The penultimate Happy Valley consisted of three deeply important conversations. The first comes from an unlikely source. Several times throughout the course of the series, Ryan (Rhys Connah) has asked his family to be honest with him about what his dad subjected his...
There’s no denying just how seismic a success Ted Lasso became for Apple TV+ during the more heightened days of the pandemic when it found an appreciative audience upon its premiere. Good-natured, very funny and potently combining funny comedy with its quieter and...
Last week, as Ryan was leaving his visit with his 'father', Tommy (James Norton) asked him how his bungee jump went. It felt like a glib throwaway question, especially when he proposed the idea of a father and son jump in a few years. Even Ryan (Rhys Connah) dismissed...
If you’re over the age of twenty, you probably remember Waterloo Road. A gritty and soapy, Manchester-based series that told the complex stories of troubled teens and their struggling teachers. The show tackled a huge variety of issues that occur in and around...
Happy Valley has always been Ryan's story. That's the main reason we had to wait such a long time for this final series. Sally Wainwright wanted to wait for Ryan (and the actor Rhys Connah) to be of age to tell the story she wanted. Following on from last week's...
Video Game to adaptations have gained a reputation for being notoriously bad for as far back as the 1993 adaptation of “Super Mario Bros” to as recent as 2022s “Uncharted”. In the last few years, we’ve seen some pushback against this, with original stories inspired by...
I have praised Sally Wainwright's dialogue in every review of one of her shows I've ever written. The second episode of Happy Valley series 3 proved it can be just as powerful in its quieter moments. The bombshell that it's Claire (Siobhan Finneran) and her boyfriend...
After a torturously long time, HBO Max’s pirate comedy Our Flag Means Death is reaching British shores and broadcasting on BBC2 from 4th January (with all episodes on iPlayer). One of the few shows to survive HBO’s eager axe, Our Flag Means Death was an immediate cult...
ere were times when I worried the BBC had forgotten they'd commissioned a third series of Happy Valley. Sally Wainwright had busied herself with passion project Gentlemen Jack and started work on a new Disney+ series, The Ballad of Renegade Nell. It had seemed Happy...
It’s tricky making a western nowadays. Just going route one and making a classic example of the genre is too cliched, and more than a little problematic given the standard “cowboys and Indians” narrative. Likewise, though, I think we’ve collectively had enough of the...
The Handmaid’s Tale is back and – yes, I’m going to say it – better than ever. Season 5, which began airing on Channel 4 and Amazon Prime Video on 23rd October, is the penultimate season. It was recently announced that season 6, which is likely to air in the autumn of...
Chris Chibnall's era of Doctor Who has perhaps been the most divisive of the show's run. Praised by some and despised by others. Whatever you made of the quality of Chinall's episodes, all Who fans were anxiously awaiting the BBC centenary special, “The Power of the...
It’s January 1995, you’re lying on your living room floor in baggy jeans and checked shirt, fiddling with a plectrum on a leather choker around your neck, Sound Garden’s Superunknown in your Walkman. You’re whining gently because the final episode of My So-Called Life...
There is a small mini-genre of television series, occasionally film too, which wants to explore what the world is like when it is viewed by a character who has had no experience of it due to being either secluded or imprisoned. Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt took a comedic...
In the third episode of The Walk-In Robbie Mullen (Andrew Ellis) breaks down. He tells Matthew Collins (Stephen Graham) he's never had any friends before. "They're my mates." Collins put his arm around him and assures him they're not his friends. The...
It's rare that a TV show feels completely immersive. It's rare that a TV drama can plunge us into a world and not explain how it all works but that's exactly what makes The Bear (all available on Disney+) So special. Set in a family restaurant in Chicago, the first...
Steven Moffat is back in his wheelhouse on BBC One pulling all the tricks that you’d expect, there’s a lot of Sherlock and Doctor Who DNA here – as someone who didn’t watch The Time Traveller’s Wife but loathed Dracula, Inside Man sets up a tonne of fascinating...
It's not unfair to say that Ryan Murphy's output on Netflix hasn't resulted in a great many hits. You can understand why the streamer would want to sign Murphy. He's a bonafide hitmaker with American Crime Story always generating awards buzz, and the American Horror...
The success of shows like Hacks, Abbott Elementary and The Marvellous Mrs Maisel at this year’s EMMY Awards show that female-led comedy is finally getting the attention it deserves. Women’s voices are in abundance, and this year a new comedy from HBO Max landed firmly...
An all-female central cast, a tricksy timeline narrative involving the abusive husband of one of the characters being murdered, all of which is set in a middle-class community where everyone knows each other’s name and secrets are hard to keep. On paper, this might...
A TV show that is based on a successful movie comes with many expectations. Given that it has a world, characters, and a fanbase built in, the expectation is that it must build on this starting advantage and take the story somewhere the movie could not go. Prime...
There’s always been a prevailing belief of sorts that comedy and horror go hand-in-hand, and nowhere is that more evident than when it comes to the sub-genre of cringe humour. Place a camera into a setting or scenario that involves unlimited embarrassments, either...
After a rather subdued run of episodes, we finally get to see both Saul Goodman and Jimmy McGill at the height of their powers. It’s a bittersweet, muted series finale that still serves as pretty much a perfect finale - quietly devastating with nicely judged...
I had intended to review every episode of this final block of Better Call Saul episodes. I enjoyed the Gene flashforward 'Nippy' which caught up with Jimmy/Saul/Gene in Omaha still playing the long con and dreaming up elaborate schemes to con deplorable rich men out...