(courtesy IMDb (c) AppleTV+) Christmas is an inherently exuberant time of the year. Whether you choose to lean into that exuberance is another matter entirely, but regards of whether you’re a tinsel addict or a Scrooge, there’s no escaping the fact that the most wonderful time of the year is Continue Reading
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Finish together: Thoughts on Sex Education season 4
(courtesy IMP Awards) Saying goodbye is never easy and that has never felt more poignant and obvious than during the final season of Sex Education, the fourth to be exact, in which a somewhat diminished cast spend much of their final year at school trying to better work out who Continue Reading
It’s beginning to sound a lot like Christmas ads … time to engage your heart (and yes, wallet)
(via Shutterstock) One of the old chestnuts, and not the fun kind that get festively roasted an on open fire, that comes out is every Christmas is how evil it is that this most iconic of festivals has been completely and utterly commercialised. And while, yes, perhaps we have taken Continue Reading
Time to face your fears with Orion and the Dark
(courtesy IMP Awards) SNAPSHOTOrion (Jacob Tremblay) seems a lot like your average elementary school kid – shy, unassuming, harboring a secret crush. But underneath his seemingly normal exterior, Orion is a ball of adolescent anxiety, completely consumed by irrational fears of bees, dogs, the ocean, cell phone waves, murderous gutter Continue Reading
Sitcom double: Frasier 2023 (S1, E5-6) and Upload (S3, E5-8)
(courtesy IMP Awards) Frasier 2023 (S1, E5-6) One of the interesting things that come into play when a much-loved character comes out of hiatus is that you watch to see how much of what we loved about them is retained and how much of a new persona is forged in Continue Reading
Documentary review: The battle for survival on Life on Our Planet
(courtesy IMP Awards) There’s an interesting trend in some parts of modern documentary making that views the enthralling wonder of information in and of itself as not enough to keep peoples’ attention. To be fair, we do live in a hyper-attentive age where people are pulled in a thousand different Continue Reading
Wrapping things up: Still Up (S1, E5-8) and Star Trek: Lower Decks (S1, E8-10)
(courtesy YouTube (c) AppleTV+) Still Up (S1, E5-8) The will-they, wont-they dance of the first half of the debut season of Still Up, naturally ramps up considerably in the back half but this being a British series, things don’t quite play out as rom-com obvious as you might assume. In Continue Reading
Survival against impossible extraterrestrial odds: Invasion ends its second season with hope … and not? (S2, E6-10)
(courtesy YouTube (c) AppleTV+) What a way to finish a season! While some series which start with brooding, slow-building portent and doom, and Invasion has had that in slowly nuanced spades throughout its first season and the second, fumble things going into the big dramatic narrative payoff, this exquisitely well-delivered Continue Reading
Sitcom double: Upload (S3, E1-4) and Frasier reboot (E3-4)
(courtesy IMP Awards) UPLOAD S3, E1-3 Death has never been so complicated. Back in them thar olden days, people died, they were buried, those left behind believed they had gone to a better place and gave the goods they’d need in their grave to make the most of it, everyone Continue Reading
Laugh out loud double: Frasier reboot (S1, E1-2) + Star Trek Lower Decks (S4 E3-7)
Frasier reboot (courtesy IMP Awards) One of the dilemmas of the modern streaming age is should you go back to a classic show, revisit and revise it, reboot and redo it? To be fair, it’s not the sort of questions many, if any, of the corporations behind the plethora of Continue Reading