Shakin’ Stevens: Re-Set. Album Review.

Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating 8.5/10

At least once in a person’s life, the wish to hit the Re-Set button is one they cannot ignore. They may plod on for a time in the usual manner, appearing to the world with a smile and a look of contentment, but the human spirit that dwells within will only burn for so long before it requires re-adjusting to the understanding that it needs to start again, not completely, but at the point where in the heart they may feel they wandered off the path of promise and hope and into the wilderness of appeasement and allowing others to misuse their good intentions.

Shakin’ Stevens: Re-Set. Album Review. full post

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

Inside No.9: Paraskevidekatriaphobia. Television Review.

Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating 8.5/10

Cast: Reece Shearsmith, Steve Pemberton, Amanda Abbington, Samantha Spiro, Ayda Kiiza, Moyo Akandé, Leon Herbert, Dermot O’ Leary,

We should be mindful of what we perceive to be irrational phobias; just because we find the notion of being fretful when a black cat crosses our path, that actors’ aversion to mentioning the lead name in Shakespeare’s Scottish play may bemuse us, or that Anatidaephobia is nothing to give a duck about, we must acknowledge that part of our own individuality and reason is immersed in the most simple of these anxieties, that something from the primordial soup attached itself to us and which has grown like a shadow as we have progressed through time.

Inside No.9: Paraskevidekatriaphobia. Television Review. full post

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

Ana Popovic: Power. Album Review.

Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating 8.5/10

We give power to that which makes us understand what drives us and to which can give us nightmares as we live in a waking state of fear and breakdown. This duality of life is to be expected…how we deal with it is where each person’s distinctive command, their circle of friends and lived ones, combine to bring peace to the mind of those caught in the spiral of living half in and half out of their soul for a while as events threaten to overtake them.

Ana Popovic: Power. Album Review. full post

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

Glen Matlock: Consequences Coming. Album Review.

Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating * * * *

Keep your head down, don’t look into the eyes of the beast that is sizing you up, that is snaring so close by you can feel the remains of the last meal it ate hitting your nostrils as though you were breathing in the sickly smell of carnage and death….do whatever you can to avoid the beast, for if you dare look it in the eye, you know you are next.

Glen Matlock: Consequences Coming. Album Review. full post

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

My Neighbour Adolf. Film Review.

Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating 8.5/10

Cast: David Hayman, Udo Kier, Olivia Silhavy, Kineret Peled, Jaime Correa, Tomasz Sobczak, Danharry Colorado.

How would you react if you came face to face with your worst nightmare, with the face of pure evil; especially when you had been led to believe that the person on question was found dead, killed by their own hand many years before.

My Neighbour Adolf. Film Review. full post

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

Great Expectations (2023). Television Series Review.

Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating 7/10

Cast: Fionn Whitehead, Olivia Colman, Ashley Thomas, Owen McDonnell, Johnny Harris, Shalom Brune-Franklin, Trystan Gravelle, Hayley Squires, Rudi Dharmalingham, Laurie Ogden, Matthew Needham, Tom Sweet, Matt Berry, Parth Thakerar, Chloe Lea, Jonathan Coy, Bronte Carmichael, Ben Moor, Emily Johnstone, James Foster, John Mackay, Eric Godon.

To wish or demand for the same outcome time and again shows that immovability and stagnation of the human spirit are sadly more common than we were led to believe, and whilst some change will often rub against the sentiment of the purist, to decry that which sparks revolution is to corrode and rust itself.

Great Expectations (2023). Television Series Review. full post

(594 words, estimated 2:23 mins reading time)

Death Of An Expert Witness. (2023). Television Review.

Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating * * * *

Cast: Bertie Carvel, Carlyss Peer, Richard Harrington, Sam Hoare, Margaret Clunie, Deborah Findlay, Dominic Rowan, David Hargreaves, Lara Cohen, Ezra Carlisle, Chris Robinson, Stuart Graham, Perry Millward, Alyth Ross, Carolina Main, Debbie Chazen, Francis Mezza, Conor Hinds, Shanaya Rafaat.

What passes for love can bring a person to their knees, and what love can destroy, so its darker emotional sibling, jealousy, can murder.

Death Of An Expert Witness. (2023). Television Review. full post

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

Blue Lights. (2023). Television Series Review.

Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating 9/10

Cast: Sian Brooke, Martin McCann, Richard Dormer, John Lynch, Joanne Crawford, Jonathan Harden, Katherine Devlin, Nathan Braniff, Dane Whyte O’Hara, Hannah McClean, Andi Osho, Gerard Jordan, Valene Kane, Michael Shea, Nabil Elouahabi, Matt Carver, Matthew Forsythe, Abigail McGibbon, Clare Gray, Stefan Boehm, Isaac Heslip, Art Campion, Desmond Eastwood, Andrea Irvine, Paddy Jenkins, Frankie McCafferty, Orla Graham, Aoibheann McCann, Charlie Maher, Neil Keery, Shane McCaffrey, Antoinette Morelli, Maria Quinn, Packy Lee, Declan Lawn, Brian Milligan, Helena Bereen, Louise Parker, Bernadette Brown, Dearbhalle McKinny, Mary Moulds, Michael Patrick.

Blue Lights. (2023). Television Series Review. full post

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

Annie Keating: Hard Frost. Album Review.

Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating 9/10

There are those who will damn a person for understanding melancholy, accusing them of pandering to the inevitability of the morose and the miserable as though it is a choice and not the sight of an empathetic soul who recognises that to relish the beauty of a spring day you have to live through, the expression of a Hard Frost with the same objective appreciation and consideration.

Annie Keating: Hard Frost. Album Review. full post

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

Inside No.9: Mother’s Ruin. Television Review.

Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating 8.5/10

Cast: Steve Pemberton, Reece Shearsmith, Anita Dobson, Phil Daniels.

It’s too late to ask your parents to reveal their secrets when they have left this mortal coil, but what lengths would you go to ask them for the truth when they are in Heaven or Hell, or the Limbo in between.

In typical resounding style, Inside No.9’s Steve Pemberton and Reece Shearsmith take the opportunity to delve into the realm of the nightmare and the visionary in the latest episode of the successfully long running series, wonderfully titled, Mother’s Ruin.

Inside No.9: Mother’s Ruin. Television Review. full post

(383 words, estimated 1:32 mins reading time)