Do you remember Anaconda? The 1997 killer snake film starring Jennifer Lopez, Ice Cube and Jon Voight? It had the tagline “When you can’t breathe you can’t scream”? It got nominated for six Razzies but, in spite of such ignominy, went on to become a cult hit and spawned three sequels? Twitter – which I sometimes feel should be called ‘Hisser’ – is only really useful for two things: one, enthusing about your favourite films; and two, engaging in geek conversation and trading obscure in-jokes with others who have similar sympathies and get your references....

Girls season 5 episode 1 Let’s be upfront about this: Girls was a great show in its first and second seasons and now it’s more of an up and down kind of thing. You can usually count on it for a handful of great moments each episode and occasionally a full, standout episode. But the simple fact of the matter is this show had more room to breathe and be weird and experimental in its early years, often feeling like a series of short films, rather than a sitcom....

4.18 Mishipeshu Grimm’s writers prefer to drip-feed us clues about character development or plot over several episodes, or even seasons, presumably favouring a slow build of anticipation over real momentum. We have come to accept this, despite some storylines feeling laboriously drawn-out, and others paid lip service seemingly only when the writers remember them (anyone seen Nick ‘grey-out’ lately?) Perhaps one of the problems lies in the fact that it is a 22-epsiode season, which is an awfully long time to maintain momentum....

The killer is violent and has no plans to stop, so they are identified, apprehended and/or killed by the authorities. Since blood is being drained from the victims in this case, I’m leaning pretty heavily toward scenario number one. In the meantime, the main plot limps along. Now, suddenly, “Audrey” (reincarnated as Lexie) must kill her true love. Is it Nathan? Or is this a mother/son thing, and Lexie has to kill her son, serial killer James Cogan, who was conceived when she was Sarah Vernon?...

Last week, the dividing lines were drawn. It was going to be team Dwight and the Guard against team Nathan and his deluded insistence that Audrey is still alive somewhere inside of Mara. This week I expected that tension to be ratcheted up ever so slightly. While that wasn’t the case (disappointingly), Duke’s role in these newly defined relationships was explored in a way that almost made up for the lack of forward momentum in the conflict between Nathan and Dwight....

Day 6 takes us deeper down the rabbit hole as we discover more clues about both the virus and the people trapped in Arctic Biosystems. And the children. You thought the platoon of frozen monkeys was bad? Think of the children (won’t anyone?). Inside the facility, Dr. Jordan appears, looking sober and relieved not to be dealing with the vector she was hiding in her quarters. She breaks up a fight between the still upright Dr....

But old habits of TV viewing die hard. While Hemlock Grove is clearly intended to be judged on the merits of its entire season, there is still the matter of it being broken up into 10 distinct parts that still cry out for criticism and analysis on their own merits. As season two enters into the middle of its overarcing story it’s hard to judge what is successful and what isn’t....

Homeland Season 7 Episode 3 Well played, Homeland. Here I was, ready to spend paragraphs cringing at the return of “Carrie Mathison vs. Social Services” after it was the one interminable part of season 6… and then instead of going left, Homeland does a fake-out and drives right. I see what you did there. Very clever… actually it was. After scaring the hell out of Carrie about what’s at stake of putting herself out on this limb—and terrifying us of another Social Services subplot—the series made clear that Carrie is involved in a “revolution” fight that could cost her all....

Hot Streets comes from Brian Wysol, whose previous credits include Rick and Morty and Robot Chicken. Wysol channels those same chaotic, creative sensibilities here and he’s able to turn this supernatural FBI show into a series that immediately grabs the audience’s attention. Adult Swim is only acquiring more content and as a result it’s very easy to get lost in the shuffle between their many new programs, but Hot Streets feels like something that it’s worth making the time for....

That film was a pivotal role in Ryder’s career, as something akin to her first “adult” star vehicle after often playing troubled teenagers and ingenious ingénues in her 1980s films, which all of Stranger Things feels more directly descended from (except, you know, without Heathers’ murder sprees). It also led to her becoming a costumed drama darling for the next decade with films like The Age of Innocence, Little Women, and The Crucible in her future....

But in the world of Fringe all roads ultimately lead to Walter Bishop’s experiments, and this is no exception when one of his long forgotten test subjects, Roy, starts to experience premonitions of ‘pattern’ events. But these things are just the well placed garnish on the dish, the main course of which is the cast performances, most notably from John Noble. Each week he seems to inhabit Walter more naturally....

5.3 The Curse Of The Bronze Lamp Despite a more positive start to the episode, The Curse Of The Bronze Lamp still lacked pace and excitement. It has often been the case with previous series of Jonathan Creek that the ‘middle episodes’ tend to veer away from more grisly setups to focus on something more light-hearted and intricate. Fans of earlier series may remember episodes such as The Scented Room and The Omega Man which certainly were in this vein....

The Killing Eve season finale may have left viewers with a killer cliffhanger as Jodie Comer’s Villanelle and Sandra Oh’s Eve Polastri converged in an unexpectedly violent confession of obsession, but there is one woman in the cast who displays just as much cryptic strength as she exits the season one stage: Fiona Shaw’s Carolyn Martens. Shaw spoke to us about how her character defies audience expectation of what a leader should do or how she should act, similarly to the way the other two principal women in the show surprise viewers with their mixture of intelligence and impulsiveness, essentially making Carolyn Martens the third female lead in the series....

Legends of Tomorrow Season 3 Episode 13 I’ve had a regular comics pull list for about seven years now. Week in, week out for 300 plus weeks, I’ve headed to the comic shop, picked up my books, and read them all by Friday. In that time, I’ve bought my share of limited series, but I also have a bunch of books that have been on there for a while, and some have been on in some form or another since I started buying weekly books....

Legion Season 2 Episode 6 I deserve this. Legion is making me eat my words and I deserve it. After tepidly admiring the last few episodes while harping about a lack of narrative momentum, Noah Hawley proves definitively that when this show is at the height of its powers, narrative momentum is often nowhere to be found. Easily the standout episode of Legion Season 2, “Chapter 14” eschews the story almost entirely to explore alternative realities or timelines of what David’s life could have been had he never gotten mixed up with Division 3....

But all too soon, Sam wakes up, in 1973, and he’s chasing the bad guys once more. I won’t lie. Looking back on this episode it bores me a little in the beginning. It doesn’t have the same energy that it picks up in the second half of the episode. However, the homage to the 70s in this episode is fantastically done. “The Warren” really is a tribute to all those slightly grotty nightclubs, complete with go-go dancers....

Jed Mercurio says he doesn’t write tragedy, but what else could you call tonight’s episode? It unfolded like a Greek play, from the opening commendation ceremony—a scene scarcely more ironic had Mark Antony popped in to present Cottan with the award for most ‘honourable man’—to the death of Lindsay Denton, a conflicted hero whose fatal flaw finally proved such. Like all tragic heroes, Lindsay had a moment of too-late recognition that her earlier mistake was the reason for her downfall....

Well, let’s not get ahead of ourselves. The story begins back in civilisation. In case you’ve forgotten, after murdering his way into The Others’ good books, Michael was given a boat and allowed to take Walt out of Season 2 and into the real world. Quite how he made it back to America in the pedalo he was given isn’t addressed, but the facts are there for us to witness....

Judging from the online reaction, I suspect I’m going to be fairly alone in this judgement, but Across The Sea was, without a doubt, the kind of episode that makes me love Lost. How can you not enjoy a series that can set a story well over a thousand years in the past, featuring none of the recurring cast, and yet make it perfectly relevant to what’s going on in the series today?...