It’s hard for any public figure in the midst of their glory days to imagine a time when they won’t be adored, feted or valued beyond measure, when the spotlight will move on to younger, more beautiful souls and they will be left alone in the dark, railing against the Continue Reading
TV
First impressions: Gotham (S1, E1 “Pilot” / E2 “Selina Kyle”)
The world is an irredeemably wicked and violent place from which little to no good can ever come. Grimly cynical yes but that seems to be the prevailing worldview of almost everyone in Gotham, a city ruled over by a witches brew of organised crime and institutionalised corruption where Continue Reading
The Walking Dead: “No Sanctuary” (S5, E1 review)
“You’re either the butchers or the cattle.” That soberingly bleak assessment of the existential options left open for humanity in the morally scorched earth environs of the zombie apocalypse pretty much summed up the thematic underpinning for The Walking Dead‘s unrelentingly fierce, action-packed, flaming walkers and cannibals (hurrah!) opening episode of season 5, Continue Reading
Weekend Pop Art: Friends go minimal and look brilliantly quotable doing it
Now this, THIS is how you celebrate the 20th anniversary of Friends first going to air! Allison Hoover, a “Miami Ad School art student and Friends superfan”, recently profiled on Mashable by Andrea Romano, decided to honour the show she loves with not one but a multitude of evocatively-colourful, beautifully Continue Reading
Happy shiny zombies: What if everyone in The Walking Dead was understanding and compassionate?
You can well understand why The Walking Dead‘s Rick, Daryl, Michonne and the rest of the onetime prison gang (before it was rather shortsightedly blown up by the Governor) don’t always see eye to eye. After all, fighting for your life against the flesh-eating undead while simultaneously holding on Continue Reading
First impressions: Madam Secretary (S1, E1 “Pilot”)
If the current imbroglio with Islamic State in Syria/Iraq with its witches brew of sectarian fighting, genocidal bloodbaths and endlessly-on-the-move geo-political posturing has taught us anything, it is that (yet again) the world is not, not has it ever been, an easy place in which to operate, much less Continue Reading
Dance! Mindy Kaling and Elmo get enthusiastic about grooving to a beat
I LOVE MINDY KALING! AND I LOVE ELMO! OH AND DANCING … I LOVE DANCING! What’s with all the capitalised effusive declarations you ask? Why I am just being ENTHUSIASTIC!, a state of being where, as Mindy explains to a happily-hyped Elmo, “you’re really excited about something”. You know, like Continue Reading
The Swingin’ Sixties in space: Syfy’s Ascension gets its first full trailer
The Sixties were a tumultuous decade to say the least. The certainty of the rigid and often blatantly sexist and racist social mores of the ’50s and early ’60s were swept aside as the counter-culture “Flower Power” revolution gained momentum, a host of countries around the world gained independence, the Continue Reading
A recipe for Captain Picard face palm cookies? Get me to a kitchen and … Engage!
Being the captain of a Starfleet vessel is not an easy task at any time, what with aggressive Klingons or Romulans always on the lookout for a bruising encounter, Q liable to pop at a moment’s notice and inconvenient rips in the space/time continuum to contend with. It’s even Continue Reading
Scorpion: “Pilot” (S1, E1 review)
Scorpion is, on paper at least – and let’s face it, none of the characters, save for possibly veteran FBI special Agent Gabe Callo (Robert Patrick), would be seen dead around anything so physical and antiquated – a bundle of well-used network formula drama tropes that have been gathered together from various police Continue Reading