Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating * * * * *
Cast: Steve Pemberton, Reece Shearsmith, Simon Callow, Shobna Gulati.
Never mind Halloween, if you want to feel the chill of fear wrap its clawed hand around your heart and mind, then Christmas is the time in which the intoxication of the spirit is more than just filling a glass of your favourite tipple, it is the beginning and the end of all things rational.
Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating * * * *
Cast: Simon Callow, Anjli Mohindra, Susan Penhaligon, Joshua Oakes-Rogers.
It was turn of the 20th Century author M.R. James who asserted that the spectres within a ghost story should always have malevolent intent if the story is to work, if it is to prick the conscious of the reader and give them the type of scare in which boundaries are crossed between the world we see and the domain of the dead.
Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating * * * *
Cast: Neil Dudgeon, Nick Hendrix, Fiona Dolman, Manjinder Virk, Callum Blake, Simon Callow, Colin Michael Carmichael, Robert Daws, James Fleet, Rosie Holden, Matthew Jacobs Morgan, Caroline Langrishe, Cyril Nri, Maggie O’ Neill, Joseph Prowen, Flora Spencer-Longhurst.
You can be scarred for life by the sword as it maims you, cuts into your skin and draws blood, but it is death by the bow that leaves you cold and frightened, the artist’s revenge and thoughts of cold bloodied murder always more palpable as the strings are drawn and the fire in the cold stare is highlighted across the bridge and the arm, drawing back till something snaps and the music becomes a requiem.
Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating 9/10
Cast: Dan Stevens, Christopher Plummer, Jonathan Pryce, Simon Callow, Justin Edwards, Morfydd Clark, Miriam Margolyes, Ian McNeice, Donald Sumpter, Cosimo Fusco, Bill Paterson, Miles Jupp, Annette Badland, Anna Murphy, Ger Ryan, John Henshaw, Ely Solan.
The modern notions of how we celebrate Christmas has come to divide the way we view the period which should be about decency, fairness and that seemingly old fashioned notion of goodwill to all. Some see it as an excuse for excess, some wallow in the frenzy and find their time afterwards beset in debt and worry, others perhaps arguably more at peace with their lot, just surround themselves with a smile, a memory of a loved one no longer in their sights and the hands of a loved one still by their side.
Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating 9/10
Cast: Simon Callow.
Satire it seems may be a dying art, no wonder when various governments and politicians have done their damndest to try and, for want of a better word, outlaw it, make it unacceptable, to make it seem offensive where there is no offence to be gleaned. They have succeeded by stealth, by somehow deflecting the real reason for satire, to poke the finger of jolly discontent at the objectionable behaviour of those who are paid handsomely to serve the state and insisting by doing so it is an attack on other sections of society.
Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating 9/10
Cast: David Suchet, Simon Callow, Morven Christie, Nigel Lindsay, Tom Chabdon, Tom Austin, Rupert Evans, Stephen Frost, Richard Katz, Sandy McDade, Nicholas McGaughey, Isobel Middleton, Fiona O’ Shaughnessy, Patrick Tomlinson, Tom Wlaschicha.
With the last ever set of detective stories being filmed for I.T.V. involving David Suchet as the indomitable Hercule Poirot, audiences could be forgiven for feeling as if they are saying a fond farewell to the Belgian sleuth who has graced the screens of the nation for the last 24 years. A farewell not born out of happiness but for the gracious way in which David Suchet has portrayed the man with honour in all that time and has for all intense purposes, been the embodiment of Agatha Christie’s greatest literary creation.
Liverpool Sound and Vision Ration * * * *
As Dr. Lucy Worsley makes her way through the Victorian age of the most nefarious crime of all, the taking of another’s life, the second part of her new series, A Very British Murder, lifts the lid on the rise of the detective, whether in fiction or on the streets and houses of Britain and the detective’s arch nemesis, that of the arm chair detective.
Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating * * * *
Cast: Oliver Lansley, Katherine Kelly, Angela Lonsdale, Tony Pitts, James Wilby, Don Gallagher, Adam Garcia, Simon Callow, James McArdle, James Floyd, Jonathon Kerrigan, Perry Millward.
The lives of those that make us laugh are often beset by some inner lingering sadness or conflicting turmoil. So it seems is the absolute truth to the life of Kenny Everett, a man who had his fingers on the pulse of a nation before they realised he had whipped out his musical comedy stethoscope and asked them to giggle.