1.9 The Bridge Privacy offers no freedom either. The republic’s eyes and ears are in people’s homes. There too, real meaning is camouflaged under pretence. Serena Joy can’t tell Rita she’s looking for a stiff drink instead of chamomile tea. Rita can’t pour her one without first offering a euphemistic excuse. To know the characters’ real feelings, The Handmaid’s Tale audience has to be alert to the artifice and hear what’s being said behind each line....

I’ve come to the conclusion that I like Worthington, though not in the ways that I like Jackie Chan or Penélope Cruz. Rather, I like the way he stands solid as a no bullshit male lead, a little like, say, Clint Eastwood, Bruce Willis or Russell Crowe. He’s got that whole Aussie down-to-earth attitude going and always keeps his cool. Add the ex-bricklayer’s backstory of selling his possessions and living in his car before the big roles came, and he’s even more of an appealing figure....

‘Sblood, zounds, fustilarian… of all the historical expletives drama has taught us over the years, I think I’m going to get the most use out of “Devil’s turds”. That’s how Saxon Lord Uhtred (Matthew Macfadyen modelling a hawk) describes the Danes spotted sailing into Northumbria in the tense opening moments of BBC Two’s new Viking-era drama, The Last Kingdom. It only goes downhill from there, and it’s not long before Lord Uhtred is Lord Uh-dead with a bolt hammered through the back of his Uh-head....

Toby Stephens stars as brooding computer scientist Dr Vincent McCarthy (his name being a nod, perhaps, to real-world pioneer John McCarthy), who works in a shadowy research bunker for the Ministry of Defence. The west is locked in a second Cold War with China, and both sides are racing to build ever more intelligent machines. “The most technologically advanced society always wins,” is how Vincent’s ruthless boss Thomas (Wedge Antilles himself, Denis Lawson) puts it....

But don’t worry, the foundation of the series is still the same, as it must be. The tenuous peace between Germany in the American Reich and Japan in the Pacific States is still barely holding together in this 1960’s alternate history in which the Axis powers won World War II. The resistance movement is still seeking to collect films for the titular man in the high castle, films which, among other things, show a different version San Francisco destroyed by an A-bomb and several of the main characters gathered up and executed....

2.9 Election Night Part Two The Newsroom’s bumpy second season reaches a close with Election Night Part II, an episode that reconnects with many of the core elements that started off the show and finally absolves itself of the Operation Genoa storyline. As discussed last week, the title has very little to do with the main thrust of the action. The 2012 presidential election was not exactly a tense race, and Aaron Sorkin’s script only occasionally pays lip service to delusional supporters at Romney HQ who thought otherwise....

Not since Martin Scorsese’s After Hours has an unplanned date gone so bad. But that’s Manhattan, from Stanton Street to West 87th, and beyond, one wrong turn can turn into a labyrinthine dead end detour. HBO’s The Night Of is a suspense thriller in the league of the first season of True Detective, but without the supernatural spooks. Everybody leads some kind of double life and Richard Price is always on top of that to make the point....

1.16 Farewell To Storyville This episode, Farewell to Storyville, was entirely about setting this eventuality up without the seams showing and, though fans have been told that the decision to leave was entirely Holt’s, the show did an excellent job of making Rebekah’s final hour into something that brought us full-circle, even for those viewers who can’t imagine The Originals without its female lead. Her exit wasn’t just in keeping with what we’ve seen and heard of Rebekah during this first season, but what we’ve always wanted for her....

After touching base with Sledge and showing how he is still coming to terms with the death of Capt. Haldane, the action shifts back to the States. Basilone is still on the promotional whirl, with free drinks, and easy access to both girls and fame being the order of the day. However, it seems clear that his heart lies elsewhere, and he soon puts in a request to train new recruits at Camp Pendleton....

Prisoner Of The Judoon kicks off with another introduction to the show as SJS tells us about her gang and her life – a tad unnecessary and slightly awkward (not to mention cheesy) to be honest. But once the tale gets into gear, it’s all tops therein. Elsewhere, Daniel Anthony (Clyde) is proving to be a gag-smith of the very top order and it’s great to see Phil Ford (the writer of this story) giving the character so many laughs....

4.1-2 The Nightmare Man Growing up is never easy. And it’s something that the venerable Doctor Who spin-off, The Sarah Jane Adventures has struggled with since its launch on New Year’s Day 2007. Created for CBBC as a complement to its parent show, SJA had an incredibly strong first season that contained several top drawer adventures (Revenge Of The Slitheen, Eye Of The Gorgon and The Lost Boy) alongside one stone cold Whoniverse classic in the shape of Gareth Roberts’ brilliant and haunting Whatever Happened To Sarah Jane?...

This The Simpsons review contains spoilers. Tonight’s The Simpsons‘ season 28 “The Great Phatsby, Parts 1 & 2″ marks the first time these yellowbellied caricatures have given us a full-hour episode. Granted, they broke it up into two parts, but not into two episodes, like they did for “Who Shot Mr. Burns?,” and it’s just slightly less a great treat. In that story we got two credits and couch gags....

This The Simpsons review contains spoilers. So now they’re handing out and taking back plaques, trophies of nebulous achievement which diminishes the exemplary works being done by star students. Good. Star students should get pulled down a notch, what with their snooty knowledge and quick access to facts or talents that regular kids don’t have. Why should only the tall excel in basketball, or the strong and fast run into the end zone when there are still flabby pouched, tobacco chewing, only-run-when-I’m-stealing semi-athletes taking home a World Series Pennant....

The Social Network is a pretty interesting experiment in making a movie about current events. Zuckerberg, Dustin Moskovitz, Eduardo Savarin, and the brothers Winklevoss are all real people, and the events depicted in the film are all, within reason, real events that actually happened. The most difficult task of The Social Network is figuring out a way to make thousands of hours of tinkering with code into something that the average audience can both a) understand and b) not be bored stiff by....

The Strain Season 4 Episode 1 When The Strain hit its cliffhanger finish last season, fans were left wondering: What’s next? When ‘lil Zach Goodweather pressed the detonator of a nuclear device and blew up New York City, fans were left in a whole new world where The Strain would no longer be about preventing the apocalypse, it would now be about surviving the apocalypse. It’s a world where certain blood types are culled to maintain societal equilibrium in order to feed the strigoi masters....

To be fair to Bonnie, don’t we all kind of feel like we’re stuck in 1994 lately? I mean, I know I for one have been seeing a lot of sunglasses paired with combat boots — the ‘90s are back in a big way. At this stage in the game, where Bonnie Bennett is concerned, you’ve got to kind of always assume that things are not going to work out for her....

4.22 The Walking Dead The whole episode was dedicated to it, too, with each old face’s return announced via swelling music and an expectation of surprise, despite the audience having several weeks warning that these characters would be popping up again. Alaric is the most missed of the three, with only a small cameo in the season four premiere since his death last season (his return here might have something to do with Cult’s cancellation), but it still didn’t have the impact I was hoping for....

6.8 Fade Into You But first, ‘Friendsgiving’, the uber-organised yet pretty half-arsed on the guest list (where the heck were Jeremy and Matt?) Thanksgiving dinner set up by Caroline on one of her post-argument fits of separation anxiety. Vampire Diaries doesn’t usually theme its parties around a particular holiday, oweing to the fact that only about two years has passed since season one, so it was safe to assume that this would be a party more filled with trauma and murder than most....

7.15 I Would For You So Damon’s decision to desiccate for 60 years rather than hang around and wait for Elena to wake up makes complete character sense, and is matched by Stefan’s decision to abandon Caroline and the babies just because she refused to go on the run with him forever. They know that this life as it is now is probably temporary, and they’re just going to make the best of it....

This review contains spoilers. 4.3 Isolation One of the enduring questions posed by The Walking Dead is a pretty simple one, and one we’ve all considered at one point or another. Just what, if anything, would you do to survive? Would you kill an innocent person if it increased your chances of living another day? Would you root through garbage to find food? For vast swaths of the world, these questions aren’t hypothetical, but in most places, these questions are merely flights of fantasy....