This week, we welcome back the brilliant Jane Roberts… Well, for the hay fever sufferer, pollen. A sniveling, sneezing, coughing, overheated season of misery. Windows shut, medication lined up in regimented order. Steroid drops for eye – check. Nasal decongestant – yup. Anti-histamine overload – uh, huh. Asthma inhalers prepped – you betcha. Sense of humour bypass – absolutely in place. People who don’t have hay fever tend to dismiss it as a case of the sniffles....

I have Supergirl hair today. My hairdresser gave me that bounce and shiny finish. To quote Eleanor Oliphant*, she made me shiny. So I have the hair. Now look in the mirror. What do I want to be today? What self shall I place myself in before I face the world? Close the door to the broken selves cupboard. Open the one next to it marked ‘pretty but never worn’....

Across the series so far, we’ve talked about a variety of things, some of which relate to those of us in very dark places. But what if you’re not? What if you’re feeling that something’s just a little off, or not quite right? It’s one of the great misconceptions of support lines, of friends, and of the many brilliant organisations we’ve been proud to work with and support as part of Geeks Vs Loneliness....

As ever with Geeks Vs Loneliness, we don’t pretend to have the answers. But hopefully there are a few suggestions that may be of use somewhere along the line. Dealing with tricky family members – be they parents, uncles, aunts, grandparents, siblings, half-siblings… heck, the list goes on – comes with an extra special ingredient. That ingredient tends to be guilt. Many of us feel a deep responsibility towards our family, to the point where we take levels of shit from them that we wouldn’t from anyone else....

5.2 Clear And Wesen Danger This is a good thing. If the writers take their time and develop a major storyline that runs all season – and allow Nick and the others to focus solely on it – it would not only be a real change to previous seasons with their ‘Wesen of the week’ plots, but it would add a story arc that, hopefully will provide more detail about the shadowy second world that we still don’t understand....

Grimm Season 6 Episode 3 Grimm Season 6 Episode 3,”Oh Captain, My Captain”, attempts a redistribution of power between who and what are usually viewed as good and evil. The balancing act plays out between Captain Sean Renard and Team Grimm. Will this narrative continue until the series’ end? Without a looming last curtain call, I imagine pitting former colleagues against each other wouldn’t feel so immediate. Before Renard was seduced by Black Claw and the perceived power of the mayor’s office, he was squarely on the side of mortal law....

As a plot synopsis, that doesn’t quite capture what happens in Her. It’s not really a film that lends itself to a neat summary, nor is it one you want to read much about before seeing. In fact, if you want a quick is it good or not, it’s terrific, and feel free to come back and read the rest after you’ve seen it as I’ll be including some spoilers....

Heroes, of course, is an action drama told in the style of a comic book, about a group of very ordinary people who discover they have extraordinary powers. There’s a politician who can fly, a cop who can hear people’s thoughts, an artist who can paint the future, a cheerleader with regenerative self-healing abilities, and there are many more. Oh yes. The series begins with Peter Petrelli, a hospice nurse who is having dreams that he can fly....

Well, the wait’s over and Heroes is back, amidst the usual barrage of product placement and plugs – this year ABC are heavily pushing’s Wednesday’s premiere of The Bionic Woman. And, from the opening lines of Mohinder Suresh’s introductory monologue, it’s familiar stuff that seeks to do as little to break the mould of series one as possible. We catch up with Claire and the man formerly known as Horn Rimmed Guy on the first day at Claire’s new school in sunny California....

For whilst Cautionary Tales involves lots of time travel, many guns pulled, lightning bolts, healing girls and flying guys – what it’s really about is children and their parents. How, at some point, we realise they’re flawed, why we sometimes hate them and don’t understand why they did what they did and do what they do, how we reconcile with them – hopefully – and ultimately how we remember them when they’re gone....

This new series proves that it can and does. Heralded, in-universe, as a ‘new chapter’ by Frank Underwood, the second set of thirteen episodes offers a widening of the original story and an escalation of the hostile machinations that Underwood conducts like a master. He is now firmly installed as Vice President, ‘a heartbeat away’ from his stated goal of Commander-in-Chief, and confident in his own nefarious abilities. The show has a notably darker tone, largely borne of the increased power that Underwood has at his disposal....

At the top of this week’s latest HIMYM episode, I thought it was being used as a throw in. Then, towards the middle, I thought it was STILL BEING USED AS A THROW IN—and used poorly at that. It continued, and I remained even more convinced of its terrible use. Then, at the very, very, very end I realized it was used absolutely… brilliantly. Four and a half stars, HIMYM writers, for excellent writing this week....

How To Get Away With Murder‘s fourth episode, “Let’s Get to Snooping,” inches us one step closer to the before of Sam’s death as each student shows shades of their survival skills or lack thereof. Competitors are forced to become allies in a dangerous game none have played before, and are ignorant of the rules and consequences. A crisis brings out the best and worst in most people, and this group is no exception....

Often after a story I’ve mused at what those stung by the Hustle crew do, once they realise what complete chumps they’ve been. This is exactly the question the writers asked, and their answer is to plot revenge. They’ve managed to find three other previous marks to partly fund the exercise, and nice-but-dim aristocrat Alfie Baron (Tom Goodman Hill) who’ll act as the lure. Carlton’s plan is to use exactly the same methods the crew would use, offering an unbeatable investment and then reeling in the crew for a cool million pounds, twice what they took him for....

The beginning of the ECIII promo was horrible, but it completely turned around in the end. So the first part of the promo didn’t do it for me, and if they continue to do things like that with ECIII, it’s going to hurt his chances to get over as a major heel. The crowd shouldn’t want to cheer anything this guy does. That being said, the end of this segment is EXACTLY what a heel ECIII should be doing....

These quotes aren’t, as you may have imagined, plucked from the reviews of Matthijs van Heijningen Jr’s The Thing, out on Friday, but John Carpenter’s 1982 movie. Now rightly regarded as a classic, it’s easy to forget just how venomous the critical response was towards Carpenter’s film – worse still, The Thing wasn’t a big hit with audiences, either. It was only later that the film grew in stature, as viewers began to notice its singularly bleak atmosphere, remarkable special effects and expert direction....

This week’s In the Flesh staged act two of Kieren Walker’s fraught homecoming by introducing a pair of new characters, a conflicted romance, and a redemptive mission. It was the episode in which the narrative gears proper began to turn, and In the Flesh demonstrated whether or not it had the mettle to outlive its three-part lifespan. Yes, is the answer to that, though it won’t necessarily be the supernatural premise that sees it through....

In Langdon’s third movie adventure, again directed by Ron Howard and again adapted from a Dan Brown best-seller, a virus generated by a crazed billionaire (Ben Foster) threatens to wipe out half the world’s population – unless Langdon can solve a series of clues that will lead him to its hiding place. The problem is, Langdon’s just woken up in a Florentine hospital with a head injury and no idea how he got there....