From shining beginnings, Netflix has fallen from grace. They have been canceling the interesting and critically acclaimed shows in favour of popularist trash. Sound familiar? Wasn’t Netflix meant to be the beacon of artistic integrity, offering something outside the offal the networks ...
Read More »Rude, arrogant, insufferable: Love to hate the TV asshole
My first TV hero was Diana Trent, played by the formidable Stephanie Cole, from the BBC sitcom Waiting for God. To this day, I hope that my old age will allow me to be as badly behaved as her. If ...
Read More »Drugs, sex, and studying: University life on-screen
TV and film is real life, isn’t it? After living in the US for a few years, one of the most common questions I was asked by my Australian friends was ‘Is school there really like it is on TV?’ ...
Read More »The Orville: A Star Trek pastiche
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? ...
Read More »Doctor Who: No longer Time Lord of the manor
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 ...
Read More »Anne with an ‘E’: I am in the depths of despair
The books and the 1980s adaptation of L. M. Montgomery’s Anne of Green Gables series of novels were staples of my childhood. Anne was one of the first weirdos I encountered in fiction and I thought of her as a kindred spirit. ...
Read More »Santa Clarita Diet: I know we have to kill somebody today, but we have to be parents every day.
I’ve always loved a good sitcom. And while the traditional set-up of the genre allows for plenty of scope for great comedy, I am thoroughly enjoying the inversion of tropes and exploration of variations on the structure that modern television ...
Read More »Gilmore Girls: A Year in the Life
Is it possible to find that spark again – that special something that made a series brilliant the first time around? Networks and services like Netflix, Hulu, Dave, Yahoo, etc certainly think so, pouring money into nostalgia projects like Gilmore ...
Read More »Binge Watching: Avatar – The Last Airbender
My exposure to anime has been very limited up to now, something I am trying to correct. Back in high school, I had my first taste for it when my Year 9 teacher showed us Neon Genesis Evangelion. To this ...
Read More »How Westworld broke out from Game of Thrones’ shadow
I’ve seen a number of recent articles discussing Westworld, asking whether or not it can ‘do for science fiction what Game of Thrones did for fantasy’. The idea being that Game of Thrones brought the fantasy genre into the mainstream ...
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