Category Archives: TV

Doctor Who: Once And Future: The Artist At The End Of Time. Big Finish Audio Drama Review.

Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating * * * *

Cast: Peter Davison, Georgia Tennant, Colin Baker, Abi Harris, Sylvester McCoy, Stephen Noonan, John Telfer, Tim Treloar, Michael Troughton.

We denigrate the artist during their lifetime, and only appreciate them when they have passed. The poorer the artist, the more their work is valued after they have departed this world, it is an exchange we barter for where we can, with hand on heart, say we have supported a starving artist, but it is delivered at the expense of a fat profit and unimportant conscience.

Doctor Who: Once And Future: The Artist At The End Of Time. Big Finish Audio Drama Review. full post

(508 words, estimated 2:02 mins reading time)

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 Piper. Radio Drama Series Review.

Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating * * * *

Cast: Tamzin Outhwaite, Charlie Lou Borthwick, Rosalina McDonagh, Kacey Ainsworth, Kassius Carey Johnson, Manpreet Bachu, Shiloh Coke, Andrew Tiernan, Mark Lockyer, Deka Walmsley, Rob Jarvis, Nhu Huynh, Natalie Mitchell, Macready Massey, Anamaria Marinca, Holly Hazelton.

Many a children’s tale of caution is one that is designed in actuality for the adult to take heed. The children of Hamelin were not the ones to openly suffer at the hands of the musician and his magic, but the parents who saw their children spirited away in act of vengeance of non-payment. It is to this effect that other tales show their true hand, the adult beware of those we cross, for the payment is often more than we can bear to lose.

The Piper. Radio Drama Series Review. full post

(590 words, estimated 2:22 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)

Call Jonathan Pie. Podcast Series Review.

Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating 9/10

Cast: Tom Walker, Lucy Pearman, Aqib Khan, Nick Revell, Daniel Abelson, Bob Sinfield, Rob Curling, Adam Byron, Bryony Corrigan, Emma Thornett, Liz White, Cole Anderson-James, Ellie Dobing, Sarah Gabriel, Ed Kear, Hope Leslie, Thanyia Moore, Jonathan Taffer, James O’Brien.

Think of how many great artistic creations come from the depths of the soul in which their opinions are more memorable than perhaps the face which delivered the immortal lines.

Call Jonathan Pie. Podcast Series Review. full post

(473 words, estimated 1:54 mins reading time)

Rose Tyler: The Dimension Cannon: Other Worlds. Audio Drama Review. Big Finish.

Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating * * * *

Cast: Billie Piper, Camille Coduri, Mark Benton, Nicola Blackman, Robert Cavanah, Luke R. Francis, Indigo Griffiths, Victoria Jeffrey, Malcolm Jeffries, Hywel Morgan, Sarah Priddy, John Rayment.

Tread softly in the worlds of others, for your presence has not been anticipated enough for it not to leave a groove in the sands of their time.

Rose Tyler has had to learn this the hard way, initially with her travels with the Doctor, then as she is stranded in another version of Earth, a parallel world where the fabric of time has altered certain aspects of what she, and the listener, would take for granted.

Rose Tyler: The Dimension Cannon: Other Worlds. Audio Drama Review. Big Finish. full post

(513 words, estimated 2:03 mins reading time)

Doctor Who: Once and Future – Past Lives. Audio Drama Review. Big Finish.

Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating 8.5/10

Cast: Tom Baker, Sadie Miller, Jemma Redgrave, Ingrid Oliver, Rufus Hound, Ewan Bailey, Colin Baker, Peter Davison, Sylvester McCoy, Stephen Noonan, Dan Starkey, Tim Treloar, Michael Troughton.

Stories are important, they are magical, they are a link to our past and our determination to see the future shaped in our image. Once a story has been silenced it becomes myth, the unspoken, the heritage of the speaker denied…but some tales persist in Time, they become the backdrop to our society, to our history and the dream that such days can once more return.

Doctor Who: Once and Future – Past Lives. Audio Drama Review. Big Finish. full post

(643 words, estimated 2:34 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)

The Prisoner: Volume Three. Audio Drama Review. Big Finish.

Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating * * * *

Cast: Mark Elstob, Lucy Briggs-Owen, Alicia Ambrose-Bayly, Jim Barclay, Richard Dixon, Barnaby Edwards, Genevieve Gaunt, Jennifer Healy, Lorelei King, Glen McCready, Sarah Mowat.

The price of losing your own individuality is more than you think, more than you can afford, and more than society can bear as the race for hegemony of all continues on with relentless pursuit and fearful dominance.

The Prisoner: Volume Three. Audio Drama Review. Big Finish. full post

(508 words, estimated 2:02 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)