purple-mug Reviews

The Artful Dodger (2023– )

You better pick a pocket or two!

[10/10 · 29 November 2023]

This is the sort of production that you've been swearing they don't make any more. Vibrant, colourful and full of characters who know that good often comes at the cost of a little wickedness here and there. Thomas Brodie Sangster is a highly believable, still largely child-like, Jack Dawkins, aka. The Dodger while David Thewlis, mercifully free of the stereotypes that have dogged the character in the past, makes easy work of the shamelessly light-fingered Fagin. But it is the unashamedly scene-stealing Maia Mitchell as the most unladylike Lady Belle, the governor's daughter, who catches the eye. Which is not to say that we are short-changed on the minor characters with a pliable governor whose scheming wife is clearly the true power, an incompetent chief surgeon with a total lack of self-awareness, a dour policeman who "hangs people for a hobby", and a proper villain played with relish by Tim Minchin. Seems they do make them like this after all!

Bodies (2023)

Rivetingly absurd

[9/10 · 6 November 2023]

It is a truth universally acknowledged that any plot involving time travel, especially any that attempts to deal with the so-called grandfather paradox, will necessarily be so full of holes that, if it were a fishing net, only the great whales would be endangered by it. In that regard, Bodies certainly does not disappoint, piling impossibility upon impossibility at a head spinning pace. However it is the panache and insouciance with which such concerns are dealt that determines whether a show will emerge battered to death or greatly loved. With great performances from the lead characters, particularly Jacob Fortune Lloyd as the thoroughly corrupt wartime cop whose heart is melted by a child (a charming live-action debut for Chloe Raphael), and a brilliant script that revealed only as much as necessary at each stage and kept you guessing until the very end, Bodies easily triumphs over its unavoidable absurdity.

Lessons in Chemistry: Living Dead Things (2023) Season 1, Episode 3

It was the dog that done it!

[9/10 · 27 October 2023]

The so called "talking dog" episode has come in for a lot of criticism from snooty reviewers but I have to say that I found this unique perspective deeply moving. As I'm a jaded old viewer who has thousands of hours of television viewing behind him, it takes a lot to elicit a deep emotional response from me these days. But as Six-Thirty came to the moment of remembering the mantra, "One foot, one foot!" I admit to being in floods of tears. Even as I write this I can feel a welling in my eyes.

I'm firmly convinced that allowing the dog to speak massively contributed to an episode which done straight would have been far less insightful and affecting. It is a kind of magical realism which is ideal for television fiction.

Count Abdulla (2023)

It's bad! Really bad!

[1/10 · 15 June 2023]

I'm not sure I have the words to describe just how bad this show is. It misses all its targets. As a comedy it fails to produce a single even remotely amusing moment. As a reflection on the humorous side of the Muslim community it is cringingly embarrassing. It's certainly no "We Are Lady Parts". As a revision of the vampire genre it's all over the place. If Nina Wadia hadn't been in the cast (did she just never read the rest of the script?) I would probably have avoided this whole debacle. Instead I'm just embarrassed for everyone concerned. If this is meant to prove, as advertised, that "comedy is back" on ITV then this is comedy that we could well do without.

Unstable (2023– )

Not bad for a side project!

[9/10 · 17 April 2023]

With Rob Lowe in great demand as always it is no small accomplishment to have devised and produced this mad science comedy as a sideline with his son. Lowe Snr's performance is, as usual, spot on but Jnr shows that he has inherited a great feel for comedy as the lightly damaged and slightly naïve flautist who discovers that he can never fully escape his father. In the supporting cast, Sian Clifford shines as the would-be Machiavellian Anna who is charged with holding the whole Ellis enterprise together, and the bright eyed, bushy tailed, but somewhat clueless scientists played by Rachel Marsh and Emma Ferreira are a delight.

Overall the show leaves you with the feeling that no high-tech company could possibly operate like this yet it would not be surprising if many in fact do.

Up Here (2023)

She sings too?

[9/10 · 27 March 2023]

Cards on the table. I would happily watch Mae Whitman reading tax returns so I may be a little biased in welcoming this addition to the schedule. Musical rom-coms are, of course, the Marmite of showbiz and this is obviously reflected in the reviews to date. But if you're a fan, you certainly won't be disappointed by the glorious mix of sense and sensibility. There are certainly plenty of points of recognition with the array of competing inner voices that surround those first glimmers of love. As with many musical numbers the words are rather more important than the tunes but, to my mind, that increases the value, especially when performed with such clarity by Whitman and Valdes.

New Amsterdam: How Can I Help? (2023) Season 5, Episode 13

Why can't anyone ever write a proper ending?

[3/10 · 20 January 2023]

So, having been put through the emotional ringer as Max gets over Helen's still unexplained decision to stay in England and slowly but surely realises the depth of his affection for Elizabeth; having cheered at his declaration of commitment to the latter; having gone all gooey eyed as he says that "real" is better than "fun"; are we really supposed to believe that just a few weeks later (a year after the Ukraine war started) they are both happy to have Max swanning off to Geneva, thousands of miles away? And how have they suddenly become so distant that they say goodbye with not so much as a handshake let alone a tear?

As for the wholly unnecessary and totally ridiculous hagiographic head to toe surgery story which allows everybody including Daniel Dae Kim's Dr Shin, whose face has not been seen for two years, to bathe in the light of glory, well words fail me. Frankly it wouldn't have been out of place if they'd resurrected Dr Kapoor from the dead to make a last bow in this travesty.

That this often challenging series should end with a bunch of implausible happy-ever-afters is an unforgiveable insult to the show's many faithful viewers. The previous week's episode would have made a more than adequate ending. This ghastly mess should never have been added.

Pitch Perfect: Bumper in Berlin (2022)

Sarah Hyland steals the show.

[8/10 · 13 December 2022]

It's not award worthy in terms of script, emotional depth, or, weirdly, musical content, but the series has a whole lot going for it in Sarah Hyland whose performance as the adorable Heidi is an absolute revelation. Add in the completely over the top vamping and the ultimate in sexy German accents from Jameel Jamil as Gisela, and a glorious cameo from veteran German actress Katharina Thalbach, and there's plenty to like about this "whatever happened to" series. It's just that as a Pitch Perfect fan I would have liked a whole lot more music, especially the a capella for which the films were noted.

Persuasion (I) (2022)

I See You!

[8/10 · 25 July 2022]

Austen gets Bridgertonned in this splendid outing for the wit and craft of Dakota Johnson. The fourth wall is well and truly demolished and it's never been done better than by Johnson's sassy, wise and remarkably forbearing Anne Elliot. Purists will, of course, complain that it's unbecoming of the demure Miss Austen but I suspect that they would be doing her a disservice in so thinking. The film is by no means perfect but it deserves credit for its fresh approach.

Skymed (2022– )

Air Crash

[4/10 · 25 July 2022]

What can you possibly do to make a mess of an account of the thrills and spills of emergency first response in the wilderness of the North? You'd be amazed. Terrible scripting, terrible acting, terrible clichés, and, of course, a disaster personally affecting the whole cast in the very first episode. The people who actually sacrifice so much to serve in the capacity of medical professionals in extreme circumstances deserve much better representation than this hackneyed, soapy nonsense.

Annika (2021– )

That old fourth wall comes crashing down!

[8/10 · 13 September 2021]

So look, here's the simple truth. I'd happily watch Nicola Walker reading the minutes from the dullest committee meeting on Earth. And I love, love, love the breaking of the fourth wall with direct to camera stuff. So I was in seventh heaven from the first moment of the first episode. Yes, that may well mean that my judgement is a little clouded when it comes to the nuts and bolts and occasional klunks of the script and general casting but, damn it, I watch television to be entertained and I was.

Sadly the naysayers and grumps are out again. Nothing new? Well why would there be? Come to that, how could there be? The whodunnit formula can be fiddled with a little but at the end of the day its stability is one of the things that makes the genre so popular and enduringly popular. If you're coming to a show that makes no bones about what it is expecting it to be something other than that and a dazzling new experience, of course you're going to be disappointed. So why do you do it?

Anyway, if you're one of the many. Many devotees of the mystery genre you'll find much here to enjoy. And, if you're not, I can only grieve for your sorry state.

The Nevers (2021–2023)

These go to eleven!

[10/10 · 13 April 2021]

I can honestly say I have never been so impressed by a first episode. Beautifully filmed, perfectly cast, rich in dialogue, witty and sharp, and full of eccentric bewitching characters. The period fantasy/sci-fi genre has had something of a revival in the past year but none of the new films and series matches the sheer sumptuousness of every aspect of the production. The special effects, stunt work, and soundtrack are instrumental in making peril palpable and the performances of. Laura Donnelly, Ann Skelly, and especially. Amy Manson as the mad (or is she?) villain (or hero?) of the piece, are pitch perfect. A hit, HBO, a palpable hit!

The Watch (2020–2021)

What is wrong with you people?

[9/10 · 4 January 2021]

How utterly predictable that we would get a raft of reviews, mostly written long before the actual show even screened from what I can see, bemoaning the gall of the producers in departing even so much as by a hair's breadth from every jot and tittle of the text of the "beloved" Discworld series. The worst of it is that these complaints are not even based on the books at all but on how the reviewers imagine the books to be. There's even a review praising past BBC adaptations despite the fact that they were all produced by Sky!

Sam Vimes isn't Sam Vimes? Really? Which Sam Vimes isn't he? In the books the character goes through a long redemptive arc which means that he is an entirely different character more or less every time we see him. Lord Vetinari can't be a woman? Whyever not? I've long suspected that Terry Pratchett himself was holding open the possibility that she was all along.

What counts is only whether this is a good watch (see what I did there?) in itself. Forget the books. Forget other adaptations (which you've conveniently forgotten that you also criticised at the time for failure to follow the plot or portray your favourite character as you imagine them to be). If this landed, unheralded, free of preconceptions, would it be worth the screen time? For me, being a bear of sufficient brain to treat the show on its own terms despite having read the books and seen the other TV versions, the answer was a very firm yes. Visually it's a treat with the very best of cute but deadly dragons as a bonus. Richard Dormer's hammed up Vimes is never dull and Lara Rossi's kick-ass Lady Sybil is great fun. And the first episode ends on a proper old-school cliffhanger. I was much entertained and I don't know that you can ask for much more from 40 minutes of TV.

The Flight Attendant (2020–2022)

Kaley's Finest

[10/10 · 1 December 2020]

I've looked at all the negative reviews with astonishment. When exactly did we lose the taste for hokum, screwball, and farce? It's improbable and unrealistic? Well, duh! It's not a documentary!

It's appropriate that the "poster" features the lead character falling as the tale is in many ways a modern Alice down the rabbit hole with Kaley Cuoco in the character of Cassie making a pitch perfect Alice buffeted by the unexpected and unpredictable while dealing with her own problems of scatty wilfulness, capriciousness, and a raging thirst! Michiel Huisman as the murder victim, Zosia Hamet as the weird best friend and lawyer, and Rosie Perez as the overly dependent colleague all provide perfect foils for the madcap misadventures. Definitely one of the highlights of this otherwise miserable year!

Truth Seekers (2020)

Scary, but not for the right reasons!

[5/10 · 30 October 2020]

So a comedy doesn't have to uproariously funny but if it's not it does have to have some other redeeming qualities. Sadly this appears to have none. It's slow, absurd but not in a good way, and lacks the bite that we have come to expect from Pegg and Frost. There are also far too many pieces of filling that seem to have been thrown in to mask the overall lack of content - Roddy McDowall surely deserves better than being Polyfilla!

Enola Holmes (2020)

This is what movies should be! Viva Enola!

[10/10 · 16 October 2020]

Milly Bobby Brown as Sherlock's little sister is captivating, engaging, and utterly brilliant especially in those moments when the 4th wall is broken down. I profoundly hope this is not the only time that we will see her in this role, whether it be in a movie sequel or better yet a TV series. Encore une fois, mille fois plus, s'il vous plait!

Tales from the Loop (2020)

Heavy Going!

[8/10 · 5 April 2020]

This, I'm sure, is the stuff of dreams to the "serious" sci-fi buff. The kind of thing they've been waiting their whole lives for. But be warned. The art house approach, the ponderous wringing of every drop of darkness from the tales, the dolorous minimalist soundtrack courtesy of Philip Glass, and the doom laden plots all contribute to weighty, even burdensome viewing at times. This is not the sort of thing you put on at the end of a riotous evening. Nor to be binge watched - it will spill your marbles and spark depressive spirals. And don't gift it to your significant other for a birthday or the like if you don't want weeks of angst as they try to work out what exactly you're trying to say. It's intelligent, meaningful and dark - maybe a little too so - well worth watching but make sure you're in the right mood, at the right time, and preferably in easy reach of your support structure!

Vagrant Queen (2020)

What aren't you getting here?

[9/10 · 5 April 2020]

It's an insane, nonsensical, illogical, and totally irrational mish-mash of every sci-fi trope you can possibly imagine given an extra twist of madness for good luck. In a galaxy (not ours!) there roams a lost Canadian, an uncrowned queen pursued by no less than two factions with very opposite intentions, and a blue-skinned alien who would be a lot more useful if she wasn't so easily distracted by tech. Chaos ensues. So what's not to like?

Of course, the high minded, serious sci-fi types - you know the sort that tear a Star Trek episode to pieces because the flux capacitor is clearly 2 inches to the right of its proper place in the shot at 34.05 - will hate it because it shows them up for the fun hating nitpickers and pedants they are. But they wouldn't know entertainment if it was plastered over the nose of a photon torpedo aimed directly at their bunkers! Yes, it doesn't make sense ... but that's the whole point! So hear them not and grab yourself a good old-fashioned dollop of joyous cocking of snooks at everybody that has forgotten there ever was a "fi" in sci-fi in the first place.

Last Christmas (2019)

I laughed, I cried

[10/10 · 14 March 2020]

What more could you possibly want from a movie? Perhaps it was the general Christmas cynicism at the time of its realise that jaundiced others' opinions but watching this in the middle of March I found it an absolute delight. The light is sparkling, the dark is heart wrenching and Emilia Clarke is just brilliant. There are very few films that I will contemplate watching again but this is now definitely one of them.

McDonald & Dodds (2020– )

Genius!

[10/10 · 2 March 2020]

Anyone who thinks this inferior in any way clearly hasn't any grounding in the crime genre. It is pitch perfect comic detective fiction of which Christie, Allingham, or Sayers would have been rightly proud with just a dash of Columbo taking it to another level. Unsurprisingly so, given that Robert Murphy, the creator and writer, is steeped in the genre and can pull on so many threads to weave into his magic carpet.

The odd couple, tortoise and hare, relationship of the two leads is fertile ground for the twisty plot to flourish in. Yes, McDonald is annoying, but that's the whole point and it's not as if there is no clear reason for her to be so. To make this a criticism of the production is just bizarre as is the suggestion that Dodds could do a single-hander. It would lack all credibility for someone who has, for very obvious reasons, not left his desk for ten ... sorry, eleven ... years to suddenly become a solo lead detective. Without McDonald there is no Dodds.

This is definitely a partnership that has legs and it's to be hoped that ITV does not, as it is prone to do, pull the plug on the say so of the kind of witless trolls whose reviews bear no relation to reality.

Station 19: Shock to the System (2018) Season 1, Episode 5

Utterly Preposterous

[2/10 · 19 May 2018]

I should perhaps start by saying that I enjoy this series generally. Because that's the last good thing I can possibly say about this episode. The utter absurdity of the electrocution and the extraordinary ignorance of basic physics demonstrated by the fire crew was cringeworthy. Birds on a wire don't get electrocuted because they have two feet on it? No. It's because they're not in contact with the ground or anything else that would provide a means for current to flow. You can avoid electrocution by bunny hopping to ensure that both feet are on the ground at the same time? Utter drivel! You can be electrocuted by ground which has a live wire lying on it yards away? Fantasy! Inside your car is the safest place to be because it's insulated by the tires? Fatheaded nonsense. It's because it's a de facto Faraday cage. A spark from a live wire reaching a fuel leak could cause the car to explode? In what Universe? And on and on it went with not a single fact correct. And then the self-contradiction began. The fire officers standing on one side of the car were 'at risk' if they got nearer but the one that approached within a few feet of the car to start soaking up the fuel leak was apparently completely safe? Just complete bilge from beginning to end. If you're watching the series and you give a hoot about science then give this episode a wide berth. Nothing much to advance the overall plot happens anyway so you can safely assign it to the bin it so thoroughly deserves.

Future Man (2017–2020)

Oh dear!

[3/10 · 20 November 2017]

Imagine, if you will, a script written by an adolescent under cover of darkness and never to see the light of day in which every piece of bad language, puerile humour, and anything else that parents are never intended to discover he has learnt is poured. And it still won't be as bad as this!

Yes, Hulu we get it. You're not mainstream so you can get away with using the f-word. Does that really justify five uses a minute? And does everything have to be about sex? Is the world really a better place for covering your hero in ejaculate? It's not big and it's not clever. It's just rather pathetic.

In the hands of some decent scriptwriters this might have been a worthwhile addition to the sci-fi canon. As just another example of the desperate need for Seth Rogen to grow the hell up it certainly is not!

The Orville (2017–2022)

So ...

[9/10 · 1 October 2017]

... you wait years for a new Star Trek series and then two come along at once. This one, of course, is not in any way an official Star Trek product but weirdly it seems a far more fitting addition to the canon than the uncomfortably anachronistic, dark and glossy Discovery purports to be. More nicely judged pastiche than parody, its humour is perfectly in keeping with the stories of the original Enterprise gently nudging at the sci-fi clichés and clunkiness without ever failing to acknowledge and honour the debt owed to the ground breaking series of the 60s and 70s. It is, in short, masterful.

Beowulf: Return to the Shieldlands (2016)

In a word ... embarrassing!

[3/10 · 4 January 2016]

So you stumble into a room and find one bloke dead while another bloke's standing over him with a broadsword and despite the fact that the dead bloke seems to show no signs of injury consistent with assault by broadsword you accuse the bloke with the broadsword of murder. Meanwhile the bloke with the broadsword having previously stumbled on the dead bloke with a monstrous creature standing over him assumes that the creature dunnit despite the fact that the dead bloke seems to show no signs of injury consistent with assault by creature. Soon after, the bloke with the broadsword is convicted of murder without any evidence being presented at all, escapes, chases after the creature, cuts its hand off (despite which it is perfectly capable of climbing 30ft of convenient scaffolding to escape) then returns with the hand as proof of his innocence. How this proves anything at all is by no means clear but apparently its good enough to get the charges dropped and then, only then, somebody thinks it might be an idea to actually examine the dead bloke's body (well, wash it, at least) whereupon it emerges that it was neither the bloke with the broadsword nor the monstrous creature but some unknown assailant with a dagger wot dunnit.

You might forgive this kind of inane plotting if it weren't for the fact that the entire cast acts like the job is community service on a wet weekend in Grimsby, devoid of passion of any kind. The only character you can raise any amount of sympathy for is the feisty healer, well at least until it transpires that she's the lover of the wet, spoilt, idiot son of the thane, at which point you give up all hope! The female blacksmith is apparently permanently peeved for no obvious reason, her mother irrationally drawn to the decidedly less than dashing companion of Beowulf, the idiot son of the thane does nothing but shout incoherently, and everybody else shuffles about looking for something to do in order to avoid the whole sorry mess.

By midway through the episode I was already rooting for the monstrous creature which, incidentally, is clearly going to turn out to be something other than the evil beast it appears to be as the clues were laid on by the spadeful. It can rip the whole sorry lot of them to pieces for all I care!

Galavant (2015–2016)

Genius!

[10/10 · 10 January 2015]

OK, so it helps if you get the broad English sense of humour (which unlike our sensitive US cousins we certainly do not consider unfit for children!), have a working knowledge of classic British serials like Robin Hood and Ivanhoe, and love a good musical with clever rhymes and much double entendre (which clearly some of the reviewers who've completely failed to get to grips with this magnificent show do not!) but how can anybody not love this? Ever since Buffy did the musical episode we've been crying out for something like this and it has so been worth the wait. The casting is spot on with Timothy Omundson's turn as King Richard a real joy, Mallory Jansen's Madalena pitched perfectly as the queen whom there is no pleasing, and Vinnie Jones natural comic touch ideal for the henchman Gareth, while Joshua Sasse has the lead as half hero, half buffoon very nicely tuned. Add in some truly marvellous wry songs like "Maybe You're Not The Worst Thing Ever" and you have a hit, a palpable hit. I have no hesitation at all in saying that this is far and away the best new show we've had in ages!