Tag Archives: Mark Gatiss

Sapphire And Steel: Perfect Day. Audio Drama Review.

Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating * * * *

Cast: David Warner, Susannah Harker, Mark Gatiss, Victoria Carling, Philip McGough, Daniel Weyman, Matthew Steer, Caroline Morris.

Humanity has an unnerving ability to create havoc and pressure on itself that in the individual comes across, at best as anxiety, at worst domineering deflection, the trauma of a past event manifesting itself as control, of wanting supposedly the best for someone in your life but directing, supervising every minute detail of the event in question, that they are left on the point of mental suffocation, of supplicating their own desires for the safety of keeping quiet so as not to cause an argument.

Sapphire And Steel: Perfect Day. Audio Drama Review. full post

(503 words, estimated 2:01 mins reading time)

Sapphire And Steel: The Passenger. Audio Drama Review.

Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating * * * *

Cast: David Warner, Susannah Harker, Mark Gatiss, Hugo Myatt, Jackie Skarvellis, Neil Henry, Claire Louise Connolly.

Guilt, or the shouldering of blame and responsibility, even if by all logical deductions incapable or culpable of the crimes committed, is a disease of the soul that will keep eating away at your mind until there is nothing left to be devoured. We should accept the blame, we must feel the remorse of actions that we undertake which has caused someone pain, inflicted misery, affected their life, or even taken it, however, there comes a time when the feeling and effects of guilt, especially when innocence is forced to accept or adapt to the cognitive association to which our own inner desires may not yet have asserted themselves.

Sapphire And Steel: The Passenger. Audio Drama Review. full post

(504 words, estimated 2:01 mins reading time)

James Bond: From Russia With Love. Audio Drama Review.

Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating 7/10

Cast: Toby Stephens, Eileen Atkins, John Sessions, Tim Pigott-Smith, Mark Gatiss, John Glover, Aileen Mowat, John Standing, Janie Dee, Julian Sands, Matthew Wolf, Olga Fedori, Micky Stratford, Nathaniel Parker, Martin Jarvis.

It could be argued that the fan and the listener alike have been short changed when it comes to adaptations of Ian Fleming’s James Bond novels for the radio; whether this is down to the estate not wishing to decry from the scores of films or because it has been long thought that such books cannot be captured with just a voice rather than the dramatic sequence that film provides is for another debate, and yet there is something to be said for being able to see 007 aim his trilby at the hat stand, to see the devastation of his actions take place, rather than just match your imagination to the actor’s voice.

James Bond: From Russia With Love. Audio Drama Review. full post

(516 words, estimated 2:04 mins reading time)

The Favourite. Film Review.

Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating * * * * *

Cast: Olivia Colman, Rachel Weisz, Emma Stone, Mark Gatiss, Emma Delves, Faye Daveney, Paul Swaine, Jennifer White, LillyRose Stevens, Denise Mark, Willem Dalby, Edward Aczel, James Smith, Carolyn Saint-Pe, John Locke, Nicholas Hoult.

Favouritism is not just about what makes you stand out in the public gaze, it is the result of who fancies you, who wants you intimately, regardless of whether they declare it openly or keep it buried deep in their subconscious, a concept that is frowned upon but none the less wrapped in truth. You get asked who The Favourite is, who you want to see come out on top, and for the most part that sentiment is born out of lust, not out of cold logic.

The Favourite. Film Review. full post

(507 words, estimated 2:02 mins reading time)

The Dead Room. Television Review.

Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating * * * *

Cast: Simon Callow, Anjli Mohindra, Susan Penhaligon, Joshua Oakes-Rogers.

It was turn of the 20th Century author M.R. James who asserted that the spectres within a ghost story should always have malevolent intent if the story is to work, if it is to prick the conscious of the reader and give them the type of scare in which boundaries are crossed between the world we see and the domain of the dead.

The Dead Room. Television Review. full post

(488 words, estimated 1:57 mins reading time)

The Haunting Of M.R. James. Radio Drama Review.

Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating 9/10

Cast: Mark Gatiss, Fenella Woolgar, Ryan Whittle, Gerald McDermott, Cameron Percival, Ronny Jhutti, Michael Bertenshaw, Tony Turner, Ewan Bailey, Chris Harper, Sam Dale, Lewis Bray.

We live in a world that is rapidly losing its sense of wonder, of having everything explained and leaving the thought of fancy and intrigue hanging in the air as if somehow resembling the figure of dishonest fruit hiding knowledge from the feast of humanity.

The Haunting Of M.R. James. Radio Drama Review. full post

(547 words, estimated 2:11 mins reading time)

Christopher Robin. Film Review.

Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating 9/10

Cast: Ewan McGregor, Hayley Atwell, Bronte Carmichael, Mark Gatiss, Oliver Ford Davies, Ronke Adekoluejo, Adrian Scarborough, Roger Ashton-Griffiths, Ken Nwosu, John Dagleish, Amanda Lawrence, Katy Carmichael, Orton O’ Brien, Tristan Sturrock, Jasmine-Simone Charles, Paul Chahidi, Simon Farnaby, Mackenzie Crook, Jim Cummings, Brad Garrett, Nick Mohammed, Peter Capaldi, Sophie Okonedo, Sara Sheen, Toby Jones.

It is, with hindsight, easy to suggest that humanity in the 20th Century lost its way, that we as a collected species lost our wonder and our innocence to a new way of thinking, a rational that arguably had its genesis in the self-imposed, stiff upper lipped facade philosophy created by the Victorians and to which even now has eaten away at our ability to forget the dreams we had as children and the wondrous stories we could weave.

Christopher Robin. Film Review. full post

(556 words, estimated 2:13 mins reading time)

The Mercy. Film Review.

Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating 9/10

Cast: Colin Forth, Rachel Weisz, David Thewlis, Mark Gatiss, Andrew Buchan, Finn Elliot, Jonathan Bailey, Ken Stott, Adrian Schiller, Sam Hoare, Kit Conner, Eleanor Stagg, Simon McBurney.

There is a fine line between the hopeless romantic adventurer and the lie told in which to preserve the memory of what you set out to achieve; it is a line so thin that you cannot but help pity and remorse for those left behind to pick up the pieces of the notion and want of derring-do and you cannot help but feel the blur of admiration that strikes home, the sense of forlorn hope that cannot but be helped be seen as glorious failure and which makes the most interesting of stories.

The Mercy. Film Review. full post

(507 words, estimated 2:02 mins reading time)

Doctor Who: Twice Upon A Time. Television Review.

Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating 9/10

Cast: Peter Capaldi, David Bradley, Mark Gatiss, Pearl Mackie, Lily Travers, Jared Garfield, Toby Whithouse, Jenna Coleman, Jodie Whittaker, Matt Lucas, Nikki Amuka-Bird.

How many regenerations have you lived through? It could be a question in which the critics decry as nostalgic, one that avoids a sense of action or purpose to the story line, the conclusion to a life is the only thing worthy as a new set of eyes to see the universe with fresh hope and a new catch phrase. To do this though misses the point, it shows that arguably you might not have been paying attention, or consumed with eager optimism for the fresh face to appear at the end.

Doctor Who: Twice Upon A Time. Television Review. full post

(627 words, estimated 2:30 mins reading time)

Gunpowder. Television Review.

Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating * * * * *

Cast: Kit Harington, Peter Mullan, Liv Tyler, Mark Gatiss, Shaun Dooley, Tom Cullen, Edward Holcroft, Robert Emms, Derek Riddell, Pedro Casablanc, David Bamber, Daniel West, Luke Neal, Luke Broughton, Philip Hill-Pearson, Richard Glover, Hugh Alexander, Simon Kunz, Fergus O’ Donnell,  Thom Ashley, Sian Webber, Kate Wood,  Sean Rigby, Beatrice Comins, Martin Lindley, Kevin Eldon, Robert Gwylim.

Gunpowder. Television Review. full post

(510 words, estimated 2:02 mins reading time)