Category Archives: TV

Class, Series One. Television Review.

Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating 7.5/10

Cast: Katherine Kelly, Greg Austin, Sophie Hopkins, Fady Elsayed, Vivian Oparah, Jordan Renzo, Pooky Quesnal, Aaron Neil, Paul Marc Davies, Shannon Murray, Ben Peel, Anna Shaffer, Con O’Neil, Nigel Betts, Peter Capaldi.

In a television programme that has spanned over 50 years, to not expect the occasional spin off would be folly, both commercially and in the interests of expanding that institution’s universe. Doctor Who, certainly since it re-emerged on the nation’s screens back in 2005, has been ripe for spin offs and the magic was kept alive by the sentiment surrounding the much loved Elizabeth Sladen as one of the most adored companions of the classic series and it was only right that she finally had her own series in the Sarah Jane Adventures.

Class, Series One. Television Review. full post

(432 words, estimated 1:44 mins reading time)

Jack Taylor, In Purgatory. Television Review.

Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating * * * *

Cast: Iain Glen, Siobhan O’ Kelly, Jack Monaghan, Christopher Fulford, Laura Aikman, Sean Mahon, David Herlihy, Sarah Jane Seymour, Peter Campion, Erin Gilgen, Roy Fleck Byrne, Conor Quinlan, Eva Jane Gaffney, Cian Kelly, James O’ Sullivan, Patrick O’ Brien, Cathal Pendred, Jack Walsh, Leah McNamara.

Jack Taylor, In Purgatory. Television Review. full post

(484 words, estimated 1:56 mins reading time)

Jack Taylor: Nemesis. Television Review.

Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating * * * * *

Cast: Iain Glenn, Siobhan O’ Kelly, Christopher Fulford, Jack Monaghan, Ian Beattie, Rory Fleck Byrne, Patrick O’ Brien, Cathal Pendred, Deborah Wiseman.

The evil in anyone’s heart can grow, can manifest to the point where they become unrecognisable to themselves as well as to others. The fate of many becoming a secondary thought to the battle that rages between the one who has lost their mind and the person they want to seek retribution against, the Nemesis will claim many lives.

Jack Taylor: Nemesis. Television Review. full post

(404 words, estimated 1:37 mins reading time)

Jack Taylor, Blood Cross. Television Review.

Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating * * * *

Cast: Iain Glen, Siobhán O’Kelly, Jack Monaghan, Elva Trill, Alan McKee, Ross McKinney, Shane Robinson, Lalor Roddy, Killian Scott, Sinead Watters.

To take and consider revenge is the point where lives become meaningless, that you may as well take the whole Human Race with you in a blaze of remorseless fury for the want of practising the harder emotion of forgiveness. To want revenge is natural, it is perhaps inherent in us all but to actually physically take a life for a sleight, for an accident which robbed you of someone you loved; the question being could you truly want to keep perpetuating the agony and pain just to satisfy blood lust.

Jack Taylor, Blood Cross. Television Review. full post

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

Paranoid, Television Review.

Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating * * *

Cast: Robert Glenister, Indira Varma, Dino Fetscher, Neil Stuke, Christiane Paul, Lesley Sharp, Dominik Tiefenthaler, Michael Maloney, Anjli Mohindra, Kevin Doyle, Jonathan Ojinnaka, William Flanagan, John Duttine, William Ash, Daniel Drewes, Polly Walker, Richard Wheeldon, Jason Done, Danny Hutson.

When taking on a big television production, one with a tale that should be enormous and potentially gripping beyond anything else on television in a single year, it often helps the series realise its own levels of genius by not overpowering it with too many subplots and characters to whom the story would not miss one single iota. Some of the greatest mini-series ever have relied solely on the narrow focus, on the detail and not the illusion and it is unfortunately a piece of television advice forgotten largely in the creation of Paranoid.

Paranoid, Television Review. full post

(391 words, estimated 1:34 mins reading time)

Hancock’s Half Hour, The Lost Sitcoms. The New Neighbour, Television Review.

Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating 8.5/10

Cast: Kevin McNally, Katy Wix, Kevin Eldon, Robin Sebastian, John Culshaw, Robert Jack.

The beauty, pathos and reflection of Ray Galton and Alan Simpson’s writing can be seen fully in two of Britain’s greatest ever sitcoms, Hancock’s Half Hour and Steptoe and Son, both written with consideration and absolute wit, performed by comedic geniuses and with the knowledge that even after 60 years in the case of Hancock’s Half Hour, the words and situations are timeless, that no matter how much we move on in society, we still are products of the post Second World War generation.

Hancock’s Half Hour, The Lost Sitcoms. The New Neighbour, Television Review. full post

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

Joe Bonamassa Live At The Greek Theatre. DVD Review.

Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating 9/10

Such is the work ethic of Joe Bonamassa that it barely seems five minutes since he was up on stage in another country, standing undaunted and musically fearsome, proud but very humble, alert and giving, from venue to venue the arc of the story remains one of Blues heaven but the chapters change; the music stays fresh and always convincing, this is the magic of Joe Bonamassa and the fan can only thank the times that we live in that his performances are captured around the world and in such eye popping clarity.

Joe Bonamassa Live At The Greek Theatre. DVD Review. full post

(455 words, 1 image, estimated 1:49 mins reading time)

Marcella, Television Review.

Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating 8.5/10

Cast: Anna Friel, Ray Panthaki, Nina Sosanya, Nicholas Pinnock, Charlie Covell, Sinéad Cusack, Jack Doolan, Harry Lloyd, Tobias Santelmann, Jamie Bamber, Patrick Baladi, Ben Cura, Ian Puleston-Davies, Emil Hostina, Susannah Wise, Imogen Fairies, Laura Carmichael, Stephen Lord, Yasen Atour, Jasmine Breinburg, Florence Pugh, Nick Hendrix, George Barnes, Andrew Lancel, Maeve Dermody.

The art of the Noir is to keep the viewer or reader guessing long enough that they doubt their own verdict, their own deductive reasoning and to question further their own possible prejudices of one suspect or another. It is an art fully utilised by the writers of the series Marcella and one that really got under the skin as each episode progressed.

Marcella, Television Review. full post

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

The Musketeers: We Are The Garrison. Television Review.

Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating * * * * *

Cast: Tom Burke, Santiago Cabrera, Howard Charles, Luke Pasqualino, Alexandra Dowling, Tamla Kari, Maimie McCoy, Matthew McNulty, Tom Morely, Thalissa Teixeira, Dan Parr, Matt Stokoe, Lily Loveless, Andre Flynn.

If there was one moment to guarantee that The Musketeers would be absolutely missed from the television schedules in the months and years ahead, it was the reappearance of Maimie McCoy’s Milady de Winter, one of the strongest female characters shown on screen in years. Whilst the emergence from out of the shadows of the conniving assassin was brief, tantalising enough to remember just how much input she had in the lives of the garrison and the four musketeers, it was the big picture she was part of which showed just how much this romance between viewer and programme had blossomed.

The Musketeers: We Are The Garrison. Television Review. full post

(491 words, estimated 1:58 mins reading time)

The Secret Agent, Television Review.

Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating 7/10

Cast: Toby Jones, Charlie Hamblett, Vicky McClure, Marie Critchley, Tom Vaughan-Lawlor, Raphael Acloque, Stephen Graham, Ian Hart, Tom Goodman-Hill, David Dawson, Ash Hunter, George Costigan, Pennie Downie, Selina Boyack, Philip Rosch, Christopher Fairbank, Chris Ryman.

It can only be a good thing that television is prepared at times to look back through the innumerable amount of books and novels from before the second world war, the wealth of words wrapped up in long forgotten dust sheets and only admired by students of English literature. At times, it is good that television does this, for it reminds the multitude that there is such a thing as a story without sensationalism and the need for lust to be shown at every possible moment.

The Secret Agent, Television Review. full post

(485 words, estimated 1:56 mins reading time)