Tag Archives: John Heffernan

Ripper Street: The Beating of Her Wings. Television Review.

Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating 9/10

Cast: Matthew Macfadyen, Jerome Flynn, Adam Rothernberg, MyAnna Buring, Charlene McKenna, Lydia Wilson, David Dawson, David Wilmot, Josh O’ Connor, Louise Brealey, John Heffernan, Anna Burnett, Charlie Creed-Miles, Richard Goulding, Phil McKee, Marie Critchley, Alicia Gerrard.

 

How far can a man be pushed before his breaking point is reached, before the Gods destroy and make mad? For Victorian Detective Inspector Edmund Reid, the Gods have been waiting a long time for the stretch of rope to uncoil to its full potential and take the man who has led H Division and the people of Whitechapel through so many crisis that the madness has almost taken on its own shadowy form; one in which now finally tears and severs.

Ripper Street: Whitechapel Terminus. Television Review.

Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating 9/10

Cast: Matthew Macfadyen, Jerome Flynn, Adam Rothenberg, MyAnna Buring, Charlene McKenna, Lydia Wilson, David Wilmot, Clive Russell, David Dawson, Josh O’ Connor, Louise Brealey, John Heffernan, Leanne Best, Francis Magee, Raymond Waring, Dermot Magennis, Kelly Campbell, Anton Giltrap, Andy Giltrap, Andy Gathergood, Mark Mooney, Tim Hibbard.

 

There are moments when the general public must wonder what goes on in between the ears of those in charge of the B.B.C. when they allow quality drama such as Ripper Street to be disavowed, to be treated to the point of shame that the makers must wonder what exactly they did wrong except bring in respectable audiences and the shuddering heads of yet another television expose into the world of drunken antics of the young and the restless takes their place in the schedules.

Jonathan Strange And Mr. Norrell, Television Review. B.B.C.

Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating * * * * *

Cast: Bertie Carvel, Eddie Marsan, Marc Warren, Charlotte Riley, Alice Englert, Samuel West, Enzo Cilenti, Paul Kaye, Edward Hogg, Brian Pettifer, Ariyon Bakare, Vincent Franklin, John Heffernan, Richard Durden, Robbie O’ Neil, John Sessions, Clive Mantle, Lucinda Dryzek, Ronan Vibart.

 

For all the other channels and subscriber based ways of watching television, for all the smoke and mirrors of television programmes being played out endlessly and arguably without diligence and care for the viewers intelligence, when the B.B.C. gets something completely right it normally becomes the best thing to have been seen in the comfort of your armchair all year and in Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell such worthy praise and lofted heights is needed.

Foyle’s War, Trespass. Television Review.

Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating 9/10

Cast: Michael Kitchen, Honeysuckle Weeks, Ellie Haddington, Rupert Vansittart,  Richard Lintern,  Tim McMullan, Alex Jennings,  Matilda Zieglar, Alexander Arnold, Michael Begley, Jonny Bingham, Jim Cartwright, Gerry Aziz, Oliver Churm, Hermione Gulliford, John Heffernan, Finbar Lynch, Colin Mace, Ania Marson, Poppy Miller, Josh Moran, Marianne Oldham, William Postlethwaite, Amber Rose Revah, Bianca Rudman, Michael Schaeffer, Michael Ryan, Jeremy Swift, Jonathan Tafler, Sophie Skelton, Jeremy Swift, Yolanda Vazquez, Scott Vickers, Daniel Weyman.

Doctor Who: Revenge Of The Swarm. Audio Drama Review. Big Finish.

Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating * * * *

Cast: Sylvester McCoy, Sophie Aldred, Philip Olivier, John Leeson, Mandi Symonds, Maggie Service, John Heffernan, Phyllida Nash, Siobhan Redmond, John Dorney, Paul Panting.

Revenge is a dish best served cold, preferably being poured from a bucket with ice cubes the size of Norwegian glacier formation and over the head of someone you don’t like whilst they are sunbathing. Failing that, to be mastered in the form that Science Fiction adores, with plenty of back story and with an enemy that doesn’t quite fit the top echelons of master criminals or war mongering civilisations.

Murder On The Home Front, Television Review. I.T.V.

Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating 7/10

Cast: Tazmin Merchant, Patrick Kennedy, James Fleet, Ryan Gage, John Bowe, Richard Bremmer, Amanda Fairbanks-Hynes, Emerald Fennell, Iain McKee, Siobhan Hayes, Susie Blake, John Heffernan, Patrick Knowles, Joey Batey.

Murder on the Home Front, the two-part television programme based on the memoirs of Molly Lefebure, may not have the stature of other crime/detective programmes that have become a staple of the diet, the fix of misdeed and felony that Britain seems to revel in watching but nonetheless it sparked and blossomed and in the end was enough to get the crime gastric juices flowing to make it quirky, watchable and in parts inspired.