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“Gone Smooth,” huh? I see what they did there. I keep driving home the stake point that The Strain is putting a nail in the coffin of the sexy vampire, in fact, now, it feels like Carlton Cuse, Chuck Hogan, Guillermo Del Toro, and the rest of the talented psychos that bring us FX’s newest nightmare fest are going out of their way to do just that. The Strain’s vampires are not erotic creatures who are going to tickle your g-spot before gently and sensually lapping up your hemoglobin, oh no, there are parasitic worms and fleshy viruses that will deliver the most horrible of infections that certainly aren’t covered by Obamacare....

3.7 Collaborators We kick things off in a most unexpected place- the bloody trenches of the Ukraine during World War II. There, we meet two soldiers struggling to survive. The two Ukrainian soldiers make a pact to stand by each other no matter what. Soon, this oath is put to the test when both infantrymen are captured by the Germans. Right before we return to the present, it is revealed that one of these soldiers is the grandfather of Vasiliy Fet....

Here are fifty of the best kids’ TV theme songs (spread over two pages and in arbitrary order) of the 1980s. Some, like Alan Hawkshaw’s distinctive Grange Hill intro, are unarguable classics of the era, while others, like Mike Harding’s Count Duckula, only started in the late-eighties and spent the rest of their run in the next decade. Obviously, there being only 50 on this list, we may have missed out your favourite (deliberately or otherwise)....

The Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt is all about Kimmy becoming comfortable and used to the various aspects of her life, whether it’s her making new friends, pursuing education, getting a job, or simply living her life in a space that’s bigger than a studio-apartment sized bunker. In fact, the central premise of The Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt is all about her attempts to learn what life is really all about, reclaim her lost years, and figure out who she really is....

3.1 The Birthday It’s the return of our favourite teen vampire series, and everyone’s seemingly spent their summer in the land of denial. We join the characters pretty much where we left them. Stefan’s off gallivanting with Klaus, leaving Elena in the not entirely comforting arms of Damon, and Caroline and Tyler are still exploring how far the whole mortal-enemies thing can stretch. Oh, and Jeremy’s still going through his Sixth Sense period....

3.11 Our Town Caroline, who was missing in action last week to make room for Jeremy and Alaric’s stories, takes centre stage for the b-story on her 18th birthday, which isn’t as much a cause for celebration as the gang originally think. The usually perky blonde isn’t that excited about turning ‘fake’ 18, and Elena, Bonnie and a returning Matt take her for a symbolic funeral instead. Morbid? Yes, but also an unexpectedly sweet sequence for a group of friends who we rarely get to see having any fun....

5.15 Try It didn’t take very long for the cracks in Alexandria’s facade to become achingly apparent to the worldly survivors from Atlanta, Georgia (and surrounding areas). From the very beginning, The Walking Dead has been cultivating a showdown between two vastly different styles of leadership and two vastly different leaders. Part of that seemed deliberate on Deanna’s part—she needs people who know how to actually survive this new world, and her group isn’t it—and part of it seems like she’s in way over her head because she thought she could control the raving animal that is the Ricktatorship....

8.1 Mercy It’s strange how coincidences can happen. Earlier this week, prior to watching the eighth season premiere of The Walking Dead, I watched an episode of BoJack Horseman. I’m quite a fan of “the sad horse show,” thought I find it difficult to recommend to other people given just how dark and serious it can turn when it’s not making fun animal puns. Without spoiling the particular episode, one of the characters admits that when life becomes overwhelming, a fantasy recurs....

It’s a more concentrated instalment than recent weeks, homing in one or two narrative strands, and in the process, putting to the side the larger arc of the miracle investigation, and the Oswald Danes character. Instead, we get Torchwood in investigation mode, and not necessarily liking what they find. The tigher focus of The Middle Men really helps a lot here, as Torchwood zooms in on a couple of its most interesting threads....

Still, From Out of the Rain was quite a nice rambling diversion – a sci-fi Countryfile, if you will – the entire plot of which could have been derived from the trailer for it. It followed some old circus folk who were living in reels of cinema film (actually, it was never explained how they got in there), who then escape and start stealing people’s life force to force people to watch their show....

The opening ceremony for the Olympics is not one of these things. It was spectacular then when I watched it in a garden in Hackney with all of my friends, initially sceptical, then awed by the spectacle, tickled by Bond and the Queen, weirdly moved by Mr Bean then completely won over by the NHS celebration, before heading onto the roof to watch the entire horizon explode into fireworks and generally radiate with the feeling that we (with we pertaining to us as individuals, our friendship groups and respective relationships, and the whole bloody United Kingdom) were actually going to be alright....

Following the cancellation of Atlantis in 2015, the BBC is heading back into ancient Greek mythological territory with this new series about the Trojan War cycle of Greek myth – that is, stories about the build up to the war between Greeks and Trojans, about the fall of the city, and the homecomings and travels of the various survivors. One of the central decisions any screen adaptation of the Trojan War cycle has to make is: gods or no gods?...

Let’s have a think about the last four years. The Twilight saga started out in 2008, as an indie curiosity directed by Catherine Hardwicke. Having become a box-office conquering juggernaut whose entries consistently rank amongst the most successful movies of the year, it all culminates in this much touted ‘epic conclusion that will live forever’. Part 2 picks up with Bella enjoying familial bliss with Edward, Renesmee (Mackenzie Foy) and the rest of the Cullens....

A Thief’s End is easily the best looking game I’ve ever seen on a console and the attention to detail and facial animations are simply unmatched in the industry today. Walking through the interior of a house early on in the game, I was amazed at how everything felt so tactile and almost impossibly real, with photos, appliances, and various knick-knacks covering every inch of available space. The same holds true of the game’s more expansive outdoor environments, which are breathing with life and vivid architecture and have a sense of depth like never before, thanks to a bigger emphasis on exploration....

With this, episode eight of season two of Under the Dome, we have finally returned to the quality of last season. Things started to get promising last week with Barbie and Sam actually escaping the Dome, and this week, the show displays the dramatic potential of having residents of Chester’s Mill existing outside the Dome. Barbie would have been a victim of dad’s machinations if it weren’t for the introduction of Hunter, played by Max Ehrich, who absolutely none of you will probably recognize as Fenmore Baldwin from The Young and the Restless....

Such is the pulpy and generally amusing conceit of Upgrade, a science fiction film from Leigh Whannell and Blumhouse Productions. The film is not nearly as smart as it could have been, or even seems to think it is, yet it still makes for an enjoyable B-movie, right down to its questionable acting and wholly unconvincing science. Ex Machina, it ain’t, but this attempt at Paul Verhoeven-lite reminds us of a time when sci-fi could also be seductively seedy in its conceits—fluffing the pillow in the coffin our robo-overlords are laying us down in....

3.3. Warrior’s Fate But as I re-watched Warrior’s Fate, I was reminded of the old truism that the more things change, the more they stay the same. We see this throughout the episode in moments that mirror some of the realities of our own time. Some will always believe that mutual religious tolerance is impossible. The tension between the Christian Saxons and the Norse Vikings has begun to create problems on both sides as we are shown early on in parallel scenes in the episode....

5.6 The Messenger One of the things, good or bad, about Michael Hirst (compared to some writer/showrunners) is that he’s pretty open with his audience. And because of that, we know that Harald and Ivar’s planned attack on Kattegat won’t come until the mid-season break. This is not unusual for the show—building slowly toward an event that we know will happen. One of the delights, in fact, of Vikings has been the fact that it does not rush things....

4.11 The Living and the Dead They did add a new twist to their repertoire that simultaneously gives the viewer urgency surrounding the orchid disaster while also showing us how the rest of the world views and deals with these Warehouse emergencies. This was done by cutting the episode into blocks with a newscast, filmed at the same speed television news is filmed and presented as real-time, breaking updates that gave the viewer a direct countdown to mortality....

On one such trip to the city, R and M run into a hunting party sent by Grigio (John Malkovich) to gather medical supplies. That’s where Julie (Teresa Palmer) first meets R. R and his friends stumble across Julie’s group and proceed to get their hunger satiated by fresh, screaming, bleeding humans. However, while R is a zombie and while R does eat human flesh, he just can’t bring himself to eat Julie....