You may have seen him in the Prom Clips, conspiring with Peter Howell from behind banks of synths to perform the score from The Sea Devils to a disbelieving yet delighted audience. Ayres and Howell are of the Eighties, the decade where the composer was largely left to their own devices with only some synthesisers and a long-sleeved-shirt for company. No Library Music or four-piece woodwind scores for them. Bookmarking the decade, their music is markedly different....

The Five Doctors (1983)Rubbish appearance by lone Dalek as part of Terrance Dicks’ attempt to shoehorn every Doctor Who cliché into a 90-minute long shoe. Result: shoe too small and Fake Hartnell and an unrecognisably aged Susan defeat Dalek far too easily. As a note, imagine if RTD had dealt with the Doctor meeting Susan again after all these years? In retrospect, it is breathtakingly poor writing that Dicks didn’t try to make more of the emotion that should be involved in this....

Doctor Who is back for its 36th series, and with it are our viewing notes – a weekly guide to the references, similarities (intentional or otherwise!) and generally interesting things about each episode. Whilst we’ve crammed in as much as we can find, this is by no means a definitive list – so if you’re sat there thinking ‘You fools! You missed this!’, feel free to plop it down in the comments below....

10.3 Thin Ice “She’s a bad girl, this one. Always looking for trouble” Picking up at the exact point where last week’s Smile left us, Sarah Dollard’s second Doctor Who episode, Thin Ice, quickly moves its constituent parts into place. Even pre-credits, we’ve had the reveal of a big monster under the frozen River Thames, we’ve learned that the TARDIS has steered the Doctor and Bill to this place, and that danger lies ahead....

Dragon Ball Super Episode 53 “Here’s your tea. Please enjoy.” Tea is the litmus test for Supreme Kais that are in training and the proof of whether an apprentice is worthy to reach the next level and take on such a colossal responsibility. The episode doesn’t shove this trial in the audience’s face, but what it does focus on is Zamasu’s troublesome disposition. When this does become a problem, it will be the tea that tips everyone off in the end....

Dynasty Episode 7 For their belated Thanksgiving episode, Dynasty delivered the show that we all really want: escalating antics and the Anders and Sammy hour. When the snark is good, it’s very very good, like Fallon casually calling Cristal “participation trophy wife” while verbally sparring with Claudia, who was pointing a loaded gun at her at the time. Michael Colhane gets a backstory Because they are WASPy and wealthy, the Carrington family takes their Thanksgiving way too seriously....

2.1 Trove Endeavour’s first series established Shaun Evans as a fine Morse, well able to capture the character’s established idiosyncrasies while making the role his own. Trove, the second series opener, provides Evans and the rest of Endeavour’s sterling cast with plenty of opportunities to showcase the subtle, thoughtful approach to Morse’s early life that worked so well in last year’s episodes. The show’s creators have worked hard to immerse us in an Oxford both instantly familiar and unsettlingly different from the city with which both this man’s life – and his deeply moving, lonely death – are inextricably entwined....

Jake Gyllenhaal, who put in an engagingly twitchy performance in Villeneuve’s previous feature Prisoners, takes on a dual role here. First, he plays Adam, a bearded, unremarkable history teacher who shuffles through life with the slightly pained expression of a chronic migraine sufferer. Adam becomes obsessed with Anthony, a jobbing actor whom he spots in some sort of breezy romantic comedy called Where There’s A Will There’s A Way. Disturbingly, Anthony looks exactly like Adam (because he’s also played by Gyllenhaal) and, like Adam, lives in Toronto....

Been missing him? Want to see more of his boyish good looks, his winning, shit-eating smile, and his soulless eyes? Well fear not as just around the corner is a ‘hilarious’ movie starring him and some other bloke called Eric Christian Olsen (no relation to the twins, I think) who has previously starred as a younger than young Lloyd Christmas in the prequel to the prequel, Dumb and Dumberer: When Harry Met Lloyd (how do these things get commissioned?...

1.18 Dead Men Tell Long Tales The whole thrust of Dead Men Tell Long Tales is the death of a dive salvage boss, and how this neatly connects to Henry’s first fatality on the Empress of Africa. The best parts of this story are those set in the past, because some of the others, such as the bar full of salty sea-dogs, was wading chin deep through clichés. And, unlike some other appearances, Lucas’s humour grates rather painfully in the few scenes they allowed him....

1.7 New York Kids And, this is the undercurrent that Forever works with in New York Kids, where the obvious audience reaction is designed to dislike the privileged, and ignore the many clues that suggest they’re not actually the murderers in this case. But in many respects, the whole exercise is a smokescreen for some subtle character development, mostly focused on Henry and Jo. They also managed to squeeze in some revealing scenes with Abe, Joanne and even Lucas....

Free Fire follows the events of an arms deal taking place in late 1970s Boston between IRA operatives and a South African gun runner. In one corner is Chris (Cillian Murphy) and Frank (regular Wheatley collaborator Michael Smiley) who are planning to take some M16 rifles back to Ireland with the assistance of paid for muscle Bernie (Enzo Cilenti) and Frank’s brother-in-law Stevo (Sam Riley). In the other corner is sleazy arms dealer Vernon (a shoulder pad sporting Sharlto Copley) his associate Martin (Babou Ceesay), their hired goon Gordon (Noah Taylor) and driver Harry (Jack Reynor)....

3.22 The Day We Died In this future snapshot, our world has become oddly similar to the alternate one, where amber protocol is being used to plug the holes as they appear. But it’s soon revealed that the other dimension was entirely destroyed, and only Walternate still exists by having travelled to our world to achieve his only special version of MAD (mutually assured destruction). Walternate helper in this task is the brilliant actor, Brad Dourif....

4.22 Brave New World – Part 2 William Bell’s god complex was a lovely counter-play to the overwhelming humanity of Walter, and the fuller explanation of the vision that Walter had brain surgery to forget. Yet this was horribly marred by a CGI sequence at the beginning that looked much less inviting that Bell’s interpretation of it. How does a couple of flying porcupine people and another two that it was hard to see constitute a new Eden?...

4.8 Back To Where You’ve Never Been I’ve recently introduced my wife to Fringe by showing her some of the recent self-contained stories, and then I hit her with this. As the episode progressed, I found myself pausing it repeatedly to provide huge amounts of exposition, and after a while I began to wonder if it was as much for my benefit in following the nuances of the show, or hers....

6.9 Battle Of The Bastards Battle Of The Bastards opens up with a brilliant special effects shot. A ball of pitch is loaded into a trebuchet and launched towards Meereen. We fly with the ball as it flies over the city, then as it smashes into the wall we leave it and cut to Daenerys Targaryen having a discussion with her adviser Tyrion. Of course, Dany isn’t here to talk, she’s here to ride dragons and light people on fire, so after being compared to her father by an astute Tyrion, Dany decides to forgo crucifying everyone who has ever owned a slave and sit down to talk peace....

This week, though, is about something that’s happening all around you. If not directly in your life, then in the lives of people you encounter. And there’s a decent chance you may not know. For I’m going to talk about invisible illnesses and disabilities. The difficulty comes when a disability, physical or mental, isn’t obvious. When the person presented to the world looks whatever we define as normal (don’t ask me, I’ve never understood what normal is), and a set of assumptions kicks in....

The aim of this ongoing series of articles is just to have a chat about some of the issues a few, some or many of us may be facing. And, hopefully, to pass on a few tips that may be of use to someone out there. However, we want to quickly talk about just keeping going. You can file this one under ‘easier said than done’, certainly. But nonetheless: no matter how low things are getting, no matter how much you may feel like throwing in the towel, please think twice....

Or maybe it’s just a whole lot of rushed crapola! I mean, after all, HBO had to downsize this season back to the original 10 episodes per, removing the breathing room afforded by bumping the previous season up to 12. But I think I might like Girls better when it’s all scrambling and manic. Though I’ve never outright disliked the show, in retrospect Season 3 was probably the worst one....

1.12 What The Little Bird Told Him This week though, we finally got some pay-off. Most excitingly, we saw Carmine Falcone really get his hands dirty. Gone is the friendly-granddad-who-somehow-happens-to-be-a-crime-lord, and now we have a man who strangles women he previously adored, locks up his enemies and murders all their goons (albeit off-screen). We’re pleased to report that it was a worthwhile reward for months of waiting. We were all but ready to wave goodbye to Falcone, but now that he’s been given a sorely-needed injection of personality, he could well become a formidable central villain (especially with Oswald and Zsaz on his side)....