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Set in the twee town of Pagwell, The Incredible Adventures Of Professor Branestawm sees Connie (a nicely understated performance by Madeline Holliday), a rebellious young girl storm out of her classes led by bitter schoolmistress Mrs Blitherington (Miranda Richardson is just one of the few big names given short shrift here) and, by chance, into the haven of local oddball Professor Branestawm’s chaotic home. Understandably, it would be difficult for Higson to transfer the Professor Branestawm books to the small screen while still retaining the same storyline (I doubt many of us would sit through an hour-long adaptation of “The Professor Borrows A Book”, one of the original stories in which Professor Branestawm must hastily return all his borrowed volumes before they become overdue) so he has widened the scope and raised the stakes higher than, to use the aforesaid example, a library fine....

I tried a bit of one-upmanship. I told her about sitting by a camp fire in the Grand Canyon, half asleep, and seeing a sort of hologram of my father in the flames. Lynsey wasn’t impressed. That was just wish-fulfilment. Not the real McCoy. So when Wayne Drew, late of the BFI, rang me to tell me that he had bought an ancient farmhouse in the wilds of Norfolk and wanted me to go there for the weekend, the first question which tripped off my ego was, “Does it have ghosts?...

My first venture into theatre was in the early ’60s, as a ‘muckefuckmacher’ in East Berlin for the Berliner Ensemble (it’s less painful than it sounds). When I went to live in the States and flashed my CV around with the Ensemble prominently hilighted, it got attention. Well at least it got me a job in the Pasadena Playhouse. A thriving touring theatre when I arrived. Unfortunately I hit it at a bad time and I was forced to do a moonlit flit from my lodgings, still owed money by the company....

When they call you a square, say “No!” again and visualise it in a big comic book speech bubble that smothers the devil juju smoke clouds spewing out the magic dragon they’re puffing. You don’t need friends like that anyway. If you get lonely, just draw a smiley face on a volleyball and talk to that. Sadly, it’s likely that the hysterical melodrama of a 30s PSA will only make them laugh and fail to persuade them to forego ‘drug crazed abandon’....

Switzerland is completely safe and you can trust the scientists to carry on the particle collisions without fear of everything collapsing into a black hole. The cinema, on the other hand, may actually be a portal to utter oblivion. Look into Fiennes’ grey eyes and quiver, for behind them dwells the secret source of universal antimatter. He keeps on appearing, draining all vitality from events around him in every movie I see at the cinema (crackpot tinfoil hat conspiracy theorists like over-generalising)....

The Magicians Season 1 Episode 7 Why can’t all of the professors in The Magicians be like Mayakovsky? If the Trials of last week’s episode led to the students transforming into geese and flying to Antarctica to get some real learning done, it would be one of the most significant turning points in Brakebills’ graduate program. The training sequences were not without their narrative hiccups, but together with the turning point in the Eliot-Margo relationship and the family details for Julia, there was definite forward progress in the overall story....

I had already seen the Boosh tour a few years ago and was expecting the same thing – a lot of energy and few fluffed up gags, props-a-plenty and an adventure into the mind of probably the most original comedy outfit since the League of Gentlemen. And while there was a lot of energy and a lot of props on offer, the thing that I was looking forward to the most wasn’t there, namely a good old fashioned Boosh adventure....

As a freshman, Naz gets his education quickly and not from books like 12 Steps and 12 Traditions either. The guards inform him that they are looking forward to the first chance they’ll get to beat the living shit out of him. They’ll even dress up in riot gear because it breaks up the day to beat down an unruly inmate. His cellmate teaches him to keep his eyes down and his mouth shut if he ever wants to wake from this nightmare....

2.9 The Map Of Moments Having Claire Holt leave the show full-time was hard last year, but there was a definite sense that she would be coming back, if only for an episode here and there (as has been the case). Now, that’s not a feeling The Originals mid-season finale leaves you with – Claire Holt is no longer occupying the role of Rebekah Mikaelson, and it seems that the whole body-jumping plotline was just leading us to this point....

1.8 The Horde Come back next year to find out more we will, because resolution or not, The Returned remains the most handsome, intriguing, poised bit of telly we’ve seen in a long while. Taken as a whole, its winding story of the living being confronted by the dead in a setting with more atmosphere than Russ Abbott’s favourite party, was a joy. Granted, the specific variety of joy it left you with was that felt when a loved pet finally twitches its last pained convulsion at the vet’s, a wave of lead-limbed emotion that you know deep down is for the best although it’ll take a cup of tea and a bit of a cry for it all to sink in....

And so, with the advent of this final two-parter, series 4 of The Sarah Jane Adventures comes to a rip-roaring conclusion as the Doctor’s favourite journalist/alien investigator is pitted against her ultimate enemy…old age! When a meteor falls to Earth, Sarah Jane, Rani and Clyde investigate the crash site, only for their rescue mission to be upstaged by the intervention of one Ruby White. Ruby’s a more kick-ass (and noticeably younger!...

(By the way, Bart writes, “I was not nominated for best spoken swear word.”) Love it! Mary enters her song in a hillbilly talent contest. When she loses and turns to Bart for comfort, he blows it again. He knows this when Mary leaves with a Brazilian record agent, telling him, “Everything’s fine.” Guys, when a woman says those two words, know that you are in big trouble. Everything is NOT fine....

4.3 One Shot That’s right, little Zack Goodweather has been hit with Cupid’s arrow and has fallen for a young lady conscripted to be his maid. Poor little Abby must not only clean up Zach’s pizza crusts and skid-marked underwear, she must also deal with his clumsy come ons. Poor Abby is not aware that Zach blew up New York City and plunged the world into thermonuclear war and a subsequent nuclear winter, but she still has to deal with the fact that Zach, history’s most prolific murderer, has a thing for her....

Perhaps even more important…why would someone name one child “Roger” and another “Jedikiah?” The Founder’s swift takeover after Jed runs off turns Ultra on its head. No more killing. No more experiments. So, the Founder really isn’t as evil as we thought. The appearance of a new breakout brings up tensions between Stephen and Hillary. Result? CHICK FIGHT. Okay, Stephen punches John for show. Still a chick fight. Jed shows up at Stephen’s house to spill the beans to Luka, who just thinks he’s crazy....

This review contains spoilers. Do you remember when people were killed every other week on The Vampire Diaries? And do you remember when it stuck? Well those days are over, as a fan favourite bites the dust this week, but rises again in a completely different capacity. We were promised a little while ago that there would be a big death before the end of the series, and this could well be it....

In the brief seconds after The Monarch decides to let Dr. Venture go, having exhausted all possible means of trying to torture him, we actually see the two men have a normal conversation they might have shared in another life. In their fleeting conversation about their past failures, and how dismal their lives have ended up, we actually realize that The Monarch and Dr. Venture aren’t all that different. The conversation is also enough for The Monarch to revisit that old photograph, in secret, of him and Dr....

4.5 Internment Even if it’s not wholly scientific accurate (I’m not an epidemiologist, so your infectious disease questions should be routed to someone else), there’s a fairly consistent logic to what’s going on here in the last few episodes. The flu has been striking down adults, rather than children and the elderly; Hershel has been having people cough in his face for days and he’s somehow still fine. That mirrors the 1918 influenza outbreak that savaged the world in the wake of WWI and killed somewhere between 50 and 100 million people worldwide....

Dammit, Bob! No, not that one…But I always knew Bob would come back to bite us…Okay, seriously, I’m done. Yikes, Sasha needs to get it together. Although her relationship with Bob is still of the plastic “we only developed this for two episodes” storyline that The Walking Dead loves to push for bigger feels, at least it’s better developed than Tyreese and what’s her name. Literally, what is her name?...

Ignore the horrible TV spots currently ruining The Way, Way Back’s chances of success, and trust us when we tell you that this movie is without doubt a fantastic way to spend 90 minutes. Admittedly, 30 second TV spots could in no way encapsulate the levels of warmth, humour and general joy to found packed between one of the most uncomfortable opening scenes ever committed to celluloid and the end credits....