Billy Liar, All I’ve Got. E.P. Review.

Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating 9/10

The end of the year is always a time to look backwards, albeit briefly, and to start making those resolutions that you will carry forward into the following year. To bring new habits into your life, to get rid of old temptations and to find new and better ways to in which to use your time…one excellent way it seems would be to purchase an E.P. by Billy Liar and revel in the sheer majesty afforded to just one man. You couldn’t get 2014 off to a better start that immersing yourself for a little while in the music that kicks the old year where it hurts, the marvellous All I’ve Got.

Billy Liar, All I’ve Got. E.P. Review. full post

(347 words, estimated 1:23 mins reading time)

The Thirteenth Tale, Television Review.

Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating * * * *

Cast: Olivia Coleman, Vanessa Redgrave, Emily Beecham, Antonia Clarke, Alexandra Roach, Steven Mackintosh, Tom Goodman-Hill, Jacqueline Davis, Lizzie Hopley, Michael Jibson, Adam Long, Madeleine Power, Robert Pugh, Sophie Turner, Gordon Winter.

There are ghost stories and then there are those that play that little bit extra on the mind. They seep through the sub-conscious and get into your dreams during the night and play havoc with your waking hours. Even when the ghost is revealed, it still gets in to your head.

The Thirteenth Tale, Television Review. full post

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

Miss Marple: Endless Night. Television Review.

Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating * * * *

Cast: Julia McKenzie, Tom Hughes, Aneurin Barnard, Joanna Vanderham, Birgitte Hjort Sorrensen, Hugh Dennis, Tazmin Outhwaite, Adam Wadsworth, Janet Henfrey, William Hope, Glynis Barber, Michael McKell, Rosalind Halstead, Celyn Jones, Stephen Churchett.

Sunday nights aren’t quite the same without a murder to solve on television, it is a pre-occupation with the darkest of crimes that seems to capture the British public’s imagination more than anything in the world, if you include cricket into the equation, there can’t be more anything else in the world that gets more intriguing to the armchair detective/umpire than introducing facts and statistics to the case.

Miss Marple: Endless Night. Television Review. full post

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

Death Comes To Pemberley, Television Review.

Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating * * * *

Cast: Matthew Rhys, Anna Maxwell Martin, Matthew Goode, Jenna Coleman, Trevor Eve, James Fleet, Rebecca Front,  Eleanor Tomlinson, Philip Martin Brown, Nicola Burley, Kevin Eldon, Tom Ward, Oliver Maltman, James Norton, Penelope Keith, Louisa-Mai Parker, Lewis Rainer, Tom Raven, Tom Canton, Teresa Churcher, Jennifer Hennessy, Oliver Rix, Joanna Scanlon, Kelly-Marie Autumberg, Pamela Ashton, David Blockley, Lee Bolton, Grant Crooks, Michael Dawson, Mark Tristan Eccles, Katya Greer, Kevin Knox, Steve Mack, Mark Mathieson, Stuart Matthews, Liam Merrigan, Bianca Rudman, Pete Szoradi, Ernest Vernon, Patricia Winker, Kelly Wood.

Death Comes To Pemberley, Television Review. full post

(498 words, estimated 2:0 mins reading time)

Atlantis. Television Review. B.B.C.

Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating 3/10

Cast: Jack Donnelly, Mark Addy, Robert Emms, Jemima Rooper, Sarah Parish, Juliet Stevenson, Aiysha Hart, Alexander Siddig, John Hannah, Oliver Walker, Hannah Arterton, Ken Bones, Joe Dixon.

There is something magical about Greek and Roman mythology; it has consistently been a source of epic tales and for the vast majority of the stories that have survived the spectre of time, they are thrilling, exciting and serve to be poignant many millennia after they first appeared.

Atlantis. Television Review. B.B.C. full post

(498 words, estimated 2:0 mins reading time)

Forthaven, Histrionic. Album Review.

Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating * * * *

Some things are just worth waiting for, even if it takes four years in which to create it for all to hear. Such is the pleasure of listening to Forthaven’s Histrionic, the indomitable Jay Roberts and a host of contributing artists that four years seems not to matter at all. Never mind the time, what matters is the end result and from start to finish this collection of songs is something to be proud of.

Forthaven, Histrionic. Album Review. full post

(360 words, estimated 1:26 mins reading time)

Silent Sleep, Walk Me To The Sea. Album Review,

Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating * * * *

There are times when you don’t need to shout too hard about what you have found, the object, the piece of music or hitherto unseen action will always find a way to make itself known and inspire those who take the time to get to understand it and sit in quiet contemplation as each word, each syllable and note floats over them and through them.  Like the sea making its presence known through each grain of sand, the infiltration is slow, meticulous and all powerful.

Silent Sleep, Walk Me To The Sea. Album Review, full post

(376 words, estimated 1:30 mins reading time)

The Tractate Middoth, Television Review.

Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating * * * *

Cast: Una Stubbs, John Castle, Sacha Dhawan, Eleanor Bron, David Ryall, Louise Jameson, Nicholas Burns, Roy Barraclough, Charlie Clemmow, Mathew Foster.

At one time even just the name of English writer M.R. James was enough to send readers and viewers alike scuttling into the dark recess of their mind. The master of the supernatural had an uncanny way of capturing base fears and turning them into works of true genius. A true genius which in some ways has not been surpasses more than a hundred years after his first written ghost story.

The Tractate Middoth, Television Review. full post

(398 words, estimated 1:36 mins reading time)

Still Open All Hours, Television Review. B.B.C.

Liverpool Sound and Vision 7/10

Cast: David Jason, Lynda Baron, Stephanie Cole, Maggie Ollerenshaw, James Baxter, Johnny Vegas, Mark Williams, Brigit Forsyth, Kulvinder Ghir, Sally Lindsay, Nina Wadia, Barry Elliott, Kathryn Hunt, Misha Timmins, Cathy Breeze, Sally Womersley, Emily Fleeshman, Nadine Mulkerrin.

There are some things in life that are worth re-visiting, even if it just the once. To see old characters move around in familiar ways but know that somehow they have changed, even slightly, is to understand that time must and always will move forward.

Still Open All Hours, Television Review. B.B.C. full post

(589 words, estimated 2:21 mins reading time)

Doctor Who: The Time Of The Doctor. Television Review. B.B.C.

Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating * * * *

Cast: Matt Smith, Jenna Coleman, Orla Brady, Peter Capaldi, James Butler, Elizabeth Rider, Sheila Reid, Mark Brighton, Rob Jarvis, Tessa Peake-Jones,  Jack Hollington, Sonita Henry, Kayvan Novak, Tom Gibbons, Aiden Cook, Nicholas Briggs, Barnaby Edwards, Nicholas Pegg, Ross Mullan, Karen Gillan.

It seems like a bad dream now but there was a time when the absence of Science Fiction from television, especially British Science Fiction tales, was in danger of being seen as antiquated as the thought of Medieval History. Thankfully neither genres and those that love and cherish where we have come from and where we are heading will ever lay down and let the banality of life ever let some television executives get their own way.

Doctor Who: The Time Of The Doctor. Television Review. B.B.C. full post

(690 words, estimated 2:46 mins reading time)