In series past, Doctor Who has had a habit of shooting out of the proverbial traps, with a hugely energetic series opener that throws us straight back into the middle of the Doctor’s particularly unusual life. The Pilot doesn’t do that. In fact, as Steven Moffat admitted in the post-episode Q&A at the series launch this evening, The Pilot is an episode title with a double meaning. And one of those two meanings – the only one you’ll get in this spoiler-free review – is very much that this is Doctor Who throwing its doors wide open, and welcoming new passengers....

Perhaps we’d all better start by sitting down. For if you were awaiting a simple, easy-to-explain blockbuster of a Doctor Who series finale, you simply didn’t get it here. Instead, if you were looking for something really very ambitious, often quite confusing, yet ultimately far more satisfying, then The Big Bang absolutely hit the mark. Warts and all. For the avoidance of doubt, let’s make this clear: we loved it....

Right then. Let’s get the obvious out of the way first: Blink that wasn’t. For reasons we discussed in the spoiler-free review yesterday, there was never really a chance that the weeping angels were going to have quite the same impact in The Time Of Angels that they did when they first appeared. That’s the nature of the beast. The centrepiece moment for them in The Time Of Angels was the marvellous slight homage to a certain Japanese horror movie (not mentioning it for fear of spoiling it for those who haven’t seen it!...

6.3 The Curse Of The Black Spot At the end of last week’s Day Of The Moon, a young girl suddenly started regenerating. The credits rolled in the midst of said process, and so I, and I suspect many of you, were hoping to get some clue as to what happened next. Nothing. Not a jot. Not a whisper. In fairness, none of the Doctor, Amy or Rory were around when she started regenerating, so there’s little reason to argue that she’s in their immediate narrative path....

What’s been sadly lacking from Dollhouse so far is a sense of wit or satire, which, given the influence of show-runner Joss Whedon, is somewhat surprising. It’s never been explored before, but within the Dollhouse there is an outfitters where the Dolls go to be prepped for their assignments. It’s run by the excellent Matt Winston (Enterprise, John From Cincinnati, Scrubs) as the chirpy style guru Franklin, a man whose mission it is to make the outside of the Doll match the inside they’ve just imprinted....

The nights are closing in, which makes it time for the gates to Downton Abbey’s theme park of escapist wealth, posh frocks and Maggie Smith doing all the good bits to squeak ceremonially open and admit us twenty-first century oiks. ‘Look, a tiny spoon just for hazelnuts! How darling’ we gasp. ‘And look! Unjust social divisions, casual racism and a patriarchy that keeps women in check.’ Isn’t it elegant. Unfortunately for lip-readers, grief had immobilised the remaining motile twelve percent of Lady Mary’s beautiful face....

1.3 Goblin Merchant Men No, what I’m talking about has more to do with the sexual and gender politics that seem to be on display and the convoluted message that they send about what was going on in Victorian England. Now, I do not expect the series to be historically accurate. It’s not really the point of the show—it’s not like The Borgias or Downton Abbey where the history is more than a setting; it affects virtually everything about how the characters act because of the choices (or lack thereof) offered to them by the social mores of each period....

1: Indy plus kids don’t mix In the meantime not only is Indy accompanied by the little brat that is Short Round, and never questioned about this by any authorities it seems, he’s also developed a really strong bond with him. I never pegged Indy down as the father figure type and this jars throughout the entire film. Plus the kid’s just plain annoying, and the way he turns evil Indy back into good Indy is frankly preposterous....

The approach writer/director Ilinca Calugareanu takes is to interview people who illicitly watched these videos in makeshift home cinemas, and weave their memories into a dramatisation of how these tiny acts of rebellion came about, structuring things so it builds up to a big laugh and then undercuts it with a dose of the oppressive reality of Ceausescu’s Romania. This shift in dynamics is used sparingly but it’s incredibly effective....

2.1 Step Nine Over the twenty-odd episodes that followed, the relationship went from one of tentative curiosity to knockabout warmth. It wasn’t the most brilliant of shows, this new friend of ours, but Elementary had more than its share of great moments and never failed to entertain. A calendar year on, we bounded up the Brownstone’s steps, ready to embrace season two like an old friend. Not that anyone was home....

Los Angeles may be its backdrop, but Episodes is, in essence, a sitcom based around two or three people bickering. Nebbish Sean and prickly wife Beverly bicker over attractive women and alterations to their script. Prickly Beverly and swaggering, arrogant actor Matt LeBlanc snipe and peck at one another every time they meet, an undercurrent of barely repressed attraction threatening to erupt at any moment. As the production of the increasingly tawdry sitcom within a sitcom, Pucks!...

Rushing for the train last week, I accidentally dropped my wallet as I struggled to get it out of my coat pocket, spilling its load of loose change on the floor. For some reason, my brain immediately selected the Episodes theme from its playlist to accompany this moment of mild humiliation. Worse still, I have to try to come up with different ways of describing Episodes week after week, a sitcom that slides drunkenly, like the boozy tones of a trombone, from mildly amusing to desperately unfunny....

Sanctuary: Part 1 One thing you can say about an alien invasion, it changes people, and not always for the better. Change seems to be the theme to the episode this week, with Weaver (Will Patton) acting positively fatherly towards Jimmy (Dylan Authors, AKA the gun-toting kid from the first couple of episodes). Meanwhile, Rick and Ben Mason (Connor Jessup) have changed since their encounter with the skitters and their harnesses....

4.11 Space Oddity & 4.12 Shoot The Moon If you like drama concerning the Mason family, then Space Oddity is right up your alley. After all, Lexi returned at the end of last week’s episode, and while she might have disturbed the launch attempt by foiling the beamer attack, she also created a lot of chaos for the Second Mass. Tom and Anne have some family trouble, taking turns yelling at Lexi, and then the rest of the group joins in to get on her case, from Maggie sarcastically thanking her to her brothers picking at her for her failings....

4.9 People Like Us The episode picks up several weeks after the game-changing events of No One’s Gone, in which Fear matriarch Madison Clark (Kim Dickens) sacrificed herself so that other might live. As noble and heroic as this final act was, Madison’s death nonetheless didn’t sit well with loyal viewers. Her departure from the show was especially egregious coming so soon on the heels of Nick’s (Frank Dillane) untimely demise....

Fifty Shades Of Black hasn’t been anywhere near as big a hit for co-writer and star Marlon Wayans as Scary Movie was, although it’s arguably in a similar situation as that first breakout hit. Many of us (this reviewer included) felt that last year’s E.L. James adaptation Fifty Shades Of Grey was already hilarious by accident, despite and even because of its self-serious tone. The IMDb summary of this film could as easily apply to the worldwide blockbuster that inspired it – “an inexperienced college student meets a wealthy businessman whose sexual practices put a strain on their relationship....

Christopher Nolan’s film before Dunkirk was a divisive, hugely ambitious sci-fi project. Interstellar broke the two and a half hour barrier, and to this day, mention of its final act is enough to get a good quality pub debate going. It was a sci-fi original movie that broke through at the box office too, and had a very real sense that nobody else could have shepherded the project through the Hollywood system, yet alone realised something so cinematic in doing so....

At Presage Paper, the corporate retreat for all the white-collar types is some kind of summer camp with more corporate buzz speak, and it’s the brainchild of Dennis (David Koechner) and Peter (Miles Fisher). More Peter than Dennis, but that’s beside the point. Of course, since this is a Final Destination movie, seven people get off the bus, which promptly falls off the bridge in a horrible manner. The only survivors of Presage Paper are Sam, Dennis, Peter, Molly (Emma Bell of Walking Dead fame), Candice (Ellen Wroe), Olivia (Jacqueline MacInnes Wood), Isaac (P....

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WlVxSfOcpPc Woody Harrelson is always an interesting choice to play a cop. His own father Charles Harrelson, was a mobster. And not just any mobster, he may very well have been one of the shooters the mob hired to whack JFK. The first time a Federal judge was killed in the twentieth century, it was by Charles Harrelson. A contract killer who held off the cops for six hours between snorts before allowing himself to be arrested, Charles was sentenced to two life sentences....

2.22 Over There Part 2 But before I get more specific, and I’d like to, I’m issuing a spoiler alert now to those who’d like their plot twists unsullied by my appraisal. If you’ve not seen this episode, don’t read on, please. Because this is effectively a single story, the action moves entirely seamlessly from the first part, with Olivia and William Bell trying to track down Walter, while Peter begins to understand the scope of Walternate’s (I love that name!...