If you like your crime drama cheesy, yet dark and intense then Shetland, adapted from Ann Cleeves’ best- selling novels, is the show for you. The series has all the hallmarks of Broadchurch: murder in […]
TV | Hairy Bikers' Asian Adventure – An aesthetic delight for eyes and ears alike
This series sees the return of the Hairy Biker duo, Dave Myers and Si King, as they explore the culinary delights of Japan, Thailand, Hong Kong and South Korea. The array of settings is nothing […]
TV | Ant & Dec – What's their enduring appeal?
The start of the eleventh series of Ant and Dec’s Saturday Night Takeaway is upon us, which presumably, still provides some entertainment for at least a few families around the country, but after 12 years […]
TV | First Dates – A dating show with a difference?
First Dates is Channel 4’s latest attempt to spice up the rather stagnant pool of TV programs about dating. It strays away from the game show format prominent in recent shows like Take Me Out […]
TV | Mary Berry Cooks – More simple and delicious recipes from the Queen of baking
Several years after the BBC ditched the likes of Delia Smith from their schedule, in a seemingly ageist move that instead sought after bright young TV chefs, this approach has been reversed in recognition of […]
TV | Outnumbered – The teenage years
The final episode ever of BBC1’s family comedy Outnumbered has now been aired. Having followed the family since 2007, I was enthusiastically anticipating its fifth series. However, as the children turned 11, 13 and 17, […]
TV | Silk – Courtroom battles, sex, hypocrisy and even a little bit of Joy Division
Battles in the courtroom, sex, hypocrisy, terminal illness, love, power, and even a bit of Joy Division. What doesn’t series three of Silk have to offer? Well, for Martha Costello (Maxine Peake), it doesn’t seem […]
TV | Five reasons everyone should watch House of Cards
1) Kevin Spacey as Frank Underwood Monstrously ambitious and cruel, Kevin Spacey surpasses himself as Frank Underwood. It’s a clichè but one cannot help but love to hate the most powerful man in Congress (or […]
TV | Procedural Vs Serialised – Battle of the attention spans
It is accepted in television folklore that serialised television is much better than its procedural sister, or perhaps rival. Who ends up sitting on the Iron throne for the Game of Thrones fans out there […]
TV | BBC vs ITV – The big debate
Late in 2013, a Chinese newspaper, the Global Times, ran an editorial saying that Britain was “no longer any kind of ‘big country’, but merely a country of old Europe suitable for tourism and overseas […]
TV | Fleming – Shaken but not quite stirred enough
It’s clear that James Bond was Ian Fleming’s idol; his books were his desired autobiography, with “you as you’d like to be”, as his wife is quick to point out to him in the new BBC […]
TV | The Smoke – Full of the same emergency services clichés?
It immediately occurs to the viewer, as they sit down to watch Sky1’s new series The Smoke, that there are surprisingly few firefighting based dramas around on television compared to their emergency service cousins. This […]