Category Archives: TV

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)

Red Dwarf: The Promised Land. Television Review.

Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating 8.5/10

Cast: Chris Barrie, Craig Charles, Danny John Jules, Robert Llewellyn, Norman Lovett, Ray Fearon, Tom Bennett, Mandeep Dhillon, Lucy Pearman, Al Roberts.

What started out as cult viewing, a chance taken on something entirely new, has become, in its own way, one of the most quoted, highly anticipated and arguably funniest comedies to have made it to television. The perfect blend is hard to attain, even harder to keep together but like Only Fools and Horses and Blackadder before it, has come to define the way an audience can keep a programme going beyond what seems its one and only joke and become part of the national psyche, identifying with the four valiant jokers in the pack and making Red Dwarf what it is today, a national treasure to which there is no comparison.

Red Dwarf: The Promised Land. Television Review. full post

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

The Twilight Zone: A Traveler. Television Review.

Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating * * * *

Cast: Steven Yeun, Marika Sila, Patrick Gallagher, Eric Keenleyside, Andrew Kavadas, Gail Maurice, Greg Kinnear, Jordan Peele, Jill Teed, Babak A. Motamed, Adam Stafford, Tanja Dixon-Warren, June B. Wilde, Trevor Lerner.

For anyone who has spent time on the road, back packing round Europe in their gap year, or the more adventurous type who see the Americas and the lands of the East a more defining pull, there will always come a time when you walk into a new town or village, when you get off the bus and stare at your surroundings, there will always one person who views you with suspicion, something in their gut tells them that you are not who you say your are.

The Twilight Zone: A Traveler. Television Review. full post

(417 words, estimated 1:40 mins reading time)

The Twilight Zone: Replay. Television Review.

Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating * * * * *

Cast: Samaa Lathan, Damson Idris, Steve Harris, Glenn Fleshler, Jordan Peele, Candus Churchill, Zari Django, Keon Boateng, Henry Mah, Samantha Spatari, Jocelyn Panton, Blake Stadel.

We only see Time as a strict progression of cause and effect, unless we use our imagination and see how all possible futures can play out, but without the benefit of a time machine, or the understanding of how one action causes a splinter, a fracture that must always be, there is little that we can do but hope for a Replay, another chance to put our world right.

The Twilight Zone: Replay. Television Review. full post

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

The Outsider. Television Review.

Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating 9/10

Cast: Ben Mendelsohn, Cynthia Erivo, Jason Bateman, Bill Camp, Jeremy Pelley, Mare Winningham, Paddy Considine, Yul Vasquez, Julianne Nicholson, Marc Menchaca, Derek Cecil, Hettienne Park, Michael Esper, Steve Witting, Max Beesley, Martin Bats Bradford, Carlos Navarro, Franco Castan, Wes Watson.

In terms of his extraordinary output, Stephen King’s The Outsider has to rank, especially in the 21st Century, at the upper end of novels that connect with the human psyche and the unbalancing of fear to which he has immersed and soaked his name through with prolific ease.

The Outsider. Television Review. full post

(682 words, estimated 2:44 mins reading time)

Inside No. 9: The Stakeout. Television Review.

Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating * * * *

Cast: Reece Shearsmith, Steve Pemberton, Rebecca Callard, Malik Ibheis.

Even in the more cerebrally minded television programmes and across the writer’s who offer the viewer a healthy dose of the macabre and genius inspired, you sometimes know what is coming at you from the beginning, it is how they turn the screw during the transmission that makes the show stand out as something more than just a half hour trip down a certain lane, it becomes the embodiment of performance, of the ordinary bent out of shape.

Inside No. 9: The Stakeout. Television Review. full post

(416 words, estimated 1:40 mins reading time)

The Twilight Zone: The Comedian. Television Review.

Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating 8.5/10

Cast: Kumail Nanjiani, Amara Karen, Diarra Kilpatrick, Ryan Robbins, Tracy Morgan, Jordan Peele, Marc Joseph, Toby Hargrave, Danny Dworkis, Jacob Machin, Briana Rayner, Darcey Michael, Sean Hewlett, Brendon Zub.

Individuality gets a hard press in the modern era, by staying true to your own core values and vision you are seemingly obligated to undergo derision, of being accused of forgoing inclusion in the search for unique distinctiveness, of owing your own voice instead of being part of design by committee. Whilst inclusion is a good thing, whilst hearing the opinions of others is way to gauge your audience, to fall in line with another to the point where they subsume your tongue, that is the path to just being another blank face on a multiplying wall.

The Twilight Zone: The Comedian. Television Review. full post

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

Inside No. 9: Thinking Out Loud. Television Review.

Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating 9/10

Cast: Phil Davis, Maxine Peak, Reece Shearsmith, Steve Pemberton, Ioanna Kimbook, Sara Kestelman, Sandra Gayer.

Disassociation is an area of science that does not get the fair representation in the media, on television, on film, that it arguably should receive. Thankfully the days where such a disorder was treated with derision is locked in the past, confined to the annals of the worst stereotypes conceived and the sensationalist attention grabbing tropes that do more harm than good.

Inside No. 9: Thinking Out Loud. Television Review. full post

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