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One of the things I like about Boardwalk Empire is how they will take a breath for a little bit of symbolism. The stain from the spilled coffee when Agent Knox invaded the home of Eli Thompson (Shea Whigham) is the spread of the rat poison that is spreading through Thompson’s veins. Edgar Allen Poe invented the mystery novel and it turned people like Knox into bulls. C. Auguste Dupin was the detective in “The Murders in the Rue Morgue,” “The Mystery of Marie Rogêt” and “The Purloined Letter....

A number of big plot developments took place in Hold Me In Paradise, but, much in keeping with the way the rest of the series has played out, these ‘game-changers’ took place with little in the way of bombast or fanfare. But we saw the heist go down almost immediately, with thousands of dollars being stolen with relative ease from one of Nucky’s biggest earning establishments. Not only that, but police chief and Nucky’s brother, Eli, was also shot and left for dead in the process....

After last week’s fairly pedestrian case, this week’s exotic tale is a very welcome change. This week sees Jonathan going in search of love, although this time it isn’t his own love, but the lost love of a client. In this case, Jonathan must go in pursuit of a performer, Irena The Lonely White Dove, at a Russian nightclub on Brighton Beach (in New York, not Brighton, England) at the request of his client, a recently released prisoner called Dimitri, who fell in love with Irena after one night of passion, the night before he was imprisoned....

The episode lives up to its title “Rock and a Hard Place,” because a series of delicate situations need to be resolved. Charlie loses another job, but Hank comes to the rescue yet again. He agrees to set up a meeting with Stu to attempt to get Atticus’ rock opera project green lit. Stu admits his business is suffering without Marcy, much like Hank can’t write without his muse. When we start to think we have seen it all in Californication, we get a drug dealer, played by Jorge Garcia of Lost fame, caught in a “muthafucka” battle with Hank....

There aren’t too many shows out these days that, for their third episode, require a two-minute recap to help you get your head around what’s happened thus far. Yet, Caprica has been dense with storytelling and set-up since its maiden episode, and its third episode continues with the work. Too much work, some might argue. That’s a piece of the jigsaw for a future episode, however, as is the news that the police let the Maglev bomber, Ben Stark, go a year before he committed the atrocity....

7.13 I, Witness Ah, the irony. But like the story of I, Witness, we’ll get to that in a moment. And that’s my first small issue with this episode. Now, as I have said before, there’s nothing wrong with a writer using a trope (or cliché). The true test is in how it’s used. And this one has the episode off to a rocky start. Because, after all, the whole point of this kind of a beginning is to pull you in—to plant in the middle of the best part of the story from the start—rather than trust your story to capture the viewers’ attention by simply building the story chronologically....

7.18 At Close Range That’s right: the bromance of Ryan and Esposito. They are just as funny, just as smart, and just as devoted (both to each other and Rick and Kate) as Caskett, but they never, ever break up or pretend not to hear the other when hovering near death. They always come through, even when that other couple leave us hanging, angry and/or frustrated. And why not? Ryan and Esposito are both stand-up guys, dedicated to their jobs, doing the right thing, and taking down the bad guys....

8.15 Fidelis Ad Mortem When theorists use the term, however, they are talking about something else. When they throw it out there, they aren’t really talking about what the reader or viewer is doing when they look at a text, but what the text does to itself. Jacques Derrida, who coined the term, spent forty years of his life trying to define it, so it’s complex, but Richard Rorty sums it up nicely when he said, that it is “the way in which the ‘accidental’ features of a text can be seen as betraying, subverting, its purportedly ‘essential’ message....

3.20: Digital Estate Planning; 3.21: The First Chang Dynasty; 3.22: Introduction to Finality Except when the first of the three episodes is Digital Estate Planning. What may have been a cute idea in the writers’ room – let’s 8bit up the entire episode – was a little stagey in the execution. Once the novelty of the Zelda-esque graphics has worn off (about two and half minutes in) what’s left is a flat, incredibly bizarre scenario that somehow sees Pierce not only turning down his inheritance, but also having foreseen that computer games were the wave of the future....

2.7 The Vault Of Heaven It’s not terribly surprising that Da Vinci’s Demons had to borrow those elements, as that’s pretty much the mental image anyone gets when they think of an old temple filled with booby traps that our genius artiste and his intrepid friends/enemy have to negotiate. Rather than Arabs, we have Incans to serve as the occasional redshirt. Rather than the Holy Grail, we have the almost-as-magical Book of Leaves, with Leonardo serving as Indy and Riario as Donovan....

Some new concept art for Miller’s version of Deadpool 2 has found its way online in the last few days, however, and we’ve learned that Josh Trank’s rebooted Fantastic Four team may have been lined up for an appearance early on. The revelation comes courtesy of artist Alexander Lozano, who has now given us a glimpse at how the team might have looked in the Merc with a Mouth’s sequel....

We are, of course, talking about Chevy Chase – appearing in Hot Tub Time Machine as ‘Repair Man’ – and while this is obviously only a cameo, we already can’t wait to see him do his shtick. If you’ve seen the trailers for the movie you’ll have spotted a blink-and-you’ll-miss it appearance by Chase as said repair man and it fits in perfectly with the ethos of the film that Chase should be roped in for service here....

But it doesn’t take long for Miguel’s attempts to ingratiate himself with Dexter to grind. He’s a loose end and one whose friends he could well do without. But as was hinted at before there is an ulterior purpose in Miguel’s interest in his brother’s death, but what that might be isn’t yet for our eyes. That’s one side of the story, but also there is an ongoing change to do with the ‘code’ that Harry once set Dexter, the rules that keeps getting broken and revised....

6.8 Sin of Omission But back to Sin Of Omission, where Dexter tries to bring Travis back towards the light, even if he’s not entirely sure which direction that might be. The best aspects of this episode are a series of critical character meetings, which are neatly staged. The one that really stood out was the cameo by veteran British actor William Morgan Sheppard, who delivered a very memorable Father Galway....

7.10 The Dark… Whatever In many ways the introduction of this character for one episode only, was purely to give Hannah a more fleshed-out backstory, explaining who she was and where she’d come from. Her initial reaction to him seemed odd, and when characters recount things that happened to them in their childhood, you’re never utterly convinced they happened. But as the story progressed you realised that Clint was all the things that Hannah described and more....

The year was 1983, Nu-romantics and punks fought for dominance on the dance floors and kids in playgrounds everywhere were looking forward to a film they had heard of only in rumours and here-say called Ghostbusters. And when not pretending to be either Michael Knight or BA from The A-Team, kids were asking parents everywhere to buy them a ZX Spectrum for Christmas. All was fun in the world. Apart from, er, mass unemployment, strikes and politics....

Dynasty Season 1, Episode 13 Up until now, the Colby family has generally had the moral high ground: Monica had done nothing but be Fallon’s friend and date the guy Fallon claimed to not want. Cecil was in jail, but it’s reasonable to believe Blake put him there, based on everything we know of Blake. As for Jeff, while he pisses off Blake and Colhane, he hadn’t done anything cruel or illegal....

3.2 Collateral Damage With a mole who seems to know their strategies better than they do, it’s obvious that the former 2nd Mass has to figure out a way to bypass their security flaw, whoever that might be, and Tom’s idea to do just that is to offer his own soldiers up as a sacrificial diversion during a daring raid on a Espheni refueling and storage facility that also happens to be a nuclear power plant....

3.4 At All Costs Falling Skies has put out four episodes thus far this season, and three of those have featured some very expensive-looking special effects and, most tellingly, gun battles of one sort or another. At its heart, Falling Skies is a parable for the Revolutionary War, and as such it needs to have actual war-like things happening. Especially considering that the Espheni know where the humans are holed up and keep launching combat missions against them, you would think having combat would be an integral part, though for too many episodes the fighting has taken a back seat to the talking....

Finding Dory, though, arrives in the UK off the back of an enormous level of success in the US. And whilst it’s arguably not the equal of the charming and quite wonderful Finding Nemo, there’s an awful lot to like here. But this is what I really, really love about Finding Dory: it presents a central character who lives with a disability, but one who also accepts it, works with it, and goes about life in as positive a fashion as possible....