Category Archives: TV

Whitechapel, Series Four, Case Three. Television Review. I.T.V.

Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating * * * *

Cast: Rupert Penry Jones, Phil Davis, Steve Pemberton, Claire Rushbrook, Sam Stockwell, Ben Bishop, Angela Pleasance, Joan Blackham, Michael Fitzgerald, James Woolley, Diane Kent, Charlotte Hope, Ann Davies.

The final case of the fourth series sees the idea of the evil that has been haunting the detective team in Whitechapel fixated on what was underneath the roads, the back alleyways and deep in the sewers. The sewers which take the waste out of the East End and in which a clan of cannibals have started to take the virtuous and honourable off the streets and like time, devouring them and leaving only the memory of them behind.

Whitechapel, Series Four, Case Three. Television Review. I.T.V. full post

(361 words, estimated 1:27 mins reading time)

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.

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

(407 words, estimated 1:38 mins reading time)

A Very British Murder: Part Two. Television Review. B.B.C.

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.

A Very British Murder: Part Two. Television Review. B.B.C. full post

(365 words, estimated 1:28 mins reading time)

A Very British Murder, Television Review. B.B.C.

Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating * * * *

No matter where you look on television or in the book stalls and shops of Britain, there is always the chance you will come across a programme, factual case or long line of fiction dedicated to the murder. The British seem obsessed with it, so much so that no Sunday night would be the same without one of Agatha Christie’s plots giving the viewer a challenge to find the killer before the spinster or the Belgian and no trip to a book shop would feel the same without picking up the latest crime thriller. Dr. Lucy Worsley’s latest historical series delves into the mind set of our island race’s preoccupation with the despicable act and looks at some cases of the deed in A Very British Murder.

A Very British Murder, Television Review. B.B.C. full post

(382 words, estimated 1:32 mins reading time)

Whitechapel, Series Four, Case Two. Television Review. I.T.V.

Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating 7/10

Cast: Rupert Penry Jones, Phil Davies, Steve Pemberton, Sam Stockman, Ben Bishop, Hannah Walters, Mandeep Dhillon, Munir Khairdin, Hugh Mitchell, Natasha Joseph, Angela Pleasance, Gavin Marshall, John Hodgkinson, Tom Beard.

American television programmes that would be considered on par with the I.T.V. detective thriller Whitechapel would no doubt scream for the sense of history that surrounds the East-End of London, the chilling residue of time, death, murder and mayhem that seem to come out of every pore and alleyway of the area. America’s loss is Britain’s gain especially when it comes to Whitechapel and its abundance of historical murders that can be re-enacted with a new novel twist by today’s modern writers.

Whitechapel, Series Four, Case Two. Television Review. I.T.V. full post

(494 words, estimated 1:59 mins reading time)

Whitechapel, Series Four, Case 1. Television Review. I.T.V.

Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating * * * * (Series 4, case 1)

Cast: Rupert Penry Jones, Phil Davis, Steve Pemberton, Claire Rushbrook, Sam Stockman, Ben Bishop, Hannah Walker, Georgina Anderson, Deddie Davies, Jake Curran, Damian Dudkiewicz, Mary Roscoe, Brian Protheroe.

If series three of Whitechapel focused on the gruesome, the first case of series four entered the disturbingly macabre in which the spirit of fear spread by Matthew Hopkins, the early 17^th century self-appointed Witch Finder General, found a new playground in which to distribute terror and in the area of Whitechapel there is perhaps no greater place of significance of which fear and terror has been housed.

Whitechapel, Series Four, Case 1. Television Review. I.T.V. full post

(515 words, estimated 2:04 mins reading time)

My Hero: Ben Miller On Tony Hancock, Television Review. B.B.C. Television.

Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating * * * *

The name, the very thought of his face and the way he was even able to clear the pubs of any custom at his absolute peak, is enough to remember Tony Hancock for what he was, a genius of comedy, the master of stalled look at camera in which he carried a nations funny bone for over a decade until his untimely death in Australia in 1968.

My Hero: Ben Miller On Tony Hancock, Television Review. B.B.C. Television. full post

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

The White Queen, Television Review. B.B.C. Television.

Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating * * * *

Cast: Rebecca Ferguson, Max Irons, James Frain, Aneurin Barnard, Faye Marsey, Amanda Hale, Janet McTeer, Rupert Graves, Caroline Goodall, David Oakes, Eleanor Tomlinson, Juliet Aubrey, Sonny Ashbourne, Pixie Davies, Veerle Baetens, Joey Batey, Michael Marcus, Tom McKay, Francis Tomelty, Michael Maloney, Ben Lamb, Shaun Dooley, Hugh Mitchell, Robert Pugh, Arthur Darvill.

As television blockbuster’s go, The White Queen has followed on the satisfying trend set by The Tudors to bring sections of history back to life and into the public consciousness.

The White Queen, Television Review. B.B.C. Television. full post

(486 words, estimated 1:57 mins reading time)

The Real Great Escape, Television Review. B.B.C. 4

Liverpool Sound and Vision * * * * *

The 1963 film The Great Escape which starred Steve McQueen, James Garner, Donald Pleasance, Charles Bronson and Richard Attenborough is one of the iconic motion pictures, alongside Escape From Sobibor, that represent forever the spirit shown by Second World War prisoners of war or those incarcerated in death camps in their attempt to escape their surroundings. However the film, no matter how thrilling, never really captured the man behind the mass escape from Stalag Luft III, the resilient and self-assured Roger Bushell.

The Real Great Escape, Television Review. B.B.C. 4 full post

(436 words, estimated 1:45 mins reading time)

Burton And Taylor, Television Review. B.B.C. 4.

Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating * * * *

Cast: Dominic West, Helena Bonham-Carter, Lenora Crichlow, William Hope, Michael Jibson, Trevor White, Christopher Cowlin, Lucille Sharp, Isabella Brazier-Jones.

It was a love affair that captured millions of people’s imaginations. The unceasing desire between two people at the end of their long acting powers that both brought them together but also tore them apart, both mentally as well as physically, was captured in all its glory in the latest well produced one-off drama by B.B.C. 4 in Burton and Taylor.

Burton And Taylor, Television Review. B.B.C. 4. full post

(538 words, estimated 2:09 mins reading time)