It is March, and, in a portacabin-cum-cafe, we sit down with Steven Moffat and Mark Gatiss. They fill us in on their new project as a coffee machine churns like a broken TARDIS in the background. Their goal is to bring Sherlock Holmes, one of the English language’s more iconic characters, into the 21st century. The ensuing series, Sherlock, will take the form of three, feature length episodes, re-setting classic Arthur Conan Doyle tales in a thoroughly modern London....
A laboured and po-faced affair, Colm McCarthy’s debut feature is a far from impressive piece of work, which seems to have little or no grasp of what type of movie it aspires to be. Is it a Guillermo del Toro-style fusion of ancient folklore with the modern world? Is it a kitchen sink drama with a supernatural edge? Is it a classic ‘beast on the loose’ story? Is it a chase movie?...
Outlander Season 2, Episode 6 Never let it be said that Outlanderdoesn’t know how to deliver a cliffhanger. In the final act of “Best Laid Schemes…,” many of the largest season 2 plot elements seemed to come to a head. Claire and Jamie struck a major blow in their campaign to stop the Jacobite rebellion before it even starts. Jamie and Jack finally dueled. And Claire’s pregnancy may have come to an end....
There has been no shortage of creativity in Portlandia this season, but “Bed and Breakfast Soft Opening” leans on the inability of Peter and Nancy to be reliable hosts for the majority of the laughs in the episode. Stu and Donald (Stu’s Stews) and an elderly Black couple are the B&B’s first guests. That helps move along when some of the episodes other skits fail to stick. Peter and Nancy make a mess of the opening of their B&B but you have to give them credit for sticking to their all-inclusive brochure....
The humor broadly falls into one of two categories: attempted winking nods at genre conventions that are absurdly ham handed; or nonsense, but in the spirit of Family Guy, repeated ad nauseum despite not being funny the first time. Most of the attempts at characterization (and most of the jokes) fall into the first category – characters lampshading the fact that they live in the DC universe (“Hey wouldn’t it be nice if we all worked for Batman, guys?...
The Saint of All Killers sometimes feels like a sheer force more than he does an actual character at times, but Graham McTavish plays the character with a chilling vulnerability that still shows his humanity. He’s not just a monster, and that’s what makes him so interesting. The Saint of All Killers was last seen during the show’s second season in a grueling underwater grave of sorts that was finally able to ensure that the Ghost Cowboy Terminator finally comes to an end....
4.15 Love ShAck, Baby Because when Pretty Little Liars has conviction in its ideas and deep, dark subject matter to deal with underneath the mystery solving and teen drama, it’s more fun than anything else on the telly. When it veers off on tangents and starts to forget itself in a bid to fulfil episode orders, the silly stuff just doesn’t land in the right way. At the moment, it’s more in keeping with the former and, until the inevitable reveal in which we discover what Ezra’s motives really are, we can enjoy a rejuvenated show that feels as though it’s enjoying itself as much as we are watching....
4.7 Crash and Burn, Girl! What did she think would happen? That no one would notice that the key to a murder victim’s apartment had gone missing? They did notice and, given that her mother was the person tasked with looking after it, that means even more problems for the Fields. Some good did come out of it, thankfully, when she, Spencer and Aria visited the apartment and found a package left by A....
5.12 Taking This One To The Grave It’s not because there’s nothing left to do with the character – Mona is one of the most entertaining, perplexing and malleable characters on the show – but because it would probably have the most impact on the characters and on the show. While Mona was around, the Liars always had someone to blame for all things bad and evil, and they also had a potential ally when Hannah decided to play the BFF card....
When Dave announced that it would be making a new six-part Red Dwarf series after 2009’s Back to Earth, it’s fair to say that many fans were cautious in their optimism; the three-part special had taken the characters down a much more dramatic route, and seemed to mark a shift in direction for the Boys from the Dwarf, one which took them away from their sitcom roots. Would Red Dwarf X continue this trend?...
4.9 Final Mission That’s right, the day is here: Wesley’s finally going to stop being an unpaid intern and become an unpaid (presumably) crew member. As his final mission, he is to accompany Picard to boldly go and resolve a mining dispute. The fun never stops on the Enterprise. Nor, indeed, does it start. The Enterprise meets up with the mining shuttle of one Captain Dirgo. Wesley mocks this idea, pointing out that he’s the only crew member and probably hasn’t earned the rank, quite unlike his achievement of being promoted to Acting Dogsbody....
Well… It’s season two, and that means everything’s gone slightly different! Riker has a beard! Wesley has a halfway-decent uniform! La Forge has a job title! There’s barely enough time to explain all of the changes they’ve made to the status quo before a weird tinkerbell-esque sprite of energy sneaks onto the Enterprise and merges with a sleeping Deanna Troi. This can mean only one thing: we’re heading for a Troi-centric episode....
And for anyone who doesn’t want to spoil the ending of Dirty Rotten Scoundrels, read carefully … Do you come to London much? Not a ton, no. Last time I was here was the London Film Festival a year a half ago, the first showing we did of the film here. It’s been a while. It just took a while to find the right people to put it out, I guess....
2.1 A Kiss Before Dying With those words begins the second season of Riverdale, the CW’s bold and, at times, deliciously overwrought, drama based on Archie comics. When last we saw our heroes, they were all facing the darkness that was slowly invading their small town. Fred Andrews (Luke Perry) had been shot and left for dead during an (apparent) robbery at Pop Tate’s Choklit Shoppe. Meanwhile, Jughead (Cole Sprouse) and Betty (Lili Reinhart) found their growing relationship threatened when the crown-wearing loner seemingly swore his allegiance to those ultra-ridiculous ruffians, the Southside Serpents....
Transposing the Pygmalion myth to a modern twenty-something romance, writer Zoe Kazan and directors Jonathan Dayton and Valerie Faris (Little Miss Sunshine) use their magic realist premise to depict a recognisable relationship with a central dysfunction: whatever Calvin writes, Ruby is. (In one moment of supreme irony, she fondly chastises him for being a control freak, but clearly doesn’t know the half of it…). It helps that the cast is superb....
Okay, as everyone should know by now, I love Sailor Jupiter. She is my favorite of all the Senshi. ALL OF THEM. So, naturally, I’ve got a lot to say about this episode. You may want to take a bathroom break now. Of the four origin stories depicted thus far, this one differs the most between incarnations of the Sailor Moon story. As expected, this episode followed the manga fairly closely with the bridal shop plot and did so quite effectively....
This is the firm’s fourth full-length stop motion feature, following Chicken Run, Wallace & Gromit: The Curse Of The Were-Rabbit and The Pirates!, and – in spite of some stylistic similarities – Shaun The Sheep is a little different. For two reasons. Reason two is that Aardman has effectively made a silent movie here. Well, one without spoken words anyway. Just stop and consider that for a minute: a virtually dialogue-free comedy, for a family audience....
Add to that a lesbian relationship that bordered on domestic abuse and sloppy, inconsistent writing and Skins v.2 failed to recapture the spirit of the original. Franky – Looks like La Roux’s Ellie Jackson at a Torchwood convention. Androgynous artistic type who’s just moved to Bristol with her two dads. Keeps a wooden doll for company. Mini – Queen Bee (for bitch) of Roundview College. Constantly seen with her two BFFs, Grace and Liv, or sucking the face of her meathead boyfriend, Nick....
After the debacle that was Aliens Vs Predator: Requiem, it’s fair to say that expectations were fairly low for Skyline. That is, until the first trailers appeared, which displayed a few neat visual ideas that suggested that their independently made sci-fi movie might be worth watching after all. And while the extensive use of CG helps to give the film a greater sense of scale, the actual plot and number of physical locations couldn’t be much smaller....
I wasn’t thrilled with the idea of a corrupting force being passed from person to person. I mean, didn’t we just do that last season with the demon who jumped here and yon with a simple touch? Similarly to last week, when the key to Purgatory was suddenly pursued with no previous mention (shouldn’t that have been higher on the priority list?), I have to wonder how each new strategy finds its particular place and time in Moloch’s overall plan....
