Dynasty Episode 4 The most recent episode of Dynasty is full of awesomely bad outfits, loads of eye candy, and a plot as thick as gravy. This is the first episode so far to find a nice balance between the many overlapping storylines the show juggles: Fallon’s business endeavors, everyone’s love stories, Cristal’s backstory, and Matthew’s death. Personally, I think chauffeur Michael is the real moral center, but the show is determined to tell us it’s Steven, in spite of his spotty record....

2.22 Art In The Blood So which is it? Is Mycroft Holmes an MI6 mole or framed asset? Was his return to MI6 precipitated by his insolvency or by his little brother’s imminent prison sentence? Is he tinker, tailor, soldier or spy? Spy is a given after the revelations of the past two episodes, which saw the arrow swing wildly around Mycroft’s character dial from hero to villain and back again before appearing to settle on ‘wronged man’....

Emerald City Episode 8 Emerald Citywill never be the Game of Thrones-esque epic it aspires to be, but it’s found a visually-stunning, somewhat narratively shallow niche to nicely occupy. Heading into the final three episodes of the season (and, likely, show), the Oz-inspired drama leans into some of its better twists — namely, the reveal that Tip is the secret heir to the throne of Oz. The domestic drama about Glinda and Roan’s marriage was, um, less good....

Made back in 2013 but only now getting a UK release, Everyone’s Going To Die pretty much had me on side from its opening credits. That ‘A Film By’ screen you sometimes get? It was filled with the name of everyone who worked on the film. A really lovely touch, and a welcome precursor for what turns out to be a far, far sweeter film than the title might lead you to believe....

As popular as demons seem to be, what with the exorcism frenzy going on in Italy, that hasn’t translated to the small screen. The Exorcist was the lowest-rated show on Fox this year, in spite of some quality writing, acting and directing. It only pulled in about 1.32 million viewers in the all-important 18-49 demo. Maybe reality is scarier than fiction for kids. The Exorcist could have been a devilishly delightful addition to network horror genre programming as they compete with Netflix....

3.3 Badlands Thus far, the show has done a good job of keeping the antagonists somehow different from our heroes. Between harnessed kids, Pope back when he was a bad guy, and various potential collaborators (Karen in particular), there has always been a strong potential for human antagonists, but until this season, it has rarely been blatant. Pope and his people turned out to be helpful fighters against the Skitter threat, the harnessed kids can now be rescued, and people generally come around to Tom’s way of thinking, more or less....

5.9 Reunion The militias are gathering in numbers and marching on Washington, waiting for the Second Mass to lead the final assault on Washington and wipe out the alien menace. Of course, it wouldn’t be Falling Skies without some kind of complication, and not only do Tom Mason’s chickens come home to roost, another familiar face from Tom’s past makes an appearance. That’s right, Lexi Mason is back, and it’s up to the gang to decide whether she’s trustworthy or another one of those weird Melora Hardin-type replicants from the last episode....

3.10 Somebody To Love Gloria and Varga were not merely the only two pieces left on the board after this bloody finale but also the most diametrically opposed. Varga, the season’s Satanic figure, was a product of chaos and darkness, a smelly malignancy whose modus operandi is to confuse, distort and overwhelm. Gloria, on the other hand, was almost entirely good (in the vein of Fargo’s earlier white knight cops) with a Sherlockian talent for cutting through the clouds of obfuscation and zeroing in on objective fact....

Writing original music is difficult. Writing original music for as many as 22 episodes of TV, often with a very tight turnaround – plus a memorable theme tune – is very difficult. So why not just make life easier for yourself, whack a few familiar songs over the visuals and head home early? Overuse the device, however, and it becomes painfully obvious that you simply don’t trust your scenes to communicate the correct emotions – see for example Smallville’s habit of ending every episode with an awkward heart-to-heart between Clark and Lana while the latest lump of licensed sad sack college rock festered in the background, trying desperately to fill in the blanks....

You Win Or You Die Don’t worry, that is in no way a spoiler. Neither is the fact that the scene with Tywin Lannister (played by the wonderful Charles Dance) and Jaime started the episode so strongly that I wondered if the rest would live up to its heights. Gutting a deer while chastising his son for not killing Ned, Tywin is the very essence of an overbearing father. With a hint of menace in everything he says and does, Tywin cares about his family’s legacy most of all, and is not above berating his son for daring to place his ego above the family name....

This week’s is difficult, as we want to talk about when a friend or relative falls seriously ill, possibly with no happy ending in sight. Stories like this are playing out around us all the time, and you never know who is hiding one behind the face that they present to the rest of the world. That doesn’t hide that fact that there are few things in the world more heartbreaking than seeing someone you love go through suffering....

Maxwell Smart (Carrell) is one of CONTROL’s top analysts. He’s a brilliant linguist, if a bit flighty, and is one of CONTROL’s most valuable assets around the office thanks to his devotion and incredibly long, detailed reports. Unfortunately, because of (or in spite of) his mind, Max is entirely too valuable to do what he really wants to do, be an active secret agent out in the field. He’s got the brains, but he’s not exactly the most formidable fighter on the block, unlike superstar Agent 23 (Dwayne Johnson, WWE’s The Rock)....

Now take a look at Ghost In The Shell, director Mamoru Oshii’s 1995 adaptation of Masamune Shirow’s manga; 22 years on, and it’s barely aged a day. It imagines a future where human and machine have long since fused; typists can have their hands replaced with ten-fingered robot limbs capable of banging out 1,000 words per second. Minds can be augmented for faster learning; eyes can be replaced with more powerful optical sensors....

We all knew it was coming, but Jesse St. James breaks Rachel’s heart and returns to Vocal Adrenalin, due to the Glee club not listening to his ideas, and just to add salt to the wounds, they perform a big number and then toilet roll the choir room in a bid to scare them and to fail at nationals. After Vocal Adrenalin’s performance puts the club in a funk and with Will also depressed about his divorce, he decides to assign them some funk numbers to get their funk back, something the rival team has never been able to do....

With Marvel Studios planning to pretty much blow up the MCU in Avengers: Infinity War and the still-untitled Avengers 4, it seems more and more likely that we’ll be looking at a very different configuration of that universe three years from now, with lots of room for fresh characters and storylines. Nova could very well be one of them. Time will tell if Gunn and the Marvel braintrust agree. Rider was created in 1966 by Marv Wolfman and Len Wein, appearing in his own series and various other Marvel titles right up through the present....

Imagine my surprise, then, when this turned out to be a real film, out in cinemas this Boxing Day. I tried to reserve judgement. I’ve seen School of Rock many times, Tenacious D songs Tribute and Wonderboy are regular visitors to my MP3 player, and I even tried to like The Pick of Destiny. As I went into the screening, I was trepidatious – would it turn out to be a Christmas cracker, or a cold, dry turkey?...

The Wii U’s been out for almost two years now, and it still feels as though Nintendo has yet to give the wider public a convincing reason to go and buy one. The general response to what it unveiled at E3 may have changed that, however, and while we still have some time to wait for its most exciting games (Zelda’s not due out until the end of 2015), the games it has in store could finally turn the Wii U into something approaching a success....

Yes, I’m aware that this season finale ends with a small town general practitioner of medicine mutating into Romanian blood dragon of some sort, stealing a baby and screeching off into the night…and we’ll get to that. But in discussing season two in its entirety, it’s important to focus on the show’s matriarch fatale, first actress listed among the opening credits and biggest weakness. I had high hopes when Olivia’s tongue re-attachment in episode one fixed her dreadful British accent and the meds Dr....

Unsurprisingly at the end of the episode I was left to nurse my psychic ego as the one nugget of insightful prediction I had made after episodes one and two failed spectacularly to mask the cataclysmic failure of my other forebodings. It’s fine, I can take it, I understand now that my attempts at seeing the future were about as shortsighted as the studio execs who thought parts two and three of The Matrix Trilogy were a good idea....