VOD TV review: Doctor Who Season 8, Episode 8 (Mummy on the Orient Express)

During the 2012 mini-season, the Doctor Who production team started to commission tie-in posters to reinforce the modern preference for high-concept, movie-style pitches. Despite the wow factor of the designs, the episodes were disappointingly reductive – when faced with a … Read More

UK TV review: Sons of Anarchy Final Season Episode 5 (Some Strange Eruption)

Episode 5 of Sons of Anarchy’s final season takes place – in tone, time and setting – post-massacre. SAMCRO are recovering and very much at war. This echoes throughout every character timeline the show follows and leaves Kurt Sutter’s tragedy … Read More

Netflix UK TV review: Gotham Episode 1 (spoiler-free)

“Before Batman, there was Gotham.” So reads the tagline to the latest series to take ownership of The Dark Knight’s world, this time with the proviso that the iconic hero won’t feature, an idea that was understandably met with no … Read More

UK VOD TV review: The Leftovers Episode 4

If you can say one thing for The Leftovers, it’s that it doesn’t shy away from symbolism. It may not like answers to its questions, but it loves to fill its screen with as much meaning as possible. So it’s … Read More

UK VOD TV review: The Strain Episode 4

Episode 4 of The Strain begins with the best worst opening of the series so far. After encountering a scientific first – a live specimen of a dangerous new infection – and taking the only logical response – bashing its … Read More

Sky TV review: Boardwalk Empire Final Season, Episode 4 (Cuanto)

“We’ve had all the fights we’re going to have,” Nucky (Steve Buscemi) says to his estranged wife, Margaret (Kelly Macdonald), as they share wine with lunch. As the two discuss Rothstein’s blackmail, which has brought them together after so long … Read More

UK VOD TV Review: The Leftovers Season 1, Episode 3

“It was a test. Not for what came before but what came after. It was a test for what comes now.”

The Leftovers has been ambling along for the last two weeks, waiting, like its audience, for a solution to … Read More

Sons of Anarchy Final Season UK review: Episode 4

Sons of Anarchy is a story of loyalty, strategy and family; cross-country drug wars and racist prison gangs. But sometimes, dropped into all the death and chaos, a sneering, murderous deviant falls deeply in love with a molested transgender prostitute. … Read More

VOD TV review: Doctor Who Season 8, Episode 7 (Kill the Moon)

Remember Armin Tamzarian? To many Simpsons fans, the name represents the horrible moment that a series defied its own (admittedly elastic) continuity and declared that Principal Seymour Skinner, a major character since the start of the show, was an imposter, … Read More

Netflix UK review: Sons of Anarchy Season 7, Episode 3

What makes Sons of Anarchy one of the truly great television shows of this era is a cast of likeable, believable, flawed characters. It has very strong, very brave writing; an admirable sense of tone and music; and a poetry … Read More