Category Archives: TV

Harley Quinn. Television Review.

Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating * * * * *

Cast: Kaley Cuoco, Lake Bell, Alan Tudyk, Ron Funches, Tony Hale, Matt Oberg, Jason Alexander, Diedrich Bader, Christopher Meloni, J.B. Smoove, Jim Rash, James Adomian, Andrew Daly, Vanessa Marshall, Tisha Campbell-Martin, Phil LaMarr, Rahul Kohli, Briana Cuoco, Giancarlo Esposito, James Wolk, Tom Hollander, Sean Giambrone, Wanda Sykes, Rhea Perlman, Jacob Tremblay, Frankie Muniz.

From maligned introduced sidekick in which to give Batman’s greatest nemesis, The Joker, a feminine, if rather weak, foil, to arguably one of the greatest and adored characters within the D.C. comic universe, and all through the tenacity of the way the act of evolvement can be perceived and to be shown to grow.

Harley Quinn. Television Review. full post

(534 words, estimated 2:08 mins reading time)

The Salisbury Poisonings. Television Review.

Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating * * * * *

Cast: Anne-Marie Duff, Rafe Spall, MyAnna Buring, Mark Addy, Annabel Scholey, Nigel Lindsay, Stella Gonet, Kiera Thompson, Duncan Pow, Darren Boyd, Stephanie Gil, William Houston, Emma Stansfield, Jonathon Slinger, Andrew Brooke, Johnny Harris, Wayne Swann, Faye McKeever, Melanie Gutteridge, Jill Winternitz, Michael Schaeffer, Ron Cook, Paul Popplewell, Clare Burt, Naomi Yang, Amber Aga.

In television drama days gone by serials such as The Salisbury Poisonings would have been given the same treatment as that which saw the nuclear torn British mainland of Threads, or the plague-pandemic ravaged world of Survivors make headlines for their vision of a society torn apart by humanity’s absolute belief in its destiny, and the shock of hubris when it all comes crumbling down.

The Salisbury Poisonings. Television Review. full post

(506 words, estimated 2:01 mins reading time)

Staged. Television Review.

Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating 9/10

Cast: David Tennant, Michael Sheen, Georgia Moffett, Lucy Eaton, Anna Lundberg, Simon Evans, Nina Sosanya, Judi Dench, Samuel L. Jackson, Adrian Lester.

To be inspired in difficult and trying times is to accept that the human condition requires stimulating, craves arousal of spirit, and whilst art has undoubtedly suffered without mercy during 2020, there is something of the eternal machine of hope that grinds on, that beats in the heart of every artist of every persuasion, that the show, in whatever format, must go on.

Staged. Television Review. full post

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

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)