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CAMPING – Series One
It’s an indisputable fact that you need a very strong stomach to watch anything written by Julia Davis. From Human Remains to Nighty Night and, most recently, Hunderby, her shows mine the most uncomfortable parts of the human psyche; refracting our most grotesque selves back at us while almost daring the audience to look away.…
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THE AMERICANS, 4.6 – ‘The Rat’
For a series defined by restraint and deliberate pacing, the last few weeks of The Americans have seen a monumental change in the show’s status quo. I assumed that, after Nina’s sudden and shocking death, the show would retreat for several weeks, taking its time to wind up for the next big development. But no, two…
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JANE GOT A GUN (2016)
The Western is a genre that resolutely refuses to ride off into the sunset. Despite an increasing distance from the era—when America’s west was the great frontier; a harsh and wild land, daring man to tame it—and despite many academic opinions that the genre’s grown irrelevant, it still endures. First it gained a new spin…
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CAPTAIN AMERICA: CIVIL WAR (2016)
Marvel films have gone big before. They’ve launched an alien invasion onto New York for The Avengers, seen half of London uprooted in Thor: The Dark World, and sent an entire city very literally crashing to the ground in Avengers: Age of Ultron. But they’ve never gone bigger than this. That’s not to say Captain…
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VINYL, 1.10 – ‘Alibi’
The final episode of Vinyl’s first season was also the last to be written by co-creator Terence Winter, who will be replaced for the second season by Scott Z. Burns (The Bourne Ultimatum) and Max Borenstein (Godzilla)—neither of whom have ever helmed a television series. It would be nice to say that the likeable and…
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OUTLANDER, 2.2 – ‘Not in Scotland Anymore’
And so, rather like The Wizard of Oz’s Dorothy, Outlander’s Claire (Caitriona Balfe) and Jamie Fraser (Sam Heughan) find themselves over the English Channel, acclimatising to the profoundly different world of 18th-century France. However, while the cultivation of several vivid social connections dominates Ira Steven Behr’s “Not in Scotland Anymore”, the episode also spends some…
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BETTER CALL SAUL, 2.10 – ‘Klick’
It’s a little miracle that Better Call Saul can deliver such a fantastic season finale, without the need for anything particularly earth-shattering to happen. Events are just allowed to unfold in a very plausible way, and we’re now so invested in the core relationships that the tiniest of things can cause a great deal of…
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HAP AND LEONARD – Season One
Hap and Leonard, the latest US crime series to find its way to Amazon Video in the UK, is something of an odd beast. Adapted from Joe R. Lansdale’s best-selling novels, by Nick Damici and Jim Mickle, who also worked on the excellent Lansdale adaptation Cold in July, and with a top-notch cast headed up…
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HUSH (2016)
A fleeting glance of Hush while browsing Netflix and you’d be forgiven for having a reflexive urge to keep scrolling. ‘A young woman living alone in the woods is terrorised by a masked serial killer’—sound familiar? However, while this horror film has its flaws, if you look past the tropes and bargain bin poster you’ll…
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THE AMERICANS, 4.5 – ‘Clark’s Place’
After the shocking ending of last week’s episode, “Clark’s Place” was an episode for The Americans to do its customary thing, after a major story development, of bringing things back down to a slow burn. None of the show’s storylines are advanced very much; instead, lots of time is devoted to subtle character beats and ratcheting…
