Picture courtesy of B.B.C. Television.
Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating * * * *
Cast: Matt Smith, Jenna-Louise Coleman, Richard E. Grant, Dan Starkey, Neve McIntosh, Catrin Stewart, Tom Ward, Liz White, Sir Ian McKellen, Juliet Cadzow, Joseph Dacey-Alden, Ellie Darcey-Alden, Annabelle Dowler.
What do you do when the girl you meet twice keeps dying? It’s enough to make a good man come out of retirement and regain that boyish inquisitiveness once more.
Suranne Jones in The Secret of Crickley Hall. Picture from the B.B.C.
Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating * * * *
Cast: Suranne Jones, Tom Ellis, Douglas Henshall, David Warner, Sarah Smart, Iain DeCaestecker, Olivia Cooke, Maise Williams, Bill Milner, Kian Parsiani, Pixie Davies, Donald Sumpter.
The Secret of Crickley Hall. Picture from the B.B.C.
Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating * * * *
Cast: Suranne Jones, Tom Ellis, Douglas Henshall, David Warner, Sarah Smart, Iain DeCaestecker, Olivia Cooke, Maise Williams, Bill Milner, Kian Parsiani, Pixie Davies, Donald Sumpter.
The second part of Joe Ahearne’s adaptation of James Herbert’s The Secret of Crickley Hall sees the tension stoked up as the malevolent force of Douglas Henshall’s Augustus Cribben starts to take more of a hold on the lives of the young family that resides in the former orphanage.
Tom Ellis and Suranne Jones in The Secret Of Crickley Hall. Picture from the B.B.C.
Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating * * * *
Cast: Suranne Jones, Tom Ellis, Douglas Henshall, David Warner, Sarah Smart, Iain De Caestecker, Olivia Cooke, Maise Williams, Bill Milner, Kian Parsiani, Pixie Davies.
It seems odd that the premier 20th century British horror writer, James Herbert, has never had many adaptations of his copious amount and in most cases prestigious work. What has been filmed has been woeful at best and an affront to British Horror at its seedy worst. For the B.B.C. to pick up the option to one of the great writer’s latter works, the sadistic and suspenseful The Secret of Crickley Hall is a coup for both writer and television viewer.
Cast: Matt Smith, Karen Gillan, Arthur Darvill, Mark Williams, Rupert Graves, Riann Steele, David Bradley, Sunetra Sarkur, David Mitchell, Robert Webb.
Liverpool Sound And Vision Rating ****
Cruelty, genocide and wading knee deep in Ankylosaurus and vicious raptors, just your average job for the Doctor but just that little bit beyond the ordinary for viewers of series seven of Doctor Who.
Picture from the B.B.C.
Originally published by L.S. Media. September 2nd 2012.
L.S. Media ****
Cast: Martin Shaw, Lee Ingleby, Roger Lloyd-Pack, Christopher Fairbanks, Geraldine Somerville, Ebony Buckle, James Norton, Simon Hubbard, Don Gallagher, Chris Brailsford, Nick Hendrix, Nicholas Lumley, Fred Pearson, Alex Childs, Beverly Fox.
Like Inspector Morse before it, it is the charm of the actors and the spark between two policeman that makes Inspector George Gently worthwhile and cracking television vision.
Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating *****
Cast: Matt Smith, Karen Gillian, Arthur Darvill, Jenna-Louise Coleman, Anamaria Marinca, David Gyasi, Naomi Ryan, Nicholas Briggs, Barnaby Edwards, Zac Fox.
It is the stuff that legends are made out of and then there is Doctor Who. The nights are beginning to draw in and what better way for the B.B.C. to showcase the autumn schedules than by the re-materialising of the blue box, two of the great companions of the modern and any era, the Doctor and an introduction to a new companion that might just be the best since Janet Fielding as the Australian flight attendant Tegan Jovanka.
Picture from B.B.C.
Originally published by L.S. Media. August 27th 2011.
L.S. Media Rating ****
Cast: Martin Shaw, Lee Ingleby, Maggie O’ Neil, Eamonn Walker, Pippa Bennett-Warner, Lenora Crichlow, Craig Conway, Gary Carr, Simon Hubbard, Cliff Lee.
In the last few years Martin Shaw has proved that a good actor cannot be kept off the screen for too long. The 1970’s saw him as part of The Professionals and in recent years he has kept his fans happy by being the star attraction in Judge John Deed and as the man out of place in Inspector George Gently.
Eddie Marsan as Dr. Ludwig Guttmann. Picture from the B.B.C.
Originally pulished by L.S. Media. August 17th 2012
L.S. Media Rating ****
Cast: Eddie Marsan, Rob Brydon, Naimh Cussack, Richard McCabe, George MacKay, Tracy-Ann Oberman, Ben Owen-Jones, David Proud, Leigh Quinn, Daniel Wilde.
Perhaps it took the Best of Men to prove that nobody should ever be written off just because they received spinal injuries during the war.
The B.B.C. Television drama The Best of Men looked at the lives of the pioneering work of Dr. Ludwig Guttmann, a German Jewish refugee whose care and compassion for those he found in the spinal unit of Stoke Mandeville proved a thorn in the sides of the British doctors.
Picture from the B.B.C.
Originally published by L.S. Media. May 11th 2012
L.S. Media Rating ****
It was a time of turmoil, political instability, plots, attempted assassinations, plague and unheard of unions and William Shakespeare was there to capture it all.
American Scholar James Shapiro’s insightful look at the decade between King James III coming to the English throne after the death of the much loved Queen Elizabeth, and William Shakespeare finally retiring to his beloved Stratford-Upon- Avon, was captured over the course of three programmes titled The King and The Playwright.