The fact that the last series of Doctor Who only finished in October means that we’ve not had the traditional wait of several months for the annual Christmas special. And, perhaps as a consequence of that, it feels as though expectations for it have been a little lower. That it might just be being taken for granted a little bit. As it turned out, The Doctor, The Widow And The Wardrobe was, for all of its wonderful production work, quite a contained tale, that of Madge Arwell....

The Ice Warriors’ tombs have melted, and so have our hearts. As the Doctor gives Missy a good telling-off for helping to save the day, we turn our attention to the references, callbacks and generally interesting things about tonight’s episode. If we’ve missed something, you know where the comments section is… Usually I take these things roughly in order, but let’s take a moment to let out what the cool kids call a big ‘squee’, or a Russell T Davies-style ‘Hooray!...

Raynor performed this disservice towards the Daleks as writer in the series 3 entry The Daleks In Manhattan/Evolution of the Daleks, and has made an even less convincing reprisal for the Sontarans in the two parter concluding with tonight’s The Poison Sky (following on from last week’s Sontaran Stratagem). I can only conclude that former series script editor Raynor got this particular gig because of favourable numbers for the awful Manhattan debacle, but a Dalek plotline is a gilt-edged gift to a Who script-writer, and should go to the best of the best as a reward for innovation and invention elsewhere in the series....

Dolph is physically gigantic – he’s a man of extremes. His eyes are impossibly blue. His hair is golden. His hands are tanned and bigger than baseball gloves. If he were holding a jewel-encrusted sceptre, Dolph would look like a king of ancient Northern Europe, or perhaps a Greek god. Instead, he simply sits perfectly still, positively humming with a weird heroic ambience. When I first meet Dolph, he’s staring at the floor – or his eyes shut may even be shut – and he appears to be meditating....

In the end stages of any faltering relationship, when it’s all but dead and buried and the mental dividing-up of belongings has begun, a destabilising flash of what first brought you together can blow in from nowhere. Are we making a mistake, you think, chucking all this in? We used to be good together, didn’t we. Didn’t we? This week’s Downton Abbey was just that sunny moment, a visitor from days past whose reappearance reminded us why we were so keen to wrap Downton’s cosy duvet around ourselves in the first place....

The pilot episode of NBC’s Dracula opens in Romania, 1881, as a pair of mysterious adventurers arrive in an underground tomb. No points for guessing whose tomb it is. An offering of blood revives Dracula in a terrific display of gore and special effects…and then we flash forward a few years. Dracula is now “Alexander Grayson,” an American inventor and industrialist, who has come to London not to buy real estate, but to offer the world free, wireless electrical power that would make Edison and Tesla turn green with envy....

An impressive array of talking heads (including George Romero, Simon Pegg, and the ever quippy Max Brooks) look at everything from the historical zombie, the corruption of the Haiti legend for 30s gothic horror purposes, and finally the reinventions that have occurred since Romero’s Night Of The Living Dead in 1968. There’s a lot of material covered, some wrily amusing observations, and a lot of irreverence. Some of the latter works very well, some of it doesn’t....

And though the remake looks very different than the original, we think that we can rest assured that the film is in safe hands. Afterall, Sam Raimi and Bruce Campbell are producing it. And the original film made them both legendary in the horror world. So they’re hanging out in their incredibly creepy cabin when the basement door suddenly opens. And we mean, it just flies open. So they, of course, decide to explore the incredibly creepy basement area....

At the very least, this episode wrapped up plot points and (tried) to gear things up for a Season 4. Why did TNT order a Season 4 when the weak writing and suckatude episodes have resulted in falling ratings? No idea. Maybe they figure a show with aliens being blown up is better than no show with aliens being blown up. Or maybe they just reaaallly like Noah Wyle. Who can blame them?...

“As for the directing, I find that the action is well executed. However the smaller moments, in which we get to know our characters, isn’t all well done. I believe the best performance is by Sam. The guy playing Kyle Reese, doesn’t do a bad job either. In general the acting is good. I however felt Christian Bale’s performance to be a little over the top at times. I must say he was propably also the one I had the highest expectations of, and so was the one that would have the biggest job of pulling this off....

Who’s your favourite Bond? Is it pouting block of man-granite Daniel Craig? Living seaside postcard Roger Moore? Or maybe it’s Alex Salmond’s Speyside spirit guide, Sean Connery? It doesn’t really matter who your favourite 007 is, even if it’s that fella from those Fry’s Turkish Delight ads back in the Sixties, because in Fleming Dominic Cooper feels like he’s trying to be them all within the space of an hour, like a one man tribute act to fiction’s biggest swaggering bastard....

“Live every day, every hour, like it’s your last.” Hirsch’s character in ABC’s Forever is a regular senior citizen in most ways, greying hair, a step slower than he used to be, a lovable curmudgeon who was quick to pick up the online dating game even at his tender old age. What sets Hirsch and his character Abe apart from the show’s protagonist—and resident immortal—is his vitality. At the end of a long, storied career it’s Hirsch that pumps life into a familiar show that still has a good chance to become something pretty entertaining....

There’s a pattern to many new show seasons, where they jump back into the big story arc for the season opener, and then, having re-established connection with their fan base, they roll out a self-contained story for the second episode. The box in question is dug up by some disposable minions of Thomas Newton, and then it kills them and the nice homeowners whose cellar it’s buried in. The return to the scary start wasn’t a big surprise, but importantly, the tone of the show has now subtly altered for this viewer....

This review contains spoilers. If Fringe does nothing else, it makes the viewer think, but this week my overriding thought was that I’m not really happy with where this is all going. But before I dive into those aspects I’m not thrilled with, a short burst of applause is due for the excellent exposition section in the middle of the story, where Peter goes inside September’s mind, a very odd place that looks like a cable car gondola....

4.6 And Those We’ve Left Behind But then, this was one of the better Fringe standalone stories, and delivered a very strong narrative structure where things progressed in a natural and revealing way. More than that, it was also an elegant means to slot Peter’s character back into the Fringe investigative mix without it seeming overly forced or contrived. The first time bubble event, in the apartment, was so weird that I rewound the PVR to try to better understand what was happening....

4.9 Enemy Of My EnemyLast week I slapped Fringe for being somewhat disjointed, and that’s not something that was repeated this week thankfully. Enemy Of My Enemy delivered a fairly wholesome slice of exposition to form an entirely different working relationship with the two universes, using Peter as the conduit between them. But given the quality of the cast that Fringe offers, even Jared Harris has his work cut out for most impressive scene of the week....

Good news everybody – Futurama is back! The crew of Planet Express immediately find themselves in trouble when their mortgage demands catch up with them, and they need to make some money quick, or they’ll be out on their proverbial collective ear (again!). Suggestions from the boys for a saucy female employee calendar are met with derisionm though, contractually, the gals haven’t got an option. After realising that the limitations of a woman trio crew (with Hermes drafting in his wife) would result in a three month calendar, the Planet Express ship is turned into a commercial “airliner”,quickly crashing on a desolate world on its maiden voyage as a customer-paying cruiser....

3.1 Valar Dohaeris Game of Thrones has lost nothing in the long wait between seasons; indeed, the best show on television has gotten even better in the interim, even if HBO telegraphed one big surprise with its “Previously on” round-up. Even with that spoiler (avoid it if you can), the show is nothing short of brilliant thanks to the steady hand of David Benioff and D.B. Weiss. The bulk of the episode this week picks up right where the Battle of Blackwater leaves off....

5.10 Mother’s Mercy Game Of Thrones doesn’t really have event season finales, but the fifth season is the one that’s apparently going to break the mould. Sure, there’s always some cool Daenerys-related tidbit (birthing dragons, freeing the slaves, and so on), but this season it seems like the annual Episode Nine bloodbath came in the episodes preceding and following after the typical “look out for craziness” moment in every season....