoming inspirational without ever quite getting there. Max Richter is that guy....

Chalky White (Michael Kenneth Williams) is bringing jazz to the boardwalk, courtesy of Dr. Narcisse (Jeffrey Wright), who sees jazz star Daughter Maitland (Margot Bingham) as a drug delivery system. Heroin may have been around before jazz, but it didn’t have a soundtrack and without a soundtrack you can’t move to it. Gillian (Gretchen Mol) is already dancing to beautiful heroin. It makes the conversations more interesting, even if its hell on the dessert....

3.11 Two Imposters The episode was fantastically lean, mainly because so many threads that had been hanging were woven into Nucky’s storyline. They had frequently seemed disparate through the preceding ten episodes, but finally, the hospital, the Artemis Club, the now-ruined Babette’s, Capone, Eli and especially Chalky were all drafted in to support the central story. If there was an overarching theme to this episode it was Nucky’s lack of knowledge....

Larson’s latest film is The Gambler, a drama starring Mark Wahlberg as a well-to-do college professor with a tendency to lose money in various gambling dens. Larson plays Amy, a gifted English student who’s uniquely aware of her teacher’s insidious addiction. Although The Gambler’s very much Wahlberg’s film, Larson again brings intelligence to her role here. Ahead of The Gambler’s UK release, we caught up with Brie Larson to talk about her performance in the film, Greek mythology, and playing alongside Woody Harrelson in Rampart....

Cardcaptor Sakura: Clear Card Episode 19 All I want is a wacky comedy starring the Cardcaptor Sakura characters. Forget Kaito’s creepy clock. Forget the time traveling camera. All I want is Tomoyo low key sassing Syaoran, Sakura flirting with Akiho, and Syaoran’s sister giving him crap. Seriously, the dude reads to kids in hospitals on the regular? Swoon! No wonder Toya loves this man so much, Yukito is the sweetest guy on the planet!...

While the plot is not airtight it hums along at a brisk case led by the always interesting James Brolin as Jackson Hunt. I liked how they kept the action on point with Hunt in that wherever he is there is going to be trouble. Dedicated Castle-ites will remember last season when Hunt and Castle saved Alexis over in Europe and it turns out Beckett remembers his face as well from a police sketch....