Tag Archives: Television Review. B.B.C.

The Musketeers: The Homecoming. Television Review. B.B.C.

Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating * * * *

Cast: Luke Pasqualino, Santiago Cabrera, Tom Burke, Howard Charles, Ashley Walters, Anton Lesser,     Peter Capaldi, Ryan Gage, Hugo Speer, Matt Slack, Michael Cochrane, Helen Cotterill, Fiona Glascott, Brian Pettifer, Vaclav Chalupa, Christophe Gilland, Michael Jenn.

Where do the good come from? Those that change the lives of all for the better! This is the question lurking at the back of the latest episode of B.B.C.’s smash Sunday night 16th century historical romp The Musketeers.

Inspector George Gently: Gently With Honour. Television Review. B.B.C.

Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating 9/10

Cast: Martin Shaw, Lee Ingleby, Lisa McGrillis, William Ash, Jemma Redgrave, Oliver Milburn, Oliver Johnstone, Pip Torrens, Daniel Lapaine, Stephen Hamilton, Ford Kiernan, Olwen May, Bradley Gardner, Simon Hubbard, Celyn Jones.

Gently With Honour placed a very big size nine boot against the world of the British Army in the deeply suspicious days of the 1960s and upturned the kind of scandal that still sticks in the throat of all who may have served in the forces during that time but also would have caused a stink so high if the British public had found out what was being done to combat the issue of Communism.

The Musketeers, Commodities. Television Review. B.B.C.

Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating * * * *

Cast: Tom Burke, Howard Charles, Santiago Cabrera, Luke Pasqualino, Peter Capaldi, James Callis, Maime McCoy, Tamla Kari, Julian Bastida, Andres Williams, Anna Skellern, Jim High, John Warnaby, Tomas Masopust, Ryan Cage.

Charged with upholding the King’s Law at all times, the morality of their actions can sometimes be too much of a burden to bear at times and never more so for The Musketeers as they are ordered to bring Emile Bonnaire to Paris to explain his actions, his actions which delve into the historic start of modern Empire building in Europe and the price paid by many for the profit of one man in the third episode, Commodities .

Doctor Who: The Time Of The Doctor. Television Review. B.B.C.

Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating * * * *

Cast: Matt Smith, Jenna Coleman, Orla Brady, Peter Capaldi, James Butler, Elizabeth Rider, Sheila Reid, Mark Brighton, Rob Jarvis, Tessa Peake-Jones,  Jack Hollington, Sonita Henry, Kayvan Novak, Tom Gibbons, Aiden Cook, Nicholas Briggs, Barnaby Edwards, Nicholas Pegg, Ross Mullan, Karen Gillan.

It seems like a bad dream now but there was a time when the absence of Science Fiction from television, especially British Science Fiction tales, was in danger of being seen as antiquated as the thought of Medieval History. Thankfully neither genres and those that love and cherish where we have come from and where we are heading will ever lay down and let the banality of life ever let some television executives get their own way.

The Great Train Robbery: The Copper’s Tale. Television Review. B.B.C.

Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating * * * *

Cast: Jim Broadbent, Luke Evans, Philip Glenister, Nick Moran, James Fox, Tim Piggott-Smith, James Wilby, Gwyneth Strong, Ken Bones, Tom Beard, Richard Hope, Tom Chambers, John Salthouse, Lee Starkey, Kelly Marie Autumnberg, Mark Ashwell, Ross McCormack, Eric Hulme, Alexa Morden, Tommy McDonnell, Al Powell, Alistair Donegan, Matthew Jure, Christine Cox, David Halliwell, Mark Mathieson, Anthony Hunt, Jacob Smyth, James McGregor, Bradley Snelling.

The Great Train Robbery: The Robber’s Tale. Television Review. B.B.C.

Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating * * * *

Cast: Luke Evans, Neil Maskell, Jack Roth, Bethany Muir, Martin Compston, Paul Anderson, Nicholas Murchie, Del Synott, Jack Gordon, Nigel Collins, Eliza Doolittle, Robert Glenister, Stuart Graham, Bill Thomas, Eric Hulme.

Those behind the 1988 film Buster should look upon The Great Train Robbery: The Robber’s Tale as a way to tell a story properly and without the large amount of buckets of whitewash in which to dip the carcass of post-war police work and the glamorisation of those involved in a crime that shook the very foundations of life in the U.K. already rocked by the scandal surrounding John Profumo and Christine Keeler.

Ripper Street, Our Betrayal. Television Review. B.B.C.

Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating * * * *

Cast: Matthew Macfadyen, Jerome Flynn, Adam Rothenberg, MyAnna Buring, Charlene McKenna, Joseph Mawle, Clive Russell, David Dawson, David Wilmot, Damien Molony, Leanne Best, Frank Harper, David Costabile, Justin Salinger, Robert Goodman, Joel Gilman.

Ripper Street: A Stronger Loving World. Television Review. B.B.C.

Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating * * * *

Cast: Matthew Macfadyen, Jerome Flynn, Adam Rothenberg, Gillian Sakar, Charlene McKenna, Paul Kaye, MyAnna Buring, Gina Bellman, Justin Avoth, Chris Patrick Simpson, David Wilmot, David Dawson, Damien Molony, Kirsty Oswald, Callum Turner, Liam Burke, Gwynne McElveen.

The writers of Ripper Street have never been afraid to head down the path afforded the rich history of Whitechapel for its inspiration. Whether it is the world of male prostitution, the salaciousness of Molly Houses, the rights of women, the Irish question or the straight poison that stalked the streets of the East End in 1888, there is not a moment in that dark history of Whitechapel that isn’t worth exploring.

Ripper Street, Dynamite And A Woman. Television Review. B.B.C.

Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating 7/10

Cast: Matthew Macfadyen, Jerome Flynn, Adam Rothenberg, Clive Russell, David Wilmot, Damien Molony, James Wilby, Leanne Best, Stanley Townsend, Charley Murphy, Martin McCann, Michael Marcus, Guy Williams, Steve Gunn, Frank Melia.

Dynamite and a Woman arguably the two most explosive elements in Victorian London, one in which caused devastation, the other which broke hearts and in which both figured predominantly in the latest case to fall to Detective Inspector Reid to solve; both being surrounded by the new instrument in London, electricity.

A Very British Murder, Part Three: The Golden Age. Television Review. B.B.C.

Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating 9/10

Murder is no parlour game likely to be solved on the last page but in act of terrible and terrifying significance.”, so relished with glee Dr. Lucy Worsley as she read from the book that set a new style of British crime fiction, Graham Greene’s Brighton Rock.

The final part of Dr. Lucy Worsley’s fascinating look at the British pre-occupation with murder centred on the Edwardian age and beyond. From the terrible murder involving the seemingly innocuous Dr. Hawley Harvey Crippen through to the way that murder became almost sanitised, cleaned and cleansed as parlour games and the rise of cinema and its own Golden Age of Film Noir in which the murderer became the celebrity in classics such as Brighton Rock and the outstanding Alfred Hitchcock film Sabotage.