How many episodes should a series need to work out what it’s about? No, I don’t mean the audience working it out, but the show itself. The Orville can’t seem to decide what it is going for. Is it a spoof? ...

Ally McBeal often gets a bad rap. This female-led show was both applauded and derided for being feminist and anti-feminist at the same time. Which is it? Personally, I always fell into the positive camp. After all, feminism is about ...

Whether owing to BBC budget concerns or Moffat dividing his time as showrunner between Doctor Who and Sherlock, Capaldi and the surrounding show have markedly suffered in recent years in levels of viewership and buzz. What, then, to make of ...

There’s a lot to be said for a strong authorial voice. Jeanette Ng’s debut novel, Under the Pendulum Sun is set in an alternate Victorian world where the fae are real. To match the setting, Ng employs a gothic voice akin ...

Who (no pun intended) is looking forward to the Doctor Who Christmas special ‘Twice Upon A Time’ where Jodie Whittaker debuts as the new Doctor? If you are, raise your hands and fists in celebration! Ah now, who’s actually looking ...

I have rarely been so disappointed with a film. Not only did I love Kingsman: The Secret Service but the sequel opens with a fight scene played out to Prince’s Let’s Go Crazy. How could a film that used Prince ...

Why do we still have ‘women’s fiction’ as a category in bookshops? Amazon, for instance, lists ‘Women Writers and Fiction Books’ as one of the major fiction categories, and ‘Women’s Popular Fiction’, ‘Women’s Literary Fiction’, and ‘Women’s Short Stories’ as ...

I’m not sure how I managed to avoid watching this film for so long. It isn’t as though it is an under the radar classic. For years, friends have been lecturing me about watching it, which prompts me (contrary bastard ...

Two IT guys and an attractive woman walk into a bar… she must be a work colleague. Graham Linehan’s The IT Crowd is all about stereotypes. The humour is almost entirely derived from stereotypes of computer geeks as well as ...

Alec Worley’s collection of three novellas covers Judge Anderson’s first year on the job. Unfortunately for Worley, the book also reads like his first year on the job. Anderson is constantly told she is exceptional, some kind of psychic genius, ...