It can be safely said that the gold standard for nature documentaries rests with the BBC’s Natural History Unit and it’s rightly-revered longtime presenter and narrator Sir David Attenborough. Time and again the Natural History Unit and Attenborough have demonstrated a fierce and palpable enthusiasm for the natural world Continue Reading
TV
Expanding bloody worlds: The Walking Dead season 7 changes everything (featurette)
The great defining moment from the final episode of season 6 was Negan (Jeffrey Dean Morgan) standing in pouring rain in the middle of the night readying his barbed-wire baseball Lucille to rain down bloody death on one of Rick’s (Andrew Lincoln) crew. We didn’t see who died but Continue Reading
Road to Gilmore Girls A Year in the Life #5: “Nick & Nora / Sid & Nancy” (S2, E5 review)
If you ever wanted a master class in how to kick off an episode of dramatic TV with as many character and narrative boxes ticked as humanly possible without it all feeling too busy or rushed, then the opening scene in “Nick & Nora / Sid & Nancy”, crafted Continue Reading
Weekend pop art: Doctor Who meets Mr Men in new book series
What does a Dalek’s tickle feel like? That may sound like an odd question to ask since the monstrous creations of Davros are more likely to exterminate than engage in mirth-filled jocularity, but it’s a play on the question asked by Adam Hargreaves back in 1971 (“What does a Continue Reading
Welcome to Coal Hill Academy where Class is most definitely in!
SNAPSHOT What if your planet was massacred and you were the sole survivor? What if a legendary figure out of space and time found you a place to hide? But what if the things that want to kill you have tracked you down? And worst of all, what if you Continue Reading
First impressions: Flaked
There’s something oddly compelling about antiheroes. While they’re not as perfectly put-together as the Prince Charmings of this world, who take more than their fair share of damsels in distress and live happily ever after more often than not, they do have very important relatable quality – they are Continue Reading
Indoorsy: What hilariously happens when 3 agoraphobics open a spa in their apartment
Life as an agoraphobic isn’t easy. And while our ever-diversifying digital age offers all kinds of opportunities for the housebound, or in the case of a new web series, Indoorsy about three agoraphobic friends who open a day spa in their home, the apartment-bound to have amazing careers, run Continue Reading
Road to Gilmore Girls A Year in the Life #4: “They Shoot Gilmores Don’t They?” (S3, E7 review)
It’s a sad fact of life but even in a town as magically quirky as Stars Hollow, where a Tennessee Williams look-a-like contest can put a bridge repair fund “right over the top” – thank you Taylor Doose (Michael Winters) – it’s still possible to have your heart broken. Yes, even Continue Reading
First impressions: MacGyver (2016)
TV storytelling, like that of any creative medium, is essentially the art of recycling of ideas that have seen the light of day many, many times before. Christopher Booker’s 2004 book, The Seven Basic Plots: Why We Tell Stories proposed the existence of a finite number of story ideas, and Continue Reading
Haters Back Off! The hilariously deluded power of self-belief
SNAPSHOT Haters Back Off! is a television comedy series starring Colleen Ballinger, based on her character Miranda Sings, that centres around “the oddball family life of Miranda Sings, an incredibly confident, totally untalented star on the rise who continues to fail upward by the power of her belief that Continue Reading