It’s just the latest of the seemingly neverending battles that are piling up on Jefferson Pierce’s plate, and he’s tired. Tired of fighting in quicksand, and tired of the collateral damage that keeps piling up as a result. As Anissa is starting to realize with her burgeoning vigilantism, violence always comes at a cost. Beating someone up doesn’t just traumatize the victim; it has an affect on the perpertrator, too....

It’s a matter of debate if Morgan was really a pirate. He held an English privateering license, and is considered a national hero by the British. But if anyone had looked closely at what Morgan was up to, they would have seen that what he had permission to do and what he was up to were two entirely different things. Having permission to spy on Cuba does not mean that you can sack Panama City....

4.1 New York Sour I’ve commented before about the informal tetralogy of TV shows that between them have charted the long American twentieth century. From Deadwood to The Wire, via Mad Men and, of course, Boardwalk Empire, we have a succession of investigations into America at, very roughly, forty year intervals. Mad Men, the only non-HBO show on the list, focuses on one central character, although the rest of the cast are interesting enough....

4.5. Shotgun The Breaking Bad creative team pulled a classic bait-and-switch this week that has become characteristic of the show’s writing. Last week either Jesse or Mike looked nailed on to meet an end, as we last saw them driving off into the desert after Mike appealed to Gud that ‘something had to be done’ about Jesse and his increasingly erratic behaviour. Trying to predict or second-guess the direction the show is going to go in is almost futile at this point however....

Broad City Season 4 Episode 2 After a trip back in time in the Broad City season 4 premiere, this week we return to real-time and find out what’s up with our two favorite gal pals in guest-star heavy episode 2, “Twaining Day.” Abbi has herself a new job working as an assistant for Dara (Wanda Sykes) while Ilana snags herself a waitress gig under Marcel (Ru Paul). Meanwhile, Ilana is having her own inner struggle when the hoity-toity Marcel wants her to be a bitchy waitress....

So, Starz’s Spartacus: Gods Of The Arena has finished, but that hasn’t stopped the channel showcasing its latest epic series, Camelot. While HBO’s Game Of Thrones has been generating a lot of buzz, Starz’s Camelot has been comparatively under the radar, despite its having hired a great cast and crew (formerly of The Tudors) for what appears to be a promising show. The producers of the show have clearly drawn their inspiration from Bernard Cornwell’s Warlord series, as Starz’s Camelot is set not in a magical world, a la the BBC’s Merlin, but a dark, gritty land, where sex, violence and betrayal are commonplace....

Cardcaptor Sakura: Clear Card Episode 4 It’s tough for TV to make me laugh out loud when I’m alone. I might chuckle or smile but something has to really be over the top to get me to even chuckle by myself. One thing Cardcaptor Sakura Clear Card is really great at is just having these moments that let the audience have fun with the characters. A similar moment happens later on in the episode where Kero delivers perhaps the greatest line in the entire history of Cardcaptor Sakura, “If you try hard enough you can make that a pun!...

Cardcaptor Sakura: Clear Card Episode 8 This episode reminded me why I fell in love with Cardcaptor Sakura and not Cardcaptors. As previously mentioned I watched a LOT of Cardcaptors when I was in elementary school. I taped all the episodes, drew terrible fanart, and even bought the Clow Book. I really dug the show. It had giant splash pages of characters surrounded by flowers, plots that totally centered on characters feelings, and so many goddamn anime blushes....

6.2 Dreamworld When you study the history of Western theatre, you learn that almost all tragedies until the twentieth century (and even many thereafter) were written either following the “rules” Aristotle supposedly outlined for the form, or in opposition to those rules: one main plot, one scene for all action, all action in a space of twenty-four hours. When it comes to TV shows that involve leads with romantic tension between them, there are also rules that are followed, largely defined by mid-eighties series Moonlighting: leads must be kept apart, romantic tension must be maintained through near misses and plot twists, there is no actual happiness in happily ever after....

That’s what happens in Child 44, the new political thriller based on the first in a trilogy of novels by Tom Rob Smith. Tom Hardy stars as MGB agent Leo Demidov, who is busy at his job of routing out political dissidents when two major challenges come into his life: he is asked to denounce his own wife, Raisa (Noomi Rapace), as a traitor, and also stumbles upon a series of grisly child killings that seem to stretch across 20 years and several areas of the Soviet Union....

Childhood’s End episode 1. There’s a reason why Arthur C. Clarke’s 1953 novel, Childhood’s End, was never adapted for the screen. It’s just so damn huge! The alien invasion (or occupation, depending on how it’s characterized) is global; it stops all war, cures all diseases, and the timeframe of the story encompasses decades. The producers of this Syfy miniseries do an admirable but not flawless job of addressing these issues of scope, and the deeper questions it raises about free will, Utopia, religion, and politics are at times pedantic but often artistically, if not always entertainingly, sound....

Leonardo DiCaprio has already confirmed he’ll play the lead in the film, which Nolan has also scribed. But it looks like Inception is going to be pretty epic in scope, as Nolan-favourite Cillian Murphy (Scarecrow in the Batman saga), Juno‘s Ellen Page and Oscar winner Marion Cotillard (Le Vie En Rose) have all be lined up to take roles. While Inception‘s plot is being treated as top secret, the film’s studio, Warner Bros, have released a brief statement, enigmatically describing the film as “a contemporary sci-fi actioner set within the architecture of the mind....

This is a formulaic show about a nerd who ends up as a spy through no fault of his own, yet it’s got wit and style that other shows just can’t emulate. But part of the new Intersect has been stolen by, and this blew my mind, Michael Clarke Duncan! He’s looking much trimmer from his Kingpin era, but he’s still got a voice so deep he’s probably trackable by seismic sensors....

Now that the madness of sweeps is essentially over for the season, TV is slowly returning to something approaching normal, (unless you’re a Supernatural fan. What’s that about?) and Community once again graces our screens. It ought to be a joyous event, but Custody Law And Eastern European Diplomacy is a curiously downbeat return. A strangely friendless Jeff, still rooming with the saw-wielding ex-Senor, sees an opportunity to get his apartment back (he is a lawyer, after all) and convinces Chang that Shirley would take his parental aspirations more seriously if he got his life together....

1.4 A Feast Of Friends Constantine’s old friend/hanger-on Gary “Gaz” Lester (Jonjo O’Neill), a member of the infamous Newcastle crew of his younger days, comes to the U.S. to seek help from Constantine in dealing with a hunger demon. While high on heroin, Gary drew the demon, Mnemoth, from a boy in Sudan (killing the boy) and trapped it in a bottle. The demon takes the form of a swarm of beetles, takes over a person’s body, and forces him or her to eat madly and incessantly....

1.3 In The Hands Of An Angry God I see this week’s tempered approach as a good move, a chance to give the issues the serious attention they deserve rather than relying too much on shock value. At the same time, this episode was heavy on reflection and light on fight scenes. I don’t mind missing out on the fights for a week, but some viewers might, depending on what you watch the show for....

This is independent British cinema at its best, a thought-provoking feature where there are no clear demarcations of either guilt or reality and the atmosphere is rarefied and eerie, unsettling without being scary. Helped by well-scripted dialogue, Laura Fraser (a hot property at the moment, you can also see her in the BBC3 drama Lip Service) gives a beautifully controlled if a tad neurotic performance, which always keeps you guessing as to whether her character Polly is losing her mind or not....

In every series of Curb of late there is the odd episode that misses the mark, not because of the jokes but because of the paper-thin plot. The Hot Towel is the first of this series to succumb to this problem. It fell down in several places for me because of far too many ideas and subplots being shoehorned into the one episode. Had these jokes been scattered throughout the series, they would have worked just as well, if not better, as they didn’t tie in with one another nor make much sense within Larry’s world....

Stick’s appearance in the last season of Daredevil was a particular highlight for me, so I’m entirely happy to see this season using him more – and especially since they’re really going in hard on all the ninja mythology stuff which, while completely unnecessary to the character, is one of the idiosyncrasies I really love about Daredevil. I already know the ninja stuff gets a bit too much for some people later on in this series, but for now, at least, I’m fully on board....