In Le Grand Guignol, however, we do at least witness that much-discussed seminal moment in which the family were driven out of New Orleans for the first time. Is the rebooted Mikael any more threatening? Does he warrant the hushed whispers that greet any mention of his past villainy? Not quite but, then again, on a show all about mass murderers and master manipulators, that was always going to be a tall order....
2.17 Exquisite Corpse We all have our demons, but the Mikaelson family have more than their fair share. Though, while its parent show is essentially all about a bunch of people trying to control the monsters inside of them, The Originals is much more content to simply let those monsters co-exist with their hosts. They are the very definition of cursed, as Rebekah once said, and for them it’s much more about embracing their nature and doing the best they can, with family taking precedence over everything....
2.21 Fire With Fire With this show, though, it’s even harder. The episode asks us to believe at different stages that Klaus would go on a murderous rampage, setting love interests on fire and driving an irrevocable wedge between himself and the mother of his child, and believe that he’d go that far to convince Dahlia that he’s on her side. It’s a stretch, especially so because of how much pain we’ve seen Klaus inflict on others just because they get on his nerves....
The Path’s new season kicks off with a bang—both figuratively and literally—as it confidently heads into its third year with a renewed energy. The show isn’t afraid to reframe its relationships, pull a 180 on the status quo, and have its characters indulge in shocking melodrama. The Path’s second season does end in quite the tumultuous way and it leads to unexplored territory for the series. Unsurprisingly, this injects these first few episodes of the third season with a helpful creative drive in what feels like it could be the show’s strongest year yet....
AMC, a popular American cable channel, has been pushing The Prisoner hard: teaser trailers, pop-up messages during other shows and sci-fi movie marathons to keep its target audience watching. Its extensive website includes a spin-off comic book series, episodes from the 60s series and a fake website for a sinister corporation that apparently runs the Village. That’s right. In the cleverest twist of the new Prisoner, Six has quit his job with a megacorp called Summakor....
As usual, feel free to discuss whether you’re watching along or you’ve seen it all, but please don’t spoil future episodes for anyone in the comments. Hey, that was a good ending. I did wonder if Frank was going to easily take out Agent Orange and be left with a five-episode coda where he takes on some even BIGGER bad guy, but it turns out: not so much. Whatever happens next, I suspect Frank’s not going to get another shot as easy as the one he just missed for a lonnnng time now....
It’s harder to describe his 2010 death as similarly vibrant. Higgins died broke and alone, wilfully starving in sheltered housing after throat cancer left him toothless and skeletal. The Rack Pack, an original film made for BBC iPlayer, glosses over Higgins’ last days. Its final scene sees him in slow-motion striding drunkenly away from the press and into a blast of white light. Though billed as a comedy drama, to its credit the film isn’t blind to the tragedy of Higgins’ binges....
The basic setup of the plot (for anyone who hasn’t been paying attention) is simple enough. The Doctor is dead, the Last of the Time Lords seemingly meeting his final end saving a gaggle of children out in deep space from certain doom. With his death verified by UNIT’s DNA checks, Sarah Jane and the gang decamp to UNIT’s giant base under Mount Snowdon where his body is being held in state by the mysterious intergalactic coffin bearers known as the Shansheeth....
The Simpsons: Season 27 Episode 20. Not exactly the same of course. When we first met our two felonious friends they were quite nice to animals, now they are in the wretched business of slaughtering defenseless animals for fashion and that’s is something the legacy of The Simpsons will not allow. It doesn’t matter how much fine Chablis they use to dampen the shock of an alligator purse. The setup is that Homer to deliver a mysterious briefcase to France without looking inside it in exchange for a free trip to Paris....
The Son Episode 6 The Son season 1, episode 6, “The Buffalo Hunter,” puts a human face on torture. Pete McCullough (Henry Garrett) may not believe in the great roundup in the sky but he no longer believes there is a benevolent guardian watching over everyone. His father, first son of Texas Eli McCullough (Pierce Brosnan), thinks Pete could use some watching himself. Eli, the young Comanche brave, continues to twist and turn through his splintered loyalties....
3.9 Do Or Die This week, things take a bleak turn on The Strain. A few episodes back, New York fell to Strigoi forces and now Feraldo’s men are abandoning her and their city. Feraldo decides to keep fighting with the few men left, but when her caravan is attacked, the last days of this brave politician arrived. We’ve seen Feraldo go from a typical city politician to a true warrior as she took back Red Hook and took the fight to the Strigoi like no other....
Let’s get something straight first of all: The Tourist has absolutely no pretensions of being anything other than a big, pretty vehicle for its two huge, pretty stars. One thing you cannot accuse it of is a surplus of ambition. The plot of The Tourist is, to put it kindly, an afterthought, an awkward necessity which is just there as a way to bring two of the most bankable stars of the modern era together at last....
While there were fewer overt moments to chortle at this week, The Trip continues to deliver. Whether it’s Coogan’s self-doubt, Brydon’s unbridled joy or pitch-perfect impressions, this is a series that has got into its stride quickly. He’s set himself up here as the man who longs for more, as a man consistently fed up with a world he feels owes him more for the hard work and successes of his past....
An especially effective scene saw Rick hiding under a bed while two intruders fought over it, it was part domestic nightmare part Three Stooges sketch, but it was one of the few underwear filling scenes in the show that did not have a zombie anywhere near the proceedings. The show did such an amazing job building up tension through only showing exactly what Rick saw. The limited point of view made the intruders more frightening than any zombie hoard by controlling what the viewer can see....
2.2 Bloodletting The search for Sophia is still on, except the search party is now short of three extra people. Namely, Shane, Rick and Carl. You see, at the end of last week’s episode, Carl got shot by a hunter out looking for delicious deer to eat. That’s right kids, there are more survivors than just the few we’ve been following. Namely, there’s Hershel Greene (Scott Wilson), his daughters Maggie (Lauren Cohan) and some other ones, and their portly pal Otis (Pruitt Taylor Vince)....
3.7 When The Dead Come Knocking As we have seen, the Governor doesn’t take too kindly to challengers to his authority. Andrea is a follower – she goes with whomever the alpha dog seems to be, be it Rick, Daryl, Shane, or even Merle in the early days of the Atlanta group. Michonne isn’t that kind of person. She’s an alpha dog, too. Her respect can’t be bought, only earned....
4.13 Alone In a way, that opening is more effective than the times Bob has mentioned that along the way he’s been the sole survivor of his groups; akin to how Beth imagines Daryl will be the last man standing, and how last week Daryl said that was a horrible thing to say, with Bob’s introduction we see just how bad that situation really is. The only difference between Bob and the living dead all around him is that Bob’s eyes aren’t all clouded over and he’s eating citrus, not brain meat....
4.15 Us We get our first glimpse of that promised land this week in an episode that takes great pains to showcase every character, save Beth, for a few moments at a time. Rick and Carl and Michonne get a glimpse, a little bit of levity, while Daryl’s initiation into Joe’s Mad Max gang continues without any real delay. Glenn is still searching for Maggie and dragging Abraham and company along for the ride....
In one sense, The Wall‘s setting looks like something out of a Call Of Duty or Gears Of War sequel: fresh-faced soldier Sergeant Isaac (Aaron Taylor-Johnson) finds himself stuck behind a dry stone wall in the Iraqi desert and pinned down by an enemy sniper. The wall looks like one of the waist-high bits of cover from Gears Of War; the way it crumbles recalls the first cover shooter of them all, the classic Space Invaders....
We meet the King this week in the latter stages of his Raging Bull transformation. Two decades on the throne had turned him from a pin-up into a health warning; fat, bearded, and sallow-skinned, Edward was not long for this world. (In keeping with TV’s anchor man dynamic in which men get older but women’s faces are frozen just before they hit thirty, forty-six-year-old Elizabeth’s ageing was economically achieved by someone hiding her Touche Éclat)....
