Tag Archives: tv reviews

Sherlock – The Blind Banker Review

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‘Sherlock and Watson work on deciphering deadly symbols that are covering the walls around London, killing everyone who sees them within hours, before any further victim succumbs to the mysterious Black Lotus.‘

Sherlock - The Blind Banker

After the fantastic pilot episode, The Blind Banker had a lot to live up to. While it wasn’t quite as good as the first one this second installment is definitely great television. Benedict Cumberbatch and Martin Freeman have the sort of chemistry on-screen that usually only comes after years of working together.

Once again, the relationship between Holmes and Watson takes centre stage. Their dealings with Continue reading →

Sherlock – A Study in Pink Review

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‘Sherlock Holmes is introduced to ex-army doctor John Watson who he moves in with and then convinces to help him solve murder mysteries. Their first case together is one that looks, to police, like a case of linked suicides.‘

Sherlock Holmes - A Study in Pink

Sherlock Holmes has been reimagined so many times that it’s hard to imagine anyone could bring something new to the table. But Steven Moffat and Mark Gatiss’ new series Sherlock brings the famous detective into modern times while keeping true to the spirit of the original stories. This series starts with a bang and I’m really looking forward to seeing where it goes.

The first episode had a lot to cover with the introductions of all the major characters, Continue reading →

Columbo – A Stitch in Crime Review

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It’s a few days late, but this review is dedicated to my favourite TV detective: Peter Falk, who passed away earlier this week. Sadly, his advanced dementia meant that Peter no longer remembered playing his most famous role: Columbo. Don’t worry Peter, we’ll remember for you. Rest in Peace.

‘A surgeon has an ingenious plan for murdering his partner in a research project, but a nurse catches onto the scheme.‘

Columbo - A Stitch in Crime

The creators of Columbo must have had a hell of a time pitching this show. ‘It’s a whodunnit but we’re going to show you who the murderer is right at the beginning of the episode.‘ It seems bizarre, but thankfully some producer decided to take the gamble and we got one of the best detective shows to ever grace the screen.

In A Stitch in Crime, the murderer is played by Leonard Nimoy, and his character has quite a brilliant way Continue reading →

Mad Men – Marriage of Figaro Review

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‘Pete returns from his honeymoon, excited about his new marriage, but conflicted about his past encounter with Peggy. After his business relationship with Rachel takes an unforeseen turn, Don attends a party which further illuminates his increasing dissatisfaction with his present life.‘

Don and Rachel

This episode opens with some new hints about Don’s mysterious past when a man on the train recognises Don as ‘Dick Whitman’. Rather than correcting the man, Don takes his business card and noncommittally agrees to catch up soon. The writers are doing a great job with dropping bread crumbs on this story, I’m looking forward to discovering what Don is hiding. One thing that he certainly isn’t doing a great job of hiding is his attraction to strong business woman Rachel Menken. These two have a real chemistry and I’m sure that we’re going to see a lot more of this impossible romance in future episodes.

Don Draper wannabe Pete returns in this episode, but the scenes in Continue reading →

Doctor Who – The Doctor’s Wife Review

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‘The Doctor receives a distress signal from an old friend. Could there really be another living Time Lord out there? Hopes raised, he follows the signal to a junkyard planet sitting upon a mysterious asteroid in a Bubble universe, populated by a very strange family.‘

I’d been looking forward to this episode ever since I heard that Neil Gaiman was writing it. Letting that twisted mind play in the universe of Doctor Who is a recipe for brilliance. And Gaiman certainly didn’t disappoint with this episode. This is the best episode of Doctor Who that I have seen in a long time.

From the very beginning, Gaiman’s touch on the episode is obvious – many of the scenes Continue reading →

The Borgias – Season 1 Review

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‘The Borgias is the sordid saga of one of the most remarkable and legendary families in history. Set in 15th century Italy at the height of the Renaissance, The Borgias chronicles the corrupt rise of patriarch Rodrigo Borgia to the papacy, where he proceeds to commit every sin in the book to amass and retain power, influence and enormous wealth for himself and his family. The Borgia family changed the face of Italy and Catholicism, and inspired works like Machiavelli’s The Prince, and Mario Puzo’s The Godfather.‘

The Borgias

The Borgias was created for Showtime by writer/director Neil Jordan, a well-known figure in the film industry probably best known for films such as The Crying Game and Interview with the Vampire. He had spent nine years trying to get The Borgias going as a movie when Showtime approached him to make a series. The Canadian-Irish-Hungarian co-production was filmed at the Korda Film Studios in Hungary in five massive soundstages, and cost a whopping $40 million to film the 9 episode run. The series proved to be one of Showtime’s biggest hits this year averaging 3.3 million weekly viewers and outperforming the highest-rated season of The Tudors by 20% (season four, 2.7 million).

Being a historical drama, The Borgias is largely aimed at an older audience, slightly more skewed towards female viewers. But with their campaign to Continue reading →

Mad Men – Ladies Room Review

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‘Don continues to conceal his increasingly complicated personal life, even in the face of Roger’s (John Slattery) invitation to open up. Meanwhile, Peggy (Elisabeth Moss) pines for the absent Pete – still on his honeymoon – while fending off the advances of several of the men of Sterling Cooper.‘

Betty and Don

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Like the previous episode, the opening of Ladies Room does a great job of filling us in on the character of Don Draper without overdoing it. While we can all accept the idea of Don not wanting his boss to know too much about his history, the fact that his wife knows just as little is very illuminating. It also goes a long way to explaining the nervous woman that his wife has become.

This episode is really focused around the women in Don’s life. While he tries to figure Continue reading →

Mad Men – Smoke Gets In Your Eyes Review

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‘While Don struggles to control his problematic love life, he tries to keep the agency from losing a big tobacco account.‘

Don Draper

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What a great introduction to a show. It set up everything you needed to know about the character of Don Draper and the world that he’s living in. The casual racism and sexism at play while he’s nervously scribbling away on a napkin really got me hooked in quickly, and willing to stay for the duration of the show. Not that the rest of the show was difficult to watch, but there was a lot to take in. We’re introduced to Continue reading →

Mythbusters – Fixing a Flat Review

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‘Adam and Jamie try to fix a flat tyre the MacGyver way with various materials. Did a fish escape capture on a rod so quickly, that it set the fishing rod on fire?‘

Adam and Jamie before the big race

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Fixing a Flat

This myth didn’t really grab my attention. While it wasn’t a particularly interesting idea, I was hoping that it would be an episode where Adam and Jamie tried to come up with their own innovative solutions, rather than trying out what had been suggested on the fan-site. There wasn’t even really much setup, they just went straight into testing the first method, and none of the footage was particularly exciting.

The second and third methods were a little more interesting, and they went into their method a bit more, but again it wasn’t particularly exciting. I guess that I just wasn’t really buying into the whole idea behind the myth. Especially when they took the myth into an urban environment. The whole thing seemed a little bit silly, which isn’t always a bad thing, but it stopped me from getting invested into this myth.

The final race was obviously a lot of fun for the pair, but by the point we reached it, I had lost virtually all interest in this story.

Flaming Reel

Another old wives tale supposedly demonstrated in a viral video. While it’s quite logical that your fishing reel heats up while running out a line, the idea that it would generate enough heat to combust seems fairly ridiculous. Unsurprisingly, they weren’t able to catch any fish to test it out in the field so they had to head back to the shop. Thankfully, they didn’t spend too much time relying on the antics of the trio, it was a pretty quick segment first up.

After that, there was a nice series of methodical experiments testing different types of line and reels. This was a really unusual case of me enjoying the secondary myth much more than Adam and Jamie’s segment. It wasn’t the most exciting myth, but the possible consequences were far more interesting than a flat tyre. Watching them test the myth with a go-kart was really fun to watch, and I was definitely looking forward to the final experiment and it didn’t disappoint. Watching the sidecar bike (with a really cool paint job) fly down the runway was about as exciting as this episode got, and the driver seemed to be having fun. On a side note I thought it was a little dismissive for the narrator to refer to the sidecar passenger merely as the driver’s mate rather than using her name.

All in all, this was a fairly forgettable episode. Next week’s myth sounds like fun though.

What I Liked – The final segments of the secondary myth were a lot of fun.

What I Didn’t Like – The primary myth was completely uninteresting, this was certainly a watch and forget episode.

Rating – 2 out of 5 (Disappointing)