Television

In 2008 our silver screens were graced with awkward adolescent comedy The Inbetweeners, which today is a stalwart depiction of what we now affectionately term ‘LAD culture’. Despite the script rendering itself incapable of going a single…

People forget just how limited the scope for sitcoms could be back in the 1980s. Sitcoms nowadays rarely break new ground, regularly outshined by big-budget behemoths like Game of Thrones. TV in the 21st century has embraced its ability to…

Actor John Mahoney has died at age 77. The award-winning actor passed away on Sunday after a brief hospitalisation, though exact details and cause of death are currently unknown. It’s likely that his passing was not a surprise for his loved…

No one could have predicted when the fifth series of popular reality show Celebrity Big Brother began in 2007 it would end up being the centre of an international race row. The series began, like any other, with eleven semi-familiar faces…

It’s 43 AD. In rain-soaked Gaul, a Roman legion of 20,000 men waits to cross the sea to finish what Julius Caesar had failed to do 90 years earlier. Emperor Claudius has ordered General Aulus Plautius to conquer Britannia and its people.…

Come sit here by the (Kindle) fire, child, and let me tell you of a magical time back in the olden days. It was before your Snapchats and your Spotifying, before the words ‘problematic’ and ‘discourse’ and ‘intersectional’ escaped from…

The success and acclaim of AMC's Breaking Bad has been shouted from every rooftop by this stage. While the shows over exposure and hype becoming too much for some, its quality and consistently excellent writing, acting and production values…

Often crime mysteries use real-world issues as backdrop. The detective trying to uncover a murder, for example, may stumble into a web of corporate or political corruption, a community rife with simmering misogyny and/or a hotbed of racial…

With the Christmas season well and truly over, it’s fair to say more than one of us have indulged in a Terry’s Chocolate Orange while watching the latest “event” drama on BBC. This year it was The Miniaturist based on the novel by Jessie…

In 1953, CIA scientist Frank Olsen fell to his death from a hotel window. Over 20 years later, declassified CIA documents revealed the organisation had been testing LSD on unwilling participants and that Olsen’s death was the result of a…