Category Archives: TV

The Musketeers, An Ordinary Man. Series Two, Episode Two, Television Review.

Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating * * * *

Cast: Tom Burke, Santiago Cabrera, Howard Charles, Luke Pasqualino, Ryan Gage, Alexandra Dowling, Marc Warren, Hugo Speer, Maimie McCoy, Tamla Kari, Christopher Fulford, Micah Balfour, Stuart Bowman, Robin Browne, Will Keen, Brian McCardie, Mark Penfold, Brian Pettifer, Charlotte Reid, Oliver Rix, Chris Ryman, Charlotte Salt, Anton Saunders, Antonia Thomas.

Broadchurch, Series Two, Episode One. Television Review.

 

Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating 9/10

Cast: David Tennant, Olivia Coleman, Jodie Whittaker, Andrew Buchan, Charlotte Beaumont, Tanya Franks, Carolyn Pickles, Jonathan Bailey, Joe Sims, Arthur Darvill, Simone McAullay, Charlotte Rampling, Eve Myles.

You can always rely on Chris Chibnall to throw a rather large spanner into the works. Not content with bringing one of the best detectives and certainly one of the most unique series to British television in 2013, he now invites all to revisit Broadchurch for a second time, and by doing so, throws everything that the viewer thought they knew completely and utterly into a frenzied doubt.

Foyle’s War, High Castle. Television Review.

Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating * * * *

Cast: Michael Kitchen, Honeysuckle Weeks, Charlie Archer, Rupert Simonian, Nick Cornwall, John Waterhouse, Rupert Vansittart, Ellie Haddington, Tim McMullan, Daniel Weyman, Paul Barnhill, Jeremy Swift, Jamie Winstone, Vincenzo Nicoli, Nigel Lindsay, John Mahoney, Madeline Potter, George Lasha, Mark Chatterton, Hermoine Gulliford, Amanda Lawrence, Joseph Drake, Neil Fitzmaurice, Marianne Oldham, Pip Donaghy, Ollie Hancock, Joe Simpson, Ludger Pistor, Will Keen, Sean Cernow.

Christopher Foyle’s war is never ending and post war Britain must be thankful that there was at least one honest man around who was willing to go up against so called authority in which to get to the absolute truth.

The Musketeers, Keep Your Friends Close. Series Two, Television Review.

Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating 9/10

Cast: Tom Burke, Santiago Cabrera, Howard Charles, Luke Pasqualino, Alexandra Dowling, Ryan Gage, Marc Warren, Tamla Kari, Hugo Speer, Dominic Mafham, Mark Carter, John Harding, Anthony Houghton, Will Keen, Olivia Llewellyn, Andy Lucas, Richard Mulholland, Hugo Nicholau, Peter Pacey, Bohdan Poraj, Oliver Rix, Mateo Rufino, Charlotte Salt.

 

The safety of France is at stake and yet somehow it is The Musketeers that have placed it in danger by rescuing a man from a lynch mob. It is the sort of opening to a new series of hugely successful adventure series The Musketeers that feels as good as it possible to be.

Esio Trot, Television Review.

Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating * * * * *

Cast: Dustin Hoffman, Judi Dench, James Corden, Richard Cordrey, Lara Rossi, Pixie Davies, Katie Lyons, Jimmy Akingbola, Pik Sen Lim, Polly Kemp, Geoffrey McGivern, Lisa Hammond, Arran Mitra, Alexander Bracq, Joseph West, James Thomas Scott, Anna Cannings, Leo Umeh, Emily Ralph.

Mapp And Lucia, Television Review.

Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating * * * *

Cast; Miranda Richardson, Anna Chancellor, Steve Pemberton, Mark Gatiss, Pippa Haywood, Nicholas Woodeson, Gemma Whelen,  Poppy Miller, Felicity Montague, Paul Ritter, Jenny Platt, Susan Porrett, Maxine Roach,  Joanna Scanlan, Simon Startin, Harish Patel, Frances Barber, Gavin Broker, Soo Drouet, Andy Godfrey, Sophie Leigh Stone, Peter Mould.

The English and their manners, it is a wonder at times that we haven’t tied ourselves up in knots and caused a type of inner combustion with the subtle one-upman, or indeed in the case of the three part television series Mapp And Lucia, one up-womanship that so leads to conflict with our neighbours and dearest friends. It is possibly the modern etiquette attached to an English Civil War, if we cannot get rid of a Government taking the country apart, lets kick down the social ladder.

The Boy In The Dress, Television Review.

Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating * * * *

Cast Billy Kennedy, Temi Orelaja, Jennifer Saunders, James Buckley, Tim McInnerny, Felicity Montagu, Steve Speirs, Meera Syal, David Walliams, Aaron Chawla, Rosheen Hinze, Oliver Barry-Brook, Emma Cooke, Harish Patel, Sonny Ashbourne Serkis, Kate Moss, Gary Lineker, Alex Thomas.

The Boy in the Dress is one of those heart-touching moments of British television that no doubt will split the vast majority of Christmas viewers. It will inevitably also have those that purposefully avoided it have mini rages into their early morning cups of tea and spitting in annoyance at the thought of such a diverse subject being given air time.

Doctor Who: Last Christmas. Television Review. B.B.C.

Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating 9/10

Cast: Peter Capaldi, Jenna Coleman, Nick Frost, Samuel Anderson, Dan Starkey, Nathan McMullen, Faye Marsay, Michael Troughton, Maureen Beattie, Natalie Gumede.

Ever since Doctor Who was bought back with a blaze of undeniable glory in 2005, the Christmas special has been a much look-forward to event, on the whole it has delivered, sometimes, thankfully not often, it has been a major let down, like finding out there are no roast potatoes on offer at your in-laws house but they spent all year preparing a room full of stinking and putrid sprouts.

Babylon, Series One. Television Review.

Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating * * * *

Cast: Brit Marling, James Nesbitt, Bertie Carvel, Paterson Joseph, Ella Smith, Jonny Sweet, Nicola Walker, Cavan Clerkin, Jill Halfpenny, Adam Deacon, Nick Blood, Stuart Martin, Andrew Brooke.

There are times when the continuous stick against the back of the collective head is not enough, sometimes it takes cleverly written satire and drama with very well hidden comic undertones to get the message across that in 21st Century Britain, the apparent message is all consuming and powerful. The message is as loud and perhaps as obnoxious as its counterpart and sometimes occasional lover, the economy. If listened too very carefully, the two words can be interpreted as one and the same and the mantra gets repeated over an d over again like a man finding out that raw onions is bad for his digestive system but carries on believing that they are doing him good just because it helps expel wind.

The Fall, Series Two. Television Review.

Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating * * * *

Cast: Gillian Anderson, Jamie Dornan, John Lynch, Bronagh Waugh, Niamh McGrady, Sarah Beattie, Aisling Franciosi, Emmett J Scanlan, Archie Panjabi, Stuart Graham, Gerard Jordan, Bronagh Taggart, Valene Kane, Richard Clements, Jonjo O’Neill, Kelly Gough, Orla Mullan, Colin Morgan, Ruairí Tohill.

The Fall of humanity is a precarious downward path and it can start with a single dominant voice whispering in the dark, it soft murmuring causing a fuse to blow somewhere and in which starts the domino like destruction wrought on society is one that should be investigated more and evidence found in which to support the afflicted in the future. What happens before then though can be seen a terrorizing game between two people and in The Fall that game is played out with the severest of consequences.