Category Archives: TV

The Thirteenth Tale, Television Review.

Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating * * * *

Cast: Olivia Coleman, Vanessa Redgrave, Emily Beecham, Antonia Clarke, Alexandra Roach, Steven Mackintosh, Tom Goodman-Hill, Jacqueline Davis, Lizzie Hopley, Michael Jibson, Adam Long, Madeleine Power, Robert Pugh, Sophie Turner, Gordon Winter.

There are ghost stories and then there are those that play that little bit extra on the mind. They seep through the sub-conscious and get into your dreams during the night and play havoc with your waking hours. Even when the ghost is revealed, it still gets in to your head.

The Thirteenth Tale, Television Review. full post

(403 words, estimated 1:37 mins reading time)

Miss Marple: Endless Night. Television Review.

Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating * * * *

Cast: Julia McKenzie, Tom Hughes, Aneurin Barnard, Joanna Vanderham, Birgitte Hjort Sorrensen, Hugh Dennis, Tazmin Outhwaite, Adam Wadsworth, Janet Henfrey, William Hope, Glynis Barber, Michael McKell, Rosalind Halstead, Celyn Jones, Stephen Churchett.

Sunday nights aren’t quite the same without a murder to solve on television, it is a pre-occupation with the darkest of crimes that seems to capture the British public’s imagination more than anything in the world, if you include cricket into the equation, there can’t be more anything else in the world that gets more intriguing to the armchair detective/umpire than introducing facts and statistics to the case.

Miss Marple: Endless Night. Television Review. full post

(565 words, estimated 2:16 mins reading time)

Death Comes To Pemberley, Television Review.

Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating * * * *

Cast: Matthew Rhys, Anna Maxwell Martin, Matthew Goode, Jenna Coleman, Trevor Eve, James Fleet, Rebecca Front,  Eleanor Tomlinson, Philip Martin Brown, Nicola Burley, Kevin Eldon, Tom Ward, Oliver Maltman, James Norton, Penelope Keith, Louisa-Mai Parker, Lewis Rainer, Tom Raven, Tom Canton, Teresa Churcher, Jennifer Hennessy, Oliver Rix, Joanna Scanlon, Kelly-Marie Autumberg, Pamela Ashton, David Blockley, Lee Bolton, Grant Crooks, Michael Dawson, Mark Tristan Eccles, Katya Greer, Kevin Knox, Steve Mack, Mark Mathieson, Stuart Matthews, Liam Merrigan, Bianca Rudman, Pete Szoradi, Ernest Vernon, Patricia Winker, Kelly Wood.

Death Comes To Pemberley, Television Review. full post

(498 words, estimated 2:0 mins reading time)

Atlantis. Television Review. B.B.C.

Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating 3/10

Cast: Jack Donnelly, Mark Addy, Robert Emms, Jemima Rooper, Sarah Parish, Juliet Stevenson, Aiysha Hart, Alexander Siddig, John Hannah, Oliver Walker, Hannah Arterton, Ken Bones, Joe Dixon.

There is something magical about Greek and Roman mythology; it has consistently been a source of epic tales and for the vast majority of the stories that have survived the spectre of time, they are thrilling, exciting and serve to be poignant many millennia after they first appeared.

Atlantis. Television Review. B.B.C. full post

(498 words, estimated 2:0 mins reading time)

The Tractate Middoth, Television Review.

Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating * * * *

Cast: Una Stubbs, John Castle, Sacha Dhawan, Eleanor Bron, David Ryall, Louise Jameson, Nicholas Burns, Roy Barraclough, Charlie Clemmow, Mathew Foster.

At one time even just the name of English writer M.R. James was enough to send readers and viewers alike scuttling into the dark recess of their mind. The master of the supernatural had an uncanny way of capturing base fears and turning them into works of true genius. A true genius which in some ways has not been surpasses more than a hundred years after his first written ghost story.

The Tractate Middoth, Television Review. full post

(398 words, estimated 1:36 mins reading time)

Still Open All Hours, Television Review. B.B.C.

Liverpool Sound and Vision 7/10

Cast: David Jason, Lynda Baron, Stephanie Cole, Maggie Ollerenshaw, James Baxter, Johnny Vegas, Mark Williams, Brigit Forsyth, Kulvinder Ghir, Sally Lindsay, Nina Wadia, Barry Elliott, Kathryn Hunt, Misha Timmins, Cathy Breeze, Sally Womersley, Emily Fleeshman, Nadine Mulkerrin.

There are some things in life that are worth re-visiting, even if it just the once. To see old characters move around in familiar ways but know that somehow they have changed, even slightly, is to understand that time must and always will move forward.

Still Open All Hours, Television Review. B.B.C. full post

(589 words, estimated 2:21 mins reading time)

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.

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

(690 words, estimated 2:46 mins reading time)

Midsomer Murders, The Christmas Haunting. Television Review. I.T.V.

Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating 7/10

Cast: Neil Dudgeon, Fiona Dolman, Gwilym Lee, Tazmin Malleson, Les Dennis, Emily Joyce, Perdita Avery, Elizabeth Berrington, Nadia Cameron-Blakey, Pamela Betsy Cooper, Paul Blair, Anthony Farrelly, Mark Heap, James Murray, Nikesh Patel, Jonah Russell, Hannah Tointon, Susie Trayling.

It is a good job that the county of Midsomer is a fictional region. Not because of the many murders, ever intriguing, ever inventive. It is the abundance of the Detective Sergeants that pass through the doors of the Police Station in Causton that make the programme, though entertaining and almost compulsive viewing, a baffling place in which regular continuality strikes real terror in the community.

Midsomer Murders, The Christmas Haunting. Television Review. I.T.V. full post

(485 words, estimated 1:56 mins reading time)

The Escape Artist, Television Review.

Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating * * * *

Cast: David Tennant, Toby Kebbell, Sophie Okonedo, Ashley Jensen, Jeany Spark, Tony Gardner, Katy Dickie, Brid Brennan, Monica Dolan, Anton Lesser, Roy Marsden, Alistair Petrie, Patrick Ryecart, Stephen Wright, Gus Barry.

David Tennant doesn’t seem to have been off the television during 2013 and thank heavens for that. Not content with playing the lead role as Detective Alec Hardy in the phenomenal Broadchurch, Aiden Hoynes in The Politician’s Husband, the dashing Jean-Francois Mercier in the acclaimed Spies of Warsaw and a little matter of reprising his role as the tenth incarnation of The Doctor for the 50th Anniversary of the much beloved Science Fiction programme, let alone his work on stage for the R.S.C, it’s fair to say that the Scottish actor has never seemed busier.

The Escape Artist, Television Review. full post

(457 words, estimated 1:50 mins reading time)

The Whale, Television Review. B.B.C.

Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating 9/10

Cast: Martin Sheen, Jonas Armstrong, Charles Furness, Adam Raynor, Jolyon Coy, Jassa Ahluwalia, David Gyasi, John Boyega, Ferdinand Kingsley, Paul Kaye, Chris Starkie, Andre Aguis, Joe Azzapardi, Macram Borg, Stephen Buhagiar, Jimi Busutti, Graham Charles, Aklileu Gudetta, Ian Shaw, Bolton White, Valentino Stojanov.

In amongst the seemingly endless repeats, festive cheer, tear-jerkers and the inane, sometimes a made for television film comes along in the run up to Christmas Day that is a sparkling jewel, a reason why television actually deserves its place in the lives of all, a piece of quality so rare that it has been worth being forced to listen to other people’s conversations about the latest celebrity gossip and ghoulish-like fascination of the box in the corner.

The Whale, Television Review. B.B.C. full post

(459 words, estimated 1:50 mins reading time)