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The Magicians Season 1 Episode 6 Things are really starting to pick up in The Magicians, and although it’s sometimes difficult to figure out which direction the show will go next, this unpredictability makes for undeniably enjoyable viewing. In some ways, the story is quite chaotic with the unknowns piling up and few answers in sight, but the characters continue to be fleshed out in a satisfying manner. In fact, the character building was expertly done this week through the use of magical tests that revealed many hidden motivations....

This part of the walkthrough looks at the eleventh episode from The Mick’s second season. Previous installments can be found here. In this installment, showrunners Dave and John Chernin are joined by the episode’s writer, John Harris. The Mick Season 2 Episode 11 – “The Trip” “Sabrina believes she’s a shoe-in at Yale, but on the day of her interview, she takes a risk that may ruin her chances and jeopardize her future....

The Missing Season 2 Episode 1 While some TV dramas go perfectly with a vat of tea and a chocolate hobnob, and others sit well with a glass of wine, the best accompaniment to The Missing season two might be a flipchart, multi-coloured board markers and a stack of Post-It Notes. Episode one was cluttered with questions to file away and a timeline so convoluted that a homemade diagram was your best hope of keeping up....

3.4 The Queen’s Diamonds Written by Jeff Povey (who has a good catalogue of staple British shows to his name, including Midsomer Murders), he tells us the story of the Queen of England’s missing gems, a bit of Aramis backstory as well as an expansion on Sylvie’s treasonous meetings and her developing relationship with Athos. That looks a lot, even on paper and it’s unfortunate that the episode suffers just as you would expect – an overstuffed hour that is tonally all over the place and has little to no consequence for the season....

Admittedly, things don’t get off to a hugely promising start, with a pre-credits sequence that – while it again sets up one of the episode’s plots – fails to provide the customary “big” gag to lead into the opening titles. Thankfully, the “parking spaces” plot goes on to provide ample opportunity to get reacquainted with various characters – although, while Kevin is good enough to carry a plot, Andy fares rather less well, and it’s becoming increasingly difficult to see what his role in the show is really supposed to be....

1.9 Reigning Pain in New Orleans Because what Klaus wants is power and, while he has succeeded in getting to the top of the New Orleans vampire hierarchy, his position as king of the city is incredibly precarious. Without the loyalty of the other vampires or the love of his family, Klaus comes to realise that he won’t last very long on top and so, in a rare fit of sensible reasoning, he recruits Marcel as his partner and makes amends with Elijah and Rebekah....

Episodes 1 and 2 form a complete introductory story within a story and, indeed, are being broadcast edited together in the UK. That story is the battle for the island of Guadalcanal. Meanwhile, Robert Leckie (James Badge Dale) signs up for unclear reasons, although he seems determined to write while there, so perhaps is taken with the romantic ideal of war, an ideal which he soon loses when faced with the reality....

Nestled between Joe Lidster’s brilliantly creepy The Nightmare Man and Russell T Davies’ series highpoint Death Of The Doctor, Phil Ford’s The Vault Of Secrets is something of a ‘business as usual’ story for everyone’s favourite CBBC spin-off. The main problem that The Vault Of Secrets faces right from the off is an overriding sense of been there, done that and this is most apparent in its use of the classic Who/SJA failsafe: the returning monster....

After the more expansive action of Death Of The Doctor , and the seemingly equally ambitious adventure to come in episodes 9 & 10, it’s clearly time for this particular series of The Sarah Jane Adventures to take stock, narrow its focus and, more practically,save a few quid on a cheaper episode. Written by series stalwart Gareth Roberts, The Empty Planet is a story that was originally meant to fill the slot in the Doctor Who specials year that The Waters Of Mars would ultimately occupy....

The earlier seasons, particularly the Hartnell/Troughton monochrome years, tried to root explanations in science – or the closest thing to it – while the more recent series starring Peter Capaldi’s cantankerous incarnation asked us to suspend disbelief most of the time (In The Forest Of The Night, though underappreciated, defied basic science). Lately, Doctor Who has become more fantastical and magical (go back further and you’ll find numerous Eleventh Doctor adventures solved by love, singing and even womb-magic) so seasoned Who scribe Simon Guerrier and astronomer Dr Marek Kukula set themselves a mighty task of unpicking it all in their collaborative book, The Scientific Secrets Of Doctor Who....

The Simpsons: Season 29 Episode 9 The premise promised (“That can’t be right,” Groucho Marx might say) by the title of The Simpsons season 29, episode 9, “Gone Boy,” would have made for a far more original offering from the series. The book and film Gone Girl was about a missing wife, who lived such a duplicitous double life, no one wanted to believe the most obvious suspect, her husband, was indeed the killer, had only she died....

1.2 In Too Deep For whatever reason, the show leans heavily on voice-over and ADR, particularly as a set-up and cool-down method. After the cold opening, which was pretty good, we flash back three days previous to that and we get Stephen mentally narrating his own life. Whenever he gets in trouble, we get more voice-over as he reaches out to Cara, or Cara reaches out to John. Whenever he’s with other Ultra agents, there’s more voice-over as Stephen talks to his handler Vaughan (Carter MacIntyre)....

4.16 Bring It On Having your main character turn into a violent sociopath is a ballsy move, even for The Vampire Diaries, but now we can at least say that they fully committed to turning Elena into one of the undead. She may have been a vampire for sixteen weeks, but that was just the transitionary phase between whiny, indecisive Elena and the reckless party girl we saw here. It’s loads of fun, first and foremost, and leaves the show at a bit of a crossroads....

5.1 What Color Is Your Cleansuit? So if you accidentally inhaled some of Doc’s “antidote” and can’t remember what went down, here’s the basic recap: Doc’s got a major deadline looming for Gargantua 2, so he recruits a group of college students to be his interns. As often happens when super science is involved, genetic mutation predictably ensues and the interns form their own society complete with rituals and myths....

5.10 Them The group is at a weird point in their journey. There’s no food. There’s no water. There’s no gasoline. They’re short two friends (and relatives). Everyone seems to be at a point where they’re ready to die. As Rick says, “We are the walking dead,” and they definitely look it. Pushed to the point of exhaustion, the group is low on everything you need to survive, but especially the will to keep going....

And if you’ve seen the trailer for The Warrior’s Way, it’s just one line of dialogue from alcoholic gunslinger Geoffrey Rush. “Ninjas. Damn.” In the last year or two, we’ve seen two of these wrong-footed action flicks that tried and failed to capture the essence of the wilder eastern equivalent. Last year, Blood: The Last Vampire mashed up horror and martial arts, but forgot to bring in much plot or logic....

What the blue green heck is going on in Casualty? You know Casualty. Appalling spot-the-accident set-ups. Character development that would embarrass Balamory. The occasional attempts to improve things by becoming more like ER, and failing miserably. That may typically be true, but it isn’t this week – aside from the medical clothing there was literally not one reminder of what the programme used to be. Instead there were characters with motivations, original filming techniques and a subtle script, following a lonely junior doctor’s last hours before she kills herself....

This review contains spoilers. The Woman In White Episode 5 Praise be for proper endings! One advantage of TV adapting historical novels is their self-containment. There’s no pressure on an adaptation to continue beyond the bounds of its original story. Series two danglers are not required (we won’t be seeing The Woman In White 2: Gothic Boogaloo), and cliffhangers can go hang. Neither, it’s worth adding, is there the prospect of a reunion miniseries ten years down the line, in which the cast all looks uncannily younger than they did the first time around....

But sadly, we can’t help but feel that the show has saved one of its weakest episodes for last. There’s still a bit of space left in for an individual narrative moment from Gwen right near the start of the episode. There are also some crucial conversations that take place amidst the loud music (I’ve really enjoyed Murray Gold’s score, incidentally), the whizzing computer screens and the continued developments. Without doubt, there’s a real sense that plenty is being thrown at the screen to ensure you get your money’s worth....

Episode four led us a little farther down Utopia’s rabbit hole (now complete with its own Alice, who, like her literary namesake, finds herself in a world of terrifying unfamiliarity). The forum group’s newest arrival bracketed the episode, which opened on her screaming, and closed on a retreating shot of the man she’d disembowelled with a sawn-off shotgun. Utopia, we should know by now, couldn’t make it through an entire fifty minutes without providing a trademark ‘talking point’ act of violence, hence the eleven-year-old girl blasting a hole you could push a loaf of bread through in a man’s stomach....