Tag Archives: Michael Maloney

The Lovecraft Investigations: The Shadow Over Innsmouth. Audio Drama Review.

Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating 8.5/10

Cast: Barnaby Kay, Jana Carpenter, Kyle Soller, Steven Mackintosh, Mark Bazeley, Samuel Barnett, Nicola Walker, Karla Crome, Jennifer Armour, Ferdinand Kingsley, David Calder, Walles Hamonde, Michael Maloney, Phoebe Fox.

One of the most interesting and intense dramas to have found its way to the listener’s appreciation of late is the adaption of H.P. Lovecraft’s dark and frequently disturbing tales that were set in and around his native New England. Julian Simpson’s superb reading and amendments to bring it to a more British viewpoint and understanding of how such a sense of enormity and mystery could begin and take hold in the country.

The Lovecraft Investigations: The Shadow Over Innsmouth. Audio Drama Review. full post

(521 words, estimated 2:05 mins reading time)

Doctor Who: Once And Future – Two’s Company. Big Finish Audio Drama Review.

Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating 8.5/10

Cast: Colin Baker, Camille Coduri, Michael Maloney, Christopher Naylor, Michelle Ryan, Tim Treloar.

The Time War rages, and the Doctor is unable to offer much help; and for once it is because he is trying desperately to help himself in solving perhaps one of the greatest threats to all his existence ever.

Degeneration is the key, and whilst the Doctor has felt its effects as the process, he perhaps has not gleaned the full problem that awaits, and who finer to paint the picture than the recent addition to the Whoniverse than that of the fearsome Timelord, The Eleven.

Doctor Who: Once And Future – Two’s Company. Big Finish Audio Drama Review. full post

(375 words, estimated 1:30 mins reading time)

Dalgliesh: A Certain Justice. Television Review.

Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating 8.5/10

Cast: Bertie Carvel, Carlyss Peer, Michael Culkin, Sara Stewart, Michael Maloney, Silas Carson, Yaseen Aroussi, Daisy Waterhouse, Barbara Marten, David Pearse, Alistair Brammer, Michael Amariah, Charlotte McCurry, Alex Hope, David Bamber, Liz Crowther, Marsha Miller.

The trouble with the law is that it does not take into consideration the actions of those who implement it.

Justice not only comes with a price, and as the statue insists, is blind, but if wielded in the wrong hands can be a weapon more potent than that in which it is in place to discourage, to outlaw.

Dalgliesh: A Certain Justice. Television Review. full post

(494 words, estimated 1:59 mins reading time)

Magpie Murders. Television Series Review.

Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating 9/10

Cast: Lesley Manville, Tim McMullan, Conleth Hill, Matthew Beard, Alexandros Logothetis, Michael Maloney, Daniel Mays, Claire Rushbrook, Ian Lloyd Anderson, Karen Westwood, Jude Hill, Harry Lawtey, Joel Birkett, Pippa Haywood, Nia Deacon, Dorothy Atkinson, Chu Omambala, Karl Collins, Lorcan Cranitch, Sanjeev Kohli, Sutara Gayle, Danielle Ryan, David Herlihy, Nathan Clarke, Paul Tylak, Adam Ewan, San Shella, Azeem Alahi, Daniel Costello, Phina Oruche, Killian Donnelly, James Flynn, Kate Gilmore.

Magpie Murders. Television Series Review. full post

(536 words, estimated 2:09 mins reading time)

The Trial Of Christine Keeler. Television Review.

Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating 9/10

Cast: Sophie Cookson, James Norton, Ellie Bamber, Emilia Fox, Ben Miles, Sam Troughton, Anthony Welsh, Jack Greenlees, Chloe Harris, Rosalind Halstead, Anton Lesser, Nathan Stewart-Jarrett, Sam Crane, Amanda Drew, Michael Maloney, Charlene Boyd, Aiden McCardle, Tim McInnerny, Danny Webb, Paul Ryan, Visar Vishka, Peter Davison, Alex Macqueen, Neil Morrisey, Danny Webb.

The Trial Of Christine Keeler. Television Review. full post

(676 words, estimated 2:42 mins reading time)

Midsomer Murders: The Lions Of Causton. Television Review.

Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating * * * *

Cast: Neil Dudgeon, Nick Hendrix, Fiona Dolman, Annette Badland, Tamzin Outhwaite, Aaron Cobham, Don Gilet, Nicholas Goh, Michael Maloney, Shereen Martin, Julian Lewis Jones, Douggie McMeekin, Carlyss Peer, Richard Rankin, Isabel Shaw, Marcia Warren.

Midsomer Murders: The Lions Of Causton. Television Review. full post

(438 words, estimated 1:45 mins reading time)

Paranoid, Television Review.

Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating * * *

Cast: Robert Glenister, Indira Varma, Dino Fetscher, Neil Stuke, Christiane Paul, Lesley Sharp, Dominik Tiefenthaler, Michael Maloney, Anjli Mohindra, Kevin Doyle, Jonathan Ojinnaka, William Flanagan, John Duttine, William Ash, Daniel Drewes, Polly Walker, Richard Wheeldon, Jason Done, Danny Hutson.

When taking on a big television production, one with a tale that should be enormous and potentially gripping beyond anything else on television in a single year, it often helps the series realise its own levels of genius by not overpowering it with too many subplots and characters to whom the story would not miss one single iota. Some of the greatest mini-series ever have relied solely on the narrow focus, on the detail and not the illusion and it is unfortunately a piece of television advice forgotten largely in the creation of Paranoid.

Paranoid, Television Review. full post

(391 words, estimated 1:34 mins reading time)

River, Television Review.

Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating * * * * *

Cast: Stellan Skarsgård, Nicola Walker, Lesley Manville, Eddie Marsan, Adeel Akhtar, Owen Teale, Georgina Rich, Michael Maloney, Turlough Convery, Sorcha Cusack, Jim Norton, Steve Nicolson, Josef Altin, Peter Bankole, Pippa Bennett-Warner, Lydia Leonard, Franz Drameh, Shannon Tarbet, Steve Edwin, Souleiman Bock, Andrew Byron, Andrew Byron, Ali Craig.

The fine line between genius and insanity is never truly explored on television unless it is in the form of a great detective and for those there are too few to whom the reason for their own peculiarities are ever given credence or perhaps respect.

River, Television Review. full post

(521 words, estimated 2:05 mins reading time)

Charlotte Pollard, The Viyran Solution. Audio Drama Review, Big Finish.

Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating * * * *

Cast: India Fisher, Michael Maloney, James Joyce, Nicholas Briggs, Louise Bradley, Nadia Kamil.

The solution is always part of the problem it seems. No matter how grand the answer, another dilemma will pop up in its place. Just as The Doctor faced being able to eradicate the Daleks from all time and space by placing two wires together, the quandary appeared that he would be as evil as them for not letting nature take its course. The solution is never the utter final truth. For the Viyrans and Charley Pollard, the solution is even more complex and for Charlotte Pollard the stakes have never been higher.

Charlotte Pollard, The Viyran Solution. Audio Drama Review, Big Finish. full post

(377 words, estimated 1:30 mins reading time)

Charlotte Pollard, The Fall of the House of Pollard. Audio Drama Review, Big Finish.

Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating * * * *

Cast: India Fisher, Anneka Wills, Terence Hardiman, Charlie Norfolk, David Dobson, Michael Maloney.

 

The intrepid travellers in the life of Charley Pollard have long been teased over the family history of the Edwardian Adventuress. There have been smatterings, the odd peek and the rare smidgen of information of how the young Charlotte Pollard grew to be the woman she has most definitely become and how it could bring about The Fall of the House of Pollard.

Charlotte Pollard, The Fall of the House of Pollard. Audio Drama Review, Big Finish. full post

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