crime
DVD: CrimsonFriday, 14 April 2017
After watching the grim Crimson, it’s impossible not to feel grubby and perplexed. Grubby, as this is a catering-size example of squalid exploitation cinema. Perplexed, as its plot is senseless, the charisma-free acting so inept that the cast may as... Read more... |
The Hatton Garden Job review - extraordinarily dullTuesday, 11 April 2017
There have been plenty of films glamourising diamond geezers who live on the wrong side of the law. Some of them don’t even star Danny Dyer. In the history of British film, rhyming slang plus dodgy morals equals box office. Perhaps there is even a... Read more... |
Vera, Series 7, review - 'brilliant Blethyn stuck in bog-standard drama'Monday, 10 April 2017
Sunshine, sex and oodles of style: Vera (ITV) has no truck with any of them and is therefore unusual among Sunday evening dramas. There’s no escaping its mission to prove it’s grimy up north.The Blanket Mire, the fourth and final mystery of this... Read more... |
Free Fire review - 'entertaining massacre with superb cast'Friday, 31 March 2017
Ben Wheatley’s sixth film in a prolific, unpredictable career is a shoot-‘em-up in the most literal sense. Setting a superb international cast led by Brie Larson and Cillian Murphy down in a big, grim warehouse, he lets them blast bits off each... Read more... |
Line of Duty, Series 4 review – 'the tension rocketed to brain-jangling red alert'Monday, 27 March 2017
Now promoted to the exhilarating landscapes of BBC One as a reward for previous good behaviour, Line of Duty set off at a scorching pace into the murky shadowland where crime, punishment, ambition and corruption mingle treacherously. Stretching back... Read more... |
Sunday Book: Yrsa Sigurdardóttir - The LegacySunday, 19 March 2017
Anyone who's followed Yrsa's earlier novels, many of them featuring down-to-earth attorney Thora Gudmundsdóttir as heroine, will value her superb evocation of very distinct and haunting parts of Iceland - the Snæfellsnes Peninsula, Heimaey island,... Read more... |
Midnight Sun, Sky AtlanticThursday, 16 March 2017
You can just hear Måns Mårlind and Björn Stein, the clever-sick Swedes behind Midnight Sun, cackling as they cooked up the pre-title sequence to the first episode of their new series. A grizzled man in a grey suit wakes up to find himself strapped... Read more... |
Big Little Lies, Sky AtlanticTuesday, 14 March 2017
It happened in Monterey, but we’re not entirely sure what yet. Adapted from the novel by Australian writer Liane Moriarty, with the action transplanted from a small town in Oz to the splendid oceanside scenery of Monterey, California, Big Little... Read more... |
Back in the Line of DutyMonday, 13 March 2017
At the end of last year’s third series of Line of Duty, we saw the back of the reprehensible Dot “The Caddy” Cottan, and with the much-abused Keeley Hawes consigned to the show’s morgue of deceased leading characters it felt as though important... Read more... |
Prime Suspect 1973, ITVFriday, 03 March 2017
The prequel is here to stay. In the end every popular TV drama flogs itself to death. The star wants out, or the writer dies, or the original source material runs dry, or the public falls asleep. And there’s nowhere else to go. Nowhere, that is,... Read more... |
Trespass Against UsThursday, 02 March 2017
The Cutlers are Pa Larkin's Darling Buds of May clan gone feral, rampaging across the Cotswolds. With Brendan Gleeson as patriarch Colby and Michael Fassbender as the troubled heir to his travellers’ caravan throne, the tone is country miles from... Read more... |
Broadchurch, Series 3, ITVTuesday, 28 February 2017
The first series of Broadchurch was a gigantic hit four years ago, though 2015’s follow-up suffered a bit of a slow puncture. Can this third and supposedly final outing restore the show to its former glories?Episode one made a tidy and reasonably... Read more... |
