Category Archives: TV

Shetland: Series Six. Television Review.

Liverpool sound and Vision Rating 9/10

Cast: Douglas Henshall, Alison O’ Donnell, Steven Robertson, Mark Bonnar, Lewis Howden, Erin Armstrong, Anne Kidd, Fiona Bell, Neve McIntosh, Benny Young, Juie Brown, Jimmy Chisholm, Conor McCarry, Angus Miller, Cora Bissett, Stephen McCole, Kate Bracken, Thoren Ferguson, Andy Clark, Anneika Rose, Lewis Gribben, Sharif Dorani, Shonagh Price.

A pertinent question of the times, the ambiguity of morality, and the classic example of how low someone can stoop when they look to revenge; all this against the backdrop of island life in the shadow of murder, of the slow decline of the human mind, and the tensions that run high when an island’s life is supposedly threatened by a returning, and unwanted, soul.

Shetland: Series Six. Television Review. full post

(554 words, estimated 2:13 mins reading time)

Cobra: Cyberwar. Television Review.

Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating * * * *

Cast: Robert Carlyle, Victoria Hamilton, David Haig, Richard Dormer, Marsha Thomason, Lisa Palfrey, Edward Bennett, Lucy Cohu, Joshua Hogan, Grace Hogg-Robinson, Richard Pepple, Andrew Buchan, Neil Stuke, Alexa Davies, Karan Gill, Dipo Ola, Georgie Bingham, Michael Jibson.

When it comes to politics, art and life are so entwinned that it can be difficult to discern the difference, to understand where fiction and fact blur and merge, where the lines of personal ambition overlap the need of entertainment; only politics seems to play with its own creation, and like Frankenstein looming over the unfortunate being as he pushes electricity through its monstrous shaped body, the result is one of indisputable carnage and denial of responsibility.

Cobra: Cyberwar. Television Review. full post

(555 words, estimated 2:13 mins reading time)

The Outlaws. Television Review.

Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating * * * * *

Cast: Rhianne Barreto, Gambia Cole, Christopher Walken, Eleanor Tomlinson, Darren Boyd, Clare Perkins, Charles Babalola, Stephen Merchant, Isla Gie, Jessica Gunning, Grace Calder, James Nelson-Joyce, Guillermo Bedward, Aiyana Goodfellow, Ian McElhinney, Gyuri Sarossy, Dolly Wells, Marcus Fraser, Tom Hanson, Kojo Kamara, Sam Troughton, Inez Solomon, Evelyn Temple, Claes Bang, Hannah Brownlie, Josh Alexander, Leigh Williams, Michael Cochrane, Richard E. Grant.

The Outlaws. Television Review. full post

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

Y: The Last Man. Television Review.

Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating * * * *

Cast: Ben Schnetzer, Ashley Romans, Olivia Thirlby, Diane Lane, Elliot Fletcher, Amber Tamblyn, Juliana Canfield, Diana Bang, Missi Pyle, Jess Salgueiro, Yanna McIntosh, Jennifer Wigmore, Paul Gross, Kristen Gutoskie.

Nature abhors a vacuum, remove a species, destroy a civilisation from existence, and what you are left with is a power struggle, a false manipulation of authority and dominance that requires feeding, and can turn on what remains on itself; the sense of the diminishing resonance that comes with extinction.

Y: The Last Man. Television Review. full post

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

Miss Scarlett And The Duke. Television Review.

Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating 7/10

Cast: Kate Phillips, Stuart Martin, Cathy Belton, Ansu Kabia, Danny Midwinter, Evan McCabe, Richard Evans, Nick Dunning, Simon Ludders, Amy McCallister, Andrew Gower, Kevin Doyle.

There are few places in time that make for the convenience of the private detective to ply their trade, and the later Victorian period with its pulse set firmly on the expansion of the Industrial Revolution, the sense of optimism shrouding the creeping decay, the rust of human life, as they fall foul to mechanisation, is up there with the very best of them.

Miss Scarlett And The Duke. Television Review. full post

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

Dalgliesh: A Shroud For A Nightingale. Television Review. (2021).

Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating 8.5/10

Cast: Bertie Carvel, Jeremy Irvine, Helen Aluko, Alice Nokes, Eliot Salt, Robin Krostoffy, Alex Krostoffy, Beccy Henderson, Fenella Woolgar, Amanda Root, Siobhan Cullen, Richard Dillane, Avin Shah, Natasha Little, Syd Ralph, Lily Newmark.

We have come to think of the past as a rusting, decaying, and in many cases unnecessary distraction from the objectives of today, and the hope for the future that we all wish to witness, the new sense of puritanism that has come replete with cancel culture, of objectifying key moments and simply erasing them as if they didn’t happen, rather than confronting them and placing them in their appropriate modern day thought; that is the past not only rusting, but being corrupted in the same way that the workers of the Ministry of Truth changed details daily under the terrifying eye of Big Brother.

Dalgliesh: A Shroud For A Nightingale. Television Review. (2021). full post

(614 words, estimated 2:27 mins reading time)

The Goes Wrong Show: Series Two. Television Review.

Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating 9/10

Cast: Henry Shields, Bryony Corrigan, Charlie Russell, Jonathan Sayer, Nancy Zamit, Dave Hearn, Greg Tannahill, Henry Lewis, Chris Leask, Ellie Morris.

British television comedy is in the middle of much need, and timely, renaissance, one that isn’t afraid of entertaining the populace, of holding true to value, and is fully versed in being witnessed as unique, adaptable, and fierce in its motives.

The Goes Wrong Show: Series Two. Television Review. full post

(435 words, estimated 1:44 mins reading time)

Ridley Road. Television Review.

Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating * * * * *

Cast: Agnes O’Casey, Rory Kinnear, Eddie Marsan, Tom Varey, Rita Tushingham, Allan Corduner, Will Keen, Tracy Ann Oberman, Gabriel Akuwudike, Tamzin Outhwaite, James Craze, Danny Hatchard, Hannah Traylen, Samantha Spiro, Julia Krynke, Danny Sykes, Henry Wilton-Hunt, Hannah Onslow, Nigel Betts, Preston Nyman, Alastair Michael, Romane Portail, Stephen Hogan, Liza Sadovy, Ethan Moorhouse.

Ridley Road. Television Review. full post

(520 words, estimated 2:05 mins reading time)

Deception. Television Review.

Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating * * * *

Cast: Jack Cutmore-Scott, Ilfenesh Hadera, Lenora Crichlow, Justin Chon, Laila Robins, Amaury Nolasco, Vinnie Jones, Stephanie Corneliussen, Evan Parke, Billy Zane, Jack Davenport.

The existence of the magician and their sleight of hand proves that we all want to be fooled at some point in our lives. Perhaps it is the willing of the suspension of belief that attracts us, the chance that we might see through the mist and feel the satisfaction of being the only one to have worked out the illusion, whilst at the same time wondering what happened to the child within who was overawed by spectacle as well as exhibition.

Deception. Television Review. full post

(464 words, estimated 1:51 mins reading time)

The North Water. Television Review.

Cast: Jack O’ Connell, Colin Farrell, Sam Spruell, Stephen Graham, Tom Courtney, Peter Mullan, Roland Møller, Philip Hill-Pearson, Gerry Lynch, Kieran Urquhart, Simon Rubaudo, Greg Dennis, Magnus Constable, Guillaume Cotre-Roux, Andrés Glattfelber, Martin Rasmussen, Kristoffer Ronning, Lars Ronning, Jack Wren, Stephen McMillan, Nive Nielsen, Rishi Kuppa, Paul Brennen, Kris Hitchen, Mark Rowley, Ipeelie Ootoova, Keenan Carpenter, Lee Knight, Tony Pitts, Eliza Butterworth, Natar Ungalaaq, Jerry Laisa, Bryony Miller, Chicho Tche, David Prosho, Benjámin Takács-Abaffy, Jonathan Aris, Jamie Maclachlan.

The North Water. Television Review. full post

(619 words, estimated 2:29 mins reading time)