Frame Rated: BETTER CALL SAUL, 2.10 - 'Klick'

Over at Frame Rated, I reviewed the season 2 finale of BETTER CALL SAUL - "Klick". Uh, 'klick' here to read!

It's a little miracle that Better Call Saul can deliver such a fantastic season finale, without the need for anything particularly earth-shattering to happen. Events just allowed to unfold in a very plausible way, and we're now so invested in the core relationships that the tiniest of things can cause a great deal of tension, heartache, and sorrow. Continue reading...

Frame Rated: THE X-FILES - 'My Struggle II'

Yesterday at Frame Rated: I reviewed the terrible finale to THE X-FILES' revival, "My Struggle II", which capped an inconsistent and frustrating comeback.

While not as distasteful as "Babylon", the finale of The X-Files' so-called 'event series' was a preposterous mess that bit off more than it could chew. Maybe if this had been a two-hour film (possibly as intended, as Chris Carter once admitted writing a third movie on spec), it perhaps would have had the necessary time and budget to do justice to some of its ideas, although brevity and lack of money wasn’t the main problem. Continue reading...

HEROES REBORN, episode 13 - 'Project Reborn'

Below is the last of my weekly HEROES REBORN vidcap'd recaps, looking at the finale "Project Reborn"...

Frame Rated: THE LEFTOVERS, 2.10 - 'I Live Here Now'

It's the finale of THE LEFTOVERS' magnificent second season, so please click through to Frame Rated for my review... and perhaps even leave a comment or share with your friends? I'd appreciate it!

Here ends one of television's finest seasons, and a remarkable achievement in terms of The Leftovers transforming itself into a more inclusive drama without losing its identity. Fine-tuning is what happened this year, and it's been a pleasure to watch and review 10 episodes that didn’t really put a foot wrong; becoming something of a masterclass in high-concept mystery storytelling, driven by complex human emotions instead of empty-promises and hit-and-miss explanations. Continue reading...

HANNIBAL, 3.13 – 'The Wrath of the Lamb'

★★★★

For the last time, a reminder: this review is scheduled alongside Thursday's broadcast in Canada. This finale airs tonight in the U.S on NBC, and Wednesday in the UK on Sky Living, so proceed at your own risk of spoilers...

Frame Rated: TRUE DETECTIVE - Season 2 Finale

Yesterday over at Frame Rated: I stepped in to review the season 2 finale of HBO's TRUE DETECTIVE on Sky Atlantic, "Omega Station".

I lost interest in this season of True Detective around the time Ray Velcoro (Colin Farrell) lost his moustache; which was ironically the moment Nick Pizzolatto’s plot broke from a crawl to a light jog. There have been some impressive sequences this year (episode 4’s city shootout was good fun, although I preferred the queasily otherworldly sex party from episode 6), but the meat of the story failed to sink its talons early enough. For much of the year, it was difficult to fully understand exactly what was going on; as important names and faces failed to leave enough of an impression on audiences, beyond the core trio of downtrodden Vinci detective Velcoro, anxious Sheriff Ani Bezzerides (Rachel McAdams), and tortured traffic cop Paul Woodrugh (Taylor Kitsch). Continue reading...

Watch True Detective online via NOW TV.

PENNY DREADFUL, 2.10 – 'And They Were Enemies'

★★★☆

Penny Dreadful's season 2 finale offered some hasty-but-fun conclusions, but preferred to instead focus on grace notes and setup for next year—rather like how True Blood structured its own closers. I was entertained, mostly because it allowed for some excellent performances to arise from a wallowing sense of self-important misery. It does get rather tiring how all of the show's characters deny themselves chances of happiness, even with each other, because they're convinced their own suffering is in some way infectious and a curse never to be shared.

Frame Rated: SENSE8 - Season One

Yesterday on Frame Rated, I reviewed the first season of Netflix's SENSE8; a sci-fi drama from the Wachowskis (The Matrix, Cloud Atlas) and J. Michael Straczynski (Babylon 5) about eight strangers who realise they're telepathically linked. Do give it a read! And share! Then tell your friends!

COMMUNITY: school's out... forever?

Season 6 of Community's over and I loved the finale ("Emotional Consequences of Broadcast Television"), which was a hilarious meta-commentary on the show's existence and ability to resist cancellation. For half its lifetime, the show's good luck mantra's been #sixseasonsandamovie, and it's now within touching distance of achieving that once-unlikely aim, but I'm not sure if there's as much hunger for a feature-film.

OUTLANDER, 1.16 – 'To Ransom a Man's Soul'

★★★☆

The finale of Outlander was far removed from what I'd have predicted earlier in this first season. The show took a brave and harrowing direction, which flew in the face of the pulp-romance feel the premiere had. "To Ransom a Man's Soul" was one of the most unpleasant, uncomfortable viewing experiences I've had for a long time, and certainly raised the bar when it comes to dramatised torture sequences. (Yes, Game of Thrones has lost that ignoble rosette.) I've recommended Outlander to family and friends I'd never want to be in the same room as when they watch this hour, let's put it that way.

MAD MEN, 7.14 – 'Person to Person'

★★★☆

Series finales are hard to do; especially for successful shows like Mad Men, which have become emblems of a cultural sea change in television drama. You can't and won't satisfy everyone. "Person to Person" was an efficient episode with a few nice highlights, but it didn't impress me. Or dazzle me. Or leave me thinking about the show hours later. I was disappointed because I expected to be bedazzled, but I'm aware much of that is down to outsized expectations. This was never going to knock your socks off, a la Breaking Bad, now was it?

Thoughts On: BATES MOTEL (S3), COMMUNITY (S6), GOTHAM (S1) & THE LAST MAN ON EARTH (S1)

BATES MOTEL (season 3, so far)
Not sure why I still watch this A&E series, because you can feel the writers struggling to think up new ways to keep the plates spinning. My patience with Norman Bates' evolution into the orphaned, cross-dressing psycho from Hichcock's seminal movie is wearing thin, and even Vera Farmiga's enjoyable screwy performance as Norma Bates is starting to grow tiring. She's great in this role, sure, but still a small oasis in an artistic desert.

CAR SHARE - Series 1

★★☆☆

There was an episode of One Foot in the Grave that took place entirely within the confines of a car stuck in a traffic jam on a hot summer's day, and it's one of my favourites. I remember being impressed by how David Renwick managed to write thirty-minutes of comedy from just three people sweating inside a stationery vehicle, but experimental episodes like that are fairly common nowadays. A rite of passage for sitcom writers, in some respects. Peter Kay's new six-part comedy Car Share uses that One Foot gimmick as its entire concept, although the claustrophobia's leavened by brief outdoor jaunts and day-dreams to shake things up. And it's an enjoyable comedy that has charm and obvious heart, but the number of laugh-out-loud moments is quite thin—certainly compared to Kay's last sitcom hit, Phoenix Nights.

INSIDE NO. 9, 2.6 – 'Séance Time'

★★★☆

The last Inside No.9 of series 2 ended with a horror-tinged instalment, rather like last year's climax "The Harrowing", but "Séance Time" had a great deal more humour. Here, we visited the abode of Hives (Reece Shearsmith), bespectacled assistant to clairvoyant Madam Talbot (Alison Steadman—not coincidental casting, given last week's Abigail's Party influence?) It began with a very eerie tone, as Hives dealt with house guest Tina (Sophie McShera), whose sister had arranged for her to have a reading with a spiritualist, and quickly became a surprisingly frightening mix of genre clichés—telekinetic tamborines, flickering lights, animated dolls—ending with a terrifying appearance from a blue-skinned demon (Dan Starkey) that reminded me of a similar jump-scare from Insidious...

BLOODLINE – Season One

★★★☆

Created by the troika behind FX's legal thriller Damages—Todd A. Kessler, Glenn Kessler and Daniel Zelman—Netflix's Bloodline is a very different show on the surface, but the underlying skeleton's much the same. In both shows, episodes are bookended by flashforwards to events that seem inconceivably shocking, whilst being interrupted by flashbacks that gradually explain character behaviour and the causes of current conflict. It's a great structure to hang a thriller on, but five seasons of diminishing returns with Damages taught me to be cautious about expecting the jigsaw to fit together in a wholly satisfying way...

DAREDEVIL - Season One

★★★★

'Into the Ring' • 'Cut Man' • 'Rabbit in a Snowstorm' • 'In the Blood' • 'World on Fire' • 'Condemned' • 'Stick' • ' Shadows in the Glass' • 'Speak of the Devil' • 'Nelson v. Murdock' • 'The Path of the Righteous' • 'The Ones We Leave Behind' • 'Daredevil'

(Spoiler warning: the following review shouldn't be read if you haven't seen the entirety of season 1, although an effort's been made to avoid ruining the experience by mentioning notable deaths and revealing the ultimate outcome. But still, caution advised...)

BETTER CALL SAUL, 1.10 – 'Marco'

★★★☆

There's an increasingly popular creative decision in U.S cable drama, to have the penultimate episode contain the majority of a season's climaxes, then use the actual finale for palate-cleansing and a peak at what the next season could bring. It's most famously true of Game of Thrones, and now Better Call Saul joins the club with "Marco".

Finale reviews: THE AFFAIR (Season 1) • DEREK: THE SPECIAL • THE WRONG MANS

It's the time of year when U.S shows have their mid-season or seasonal finales, and UK shows have Christmas specials that occasionally act as series-enders. So I just thought I would briefly cover three shows I've been watching, that ended very recently...

DOCTOR WHO, 8.12 – 'Death in Heaven' • when it rains, it pours

★★☆☆

After the excellent first part, I perhaps had unreasonably high hopes for the concluding half of Series 8's finale. Sadly, it fell prey to many of the things that commonly prevent epic DOCTOR WHO episodes from achieving greatness. "Death in Heaven" was one of those hours that was, at its best, a briskly enjoyable mess. The core plan of Missy/The Master (Michelle Gomez) to create a billions-strong army of Cybermen from living and dead humans, via a worldwide expanse of nanobot rainclouds that could create Cybermen, held together surprisingly well—but the story quickly got stuck in quagmires and was ultimately suffocated by its own silliness.

DOCTOR WHO, 8.11 – 'Dark Water' • did you Missy me?

★★★★

The heart of Series 8's mystery was answered by the end of "Dark Water", and was only a surprise in the sense it was the most obvious of the many fan-theories. There was a time when Steven Moffat would have outmanoeuvred shrewd DOCTOR WHO viewers, but in some ways he still managed to by making the answer so obvious.