Category Archives: TV

What We Do In The Shadows: Series Two. Television Review.

Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating * * * *

Cast: Kayvan Novak, Matt Berry, Natasia Demetriou, Harvey Guillen, Mark Poksch, Veronika Slowikowska, Jake McDorman, Anthony Atamanuik, Michael Mann, Craig Robinson, Nick Kroll, Mark Hamill, Greta Lee, Haley Joel Osment, Lucy Punch, Christine Ebadi.

It is the darkness that we arguably feel our senses become heightened, take on a form that borders somewhere between overwhelming animalistic hedonism and the morose anxiety that sees us confess our perceived sins to total strangers at four in the morning, the lockdown blues of the missed bus home, or the last temptation of the meat feast pizza in which to soak up the residue of Bloody Mary’s devoured; in darkness we are more our true selves than we care to believe, care to imagine, in the daylight, when the sun bleaches out our wickedness.

What We Do In The Shadows: Series Two. Television Review. full post

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

Killing Eve: Series Three. Television Review.

Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating * * * *

Cast: Jodie Comer, Sandra Oh, Fiona Shaw, Kim Bodnia, Owen McDonnell, Harriet Walter, Danny Sapani, Turlough Convery, Gemma Whelan, Steve Pemberton, Raj Bajaj, Alexandra Roach, Sean Delaney.

As inevitable as it was for a third offering of Killing Eve to be commissioned, especially with the cliff-hanger that preceding series left the viewers confronting their emotional response to Villanelle’s destruction of Sandra Oh’s titular character, there seems to be a moment in which you can foresee the story-lines embracing the world of the absurd, of creating havoc for havoc’s sake and treating the agent of chaos as nothing more than that of embracing titillation.

Killing Eve: Series Three. Television Review. full post

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

Code 404. Television Review.

Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating 8.5/10

Cast: Stephen Graham, Daniel Mays, Rosie Cavaliero, Amanda Payton, Anna Maxwell Martin, Michelle Greenidge, Emily Lloyd-Saini, Steve Oram, Richard Gadd, Simon Strutt, Anna Leong Brophy, David Shelley, Tracy Ann Oberman, Faith Edwards, Richard Pepple. Ruth Horrocks.

The future of policing is in information and the ability to embrace even greater advances in technology, or so the message goes, so it is delivered on an ever-increasing basis.

Code 404. Television Review. full post

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

Citizens Of Boomtown: The Story Of The Boomtown Rats. Television Review.

Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating * * * * *

The label of punk was far reaching, and unlike today where the meaning of that four-letter word has been accepted as part of a mainstream crowded with adjectives and add-ons to make it sound all encompassing, in the 70s it was the visual and aural defiance that meant fear to those that couldn’t grasp that the old, tired, archaic ways had to die, and for those it touched, for those who saw it for the brave, boundless and dynamic beauty it was, it was, and remains, the pivotal moment that defined a generation’s defiance.

Citizens Of Boomtown: The Story Of The Boomtown Rats. Television Review. full post

(716 words, estimated 2:52 mins reading time)

Van Der Valk: Death In Amsterdam. Television Review.

Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating 7/10

Cast: Marc Warren, Maimie McCoy, Luke Allen-Gale, Elliot Barnes-Worrell, Darrell D’Silva, Emma Fielding, Christine Cole, Tom York, Saman Amini, Claire Bender, Marieke Heebink, Maarten Heijmans, Britte Lagcher, Mike Libanon, Tom Mothersdale, Shaniqua Okwok, Sander Plukaard, Arthur Roffelson, Peter van Heeringen, Wendy Vrijenhoek, Jennifer Welts, Bram Blankestijn, Joop Kasteel, Christian Petersson, Fruzina Nagy, Frieda Barnhard.  

Van Der Valk: Death In Amsterdam. Television Review. full post

(562 words, estimated 2:15 mins reading time)

Britain’s Outlaws: Highwaymen, Pirates and Rogues. Television Review.

Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating * * * * *

As a society we look upon the criminal fraternity with a mix of fear and incredulity, the same contempt at times we reserve perhaps for members of government, but there was a time when a certain kind of forbidding figure would be lauded by many, praised, admired and have songs written about them that would be known the length and breadth of the country.

Britain’s Outlaws: Highwaymen, Pirates and Rogues. Television Review. full post

(650 words, estimated 2:36 mins reading time)

Van Der Valk: Only In Amsterdam. Television Review.

Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating * * * *

Cast: Marc Warren, Maimie McCoy, Luke Allen-Gale, Elliot Barnes-Worrell, Darrell D’Silva, Emma Fielding, Taj Atwal, Juliet Aubrey, Tim Dutton, Taheen Modek, Paul Tylek, Eva Marie de Waal, Teun Kuilboer, Mike Libanon, Martijn Nieuwerf, Martijn Oversteegen, Anniek Pheifer, Jeroen Spitzberger, Gonny Gaakeer, Frieda Pittoors.

Art has the ability to provoke dialogue, the close examination of light, colour and shadow, the heated exchange of whether a Master produced the piece or is it a copy faithfully offered or with nefarious intent; such is the opinion of one person that the copy itself can take on greater significance, offer a greater mystery than the original could hope to incite.

Van Der Valk: Only In Amsterdam. Television Review. full post

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

Van Der Valk: Love In Amsterdam. Television Review.

Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating 7/10

Cast: Marc Warren, Maimie McCoy, Luke Allen-Gale, Elliot Barnes-Worrell, Darrell D’Silva, Emma Fielding, Frances Grey, Daniel Lapiane, Stephanie Leonidas, Vineeta Rishi, Frieda Barnhard, Kees Boot, Reinout Bussemaker, Malou Gorter, Hugo Haenen, Markoesa Hamer, Alex Hendrickx, Mike Libabon, Victor Low, Arian Nik, Ilse Ott, Peter van Heeringen, Hylke Sprundel, Danny Westerweel, Fruzsina Nagy, Nick Vorsselman.

A name is important, a name earned and one that implies trust, a certain expectation, dependence on a faith installed in a previous age, and is one that should not be revisited unless the situation is absolutely right for fear of tarnishing a memory, of destroying an image of what that name actually and irrevocably stood for.

Van Der Valk: Love In Amsterdam. Television Review. full post

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

War Of The Worlds. (2020). Television Review.

Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating * * *

Cast: Gabriel Byrne, Elizabeth McGovern, Lea Drucker, Adel Bencherif, Emilie de Preissac, Natasha Little, Daisy Edgar-Jones, Ty Tennant, Bayo Gbadamosi, Stephen Campbell Moore, Stephane Caillard, Aaron Heffernan, Georgina Rich, Michael Marcus, Paul Gorostidi, Theo Christine, Mathieu Torloting, Alysson Paradis, Guillaume Gouix.

War Of The Worlds. (2020). Television Review. full post

(472 words, estimated 1:53 mins reading time)

Quiz. Television Review.

Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating * * * * *

Cast: Matthew Macfadyen, Sian Clifford, Mark Bonnar, Helen McCrory, Michael Sheen, Aisling Bea, Elliot Levey, Risteard Cooper, Trystan Gravelle, Michael Jibson, Jasmyn Banks, Seraphina Beh, Matt Butcher, Paul Bazely, Andrew Leung, Jerry Killick, Matt Blair, Mark Aaron Byrne, Scott Handy, Keir Charles, William Chubb, Dean Nolan, Maggie Service, Geoffrey McGivern, Martin Trenaman, Nicholas Woodeson, Michael Elwyn, Paul Hunter, Sarah Woodward.

Quiz. Television Review. full post

(680 words, estimated 2:43 mins reading time)