6.14 Dressed To Kill The mystery at the centre of the episode took advantage of the success of The Devil Wears Prada to bring us into the fashion world. Because many of us had seen the movie, the writers were able to spare us the explanation of why fashion matters (at least enough to take all the characters but Yumi seriously), and more importantly, they were able to use the aide-leaving-her-apartment-at-the-crack-of-dawn-to-get-her-boss-her-nitpicky-breakfast to communicate a great deal about not only the kind of woman Matilda King is, but to instantly illustrate precisely what the relationship to her subordinates was like—even to the point of making the terrified receptionist seem a touch redundant....

8.20: Much Ado About Murder Did the episode actually live up to my hopes? Sorta. But certainly not the way I expected it to. For starters, it was actually pretty light on the Shakespeare, all things considered. The plot revolves around the murder of an actor, who himself is potentially on the point of murdering Shakespeare. The episode opens with the performer, Zane Cannon – famous for his action-film franchise and a notoriously bad actor – stumbling through Hamlet’s “To be or not to be” soliloquy as though he’s never heard the thing before, in preparation for his big opening night....

Where earlier in the season we had Sarah get jealous about a love interest for Chuck (who turned out to be a Fulcrum agent), now the tables are turned when Agent Walker is dispatched to seduce another spy, Cole Barker, codenamed ‘Beefcake’. It turns out that he’s an MI6 operative for whom Sarah, depressingly from Chuck’s viewpoint, responds positively to his charms. Where this show works best is when it throws a real curve-ball at your expectations, and it just hasn’t pitched enough of those recently....

For those that don’t care or can handle knowing, things happen in this episode where Chuck Versus The Colonel that strongly hint that the show is nearly done from a story standpoint. An official announcement on next season for Chuck and pals hasn’t been made, but lots of plot elements are terminated in this 42 minutes, so many, in fact, that if it did get another season it would be radically different....

Because the problem with such well told tales is just that. You know what’s going to happen, and when. Then you read the film is just shy of two hours, and recall the moment in bad adaptations of A Christmas Carol when you realise you’ve still got two ghosts to go. Is this just an exercise in ticking a live action take on a classic story off the list? It’s infectious, too....

Colony Season 2 Episode 2 The horror of Colony lies in the unseen. I’m not referring to the aliens themselves, or whatever secret mind-bending conspiracy lurks beneath everything; that’s on the peripheral. I’m talking about the invisible terrors of zeitgeists, borders, power dynamics, emotional violence, duplicity, withheld information, bureaucracy, persecution, guilt and shame. Forces that drive people to do desperate things they don’t want to think they’re capable of doing. Forces that Will and Katie Bowman must to cope with every minute of every day living under The Occupation....

2.8 Slouching Towards Bethlehem But, that’s a minor point, because the way that this story is constructed entirely gives away what’s going on with the mysterious masked Batman fan that she’s held captive by. The fact that when she knocks him unconscious she then fails to remove his mask was very silly, unless you’re keeping that revelation for later. But, that he wore the mask only makes sense if he intended to release Kenya, and then he’d be likely to see her again....

Amanda Rosewater feels much more genuine as the proprietor of the Need Want than she ever did as mayor, whether she’s paying Stahma Tarr the Castithan crime family’s cut of the profits or indulging in a little “blue devil” pick-me-up. With these new flaws, her decision to take the job as Pottinger’s chief of staff doesn’t seem as naive and idealistic as it would have last year. But you KNOW Stahma manipulating the family business while maintaining Alak as a figurehead leader will be enticingly evil....

Before we get to yet another cliff hanger ending, because that seems to be at least one thing the writers on this show know how to do, let’s talk about the return of Hannah. In their scenes in tonight’s episode, Dexter and Hannah were hit and miss. In some, like their scene on the boat, their chemistry is undeniable. It’s fun to see Dexter react like a normal guy around a girl he has a crush on....

This season, we haven’t had any sort of consistency as far as story or theme. The one thing that keeps coming into focus though is an eleventh hour romance for a titular psycho. So far this season, love has been wafting in the air only in subtle douses. With their relationship on the mend, it was looking like Deb and Dexter were about to head into the incestuous romance we have all been dreading....

This week opens with Dexter’s imagined father Harry warning Dexter to leave Hannah alone. Usually Dexter follows Harry’s Code, unless the code impedes Dexter’s compulsions and this week his Lizard Brain is telling him that Hannah McKay is guilty and she must be put down. After only just last week promising Deb that he will not interfere with Miami Metro cases, Dexter purposely sabotages the blood reports on the recently discovered Wayne Randall victims to hide Hannah’s involvement in the murders....

NOTE: EVEN THOUGH WE’VE DONE OUR BEST TO KEEP SPOILERS OUT OF THIS, IF YOU STILL WANT TO WATCH THE EPISODE ABSOLUTELY COLD, THEN YOU MIGHT WANT TO TURN BACK NOW. Hear those drums in the trailer down below? You’re going to be hearing that a lot more in the coming week, as the BBC gets ready to screen The End Of Time Part One on Christmas Day, bringing with it the return of The Master....

The Memory Cheats As well as presumably rewriting some of the Doctor’s own battles with the Daleks, Cybermen and Weeping Angels, the Monks have infiltrated some other famous works and moments with links to the Doctor: the Vitruvian Man and the Mona Lisa were both created by Leonardo da Vinci, who was known to the Doctor when he visited his workshop in 1979’s City Of Death – on which occasion the Doctor marked out six extra Mona Lisas as fakes in order to foil Scaroth’s plot....

Tonight’s show starts off with a flashback and an action scene as a young Alex Lannon plays a bit of one-on-one with his father, Jeep. Their game is interrupted when they’re ambushed by a group of eight-balls—humans possessed by malevolent lower angels. Clearly, these heavenly creatures are not the same rosy-cheeked cherubs as portrayed by the Renaissance painters of old. Their mission statement is clear—destroy any mortals who survived the extermination-level war waged between angels and men....

The premise is as simple as an archetypal cabin-in-the-woods horror: a trio of disadvantaged early 20-somethings break into an old blind man’s house, expecting to find a life-changing haul of cash but instead find themselves face-to-face with a deadly adversary – and his equally terrifying hound. We’ve seen the burglars-in-peril scenario in horror before, most memorably in Wes Craven’s underrated 1991 oddity The People Under The Stairs. Like that film, Don’t Breathe depicts its band of young criminals as victims of their environment; the streets are cracked and overgrown, the houses in the middle-class suburbs largely empty and falling apart....

1.9 Four Roses On one side, we have the evil of the Order of the Dragon. In theory a Christian order, they behave in anything but a Christian way. While Vlad Tepes’ crimes are un-enumerated in the story, they were supposedly horrific enough to doom his wife (who does not appear to have played any part in them) to burning at the stake and himself to the curse of demonic vampirism (making one wonder what these “holy” soldiers were thinking)....

Dynasty Episode 6 This is the first episode that feels like we’re going beyond the events of the pilot (new stepmom/boss, Steven returns, dead Matthew) to put into place the rest of the web of love, corruption, and deceit. The best soaps have a cast of characters with a wide array of secrets and competing interests that cause them to believably switch loyalties at the drop of hat, making for strange bedfellows when their interests align, and pulling people who should be together away from one another....

5.8 Stalag 14th Virginia It hasn’t been all bad. The Katie Marshall story line has been okay, thanks to Melora Hardin’s ability to act frigid and weird when appropriate, and it’s been nice to see the Second Mass caught by surprise, but it plays out exactly the way it’s supposed to. There are betrayals, there are reversals, people escape, people come storming in to the rescue, and only the bad guys really seem to die aside from one martyr to the cause of justice (and he spent most of his time on the show being a jerk to the Masons)....

2.7 Did You Do This? No, You Did It! Not that a violent shortcut is completely off the table. As the opening montage loudly reminded us, this world, however complicated, is a terrifyingly violent one and the prospect of any resolution coming through words alone seems very remote indeed. We started with a double Gerhardt funeral and finished with another (possible) burial and a putative patriarch in the boot of a butcher’s car....