3.8 The Pit It’s that lack of clear vision that causes the show to veer between sickening violence and campy melodrama within one episode, or weave from unsettling depictions of very real mental illnesses to dumb crime plots. Tonight we got some series-best work from Freddie Highmore, who is becoming more riveting to watch and downright terrifying with each episode, but we also had to deal with the narrative cul-de-sac of Caleb and Dylan’s gun running adventures....

And all of that is present in Batman Returns too. So much so that Burton gilded the lily by naming the one original character in the film after Max Schreck, the silent film star who played the cadaverous vampire in Murnau’s 1922 triumph of depravity, Nosferatu. Thus it is fitting that Twitter user IhlaLaLaLa-LaLaLaLa has recut Batman Returns as a silent film every bit as expressionistic as the Schreck film that inspired Christopher Walken’s antagonist....

This week’s episode was actually not all that bad, in fact it was pretty good, but compared to the pant-wettingly brilliant instalments the previous two weeks it felt like a bit of a let down. It’s ridiculous, of course, almost like complaining about the lobster because I’ve been spoon-fed foie-gras for the last few weeks. We quickly learn she was the leader of the final five and the driving force behind their escape from Earth and journey to the colonies....

3.1 The Teens they are a Changin First, there’s Josh and Nora. Nora survived her encounter with the twins’ dad and makes it home unscathed. There’s an adorable reunion and just that would be enough to satisfy my adorable quotient for the week, but then Josh gets a patient, Erin, who was recently scratched by a wolf. Josh decides he should tell her about what’s about to happen to her at the next moon, but Nora argues that knowing will only give her time to dread it, like Nora had to after Josh scratched her....

3.5 The Longest Day We all knew Herrick was making a comeback, but who knew it would be treated in such a unique way as this? You could argue that it’s a bit of a cop out to have Herrick losing his mind, but then there’s plenty of ambiguity in ‘Uncle Billy’, leading viewers to wonder just how much he’s letting on. One thing’s for sure: the Box Tunnel massacre is up from the floorboards and out of the bag....

4.11 Havre de Grace “I didn’t know my real name. He called me Daughter and that’s who I am.” It’s strange to consider that Dr Valentin Narcisse didn’t even appear until the second episode of this season and yet, by this penultimate instalment, he’s made enough of an impression to be described in simple pronouns. That diabolic He doesn’t even have to appear in person this week and still his presence is everywhere....

Boyhood is told from the perspective of six-year-old Mason (Ellar Coltrane), an imaginative, somewhat distracted boy more fascinated by the world around him than his homework, which he often leaves crumpled up in his school rucksack. His mother Olivia (Patricia Arquette) has little to do with Mason’s father, Mason Senior (a brilliantly louche Ethan Hawke), and instead becomes involved with a series or men who are, each in their own way, unpleasant or deeply flawed....

Why would anyone try to kick this habit? Well I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but this show has gotten pretty heavy lately. I’m considering the option of acquiring a prescription to anti-depressants just so I can watch next week’s finale without the impending certainty of an anxiety attack. “Granite Slate” continued the all out assault on your heart and felt like the perfect first chapter of an “epic television event....

“Steve made little breastplates out of ashtrays,” recalls Palace Software’s Richard Leinfellner, “which apparently kept pinging off for some reason.” Edited by Alex Wiltshire, Britsoft accompanies From Bedrooms To Billions, Anthony and Nicola Caulfield’s feature-length documentary about the same subject. That two-and-a-half-hour film felt like a labour of love, and Britsoft is a testament to just how much work they put into it; this 420-plus-page volume contains transcripts from nearly 100 interviewees, each sharing their recollections of a rapidly evolving industry....

With the Hank Moody comeback tour in full swing, Charlie Runckle is busy fielding offers to get his favorite client back on the job. Fresh out of rehab and ready to start writing, Hank wants to sit back and really focus on coming out with a great novel or even a short story, hell he’s just ready to churn out meaningful prose. This is really the first time we’ve seen Hank eager to write....

When struggling actor Justin Marquette is found dead in Room 147 at a random “Best Traveler” hotel, it seems like just another homicide in the big city. However, the murder is actually the sanest thing about this episode; it was just that good a narrative. After investigating the now deceased thespian’s theater group, they turn up a suspect named Anita Miller. After just a few seconds Ms. Miller admits to the the murder and writes her confession in great detail....

8.5 The Nose One of the things that we heard going into this week’s episode, The Nose, was that it was going to be a return to the early more campy days of Castle. Now, I’m not exactly sure what that means, since campiness is a quality that is pretty evenly distributed throughout the series. In fact, way back in the day, before the series really found its legs (letting Fillion fully be Fillion) and it was just another stereotypical procedural with a tough-as-nails female detective and her less by-the-book partner, most of the camp was relegated to the ridiculousness of the premise, rather than a major driver of episode plots....

Usually the brilliance of Community’s homages comes from how they intertwine character development and real dramatic moments with an absurd makeover of the Greendale campus. But there are those rare occasions (like in the Season 3 heist episode, “The First Chang Dynasty”) that the show wins me over just by picking something to parody and then going for broke with it. I can see a lot of people finding this one flat out dumb (and there’s certainly an argument there)....

The film starts off in a house as about 10 adults and their 80 or so spawn prepare to go on holiday right before Christmas. Various high jinks ensue, all ranging between mildly amusing and slightly entertaining. The main child, Kevin, gets shouted at because he doesn’t understand quite why it’s necessary for each family to keep spewing out human lava. His mother doesn’t appreciate his point and insists that he stay home alone while they all go on holiday....

My parents were always into whodunits and they thought the same. So a year or so down the line, when I sat down on the couch at 9pm for a dose of ‘there’s been a murder’, I was surprised to be watching an episode of CSI with them. I asked ‘What’s the deal, Neil?!’ and they replied ‘We be chillin’, no classics hittin’ up the box, thought we’d try a new flavour’*....

The head of the Venture clan is Dr. Thaddeus “Rusty” Venture; a former boy adventurer in the mold of Johnny Quest grown older. In spite of his name, Dr. Venture didn’t actually finish school. Nor is he much of a scientist or inventor. He has some inventions, but they’re mostly based off his father’s old ideas or somehow unsuccessful, thanks in no small part to his addiction to prescription pills and general insecurity....

In the real world, Da Vinci was a true Renaissance man before the term was invented, a polymath who excelled at engineering, painting, sculpting, architecture, philosophy, mathematics, music, anatomy, geology, cartography, botany, writing, and pretty much any other pursuit he put his considerable mind towards conquering. He shares these traits with the fictional Da Vinci, brought to life by Tom Riley, and builds on the considerable legend with an interesting conglomeration of personality traits, physical tics, and clothing items plucked at will from the universal closet of pop culture heroes....

Journalist and broadcaster Charlie Brooker’s brilliant new E4 series Dead Set could easily usher in a new era of TV horror. For all the Mail’s moaning about violence on the small screen, there’s precious little in the way of proper gore slopping about, a sad state of affairs Dead Set corrects with gusto. Fans of Brooker’s journalism are unlikely to be disappointed. Classic Brookerian phraseology is present and correct, revelling in its warped new context, with one character describing the experience of picking shards of a friend’s skull out of her jumper like “cats teeth....

3.9 Ostinato In White From the outset, this story is all over the place, trying to make you think that darling Doc Yewll has been ripped to pieces by some feral creature. Except this Yewll just doesn’t react like the one we’re used to, because she always has a plan. That’s soon explained, linking back to earlier in the season when Kindzi took the Doc’s DNA, which she then failed to destroy when instructed to do so....