ASH vs. EVIL DEAD, 1.3 – 'Books from Beyond'

★★☆☆☆

Three weeks into Ash vs. Evil Dead and there's definitely a pattern emerging: Ash (Bruce Campbell), Pablo (Ray Santiago) and Kelly (Dana Delorenzo) travel to various places in an attempt to undo the Necronomicon's spell, and each half-hour crescendos with a big set-piece in that location involving the slaying of a monster.

Autumn 2015 TV - Part One

We're a few months into the 2015/16 television season, so I just wanted to run down all the shows I'm watching, how I think they're getting on, and my degrees of continued interest in them.

'Agents of SHIELD' (season 3) - ABC.
Season 1 became good halfway through. Season 2 turned bad halfway through. Season 3's proving to be a real bore from the start. It seems someone decided what we really want from AoS is lots of people with superpowers, so they're going big on the whole Inhumans angle. I just wish the show didn't feel like a live-action X-Men more than a spy-fi show that could tackle a lot of different subjects and ideas. Unsurprisingly, the best episode (so far) concerned an hourlong flashback to Simmons stranded on an alien planet, having to survive until rescue arrived. While it was probably inspired by The Martian novel, or knowledge of the film adaptation, it was something you don't see TV do very often.

ASH vs. EVIL DEAD, 1.2 – 'Bait'

★★★☆☆

This second episode had a much harder job than the premiere, which played very much like a short movie sequel to the first two Evil Dead films. "Bait" is where things truly begin, in terms of trying to ensure audiences this franchise can work as a long-running television series. The plot isn't much—Ash (Bruce Campbell) and Pablo (Ray Santiago) race after Kelly (Dana Delorenzi) in his trailer, as she's absconded with the Necronomicon to deal with her resurrected mother (Mimi Rogers). It turns out that Kelly's mother has a plausible explanation for her return from the dead, and isn't a white-eyed frightening Deadite, leading to an awkward family reunion dinner that a sceptical Ash and Pablo are invited to.

Review: Starz's ASH vs. EVIL DEAD

★★★★☆

After three movies, the last of which premiered in 1993, fans of The Evil Dead have clung to hopes that director Sam Raimi would return for a fourth instalment. The fact Raimi became a big-deal Hollywood director meant prospects for Evil Dead 4 always looked slim from the mid-'90s onwards. The party-line is that he was always too busy, but it's fair to say that directing a third sequel to a low-budget horror saga that never set the box-office ablaze isn't a wise move for a director trying to hit the big-time—and eventually managing to with a different trilogy: Spider-Man.