Category Archives: TV

Van Der Valk: Freedom In Amsterdam. Television Drama Review.

Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating 8.5/10

Cast: Marc Warren, Maimie McCoy, Darrell D’Silva, Emma Fielding, Azan Ahmed, Django Chan-Reeves, Rita Bernard-Shaw, Josh Bolt, Thoren Ferguson, Roger Jean Nsengiyumva, Patrick Aliev, Simone Giel, Erika Minderop, Loek Peters, Sieger Sloot, Chiem Vreeken, Loes Haverkort, Peter van Heeringen, Mike Libanon.

A detective’s team is a family, there may be the lone wolf who solves crimes with unnerving consistency, but they still require back up in today’s modern fight against the criminal underworld, they essentially need collaboration and reinforcement to bring the perpetrator to book, to see justice done; and yet there is the grey area which insists that if a detective has a family of sorts to help in their examinations of the crime, then the criminal themselves relies heavily on those they also have brought into their own fold.

Van Der Valk: Freedom In Amsterdam. Television Drama Review. full post

(466 words, estimated 1:52 mins reading time)

The Gallows Pole. Television Review.

Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating 8.5/10

Cast: Michael Socha, Sophie McShera, Nicole Barber-Lane, Stevie Binns, Emma Chadbourne, Samuel Edward-Cook, Adam Fogerty, Rob Galloway, Sharondeep Kaur, Seigfried Moorland, Soraya Jane Nabipour, Charlotte Ockelton, Dave Perkins, Jennifer Reid, Joe Sproulle, Thomas Turgoose, Yusra Warsama, Anthony Walsh, Stuart Zubrzycki, Fine Time Fontayne, Tai Mukome, Olivia Pentelow, Harv Sodhi, Thomas Taylor, Esmae Wilson, Ralph Ineson.

Every generation sees the world through essentially the same eyes, the politics may alter, the situation that creates the division may change, but the overriding thought of any person anywhere in the world is that of having enough money in order to survive.

The Gallows Pole. Television Review. full post

(630 words, estimated 2:31 mins reading time)

Midsomer Murders: For Death Prepare. Television Review.

Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating 8.5/10

Cast: Neil Dudgeon, Nick Hendrix, Fiona Dolman, Annette Badland, Alexander Hanson, Clive Rowe, Kevin Whately, Samantha Spiro, Shobna Gulati, Jenna Russell, Jane Bertish, David Rubin, Dylan Wood, Tessa Wong, Matthew Bose, Ben Godard.

“A policeman’s lot is not a happy one…”

No matter how hard people within certain professions try, what they see whilst they are holding communities together, stopping cities from becoming zones overrun by fear, hate, damnation, they can never truly see the sparkle of a day without something reminding them that underneath it all the spectre of humanity’s more base instincts will rise to the surface and threaten to pour oil over small fires burning, will make any compulsion to sing one that becomes a mumble of forgotten promises in front of the paying audience.

Midsomer Murders: For Death Prepare. Television Review. full post

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

Inside No.9.: The Last Weekend. Television Review.

Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating * * * *

Cast: Steve Pemberton, Reece Shearsmith, Sheila Reid.

“Beware the fury of a patient man”.

The question of how long and how far you would go in order to exact revenge on the one that destroyed you is one that is dangled before us in the darkness, perhaps whispered by a friend when the Devil is on their shoulder, the one who wants to know just how far you are prepared to go so they can either aid you, or have their statement and story ready when the police come knocking on their own door.

Inside No.9.: The Last Weekend. Television Review. full post

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

A Small Light. Television Series Review.

Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating * * * * *

Cast: Bel Powley, Joe Cole, Live Schreiber, Billie Boullet, Ashley Brooke, Amira Casar, Ian McElhinney, Sally Messham, Andy Nyman, Nichlas Burns, Rudi Goodman, Caroline Katz, Liza Sadovy, Laurie Kynaston, Noah Taylor, Sebastian Armesto, Bill Milner, Sean Hart, Hanna Van Vliet, Eleanor Tomlinson, Jim High, Cosima Shaw, Tom Stourton, Daniel Donskoy, Dylan Edwards, Sarah T. Cohen, Vicki Pepperdine, Victor McGuire, Jeff Rawle.

A Small Light. Television Series Review. full post

(657 words, estimated 2:38 mins reading time)

Inside No.9: 3 x 3. Television Review.

Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating 8.5/10

Cast: Lee Mack, Tiajna Amayo, James Bailey, Kiran L. Dadlani, Gemma Page, Mary Keegan, Ronay Poole, Jim Rastall, James Tucker, Saskia Wakefield.

A piece of television that keeps you awake during the night, that has taken your reason out for a long walk and left it at the roadside attached to a pole and driven off at high speed, is to be congratulated for the sheer audacity in which it has been conceived and executed.

Inside No.9: 3 x 3. Television Review. full post

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

Miss Scarlet And The Duke. Series Three. Television Review.

Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating 8.5/10

Cast: Kate Phillips, Stuart Martin, Ansi Kabia, Evan McCabe, Felix Scott, Sophie Robertson, Brian Bovell, Cathy Belton, Simon Ludders, Sam Hoare, Tim Chipping, Tafline Steen, Greg Haiste, Robert Wilfort, Emma Gojkovic, Joseph May, Will Merrick, Tamsin Newlands, Liz Crowther, James Barriscale.

There are detective series that stand out for an entirely different reason than that which are forever hoping to attain.

Miss Scarlet And The Duke. Series Three. Television Review. full post

(425 words, estimated 1:42 mins reading time)

Inside No.9 : Love Is A Stranger. Television Review.

Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating * * * *

Cast: Steve Pemberton, Reece Shearsmith, Claire Rushbrook, Frances Barber, Matthew Horne, Asim Chaudhry.

The insular and the perpetually lonely, the shy and the sexually sly, have never had it so good when it comes to the advent of online dating. As near to anonymity as it is possible to go, the filters, the regulations, the privacy, all is in favour of finding the one, the perfect match which little engagement and effort; for nobody expects to find love online, no one imagines unearthing the one to die for in such a short space of time.

Inside No.9 : Love Is A Stranger. Television Review. full post

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

Dalgliesh: A Certain Justice. Television Review.

Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating 8.5/10

Cast: Bertie Carvel, Carlyss Peer, Michael Culkin, Sara Stewart, Michael Maloney, Silas Carson, Yaseen Aroussi, Daisy Waterhouse, Barbara Marten, David Pearse, Alistair Brammer, Michael Amariah, Charlotte McCurry, Alex Hope, David Bamber, Liz Crowther, Marsha Miller.

The trouble with the law is that it does not take into consideration the actions of those who implement it.

Justice not only comes with a price, and as the statue insists, is blind, but if wielded in the wrong hands can be a weapon more potent than that in which it is in place to discourage, to outlaw.

Dalgliesh: A Certain Justice. Television Review. full post

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

Inside No.9: Paraskevidekatriaphobia. Television Review.

Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating 8.5/10

Cast: Reece Shearsmith, Steve Pemberton, Amanda Abbington, Samantha Spiro, Ayda Kiiza, Moyo Akandé, Leon Herbert, Dermot O’ Leary,

We should be mindful of what we perceive to be irrational phobias; just because we find the notion of being fretful when a black cat crosses our path, that actors’ aversion to mentioning the lead name in Shakespeare’s Scottish play may bemuse us, or that Anatidaephobia is nothing to give a duck about, we must acknowledge that part of our own individuality and reason is immersed in the most simple of these anxieties, that something from the primordial soup attached itself to us and which has grown like a shadow as we have progressed through time.

Inside No.9: Paraskevidekatriaphobia. Television Review. full post

(451 words, estimated 1:48 mins reading time)