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Displaying a similar lightness of tone as dependable British hits such as Love Actually and Four Weddings And A Funeral, Marigold Hotel is a pleasant, easy-going evening’s entertainment that delivers everything you could rightly expect of it. There are laughs. Arguments. Romance. A little bit of tragedy, a smattering of pathos, a sprinkling of poignancy. It’s undemanding and a tad predictable, but there’s nothing wrong with that – especially when the dialogue is as sparky as it often is here....

Sadly, by this point, you may not care if the House Of Cards star is dreaming or not as any semblance of reality and cohesive story-telling have been abandoned in this brave, challenging but ultimately problematic piece of work from the man behind the notable Waltz With Bashir (2008), Ari Folman. In essence, this is not dissimilar to an aspect of another Hollywood dissection, Robert Altman’s sublime The Player. In one scene in that 1992 classic, studio exec Larry Levy suggests that writers can be dispensed with in the movie industry, simply relying on what they find in newspapers....

The setup is promising. It follows a caveman by the name of Grug – voiced by Nicolas Cage – and his family, as they try and stay safe from the ravages of the prehistoric world. Grug is a fear-changing, protective father, to the particular annoyance of his teenage daughter, and while his family are safe, they never get to see the outside world. We saw father-daughter issues explored just a few months ago in Sony’s disappointing Hotel Transylvania, and the whole Ice Age franchise has been built to an extent on a father trying to adapt to his children growing up....

Iain Duncan Smith wrote to The Times to express his disapproval with The Dark Knight’s 12A rating. He said “I was astonished that the board could have seen fit to allow anyone under the age of 15 to watch the film. Unlike past Batman films, where the villains were somewhat surreal and comical figures, Heath Ledger’s Joker is a brilliantly acted but very credible psychopathic killer, who extols the use of knives to kill and disfigure his victims during a reign of urban terrorism laced with torture....

I was heartened by the many kind and positive comments that my last review of The Deep evoked. It’s obvious this show already has a dedicated following. It struck me that in shipboard dramas the vessel is often either a personality in its own right, or an inanimate star that will shine at some point to get the cast out of the deep doo doo. But in this show, as nice as it looks, the DSV Orpheus is a complete liability, more likely to contribute to killing all the crew than rescuing anyone....

We haven’t had a genuinely bad episode of The Flash yet, and I’ve groused a little about the most recent couple of episodes being a little formulaic. A little too much “villain of the week” and not enough real character development. While “Power Outage” is very much a villain(s) of the week scenario, it was done in an inventive enough way, and dropped just enough bombs on us to step things up....

The Flash Season 2 Episode 20 “Breaking news coming out of Jitters Coffee Shop…” That was an actual line written for this episode. And it may not even be the worst one. Here’s some “breaking news” of my own. “Rupture” might be the low point of the longest sustained stretch of bad episodes The Flash has ever had. And for real, it’s tough to put a brave face on for “Rupture....

2.8 The Messenger I was a little cool on The Following in its first season. Sure, it was violent, but for whatever reason, I never really liked it all that well. It definitely had a strong performance from Kevin Bacon, but there seemed to be some issues with the show that kept me from embracing it completely. All that has changed in the second season. The Following has dropped any pretence at seriousness and has decided to go completely off the rails....

In case you haven’t heard, Halo 2‘s re-recorded score for the Anniversary edition is gorgeous. Martin O’Donnel and Michael Salvatori’s original score receives a lot of love from Skywalker Sound, elevating the music to video game godliness. Really, could there be a better match made in heaven? But whether its still popular isn’t a sign of the score’s greatness. It’s the way it becomes its own separate masterpiece, having a life of its own through sound....

The first meeting was in a cellar in Shepherd’s Bush. Not the most auspicious of starts. I didn’t have a lot to do with the planning so I slipped up to town in the afternoon for a spot of shopping. On the underground I was confronted with a bunch of busking musicians. For some reason I thought they were Spanish. So I chatted to them in Spanish – as you do....

The Last Man on Earth: Season 2, Episode 10 “And the Wright Brothers weren’t pilots until they stepped into that plane…” It’s beautiful in the form of Christmas Grinch Phil Miller fighting to survive over the holidays, and it’s beautiful in the form of Phil, the new worm that’s been birthed thousands of feet above the Earth’s surface. And while we’re talking about beautiful, that footage of Mike reeling himself back into the Space Station is some of the most gorgeous stuff that any sitcom has been conjuring up this year (it should be no surprise that wunderkind Jason Woliner, hot off his stint on Nathan For You’s gamechanging finale, is behind the camera)....

The Magicians Season 2 Episode 7: “Plan B” Once again proving that it can bring disparate story arcs together under one umbrella, The Magicians gives us the Ocean’s Eleven episode we didn’t know we wanted. Addressing both the expensive nature of Julia’s abortion and the cost of declaring war on Loria is no mean feat, and unlike the somewhat deficient treasure hunt episode, “Hotel Spa Potions,” the bank heist idea in “Plan B” actually works very well on a number of levels, involving not only the aforementioned financial situations but also the imprisoned Alice-niffin and Penny’s magical difficulties....

“The Accident” puts the youngest Pemberton member, Ben, front and center as he struggles in his attempts to make a friend. This doesn’t get any easier when a disaster at a sleepover results in Mickey, Jimmy, and Alba intervening to simultaneously be the best and worst guardians of all time. Beds get peed on and Sabrina is forced to spend time with Chip, so everyone is in dire straits this week....

Some people might say that the Boosh crew are relying too much on former glories, and this episode does retread some familiar ground. The Shamans make their second appearance so far this season, and it could be argued that the writers are running out of ideas. A change of tack could be in order – a Shaman spinoff show, anyone? While the bickering between Tony Harrison and Zaboo still raises a smile, maybe people becoming bored of them....

One of NBC’s special features this year is to run the occasional hour-long episode of The Office, and since this is basically the “find out what the gang did over the summer, because we’re going to be different and assume time still passes when we’re not filming” episode, this is a good place to start the expanded episodes. After all, there are a lot of characters to catch up on....

The episode begins with Sid Phillips paying a visit to Mr and Mrs Sledge. After sitting down to dinner with them, he tells them a palatable untruth – Eugene will be fine. As the following 45 minutes will show, this is most definitely not the case. Compounding this is the Marines’ lack of water, caused by an inability to establish supply routes past the Japanese. The soldiers’ desperation is portrayed convincingly and more than once I found myself reaching for a drink as my lips became dry in sympathy....

1.6 Lucy “If anything had a purpose, wouldn’t we know?” Jérôme asked Claire this week, and with just two episodes left in this eight-part first series, you might very well pose the same question. The Returned, beautiful and captivating as it is, has set so many tops spinning over the past six weeks that logically, it’s only been able to keep a select few in motion, while others wobble, slow, and eventually come to a stop....

This The Simpsons review contains spoilers, like Nucky dies at the end of Boardwalk Empire. Chemistry also comes into play in the subplot, which stars the Simpsons family. Abe’s friends at the Springfield Retirement Castle are discovering better living through chemistry. We can see where Homer gets his penchant for addictive behavior as his old man turns out to have a big appetite for prescription hallucinogens. The nursing staff is doling out love drugs and they’re safer and more fun than a four-hour erection from Cialis....

This The Simpsons review contains spoilers. A short while ago, in season four, while Maggie was still an infant in a jumbo chicken carry out box, a terrible, terrible thing happened at Kamp Krusty. And every year the tradition continues in the Krustiest place on earth. Fun’s fun, but when someone loses an eye, things really get rolling. Sure, in cartoons all it takes is a little White Out and 200 disabused animators to put things back together again, but it’s still traumatically fun....

Closing logos have evolved into a TV production company’s tiny stamp of individuality. They’re a single snippet of screen time not at the mercy of network notes, audience feedback or sponsorship concerns. A closing tag doesn’t need to sell a show, tell a story, or lasso an audience back for the next episode. It’s simply a signature, a few seconds entirely belonging to the creatives, to do with what they will....