4.1 Old Dogs, New Tricks Being Human (US) is finally back and hitting the ground running. It’s been three months since the last episode and Josh is still a wolf…mostly. First things first: Aidan and Nora are friends again! After their fall out last season, it made me really happy to see the two people who care about Josh the most come together to take care of him in his, uh, “time of need....
4.7 Gallows Humour Strap in for one of the most heartbreaking things I’ve ever watched, and I’m someone who doesn’t even change the channel when those Sarah McLaughlin pet commercials come on. This week’s episode is sad heaped on top of sad, and every single character manages to break our collective heart. We open with Aidan, waiting while Kenny’s vampires clean up the mess he left when he lost control and drained the girl from the previous episode....
The two seasons of Charlie Brooker’s sci-fi anthology masterpiece that ran on England’s Channel 4 in 2011 and 2013 were three episodes each. That stretches the concept of how few episodes a TV series can feature before its even a TV series anymore and not a lose confederation of movies under one brand. Then, as tends to be the case on television: Netflix happened. Black Mirror set the streamers’ servers ablaze and led to Reed Hastings’ boyz picking up the show for two new seasons....
Our sister publication in the US sat down with Grace last month to talk BlacKkKlansman. It’s something that he was excited to partner with Lee on. Grace’s worst fear might’ve been finding sympathy for a man he describes as evil in a sort of “TV movie of the week” biopic. Rather Lee offered him the chance to depict the danger of those like Duke, who might peddle in anger and emotional foolishness, but do so with cunning....
Children’s TV at the time was a curious blend of the weird and the wonderful, with Blue Peter being at the more watchable end of the spectrum. In hindsight it was implausibly wholesome fare, where the division between childhood and adulthood interests was enforced like the Berlin wall. I vaguely remember the Christopher Trace era, but for so many years Valerie Singleton and John Noakes were my extended relatives and surrogate pet owners....
The game’s going to be set in the near future, where many countries have automated a good deal of their armies, with drone jets and robotic walkers being amongst some of the units on offer. The setting for the game borrows elements from a range of sources. Mechwarrior-style robots can be seen clomping around, Ghost Recon-style drones and armour are utilised and worn, and there’s even a scene with a Total Recall-inspired x-ray machine to detect weapons....
As Caprica leaves our screens for a six month sabbatical, with the back end of its maiden season to come, it’s fair to say that it’s a show that’s occasionally sparked into life, but often fallen under a weight of questions. This episode is, I’d argue, one of the best we’ve seen thus far, but it’s also hard to make a case that it’s left us tantalised for the day it comes back....
To be specific, he had him shot on the steps of a courthouse, then replaced him with his long lost sidekick, James Bucky Barnes, who hadn’t been seen since he was blown into several hundred pieces over the Atlantic. However, Bucky survived, only to be captured (and thoroughly brainwashed) by the Russians. Subsequently, they made him work for many years under the guise of the mercenary Winter Soldier, until his rediscovery and rehabilitation courtesy of Steve Rogers....
The lights went down, the curtains withdrew and that classic day for night shot of the Junkers Ju 52 over the Alps came into view, and those iconic drums began to that repetitive beat. Instantly I was transported to WWII. The crisp cold winter air caused me a sharp intake of breath and, armed to the teeth, I stepped out into star-filled night sky, listened for the rustle of parachute silk opening and waited for the inevitable crunch of fresh deep snow beneath me....
Bizarrely, it marked the first mainstream TV show I’ve ever seen in 3D, and by the end I was actually more mystified about why they bothered to do this than anything else. Morgan appears at the start and tells you to put your 3D specs on, so you can admire their handiwork, for what it is. We then get a rather poor – by Chuck standards – story, interspersed with all the obvious and clichéd uses of stereoscopic 3D that you can imagine....
There’s been something missing this season from the television schedules, a breath of fresh air that only one show can deliver. Chuck is back to save the world, and probably my sanity along with it! Or rather I was hoping it was, but the first story only slightly rocked my boat in this respect. To that end they decided to entirely alter things by starting out with the premise that Chuck has dumped Sarah, the woman he’d die to have in the first two seasons....
Colony Season 2 Episode 9 Remember how last week was full of twists and turns that blew apart the show’s world and reassembled it in a new and unusual configuration? Yeah, this episode knocks all of that over like one big poorly structured Jenga puzzle and doesn’t even bother with putting things back together again. “Tamam Shud” means “finished” or “ended” in Persian, and hot damn, is that ever an appropriate title straight out of the The X-Files school of cryptic yet relevant episode titles....
Look, I know it might sound like a stupid coincidence to note: “Duh, hey, this episode had people getting tied up with ropes just like another one did!” But it’s actually kind of a big deal. The thing is, in “Intro to Knots,” there was no logical buildup to the study group going insane and tying up a professor so they all just came off as nuts. Yes, they’d done crazier stuff in the past like destroyed the school with a paintball fight over the chance to score priority class registration, but the smartness of Community is that it can go to these ridiculous places where everyone acts like nutcases because it knows how to establish and build to a tone where that behavior feels somehow believable....
This review contains spoilers. After last week’s therapeutic trip to the carnival, this week the group went the whole hog and just spent some time in a hospital – surely the best place to get the therapy so many of them sorely need… at least in Annie and Abed’s eyes. Thanks to the Dreamatorium, Abed’s insecurities and Annie’s apparent specialist knowledge of hospital administration, she and Abed manage to work through some of those pesky group-control issues....
5.7 Bondage And Beta-Male Sexuality Back in the second season, Community hit a high point with Mixology Certification, in which Troy’s 21st birthday celebrations turned surprisingly melancholy. Coming back from a Sochi-mandated hiatus, Bondage And Beta Male Sexuality feels like the first episode since that one to find the characters in that same sort of mood – close to closing time at some quiet venue, turning their thoughts to more existential matters....
Dark Matter Season 3 Episode 6 The relief is palpable as Dark Matter returns with a great episode that plays on the show’s strengths: its characters. With wonderful performances from Melissa O’Neil in particular and from the Raza crew in general, no one even minded the confusion of being deceived by merc doppelgängers; in fact, being fooled was downright fun! Although the season’s story arc continues to progress very slowly, motivations are now clearly in place for our protagonists as well as Commander Nieman, Emperor Ishida, and others....
For the last ten or so years, since the sentimental Big Fish, Tim Burton has been honing his previously odd, gothic-meets-kitsch aesthetic into a rich, pristine gloss, all the while trampling on familiar properties from Sweeney Todd to Willy Wonka. 2010’s Alice In Wonderland was not only Burton’s most expensive, but his most successful film to date, but it found the director, who was once feted as the most distinctive of modern Hollywood visionaries, slipping towards humdrum mundanity....
2.3 The Cord And The Ax Where the episode really worked well was the whole Amanda/Nolan/Pottinger dynamic, in which having a foot in each camp makes Amanda a significantly more interesting character than before. Her assault on the difficult customer demonstrated a whole new side, one who isn’t beyond some excessive violence. That was an unexpected direction, and the announcement that Christie is expecting is another. I’d have preferred some explanation as to how two species that evolved on different planets could share enough DNA to make this possible, but it binds Rafe back into the bigger story quite conveniently....
For example, Rafe never really did get a chance to foment his rebellion against the Earth Republic using the weapons supplied by the Votanis Collective. And now that Quentin saw fit to bring Pilar back to the family, the fate of Christie, Alak, and their baby is left up in the air as well. Linda Hamilton delivered a worthy performance in her short guest appearance, and I hope we get to see more of her in season 3, if there is one....
