Reviews

I was very harsh on this series when it started but I have come to rather love it, despite some ropey characterisation & the merging of CGI & models still strikes me as odd. I'm getting used to it, though.

That said, I now watch it every day on TV catching up & I see the frenetic pace has been modified somewhat, concentrating on one situation at a time,

The new versions of the Thunderbirds are superb & using camera tricks like the zoom to make them more realistic is appreciated. Main characters are much improved, some humour has crept in & Lady Penelope & Parker the great double-act they used to be.

Pity that Kayo still has so little to do.

In summary I guess I was too stuck in the mindset of the young boy who saw the original series. This is a fine continuation.

Rather than delete the original comment & pretend I was prescient, I leave the original below.

THUNDERBIRDS ARE GO, what a disappointment. While I liked the up- dates on the machines and an active role for Kayo, the character CGI was absolutely appalling. Their decision to deliberately make the characters skin look plasticky is ridiculous and the movement is primitive beyond belief. The NEW CAPTAIN SCARLET reboot was miles better and that was using 2005 technology.

The next problem was stuffing so many missions into the hour, presumably on the assumption that kids today suffer from attention deficit disorder. Thus no tension whatsoever was generated in any of the missions whereas the original concentrated on one disaster at a time and twisted the tension almost to screaming point.

Finally, the disappearance of Jeff Tracy. I thought at first they were suggesting he had died (a nod to reality and the passing of time) but it soon became clear that The Hood had caused him to disappear. So any chance that the Tracy boys WON'T find him at some point? Not exactly holding my breath on that plot twist.

This is a sad new wrinkle because the original showed that a father could run a family with grace and wisdom. Now his absence seems a nod to so many of the young viewers being from broken families with absent fathers. In my opinion, a step too far in entirely the wrong direction.

It says something that the best moments of the entire hour were the repeats of the original Jeff Tracy voice saying "5, 4, 3, 2, 1"

After the razzmatazz of the launch it seems ITV is burying future episodes at 8am on Saturday mornings. Maybe it will give the grownups an hour of peace on a Saturday morning which is about the best you can say for this spectacular misfire.

WARNING: DON'T read this review if you have not seen Luc Besson's LUCY and still want to without preconceptions.

I saw LUCY, directed by Luc Besson, last night. I saw it so now you don't need to. It's not just that it's a bad film, it's that if you've seen the trailer, you've pretty much seen the film. On top of that Besson wants to have his auteur cake and mange it.

He sticks in vaguely appropriate stock footage when hammering home some point or other as though we can't understand his great artistic vision and winds up making a high-budget philosophy/film studies student graduation film.

At the other extreme he is so in thrall to lazy American action tropes ie huge gun fights and gigantically destructive car chases it comes across like a chic Parisien trying to pass himself off as an American in Paris. "Ca va, baby? Je suis "Hank" Besson".

These Yank tropes fill in all the bits between the French philosophising and are polyfilla in place of a solid plot. When in doubt have lots of bullets flying around.

Honestly, you could tell the whole story in 15 minutes but Besson spends the first 15 minutes just setting up the delivery of a briefcase!

As for Morgan Freeman, he's just there to be the "voice of god as infodump" again and has absolutely nothing to do with the outcome of the plot. He just looks on in awe as Scarlett Johansson becomes God, basically. Presumably, while he spent weeks looking at a ping pong ball on a stick, he was actually thinking about lunch in the same way that Johansson thinks showing intelligence lies in not looking people in the face.

Most seriously, he delivers the "people use only 10% of their brain" premise as though it's a real thing while playing the world's expert on evolution. No, that's a myth. We use all our brains all the time. I suspect using 100% might be having an epileptic fit but, however it is, the 10% brain trope is appallingly bad science. If you imagine Freeman as a Creationist seriously arguing the world is 6000 years old as cutting-edge science you'd get a whiff of how bad this pseudoscience is.

All I can say in its favour is that Johannsson is mesmerising, as always, and she does at least take it seriously. It looks good on the SFX side and is tres chic, as you'd expect from Besson.

But, dear God, Besson, get a real writer in. Your self-penned juvenile comic book story sensibility just isn't cutting it in a world that has people like Chris Nolan who did your finale in INTERSTELLAR and did it better. Actually so did Stanley Kubrick, in 2001.

Finally, the very hazy third series clicks into focus and we get a great episode. It turns out to be largely a bottle episode and is all the best for it, as it highlights the strengths of the main characters in a battle of wits with the brilliantly insane Laura Haddock (Lady Vera Montacute) and her psychopathic husband Charles Edwards (Lord Montacute) The latter pair seemed to force the regular cast to fight their acting corners as the guest stars skillfully let their characters' mask of upper class entitlement slip by degrees to reveal the decadence and self-loathing beneath. Meanwhile Reid, Drake and Jackson got chances to show their skills as detectives rather than walking relationship disasters. The "return" of the brutal Drake of the first two series was particularly clever. Even less featured characters like Sgt Atherton (David Wilmot) and PC Grace (Josh O'Connor) and Daniel Kendrick as the slimy Tom Denton had great character moments proving that RIPPER STREET is best as an ensemble piece based on its founding principles of a Victorian police procedural. Lately it seems to have tried to cram too many characters into its expanded running time and has become flabby and self-indulgent. Even, dare I say it, maudlin and over-sentimental. In other words, you don't need to hold our attention with train crashes every week. Now, can we have a return to the wonderfully florid faux-Victorian dialogue of the first two series? What we have now is more Victorian-lite but Hollywood- friendly Dick Van Dyke stuff.

Another duff episode from Steve Thompson who penned the two worst episodes in modern WHO i.e. "Curse of the Black Spot" and "Journey to the Center of the TARDIS". This time his mentor stepped in to add some quality in an (I assume) rewritten-by-Moffat offering but there was nothing new or exciting here, It was WHO designed by committee, bland, unexciting and already recycling modern WHO tropes. The last two of their species? That's in HIDE Season 7, Episode 10. Richest woman in the Universe? Zoe Wanamaker as Cassandra in Season 2, Episode 1 "New Earth". The rest of it was a dull retread of OCEAN'S 11. The director, Douglas Mackinnon, tried his best to hide the paucity and inertia of the material with lots of 60s wipes and jumps from the great caper movies of that period but it was mostly tired talking heads explaining the simple plot over and over again with no great sense of urgency or peril. Truly, you can't polish an info-dump.

Beware, Sherlock fans, if you didn't see last night's episode. Spoilers be here!

"SHERLOCK: The Sign of Three" then. What a train wreck. It ill behooves a series, written by two of the cleverest writers in the UK about two of the cleverest brothers ever plus their medical chum, to make schoolboy errors in plotting and pacing. (We know Mark Gatiss IS Mycroft so Steven Moffat must be Sherlock. Does that make Steve Thompson Watson?) Allow me to do a sort of reverse-Watson deconstruction of last night.

I doubt if even Nigel Bruce's bufferish Watson would have been as baffled for as long as Sherlock was but the problems started with Lestrade's subplot. First of all, Chekhov's famous dictum about a gun in act one. If you show brilliant gang getting away with it at the beginning, justice must come at the END. Just hinting that Lestrade's trap had finally worked as he runs to be with Sherlock is weak and confused. Then the leaving itself. Lestrade is a driven copper, a real one in the story. He would never leave the "collar" in his assistant's hands for so little reason. It was a cute gag but the gag was seen coming a mile off, like a weak American sit-com sting.

Then there was the interminable drunk section. First of all, why only two of them? They have enough male friends, especially from John's side, to go on a Stag. Why no Lestrade especially after last week's unexpected big hug? I appreciate we now have two big film stars headlining a series, their fame having grown since the series started. The drunk acting was, consequently, brilliant. A master-class. Very funny. Too LONG. Too self-indulgent. Gattis and Moffat. Kill your babies. This was flabby.

It also padded out a childishly simple plot. Oh my. Who might be the target in a room of wedding guests? If it isn't Holmes and Watson, might it be the battle-scarred soldier with his campaign ribbons whom no-one expected to show up but who gets "more death-threats than even you, Holmes?" Given part of the plot was the almost murder of ANOTHER soldier? Could it possibly be him? Given that, the drunk scene looks like smoke and mirrors to pad the mystery out by clouding Sherlock's intellect.

Finally, the humanisation of Holmes. Don't go there! The love was so palpable at the end I expected the Famous Four (Holmes, Mr. and Mrs Watson and the Watson baby (aaawwwwww) to laugh off the previous days of terror and freeze-frame like POLICE SQUAD.

There was hardly enough plot here for sixty minutes let alone ninety and now we really must address the Elephant in the Room. (See what I did there?)

Benedict Cumberbatch's old sparring partner, Jonny Lee Miller, is playing Sherlock in the American series ELEMENTARY. In that series, what Sherlock is and does has consequences. His Lestrade has suffered for his alliance with a high-functioning sociopath. Another supporting character was shot saving Sherlock and still can't forgive him as his hand is paralysed. His Watson is pulling away from him, growing both as a woman and as a detective.

My point is, Gatiss and Moffat, is that you are acting like Mycroft and Sherlock. You love the puzzles but your grasp of human motivation seems tenuous at best. You go for the easy laugh and expect your talented stars to hold the screen while you work out what to do next. Your brilliant creation is in danger of becoming a Fabergé Egg, scintillating on the surface but empty inside. Time to put Sherlock back into that cold and frightening space that is his and his alone. The operative word is "alone". Time to get serious about your writing.

PS: Yes, I'm aware that the third writer was Steve Thompson, responsible for two of the worst DOCTOR WHO episodes of the modern era but this series has your names above his. You are responsible. Fix it.

Not since the golden era of THE GOOD OLD DAYS (a BBC variety show purporting to be set in a Victorian music hall) and the seemingly endless and convoluted vocabulary of its master of ceremonies, Leonard Sachs, has there been such a shameless wallowing in the obscure and fascinating sub-pathways of Victorian slang, in this case gay and sexual.

At times I was sure the writer was sitting with a dictionary opened to the most obscure and forgotten of terms for homosexuals and various sexual practices, striking out any that were still in common usage. Thus I heard "manticore" again and "mary-anne" and "rantipole" which shows just how impoverished our vocabulary has become recently. Why, there was even "gamahuching", a term I haven't heard since delving into a reprint of "The Pearl, A Magazine of Facetiae and Voluptuous Reading" published in 1879 which I was perusing purely for research purposes (of course).

Actually it's extremely difficult not to slip into this style of writing after an episode of RIPPER STREET. The love of language goes hand in hand with a subversive political anger that powers every episode. All the characters have a curlicued style of speaking that comes straight from Victorian novels. Why, even a lowly GPO telegraph boy accessed a deep well of sexual slang in order to get arrested that made me think he had at some time been one of the panthers Oscar Wilde had feasted with and who had gained more from the encounter than a mere half-a-crown.

What distinguished this episode however was not just the immense erudition of the slang or the sensitive exploration of the Victorian gay underworld. It was the clever unfolding of a plot that exactly mirrors our current relationship with our broken and crooked financial institutions. People were ruined and many were murdered to keep a bank from crashing and every trick in the book from blackmail to extreme violence was used to save the reputations of the monsters at the top of the social ladder.

However, for all its wonderful attention to detail (everyone looks dirty!) and its historical accuracy (some GPO telegraph boys WERE notorious as rent boys on the side) there is a telling moment that tells you that RIPPER STREET is, in the final analysis, fiction.

In the end, the banker is punished.

That tips RIPPER STREET over from fiction to fantasy.

Fans of MARVEL'S AGENTS OF S.H.I.E.L.D. won't be disappointed with this week's third episode. Aside from some nifty "playing around with gravity" sfx you're going to see Agent Coulson get SERIOUSLY bad-ass in a way you might never have suspected from the quiet voice and the twinkly smile.

More and more this series seems to be moving in on THE MAN FROM U.N.C.L.E.'s format, with Skye as a permanent "member of the public" draftee instead of U.N.C.L.E.'s guest star draftee gimmick.

Plus more hints about Coulson's death and resurrection. For some reason Coulson seems to be missing his muscle memory. Now why might that be, I wonder?

For those of you in the UK waiting to see MARVEL'S AGENTS OF S.H.I.E.L.D. on Friday, you can relax. I've seen the pilot episode and it is fabulous. In fact, I don't think I've seen a more confident and fully-formed first episode since, possibly, BUFFY and ANGEL. The Whedon DNA is all over it. It references AVENGERS ASSEMBLE and IRON MAN 3 and even features J.August Richards who played Gunn in ANGEL. It is clever, witty, has some laugh out loud moments and just the right amount of pathos (Richards' speech about being ground down by the recession is so now it hurts). All through I was thinking this is what TORCHWOOD was trying to be but never was. You'll see the parallels very easily but S.H.I.E.L.D. is the real deal. Hallelujah!

I watched RIPD last night and, even as I watched and knew it wasn't that good, I was also aware that there was a nice little idea in there struggling to get out.

Mostly it felt and looked like a low-budget rip-off of MEN IN BLACK and GHOSTBUSTERS so, allied with the very cheap-looking "deadie" creatures (OK, a little BEETLEJUICE DNA in there as well) it was as though I'd fallen through a time-warp and was back in the 80s.

Yet there's Ryan Reynolds, Jeff Bridges, Mary-Louise Parker and Kevin Bacon taking it relatively seriously. Were they seeing a different film, in much the same way people see a supermodel and an old Chinese man when they look at Bridges and Reynolds in this one?

A curiosity, then, in which you can indulge nostalgic love for two (maybe two and a half) much better films and one which doesn't outstay its welcome at about 83 minutes. Worth it for Jeff Bridges channelling Wild Bill Hickock (or less charitably, Rooster Cogburn) mostly. Dead in the water otherwise.

So what is about THE LONE RANGER that is so terrible? Why is this fun little movie vilified as worse than GREEN LANTERN, a bigger disaster than JOHN CARTER? Actually nothing.

At 140 minutes it's a little long for modern tastes but, on the other hand, it is trying to evoke a bye-gone era. Not the actual Wild West but the cooler 1950s when Clayton Moore and Jay Silverheels were the biggest double-act on black and white television.

It was a more innocent, leisurely time where no-one asked why a white man was hanging out with "an injun" and he wasn't asked by everyone he meets "what's with the mask?" Yes, that's a running gag in THIS film because we're now post-post-modern, y'see, and Americans have discovered irony.

Even so it does not shrink from depicting the racism and violence directed against the Native Americans in the real West and the fate of two entire tribes is depicted with genuine pity.

Like most such retreads it's an origin story which makes a lot of sense because I'm pretty sure we never asked for or needed one on a 30 minute kid's programme, so we never knew how this team-up came to be. Everything from the mask to the silver bullets is neatly explained and actually links to the main plot. What more can you ask?

Armin Hammer is a handsome, charming yet believable good guy and Johnny Depp manages to keep his face deadpan for a whole film and is all the better for it. It's a knowing film which still manages to have a lot of love for the genre it's (very gently) ribbing.

It's from the producers of PIRATES OF THE CARIBBEAN and that's how you should think of it. It mixes a classic form with a modern taste for the occult and if you call it PIRATES OF THE WILD WEST you're not far off the mark.

It's so spot-on it even gets the William Tell Overture into the climax and still makes it thrilling rather than extremely silly. Go and see it but only when you have loads of spare time and are in a mellow laid- back, no-hurry kind of mood. You won't be disappointed.

DR.WHO REVIEW: (careful if you haven't seen it yet as here be spoilers).

At last, after a very poor series of episodes DR.WHO slid into the safe harbour of a Mark Gatiss story and all was well again. Last night's THE CRIMSON HORROR brought all of Gatiss' trademark obsessions of body horror, steampunk and comic book plotting to the fore and it was a delight from start to almost finish. I'll get to the almost in a moment.

Bravely, The Doctor was off screen for the first 10 minutes leaving Madame Vastra, Strax and Jenny to carry the episode and very well they did. With some deeper character work there's a spin-off series there. Diana Rigg was utterly believable as Mrs Gillyflower (even with rubber monster attached) but Rachel Stirling stole it as her blind(ed) daughter, Ada.

New WHO always works in Victorian milieu and this played with genuine tropes such as End of Days religiosity and muscular Christianity (the "supermodel" guards) as well as Utopian work schemes such as the factory/village complex extrapolated from real model communities like Port Sunlight, Bourneville or even Trowse near Norwich.

Writers still having a problem with Clara though. She seems too knowing to ever be in much danger. Best image of the episode though did actually involve her, the sheer Victorian horror of being preserved under glass. Brilliant! Now to the almost. The awful last few minutes.

Clara goes home and the kids have been trawling the internet for images of her time-travelling, like you do. With all the penny dreadful plotting of the episode (many different aliens, symbionts, a Wax Museum Doctor, steam powered missiles) I just couldn't swallow that these kids would use the internet for STUDY! Searching for historical pictures just in case their nanny was there and then blackmailing Clara to get on the time machine. Just utterly unbelievable! Kids in the TARDIS? Just SO wrong. Please don't turn DR.WHO into SPYKIDS on a CBBC budget.

Saw IRON MAN 3 last night and it was superb. It was the sequel IRON MAN 2 should have been but wasn't and the perfect extrapolation of life after AVENGERS ASSEMBLE. The set pieces are suitably awesome and the acting performances are uniformly excellent from the leads right down to the tiniest bit part (there's a jewel of a cameo from a guard that upstages even Downey's comic timing). The script gets the balance between the epic and the personal just right and Sir Ben delivers two performance for the price of one and both are genius (can't say more - spoilers!). Mr Downey Jr also manages to show even more of the complexity of Tony Stark. Just when you think there's no more to be fracked out of that particular mine, he goes deeper. The writer set out to deliver a fun story and that's exactly what it is. It draws you in from the first moments and doesn't let go. What more could you possibly want?

Last ever episode of BEING HUMAN last night and it was a stonker. That's a Brit term for a huge bombardment (from the First World War, IMDb spell-checker, but now it means it was a genius episode).

Beautifully written and acted, this series just got better and better, surviving even the total replacement of its cast with an even better cast. How many times does that happen? Not a perfect ending but satisfying, depending on which version of reality you prefer. Don't read on if you don't want spoilers but I applauded the final ambiguity even though I wanted to believe that BEING HUMAN finally delivered on its inherent promise.

That said, BEING HUMAN was never afraid to step into the melodrama ring with the big American champions like SUPERNATURAL and swing way above its weight with a fraction of their budgets. It did it with wit and charm and a genuine love of its characters and was never afraid to put its characters through hell to pull out those brilliant comic moments.

Last night it was the return of the Potter's Wheel at just the right moment. I can't explain that any further. You have to see it to appreciate the genius of it.

Can't wait to see what Toby Whithouse (creator, writer and, as it turns out, a bloody good actor) gives us next!

Just saw the extended version of GREEN LANTERN. It didn't make it a masterpiece but it made it a much better film. What was added? A whole section at the beginning that makes you care about the three lead characters because you see them when they were kids. In turn, this helps you understand the rivalry between Hal and Hector as adults.

There is also a much better relationship exposition with Hal Jordan's father before he dies. Seeing so much more of the father's horrific death explains so much better why Hal Jordan feels he isn't as fearless as he needs to be to become the Green Lantern he's expected to be.

Other scenes benefit from slightly longer takes especially the GL Corps sections and Hal's training scene.

Cutting these scenes to make the film a more cinema-friendly length, the distributors buggered up the film. The lesson? Even in fantasy you have to CARE ABOUT THE CHARACTERS before you get to the special effects! I think I would have quite happily sat through 123 minutes rather than 114 if the film had been allowed to breathe a little. Try the extended version. You might like it.