Tag Archives: Television review

Ripper Street, The Good Of This City. Episode Four, Television Review. B.B.C. Television.

Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating * * * *

Cast: Mathew Macfadyen, Jerome Flynn, Adam Rothenberg, Emma Rigby, Jonathon Hobbs, Paul McGann, Anton Lesser, MyAnna Burling, Charlene McKenna, David Wilmot, Amanda Hale.

The fourth episode of the gripping Ripper Street, the evocative The Good of This City, had more than a nod to the Timberlake Wertenbaker play Our Country’s Good. Whereas though no one was being transported halfway around the world to a penal colony that would be the death of most of those that originally were sent there, there was still the utter displeasure in seeing the locals of Whitechapel being compulsory evicted from their homes in the name of progress.

Ripper Street, The Good Of This City. Episode Four, Television Review. B.B.C. Television. full post

(404 words, estimated 1:37 mins reading time)

Ripper Street, The King Came Calling. Episode Three, Television Review. B.B.C. Television.

Picture from B.B.C. Television.

Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating * * * * *

Cast: Matthew Macfadyen, Jerome Flynn, Adam Rothenberg, Patrick Baladi, Amanda Hale, Jonathon Barnwell.

 

Whitechapel’s one and half square miles of intrigue, disorder and death goes hand in hand with its seemingly rich neighbourhood of the city of London, even in the late Victorian era of the 1880s. In the third episode of Ripper Street, The King Came Calling, the mixture of misplaced and intolerable idolism, the flowering shoots of social reform and murder are all presented in what is in effect the best part of the series so far.

Ripper Street, The King Came Calling. Episode Three, Television Review. B.B.C. Television. full post

(360 words, 1 image, estimated 1:26 mins reading time)

Spies Of Warsaw, Television Review. B.B.C. Television.

Picture from B.B.C.

Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating * * * *

Cast: David Tennant, Janet Montgomery, Marcin Dorocinski, Linda Bassett, Piotr Baumann, Nicholas Blane, Kenneth Collard, Dan Fredenburgh, Adam Godley, Burn Gorman, Ellie Haddington, Julian Harries, Ann Eleonara Jorgensen, Radoslaw Kaim, Grzegorz Kowalczyk, Anton Lesser, Richard Lintern, Tuppence Middleton.

Audiences wait an eternity for television drama to make its way back to the Second World War espionage era and then two perfectly good ones come along in a matter of weeks. The second of these diverted away from the thrilling William Boyd penned Restless with the stunning Hayley Atwell as the heroine and focused on the months before the invasion of Poland in Spies of Warsaw with another television favourite, David Tennant, in the lead role.

Spies Of Warsaw, Television Review. B.B.C. Television. full post

(497 words, 1 image, estimated 1:59 mins reading time)

Ripper Street, Episode Two. Television Review. B.B.C. Television.

Picture from B.B.C. Television.

Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating * * * *

Cast: Matthew Macfadyen, Jerome Flynn, Adam Rothenberg, MyAnna Buring, Charlene McKenna, Amanda Hale, Jonathon Barnwell, David Wilmot, Michael Smiley, Hugh O’ Conor, Giacomo Mancini, Joe Gilgun.

 

When it comes to British crime drama, you don’t get much better than basing the story on real events or authentic people and by placing in it in the sometimes squalid and mean streets of late Victorian era Whitchapel, it surely should be a ratings winner. Ripper Street continues the superb start it made in episode one and brings the claustrophobic, disease ridden and above the law contempt even closer to home in the second episode, In My Protection.

Ripper Street, Episode Two. Television Review. B.B.C. Television. full post

(364 words, 1 image, estimated 1:27 mins reading time)

Frankie Howerd: The Lost Tapes. Channel 4. Television Review.

Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating * * * *

When Frankie Howerd died in April 1992, the British public lost one of its dearest television and stage stars. Along with Tony Hancock, Sid James, Peter Cook and Dudley Moore, Frankie Howerd was a real superstar of his age and in three separate eras he managed to woo a different generation and grab them by both their funny bones.

Frankie Howerd: The Lost Tapes. Channel 4. Television Review. full post

(483 words, 1 image, estimated 1:56 mins reading time)

Ripper Street, Episode One, Television Review. B.B.C. Television.

Picture from B.B.C. Television.

Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating * * * *

Cast: Matthew Macfadyen, Jerome Flynn, Adam Rothenberg, Myanna Buring, Charlene McKenna, Jonathon Barnwell, David Wilmot, Ian Bannon, David Dawson.

London’s Whitechapel district is never far from a source of inspiration when it comes to gruesome tales, especially when it comes to its down at heel and salubrious past. Things may have improved in the 130 years since Jack the Ripper stalked its alleyways but in the 1880’s the police and the public were under siege by evil and danger that masqueraded itself as decency. The latest B.B.C. television series to look at the way Victorian detectives dealt with the disorder and death of the times is the tremendous Ripper Street.

Ripper Street, Episode One, Television Review. B.B.C. Television. full post

(402 words, 1 image, estimated 1:36 mins reading time)

Restless (Part Two), Television Review. B.B.C. Television.

Michelle Dockery as Ruth Gilmartin. Picture courtesy of B.B.C.

Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating * * * *

Cast: Hayley Atwell, Rufus Sewell, Michelle Dockery, Charlotte Rampling, Michael Gambon, Thekla Reuten, Adrian Scarborough, Bertie Carvel, Anthony Calf.

The second segment of William Boyd’s fantastic spy tale, Restless, continued the excellent and riveting start that would have had viewers gripped in part one. With the net beginning to close in Eva Delectorskaya and her daughter Ruth, the pair began to set up Eva’s old boss and lover in a great case of double bluff.

Restless (Part Two), Television Review. B.B.C. Television. full post

(362 words, 1 image, estimated 1:27 mins reading time)

Restless (Part One), B.B.C. Television. Television Review.

Hayley Atwell as Eva Delectorskaya. Picture from the B.B.C.

Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating * * * *

Cast: Hayley Atwell, Rufus Sewell, Michelle Dockery, Charlotte Rampling, Michael Gambon, Thekla Reuten, Adrian Scarborough, Bertie Carvel, Anthony Calf.

In recent years there have been some excellent modern stories which add more light onto the roles of women during World War Two, especially in the world of espionage, one of the greats is Paul Verhoeven’s Dutch masterpiece, Black Book. The B.B.C. has now aired its equivalent in the outstanding first part of Restless starring Hayley Atwell, Michelle Dockery and Charlotte Rampling.

Restless (Part One), B.B.C. Television. Television Review. full post

(401 words, 1 image, estimated 1:36 mins reading time)

The Girl, Television Review. B.B.C. Television.

Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating * * * *

Cast: Toby Jones, Sienna Miller, Penelope Wilton, Imelda Staunton, Sean Cameron Michael, Candice D’Arcy, Patrick Lyster, Kate Tilley, Adrian Galley, Leon Clingham, Angelina Ingpen, Louis Joubert, Aubrey Shelton, Carel Nel.

 

Alfred Hitchcock’s fascination with Tippi Hedren, the young blonde woman who made a remarkable transformation from fashion model to actor, is the premise of the biopic The Girl.

The Girl, Television Review. B.B.C. Television. full post

(392 words, 1 image, estimated 1:34 mins reading time)

Doctor Who, The Snowmen. B.B.C. Television. Christmas 2012. Television Review.

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.

Doctor Who, The Snowmen. B.B.C. Television. Christmas 2012. Television Review. full post

(464 words, 1 image, estimated 1:51 mins reading time)