Everything Express
TV
Review: The Fall (BBC2)
Gillian Anderson does Prime Suspect as Silence of the Lambs amongst the hard men of Belfast. Now fully British again after her X-files stint, Gillian Anderson (Great Expectations) is DSI Stella Gibson, a fish-out-of-water female detective in a man’s world, chasing down a serial killer in a post-Troubles Northern Ireland still thick with sectarian tension. … Continue reading
Review: Vicious (ITV1)
Time travel is possible and it’s here as a working scientific phenomenon. That’s the only explanation I can find for Vicious, ITV1′s latest situation comedy, which is barely a ‘sit’ and contains no ‘com.’ Starring Britain’s two foremost theatrical knights, Sirs Ian McKellen (The Hobbit, X-Men) and Derek Jacobi (Henry V, Underworld Evolution) as an … Continue reading
Review: Danny Boyle – Man of Wonder (BBC Culture Show Special)
“In a Culture Show special, Oscar winning director Danny Boyle talks to Mark Kermode about his new film Trance, London 2012′s afterglow and the highs and lows of an extraordinary film-making career.” Danny Boyle began his career in subversive agit-prop theatre at the Royal Court and went on to be equally subversive in TV. Breaking … Continue reading
Review: Game of Thrones Season 2
It’s often said that the life in the middle ages was nasty, brutish and short. George R.R. Martin’s intricately crafted world of Game of Thrones captures all of that; blood feuds, treachery, zealotry, fornication and death, transferred to the screen in all it’s gory glory by HBO. Mysogeny, nudity, swearing, and sex, with the entire … Continue reading
Review: Labyrinth, Channel 4 TV
Supervising the adaptation of her own 2005 novel, Kate Mosse delivers an historical-mystery-conspiracy-supernatural-’thriller’ based on some cod-historical version of the Holy Grail myth which mystifies but fails to thrill. Channel 4 TV trumpeted Labyrinth as a flagship drama. With medieval and modern plot lines mashed together with the subtlety of the earthquake in episode one, … Continue reading
Review: Terra Nova [Fox TV]
In the year 2149, humankind seeks escape from the polluted Earth by travelling to the past to establish a new colony. Or: a group of very pretty actors (plus Avatar‘s brilliant Stephen Lang) travel back in time to colonise Earth 85 million years ago in the Fox TV adventure series. It could have been Mysterious … Continue reading
Review: Crossing England in a Punt: River of Dreams
From the Staffordshire hills to the Humber estuary, spirited explorer Tom Fort embarks on a 170-mile journey down Britain’s third longest river, the Trent. Beginning on foot, he soon transfers to his own custom-built punt, the Trent Otter, and rows many miles downstream. Along the way he encounters the power stations that generate much of … Continue reading
Review: Foyles War (ITV1)
Familiar Sunday-night sleuth DSI Foyle’s war becomes Foyles Cold War in a dowdy Britain of rationing and displacement, enlivened only by traditional red buses and red telephone boxes. The cancelled detective is back with us thanks to the outrage of it’s loyal audience, both in the UK and around the world. Spies in trench-coats and … Continue reading
Review: Sherlock Season 2 DVD
The best show on DVD? It’s an easy deduction to make. Sherlock is that rare programme – a modern adaptation that works. For series two, Mark Gatiss and Steven Moffat team up to produce another round of intelligent, witty scripts. In the first series Sherlock Holmes and John Watson were given suicides, international smuggling and … Continue reading
Review: The Thick of It – The Inquiry
Madness in their method acting made this bravura episode of BBC2′s political satire one of the finest episodes of TV ever made. The hour-long special (season 4, episode 6) mounted a Leveson or Chilcot-style inquiry into the sucide of NHS campaigner Mr Tickell after his flat was sold off. What ensued was one of the … Continue reading
Review: Restless BBC TV
Two more strong heroines uncover dark deeds in the BBC’s measured, low-octaine, double period spy drama Restless, from William Boyd’s own best seller. It’s 1976 and out of the blue, your elderly but formidable mother tells you she’s a former MI6 spy and that people are out to kill her. Rather than put her into … Continue reading
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