tue 10/06/2025

sci-fi

The First Men in the Moon, BBC Four

Obviously the world has decided it needs Mark Gatiss, and it keeps finding things for him to do. An influential figure in the latterday revival of Doctor Who, as well as co-creator of the BBC's recent Sherlock, Gatiss's forte is turning out to be...

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Turner Prize 2010, Tate Britain

There may be some who feel this year’s shortlist for the Turner Prize has done little to forge ahead with anything new, innovative and different. And then there may be others who will welcome the rather more established artists on this year’s list,...

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Earthquakes in London, National Theatre

What sound does a screaming foetus make? It’s not the kind of question that most theatre plays provoke you to ask, but Mike Bartlett’s new piece about climate change is not a normal play. At the end of the first half of this rollercoasting epic,...

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The Deep, BBC One

Wasn't The Deep the title of a 1970s movie starring Jacqueline Bisset and Nick Nolte? Something about sunken treasure and a stash of morphine off the coast of Bermuda. I have a hunch it may have been complete twaddle. No less preposterous is this...

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Splice

Although it has taken over a decade to come to fruition, Splice still feels like a timely piece of work with its macabre and gruesome take on notions of genetic mutation for commercial gain and the god-like delusions of the scientific community. In...

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Predators

The original Predator from 1987 is perhaps best remembered for taking Schwarzenegger’s borderline homoerotic body-fetishism to new heights, as he stripped naked to mud-wrestle the titular alien hunter. It was among the more efficient of the big,...

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Ashes to Ashes, BBC One

After the final episode of The Prisoner was aired in February 1968, Patrick McGoohan had to go into hiding after being besieged at home by viewers demanding an explanation about his teasingly obscure (and, I think, rather brilliant) ending. It’s...

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Ditch, Old Vic Tunnels

Gethin Anthony as James: the new arrival is soon introduced to the horrors of war

Dystopia is a genre that works like a rhetorical device. Take a government policy — let’s say the war in Afghanistan — then list the bad effects that this has had on the British people, exaggerate by a factor of ten, or more, add some obscure but...

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DVD: World on a Wire

Rainer Werner Fassbinder lived fast, died young and left an awful-looking corpse, in 1982, at the age of 37. But not before writing, directing and producing dozens of movies, as well as plays, television series and the odd radio drama or book....

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A Thousand Stars Explode in the Sky, Lyric Hammersmith

Ann Mitchell, Nigel Cooke and Harry McEntire: ‘Much of the dialogue is obstinately ordinary, with a deliberately insistent quotidien feel’

During the past week, as the first coalition government for 70 years has been formed in the UK, we were frequently warned that failure to find a solution might be the end of the world. It’s a solid, if usually over-used, metaphor. But what would...

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Valhalla Rising

Danish director Nicholas Winding Refn has already displayed unsettling form as a filmmaker intimately acquainted with violence. His Pusher trilogy probed into the black heart of Denmark's criminal underworld, while Bronson surfed a monster wave of...

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The Prisoner, ITV1

"The ultimate battle! Jesus versus Magneto!" raved one sci-fi blogger (ironically), on seeing that this Anglo-American remake of The Prisoner stars Jim The Passion of the Christ Caviezel and Sir Ian X-Men McKellen. If only. Unfortunately the new...

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