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...
The Handmaids Tale continues to surprise
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...
First Look: The White Lotus Season 2
The trailer has been released for the second instalment of the award-winning series, The White Lotus. The seven-part series returns 31 October exclusively on Sky Atlantic and NOW. The social satire is set at an exclusive Sicilian resort and follows the exploits of...
The Bear – This immersive and stressful drama is one of the year’s best
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...
First Look: The Last of Us
HBO Max have released a trailer for their adaptation of The Last of Us which will be coming to Sky Atlantic early next year. The post-apocalyptic drama is based on the 2013 video game of the same name and will follow Joel (Pedro Pascal), a smuggler tasked with...
Dahmer – Monster: The Jeffrey Dahmer Story knows exactly what it has to do and it does it really well.
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...
Prime Video’s A League of Their Own is much more than a remake.
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...
Disney+ confirms a date for critically acclaimed drama The Bear
Disney+ have confirmed a date for the critically acclaimed US drama The Bear. The series follows Carmen “Carmy” Berzatto (Jeremy Allen White), a young chef from the fine dining world, who comes home to Chicago to run his family sandwich shop – The Original Beef of...
Autumn 2022: The shows we’re really excited to see.
After a summer of sport, TV is getting its act together this autumn. Yes, the World Cup will disrupt things in November but the streamers have plenty to keep us non-footie fans occupied. Here are the shows we're looking forward to over the next few months. Minx...
Better Call Saul delivers one of the best series finales of all time
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...
Why The Handmaid’s Tale feels more vital than ever.
In the spring of 2017, I had the rare luxury of a night to myself. I was channel hopping when I came across what looked like the climax of an action sequence on Channel 4. An aerial shot of a car skidding through a snowy landscape, sirens blaring close behind, was...
Huzzah! Why The Great is the riotous period drama you’ve been waiting for.
Seasoned viewers of period drama will be well aware that the past is a foreign country and that folk do things differently there. Even so, The Great (currently in its second season on Channel 4) is that little bit more different. The exuberant comedy-drama on the rise...
Breaking Bad: The art of telling one epic story from beginning to end.
A pair of trousers fly through the air, landing on a dusty road which an RV speeds through with panicked abandon. So begins a series that was pitched by its creator as ‘Mr Chips becomes Scarface'. Television series can naturally morph and change as they...
Under the Banner of Heaven uses a shocking crime to look deeper at religious beliefs.
After watching the first episode of “Under the Banner of Heaven,” I was admittedly sceptical. The first episode starts out slow, simply introducing the murder at the centre and the detective who will be solving it. Everything about the first hour of the show told me...
Better Call Saul’s “Fun and Games’ reaches the full Saul Goodman
It's hard to pinpoint the exact moment I started to worry about Kim Wexler (Rhea Seehorn). The relationship between Jimmy (Bob Odenkirk) and Kim is, in my view, one of the most interesting partnerships on television. Incredibly, nauseated, connected by their mutual...
The EMMY Nominations 2022
The nominations have been announced for this year's Emmy Awards. Announced by JB Smoove (Curb Your Enthusiasm) and Melissa Fumero (Brooklyn Nine-Nine) the nominees represent the best of recent television. The most nominated shows were Succession with 25 nominations,...
Justified: Remembering one of TV’s best kept secrets.
“You see that guy in the hat?” “The tall one?” “The one in the hat!” Does anyone actually listen to their friends’ recommendations anymore? It’s a counter-intuitive phenomenon, but the more someone goes on about the latest must-see thing on TV, the less likely I am to...
Celebrating The Wire 20 Years On.
It was the show’s mastery of character that made it great. 20 years ago this month, HBO aired the first episode of The Wire. Nine months earlier, 9/11 had dramatically snatched federal law enforcement’s attention and budget away from the war on drugs and towards the...
Deadwood: Looking back at HBO’s true masterpiece.
“Pain or damage don’t end the world. Or despair, or f***ing beatings. The world ends when you're dead. Until then, you’ve got more punishment in store. Stand it like a man… and give some back” This could well be the mission statement for Deadwood, David Milch’s...
Apple TV’s For All Mankind is the best recent example of prestige TV.
America is reeling from a gigantic loss in the Cold War – of prestige, of humiliation. In other words: A Red Moon. We are introduced to Ronald D. Moore’s For All Mankind as it throws us for an alternate history style scenario establishing the gauntlet from the get-go...
David Simon returns. We Own This City and the vindication of The Wire
A new David Simon project dropping has roughly the same effect on critics that a designer drug has when it debuts among addicts. So with We Own This City beginning on Tuesday 7th June on Sky Atlantic expect a deluge of podcasts, blogs and think pieces marking the...
The Sopranos: The show that paved the way for all that was to come.
Like everyone else, including James Gandolfini’s own son, Michael, in preparation for his role in the prequel movie The Many Saints of Newark (as cited during his interview with Simon Mayo for Kermode and Mayo’s Film Review) I used lockdown to start watching The...
Better Call Saul’s Plan and Execution is an tense and moving watch.
If you've seen the mid-season finale of Better Call Saul then you're probably still sat aghast. I spent its closing moments with my hand clasped over my mouth as if I'd just witnessed something horrific. Thinking about it now, with a few days to let the episode sink...
The rise and rise of Apple TV+: Why the streamer is a must.
Co-written by site Editor Luke Knowles and Site Contributor Amy Beth. *Contains spoilers for season one of Severance* “You know, my mother was an atheist. She used to say that there was good news and bad news about hell. The good news is hell is just a product of the...