The Mandalorian is one of a slate recent breakout streaming hits which has benefited no doubt from the fact that it is part of the Star Wars universe but also because it is some damn fine storytelling, beautifully presented. Parts of its appeal is a Western-style narrative that feature a Continue Reading
TV
Altered Carbon has been re-sleeved! Welcome to the season 2 teaser trailer
SNAPSHOTSeason 2 of the sophisticated and compelling sci-fi drama finds Takeshi Kovacs (Anthony Mackie), the lone surviving soldier of a group of elite interstellar warriors, continuing his centuries-old quest to find his lost love Quellcrist Falconer (Renée Elise Goldsberry). After decades of planet-hopping and searching the galaxy, Kovacs finds himself Continue Reading
Rise up together: Thoughts on Grace and Frank S6
The challenge for any series that manages to make it past the first few seasons, when cancellation lurks like some sort of televisual predator (yes, even for streaming shows) is balancing the twin competing demands of delivering up characters and situations that audiences have come to love while still forging Continue Reading
Everyone’s saying “My name is Inigo Montoya. You killed my father. Prepare to die” … no, really
“My name is Inigo Montoya. You killed my father. Prepare to die.” As iconic movie lines go, these immortal words of vengeance and loss from The Princess Bride are right up there among the best. How iconic exactly? So famous and suffused through the pop culture consciousness of humanity that Continue Reading
Trio of tremendous TV trailers: Sex Education S2, Insecure S4 and Nora From Queens
I love TV. I also don’t have enough time for TV. Well, all the shows I want to watch anyway and in this age of Peak TV, that is more shows than I can possible keep track of (and pixels know, I’ve tried!) and watch in a lifetime. Still, the Continue Reading
Yeehaa compagno and compagna! The Mandalorian gets the Spaghetti Western treatment
Defined as a “broad subgenre of Western films that emerged in the mid-1960s in the wake of Sergio Leone’s film-making style and international box-office success”, Spaghetti Westerns are brilliantly, wonderfully over the top. They were a big deal with over 600 Euro-Westerns made between 1960 and 1978 and given their Continue Reading
Have you seen our robot? Thoughts on Lost in Space (season 2)
If you were to be uncharitable, you could be forgiven for wondering why anyone in the 24th Colonist Group to Alpha Centauri lets the Robinsons anywhere near their precious spaceship, the Resolute, in the robust frame of which rests not only the lives of a select group of human refugees Continue Reading
Open up! Update from the Eurovision Song Contest 2020
It might seem like a long wait until the Eurovision Song Contest 2020, which takes place on 12-16 May, but truth be told, it’s just 135 days until the grand final! In a busy month for organisers, the first tranche of tickets went on sale, and surprise, surprise, completely sold Continue Reading
Do Rick and Morty and Back to the Future have anything in common? Turns out they just might
SNAPSHOT As we see in today’s boomer, millennial and zoomer animosity, generational divides can seem so impenetrable that connecting with each other might as well require time travel. ‘Back to the Future’ made this literal when Marty had to meet his parents at his age to understand them. In the Continue Reading
Small screen, big stories, much bingeing: My 20 favourite TV shows of 2019
Peak TV done got me again. Just when I thought I had all my televisual options under control and more than achievable, along come yet another streaming platform or two – hello Amazon Prime and Disney + ! – and suddenly all my best laid plans of sitting in front Continue Reading