Such is the case with Episodes, a series that has meandered through awkward comedy, sometimes flat, obvious situations, to a final episode filled with moments of inspired brilliance. As I’ve said about other episodes, it’s been a bumpy ride, but this closing instalment of Episodes felt like a satisfying punchline to one of the longest set-ups in the history of comedy. Seven episodes ago, writing couple Sean and Beverly arrived in LA with their luggage and the script for their UK hit sitcom, Lyman’s Boys, only to have both their dreams and their masterpiece gradually prodded into oblivion....

No. For real. As the comic opens, Snagglepuss is a sucessful playwright living in 1953 New York City. With his beautiful wife, actress Lila Lion, on his arm he is the toast of the town. The only problem is that it’s all a facade. Despite being dressed to the nines the mountain cat has no clothes. It is quickly revealed that his marriage is an arranged scam of convenience, and Mr....

Calling the episode “Saturday Night Massacre” told us what to expect, and it would have been foolish to hope that the term would be used to describe the decimation of the Espheni forces. And given where we last left Lexi, it could have been surmised that she would be the instrument of the 2nd Mass’ destruction rather than Scorch and his forces. Be that as it may, Lexi’s departure near the start of the episode left the door wide open for the sanctuary to no longer be a safe have, and the battle that ensues certainly makes sense....

I’ve just watched the second episode of FlashForward, and my concerns about the overall tenet of this piece are being forced to the surface. The big ‘unknown’ that almost all the characters are striving to grasp is did the flash reveal a possible or certain future for each person? What we get in White To Play is divided between the detective stuff of hunting the person who wasn’t unconscious during the blackout, and people making their choice to go with the future they’ve seen or to reject it completely....

1990’s Flatliners is a sci-fi inflected psychological horror, directed by Joel Schumacher and boasting an all-star cast. In the original, Kiefer Sutherland, Julia Roberts, Kevin Bacon, Oliver Platt, and William Baldwin star as medical students who conduct ill-advised experiments on themselves in the hope of proving that there is life after death. So, in case you haven’t seen the original, Courtney Holmes (Page) enlists her classmates to stop her heart and then resuscitate her, monitoring and recording her brain activity....

After a somewhat lumpy first episode, Fringe comes back with Night Of Desirable Objects, which in retrospect is a return to a decidedly X-Files monster-hunt platform. It’s fun enough, but I kept thinking that maybe it’s time Fringe shrugged off that particular tendency rather than promoting the similarities. The spooky start has some construction workers working near a field of corn when one of them notices something blue in the dirt....

3.21 The Last Sam Weiss For the creators of the show, it’s now time to cash in the chips they’ve been hording over the previous episodes, and splurge the proceeds with total abandon. This story, The Last Sam Weiss is a splurge, although it left me feeling rather satisfied, rather than the empty hollow response that these experiences often evoke. As the title suggests this brings Sam Weiss (Lord Of The Rings reference, maybe) into the foreground, as it’s revealed that he’s part of a chain of his ancestors that have carried the secrets of the machine through the centuries....

6.1 The Red Woman One of the best things about Game Of Thrones‘ return is that the show doesn’t waste a single minute. Immediately, it picks up immediately where it left off last season, and that’s all the way across the board. After a great tracking shot beginning at the Wall and sweeping over Castle Black, Jon Snow is the first thing we see, laying on his back in the frozen snow in a puddle of his own darkened, drying blood....

This week, I want to talk about a musical. I don’t know if any of you have ever had the pleasure of Matilda: The Musical, that now appears to be heading to the movies before the end of the decade. The lyrics to the show were penned by the mighty Tim Minchin, and the first big song you get is Naughty. I love Naughty, and I like the message that it sounds out....

This week, we’re handing over to the brilliant Jane, who wants to have a chat about music… I’m in the kitchen, heading for the door. Radio on for the dog, places to be. Then – boom! I’m getting a bit Freddy, tasks forgotten, tail feather shaking, vocal chords straining. Yes, whichever generic rock station I’m tuned to today has just played Queen’s Hammer To Fall and the world falls away as I show my appreciation in some spectacularly inept kitchen dancing....

Depression seems to open up the caverns within the mind – causing worries to escalate, thoughts to get entangled and anxiety to overwhelming everything. I couldn’t process the fact that I was ill, something which everyone gets, and that not being able to be my normal productive-self did not make me a failure of a human being. I can see that now I’m not under its control. I couldn’t see that less than six hours ago....

It makes for a very relatable, unique setup. It’s a different kind of suffering when family comes to visit you and they’re on your turf. When you have to go visit them, there’s the regular awkward horribleness of family with the added horror of being trapped with them in a situation that you have no control over. Where you go and what you do is mostly left up to the family you’re visiting and you’re invariably going to spend the bulk of your time there in their company....

Girls Season 6 Episode 1 We begin the final season of Girls by learning that Hannah has been printed in a major publication. This is presented through a montage of her friends and family reading and reacting to her story, followed by a shot of Hannah hugging her work to her chest and smiling like a goofball. It’s all very upbeat, and I suppose it should be, as Hannah’s realizing her dreams and all that....

Twenty-something farmer’s son Johnny (Josh O’Connor) is the centre of the film, which opens bright and early one morning in the Yorkshire countryside. Expect Johnny is feeling far from bright; dawn is fast approaching and he’s retching into a toilet as opposed to being out at work on the field. It soon becomes clear that his sickness is self-inflicted, having been heavily ‘on the sauce’ the night before. The reasons for his heavy drinking, which occurs which apparent regularity, soon become equally clear and wholly understandable....

Gotham Season 2, Episode 19 Gothamis currently suffering from one of the same problems Arrowis: it’s trying to introduce magic (or some supernaturally higher degree of magic-like science, I suppose) into its setting without explaining the rules. This makes for a confusing, stakes-less context for a story, a handicap that Gothamcan really not handle right now. Meet your proto-Batman. This whole time you probably thought Bruce Wayne was this show’s proto-Batman, huh?...

Gotham Season 2, Episode 20 Githammanaged to pull off a pretty action-packed, suspenseful third act in “Unleashed” by putting its super-teens in danger. Ultimately, this episode was a little too disjointed to be one of Gotham‘s best, but it was an entertaining hour — with one of the best random character rendezvous’ of this show’s short history. Here’s everything that went down in “Unleashed”… Gordon and Bullock manage to convince Tabitha to help them track down her brother before anyone else finds him and tries to kill him (which, yeah, good luck with that)....

It’s possible for a TV show to twist the mundane aspects of police work into something both realistic and interesting. Hell, one of the consensus best dramas ever, The Wire, was able to make detectives listening to phone calls while sipping coffee in a basement riveting art.* But frustratingly, most cop dramas try to extract intrigue from each “suspect” crossed off the list. That’s how The Killing somehow stretched one above average episode of Law and Order into a whole excruciating season of ultimately innocent suspects and false leads....

Baron Cohen is probably more expert than anyone at the film with big, crowd-pleasing laughs. Some of them are aimed unjustly, but they hit the spot. Effectively, he co-opts the audience into laughing with him even when we’re instinctively queasy about the joke’s morality, so we can’t very well take the moral high ground. The bastard. This characterisation is the first step that makes you feel uneasy: there are a lot of choices that steer us towards Benefits Street territory and there’s the uncomfortable suspicion we’re being encouraged to accept and laugh along with tabloid cliches of working-class life....

3.1 Antipasto First, frankly, it is, quite simply, an amazing piece of cinema. Yes, I know it’s on television, but trust me, it might as well be on the silver screen at a film festival for the level of auteuritsm on display. If you aren’t watching, you’re missing out. Second, many people don’t watch because they are convinced that the show is nothing but an excuse to bring more violence to television....

Hansel & Gretel: Witch Hunters is no exception. Wearing its torn-out heart on its sleeve, there was only ever going to be one question that needed asking: is it as much barmy fun as it looks? Thankfully, I’m pleased to say, it’s pretty much every bit the overblown, tongue-in-cheek, witch decimating schlockfest it promised to be. After waiting patiently for a cinematic release since the start of last year, Hansel & Gretel was finally unleashed once Jeremy Renner’s amazingly quick ascent to Hollywood golden boy status was at full tilt, with both Avengers and The Bourne Legacy cementing his success in 2012 – after all, it accidentally worked wonders for Cabin In The Woods, when fellow Avenger Chris Hemsworth’s career rocketed while the film awaited release....