As a prediction for my next few weeks I shall bung the standard ingredients into the Merlin-script-o-matic (it’s a bit like the Dan Brown-o-matic only with more eloquent sentence structure) and predict the next few week’s worth of stories. A new character will enter the show, they will be a baddie and have something to do with magic The new character will in some way endear him or herself to the court, Arthur or Giles (sorry Uther) 4....
3.9 Love In The Time Of Dragons And much as I like to see Katie McGrath and Emilia Fox’s cruel collaborations, I felt the series needed to focus on other characters. I’m sure in the remaining episodes the two vixens will be the order of the day, but this week’s episode had Gaius take centre stage in a tender episode which still had dark undertones. Alice (played by Shirley Valentine‘s Pauline Collins) arrives in Camelot and Gaius is overjoyed to be reunited with the woman he once loved....
Last week’s Misfits was all about introducing new member Rudy, and this week we get to meet another newbie in the form of Melissa, Curtis’ alter ego played to uncanny perfection by actress Kehinde Fadipe. Curtis episodes have a chequered history in the show, and this episode manages to bring out the best and worst in his character, without much Nathan Stewart-Jarrett on screen at all. But it’s back to basics this week, as the former champion realises that he could compete again under the guise of Melissa....
Like a post watershed Sesame Street, Mongrels introduces a menagerie of talking animals who congregate around the back of a London pub. There’s Destiny, an afghan bitch whose owner’s insistence on dragging her to a dog dancing show forces her to take decisive action. What’s immediately striking about Mongrels is the quality of the puppets. Well designed and full of character, they keep the show eminently watchable, even though the jokes occasionally fall flat....
TAKE US FROM THE TOP: BEST SCENE(S) OF THE NIGHT: Mayor Sad-Dad really made his presence known tonight with MULTIPLE SCENES. It was like throw back Thursday to his Peggy era! He had his bro-date with Jeff Fordham and two (obvious to anyone but Mayor Sad-Dad) prostitutes, the scene where he had missed calls and voice mails from one of his daughters and a police chief (note: upon seeing his phone, his line was “aw, crap....
Outlander Season 2, Episode 3 It is a truth universally acknowledged that every fine home must be in want of a pickpocket. So brings about the latest unexpected addition to the Claire and Jamie Fraser found family collective. The husband and wife team have accumulated their own little home within the larger superficial eccentricities of Parisian court culture. They have one another, of course. They have Murtagh. They have lady’s maid Suzette, who Claire looks out for by acquiring birth control....
Boasting the voice of Ben Whishaw (a relatively late replacement for Colin Firth), we’re introduced to Paddington in an outstanding opening ten minutes, where his world is pretty much turned upside down. Through a series of events, and a tragedy, he ends up alone, at Paddington Station. Where nobody seems interested in him at all. That is until the Brown family walk by. Hugh Bonneville’s Mr Brown isn’t much of an initial fan, but it’s Samuel Joslin’s Jonathan Brown who instantly warms to Paddington, and off they go to the London suburbs....
With this in mind, you’ll understand why the weekend’s Peep Show held more intrigue to me than most, as this was exactly the predicament Mark and Jez found themselves in. Like a very British farce, the pair were in Zahra’s flat as Jez finally wooed her into his naughty ways of thinking, and Mark went over to pick him up to attend his son’s (James Ian or Ian James?) christening....
In the book of Stuff That Shouldn’t Need Explaining Nowadays But Somehow Still Does, right between the parts on not making fun of deaf accents and not ridiculing fat people for their size, there’s an entry entitled Rape: Comedy. It’s pretty long, and covers the right to free speech and subversive power of laughing at dark subjects. There’s a lot on context, voice and irony. It’s nuanced stuff but concludes with an evergreen reminder: “Making rape the punchline to a seaside-postcard comedy skit is crass and cheap....
Was it really a year ago since the last season of Primeval was on telly? Actually, no it wasn’t. Don’t worry, you haven’t tripped though a Primeval anomaly into a year in the future, but rather, due to an interesting agreement between ITV and satellite channel Watch (much to do with ITV canning the series after season 3, due to budgets). But hey, now you know when and where to watch....
The kids are too busy watching NetTubes on their iBoxes and downloading illegal FlickTorrents to deign to ever turn up at a cinema, whereas there are people of a certain age for whom going for a night out at the pictures is still actually demonstrably a thing. I’ve seen it first hand: I went to a packed screening of Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy in Brighton not long ago where my presence brought the room’s average age down by about 50 years, and I wouldn’t be surprised if Skyfall’s recent astronomic box office total wasn’t at least partly propelled by appealing to punters old enough to be Roger Moore’s parents....
1.12 Same Exactly Nevertheless, it was one of the best responses to the original premise of the show, that skilled LA fixer Ray could slice through his clients’ problems with proficient efficiency but couldn’t quite fix his own life. It was a rather unbalanced premise; the first component was far weaker than the second. Over the course of this season, we’ve seen, repeatedly, how shallow the plotlines were that handled the Hollywood material....
One’s enjoyment of Revenge lies largely in how you feel about rape revenge movies in general. For those who dislike them, even a highly stylized example is never going to land. Is such a thing as a feminist rape revenge movie even possible? The marketing push around this movie, proudly quoting male trolls who sound like Richard, posits that Revenge is just that. A woman writer-director certainly helps, but that’s a superficial measure of empowerment....
The game, on the other hand, stalls before it even gets out of the garage. At first, the game seems to have promise. You’re a skeleton that goes on fire, for heaven’s sake! What could go wrong? Well, first, you start off wandering around Hell, so everything else is on fire, too. This should be cool, but it actually makes it quite hard to see what’s going on. The sprawling levels feature room after room after room, all of which look exactly the same, making figuring out where you’re going almost impossibly hard....
3.18 Allegiance Captain Picard is reading in his quarters when, out of nowhere, a blue light transports him to a room! No, it’s not Chief O’Brien finally snapping, but something more sinister. Captain Picard has been abducted! The bridge crew notice some odd readings from the Captain’s quarters and when he doesn’t respond to pages, they send Worf down there with a security team. Except when they get there they find… Captain Picard, acting completely normal....
1.11 Haven The episode begins with the Enterprise arriving at Haven, the kind of subtly-named planet we see a lot of in TNG‘s early days (although it’s probably better than hearing the likes of “Rigel III” again). And in an unusual turn of events, this week there are two things happening! The first is that Troi’s husband-to-be, to whom she was betrothed as a child, is finally cashing in his chips....
3.21 Hollow Pursuits When Barclay gets to the cargo bay he’s given a dressing down by Riker and La Forge for his lateness and generally neglectful behaviour. They lament how such a loser managed to make it onto the Enterprise anyway. Although a better question might be how he made it to Lieutenant when he’s basically incompetent. It certainly wasn’t his firm handshake. Meanwhile La Forge’s team discovers a seal on one of their canisters has broken, sewing mystery dry ice everywhere....
Wasting next to no time on exposition, we’re informed by Rick the he and Morty are trapped in a simulation of their world. In reality, they’re on a ship of Zigerian scammers, “the galaxy’s most ambitious, least successful con artists.” Before telling him this, Rick pulls Marty out of his fake classroom and into the locker room showers, where he instructs Morty to strip naked and shower with him. This is the only way they can speak freely as the Zigerians won’t monitor them because they happen to be very uncomfortable with nudity, which is possibly the best villain weakness in the history of fiction....
And … WWE expects that will be enough for you to boo him at SummerSlam. In WWE’s storyline, Roman Reigns is the big hero who will come swinging in at SummerSlam, take the Universal Title from Lesnar, bring it back to “full-time WWE” and save us all from Lesnar’s antics. That might work if SummerSlam were somewhere in the middle of the country with fans just happy to be in the building....
How daunting was the prospect of finishing Battlestar Galactica, giving that it’s being called one of the greatest TV shows of all-time? The awards that you’ve won for Battlestar Galactica and so forth, do they spur you on or do they make you sit back and relax? Uh, I don’t know. They look pretty on my mantle. [laughs] I think the awards and the acclaim are surprising and gratifying and you’re always amazed that people like what you do, and it’s even more surprising when you find the critics, the publications, and organisations like that, give the show awards, it’s great....
