Category Archives: TV

Philip K. Dick’s Electric Dreams: The Commuter. Television Review.

Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating * * * *

Cast: Timothy Spall, Tuppence Middleton, Anthony Boyle, Rudi Dharmalingam, Rebecca Manley, Anna Reid, Hayley Squires, Tom Brooke.

We are all just passengers here, a short lived journey through Time, a fleeting preoccupation with the memories we create, the interaction we subject ourselves too in the search for happiness; sometimes it is all just too much and the lies and the truth of what have become jumbled, we wish for a time when being content is all consuming.

Philip K. Dick’s Electric Dreams: The Commuter. Television Review. full post

(420 words, estimated 1:41 mins reading time)

The Child In Time. Television Review.

Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating 9/10

Cast: Benedict Cumberbatch, Kelly Macdonald, Stephen Campbell Moore, Saskia Reeves, John Hopkins, Anna Madeley, Lucy Liemann, Richard Durden, Geraldine Alexander, Elliot Levey, Karen Bryson, Andrea Hall, Gerard Monaco, Laurence Spellman.

An adult is just a child that has found a way to deal with growing up, growing old and finding that rare solution to owning responsibility; an adult is the child and then forgets what it was to be carefree, to be light hearted and cheerful. It is only in the urgency of our parent’s voice that the child begins to understand that the world is a dangerous place, not the untroubled paradise of learning, of playing and the hopefully cheery memory we wish it could be.

The Child In Time. Television Review. full post

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

Strike: The Silkworm. Television Review.

Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating * * * *

Cast: Tom Burke, Holliday Grainger, Tim McInnerny, Dominic Mafham, Tasmin Topolski, Tom Greaves, Monica Dolan, Liz Williams, Rob Callender, Jeremy Swift, Peter Sullivan, Dorothy Atkinson, Catherine Bailey.

Why anyone would want to be friends with a novelist or any form of writer who sees the muse in almost anything is one of those rare questions that never truly gets answered; to be a friend of a writer is to open yourself up to the knowledge that some part of your personality might be the basis of a character’s reason for existing somewhere down the line.

Strike: The Silkworm. Television Review. full post

(366 words, estimated 1:28 mins reading time)

Upstart Crow: Series Two. Television Review.

Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating 8.5/10

Cast: David Mitchell, Gemma Whelen, Liza Tarbuck, Harry Enfield, Paula Wilcox, Helen Monks, Tim Downie, Dominic Coleman, Mark Heap, Rob Rouse, Steve Spiers, Jocelyn Jee Esien, Adam Harley.

It doesn’t seem that long ago that Ben Elton, one of the prestigious and prolific comedy writers of his generation, was asked to step in and take what was a perhaps seen as a series that confused some, baffled others and had those who had the wherewithal to not only admire Rowan Atkinson but who also understood the intricacies of historical comedy, heavily borrowing dialogue from William Shakespeare, to the absolute heights of the British comedy mountain.

Upstart Crow: Series Two. Television Review. full post

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

Strike:The Cuckoo’s Calling. Television Review.

Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating * * * *

Cast: Tom Burke, Holliday Grainger, Martin Shaw, Davis Avery, Leo Bill, Tara Fitzgerald, Kadiff Kirwan, Kerr Logan, Natasha O’Keeffe, Killian Scott, Bronson Webb, Elarica Johnson, Amber Anderson, Brian Bovell, Adelle Leonce, Kevin Fuller, Greg McKenzie, Jazz Cartier, Tezlym Senior-Sakutu, Suzanna Hamilton, Callie Coke, Sian Phillips.

There is always a detective waiting in the wings, a shadow waiting to emerge and be able to save the day with cunning, remarkable insight and the odd quirk to their name; in an age where television and arguably literature seems to have cornered every possible way to portray the down at heel gumshoe or detective with a flaw, along comes Cormoran Strike to add another dimension to the armchair detective’s televised alter ego.

Strike:The Cuckoo’s Calling. Television Review. full post

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

Quacks. Television Review.

Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating * * * *

Cast: Rory Kinnear, Lydia Leonard, Mathew Baynton, Tom Basdon, Rupert Everett, Marcia Warren, Lisa Jackson, Kayvan Novak, Georgie Glen, Milly Thomas, Andrew Scott, Miles Jupp, Fellena Woolgar, David Bamber, Ben Willbond, Geoff McGivern.

 

Every profession has the pop stars of their day, the showmen and women, the extroverts and the gregarious who live for the acclaim, the prestige and the privilege it brings. The artist, the poet, the actor, the musician and the surgeon, all have their theatres, all have one person who plays to the crowd and relishes the sense of power it brings.

Quacks. Television Review. full post

(545 words, estimated 2:11 mins reading time)

Fargo: Series Three. Television Review.

Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating * * * *

Cast: Ewan McGregor, Carrie Coon, Mary Elizabeth Winstead, Goran Bogdan, David Thewlis, Michael Stuhlbarg, Shea Whigham, Scott McNairy,  Andy Yu, Mark Forward, Olivia Sandoval, Russell Harvard, Mary McDonnell, Hamish Linklater, Scott Hylands, Graham Verchere,  Linda Kash, Caitlynne Medrek, Sylvester Busch, Thomas Mann, Fred Melamed, Riger V. Burton, Rob McElhenney, Francesca Fisher, Nikolai Nikolaeff, Ray Wise, D.J. Qualls, Billy Bob Thornton.

 

Fargo: Series Three. Television Review. full post

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

In The Dark. Television Review.

Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating * * *

Cast: MyAnna Buring, Ben Batt, David Leon, Emma Fryer, Jamie Sives, Clive Wood, Pearce Quigley, Jessica Gunning, Georgia Tennant, Ashley Walters, Sophie Bloor, Matt King, Tim McInnerny, Lee Boardman, Alice May Feetham, Fisayo Akinade.

There is always a police drama in which to rifle through, to borrow, sometimes wonderfully well, from literature; yet somehow television and film always seem to rely heavily on certain authors the vast majority of times without searching beyond the known and easily marketable. For every Christie there should be someone of unequal note, for every Ian Rankin there should be a new novelist writing with clarity and sensitivity of plot being given their chance to have the characters they painfully created, up on the screen.

In The Dark. Television Review. full post

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

Ill Behaviour. Television Review.

Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating * * * *

Cast: Chris Geere, Tom Riley, Jessica Regan, Christina Chong, John Gordon Sinclair, Anjana Vasa, Sanchia McCormack, Mark Asante, Lorna Browne, Tom Bell, Simon Meacock, Andrew Bennett, Wendy Meredith, Kellie Blaise, Joey Akubeze.

Mortality and comedy can live together in a secret harmony, the gallows humour employed by many when they know they are under the sentence of death, be it at the hand of state or by their own body fighting a war against them, from within the enemy is the hardest to reason with and win over.

Ill Behaviour. Television Review. full post

(545 words, estimated 2:11 mins reading time)

Ripper Street: Occurrence Reports. Television Review.

Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating 8.5/10

Cast: Matthew Macfadyen, Adam Rothenberg, MyAnna Buring, Jerome Flynn, Killian Scott, Jonas Armstrong, Anna Burnett, Anna Koval, Clive Russell, Matthew O’ Brien, Joseph Harmon, Lydia Wilson, Joseph Mawle, Patrick Drury, Kye Murphy, Kahl Murphy, Benjamin O’ Mahony, Matthew Lewis, Sarah Vaughn, David Dawson, Marko Leht, Jennifer Aries.

 

Ripper Street: Occurrence Reports. Television Review. full post

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