Category Archives: TV

Doctor Who: The Lie Of The Land. Television Review.

Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating 8.5/10

Cast: Peter Capaldi, Pearl Mackie, Matt Lucas, Michelle Gomez, Emma Handy, Beatrice Curnew, Stewart Wright, Solomon Israel, Jamie Hill, Rosie Jane.

How easy is it to swallow a lie, to take what you read as the gospel truth and all because it fits in with your narrow view of the world is the truth you seek without having to investigate further. False News has become the word of our times, perhaps the rise in social media has become part of the problem as certain people, certain organisations, have invested their time and energy to promoting The Lie of the Land.

Doctor Who: The Lie Of The Land. Television Review. full post

(465 words, estimated 1:52 mins reading time)

Doctor Who: The Pyramid At The End Of The World. Television Review.

Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating 8.5/10

Cast: Peter Capaldi, Pearl Mackie, Matt Lucas, Ronke Adekoluejo, Tim Bentinck, Andrew Byron, Daphne Cheung, Rachel Denning, Tony Gardner, Nigel Hastings, Jamie Hill, Togo Igawa, Eben Young.

The question is, do you give away your freedom to be saved? If you are drowning, if you are there in the water struggling for each breathe and someone offers to save you but at the price of slavery for your family forever, would you take it, knowing that the servitude will be relentless, that the abuse on those you love would be without pity, remorse or justice, would you still ask them to throw a lifebuoy?

Doctor Who: The Pyramid At The End Of The World. Television Review. full post

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

Inspector George Gently: Gently Liberated. Television Review.

Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating 8.5/10

Cast: Martin Shaw, Lee Ingleby, Heather Carroll, Lisa McGrillis, Lorcan Cranitch, Steven Elder, Don Gallagher, Simon Hubbard, Emma Rigby, Victoria Bewick, Anamaria Marinca, Maria Stockley, Robert Lonsdale, Derek Hutchinson, Paul Warriner, Rachel Teate, Christopher Tembey.

 

A television series can too often outlive its life expectancy, the natural story that drew the viewer in coming to a stuttering halt and becoming less than the perfect ideal viewing it once was proudly claimed to be. In some cases though what might have been perceived as the final adventures of a much loved character might not be enough, the finale of a person’s life left hanging, stuck in the rounds of congratulations and non-committal farewells. Such was the fate of Martin Shaw’s Inspector George Gently, left dangling after a successful case cracked, there really was a couple of more hurrahs left in the soul but none seemed forth coming.

Inspector George Gently: Gently Liberated. Television Review. full post

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

Doctor Who: Extremis. Television Review.

Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating * * * * *

Cast: Peter Capaldi, Pearl Mackie, Matt Lucas, Michelle Gomez, Corrado Invernizzi, Francesco Martino, Ronke Adekoluejo, Jennifer Hennessy, Ivanno Jeremiah, Joseph Long, Alana Maria, Laurent Maurel.

 

The truth we seek, for the vast majority of times we find we cannot handle the revelation, that for all our sophistication and 21st Century thinking, we are still creatures often afraid of the dark and superstitious of what the light might bring; that we huddle together to plot the downfall of one because they bring knowledge that might disturb our tranquillity and comfort. In the veritas we seek but in the extreme and revolutionary we become as blind as those who refuse to bear witness.

Doctor Who: Extremis. Television Review. full post

(453 words, estimated 1:49 mins reading time)

Bucket. Television Review.

Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating * * * *

Cast: Frog Stone, Miriam Margolyes, Stephanie Beacham, Catherine Steadman, Cyril Nri, Maggie Stead, Iain McKee, Waleed Akhtar, Margaret Cabourn-Smith, Chris Middleton, Sonny Ashbourne Serkis, Samantha Baines, Cicely Giddings, Janine Harouni, Seeta Indrani, Tom Price.

 

The Bucket List, we all perhaps have one but it is one that is constantly updating, ever shifting, perhaps never taken too seriously, there is always time to do anything and only the most daring of adventures are ever put off till it is too late to ever contemplate doing them. Bucket it all, the list should always be looked upon as a friend, the memory for others to be inspired by and no matter how bizarre the revelations’ that come with them, no matter the chaos that ensues, some things in life are just too important to never achieve.

Bucket. Television Review. full post

(479 words, estimated 1:55 mins reading time)

Doctor Who: Oxygen. Television Review.

Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating 9/10

Cast: Peter Capaldi, Pearl Mackie, Matt Lucas, Kieran Bow, Justin Salinger, Lewis McGowan, Mimi Ndiweni, Peter Caulfield, Katie Brayben, Clem So.

All that you need is the air that you breathe…and a superbly written Doctor Who story in which the means of Capitalism are shown for what they truly are, the means of control, supply and demand and when demand for labour is non-existent, the way that the economic and political structure survives is to terminate all who cost too much to be involved.

Doctor Who: Oxygen. Television Review. full post

(447 words, estimated 1:47 mins reading time)

King Charles III. Television Review.

Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating 9/10

Cast: Tim Piggott-Smith, Oliver Chris, Richard Goulding, Charlotte Riley, Margot Leicester, Tamara Lawrence, Adam James, Priyanaga Burford, Tim McMullan, Katie Brayben, Nyasha Hatendi, John Shapnel, Parth Thakerar, Ian Redford, Max Bennett, Tom Mothersdale, Rupert Vansittart.

The vast majority of the country has not seen a day like it, the moment a crowned monarch passes on, the moment when pomp and ceremony, of tradition and unpalatable truths are laid out and given a public airing; to have a constitutional monarchy is to expect that nothing would be simple following a death in the family.

King Charles III. Television Review. full post

(565 words, estimated 2:16 mins reading time)

Babs, Television Review.

Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating 8.5/10

Cast: Samantha Spiro, Nick Moran, Leanne Best, Jamie Winstone, Luke Allen-Gale, Zoe Wanamaker, Robin Sebastian, Daniel Ben Zenou, Toby Wharton, Nicholas Asbury Jerry-Jane Peers, Alex Macqueen, Ross green, Rob Hughes, Tom Forbes, Joe Stilgoe, Julia Ford, Rob Compton, Charlie Archer, Honor Kneafsey, Jonathan Rhodes, Barbara Windsor.

 

Babs, Television Review. full post

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

Doctor Who: Knock Knock. Television Review.

Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating 9/10

Cast: Peter Capaldi, Pearl Mackie, Matt Lucas, David Suchet, Mariah Gale, Mandeep Dhillon, Colin Ryan, Ben Presley, Alice Hewkin, Bart Sauvek, Sam Benjamin.

Knock Knock. Who’s always there? The tenth series of Doctor Who since its gallant return has been one of tea time horror, it might be going out a couple of hours later than the classic series under the stewardship of Tom Baker but all the hallmarks are there to encourage further the even most unconvinced television viewer that the B.B.C programme has moved Heaven and Earth to reflect both the times we find ourselves in and to generate where possible the image of a time when the Doctor had more than a few ghost stories and haunted houses in which to delve around in.

Doctor Who: Knock Knock. Television Review. full post

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

Doctor Who: Thin Ice. Television Review.

Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating 8.5/10

Cast: Peter Capaldi, Pearl Mackie, Matt Lucas, Nicholas Burns, Asiatu Koroma, Peter Singh, Simon Ludders, Tomi May, Austin Taylor, Ellie Shenker, Kishaina Thiruselvan, Badger Skelton.

There is always something reassuringly honest about Doctor Who when it finds itself within the past, a story that explains, even in the smallest detail or nugget of information, how history has been seen across the ages, how the unfolding of time is not that different after all from what we believe, or even how wildly inaccurate our modern day of thinking is and how biased it can be when we only use modern devices instead of books to check our facts.

Doctor Who: Thin Ice. Television Review. full post

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