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Kaleidoscope is a fairly routine eight-part heist drama with a supposed novelty spin: apart from the beginning and the end, you can view the episodes in any order, meaning that each viewer has a slightly different experience. If I sound mildly…
January 18, 2023
Article at Spectator
A strange new virus has infected half the world but the cure is worse than the disease: authoritarian tyranny, in which the populace lose most of their freedoms, are subject to endless testing and are corralled into gated communities. I’m talking, of…
January 04, 2023
Article at Spectator
The Offer (Paramount Plus) Even when you know the ending, this ten-part drama about the making of The Godfather, seen from the perspective of novice producer Albert S. Ruddy (Miles Teller), is outrageously gripping, gorgeously evocative of louche,…
January 03, 2023
Article at Spectator
They’re tricky things to get right, Christmas specials. Ideally, they should capture in one perfectly judged episode the very essence of everything you found wonderful about your favourite classic sitcom, be it The Royle Family, Father Ted or Peep…
December 28, 2022
Article at Spectator
The Top Gun series received generous support from the US Navy because it was such an effective recruitment tool. I wonder if something similar went on between the CIA and Netflix’s new series The Recruit, this time as an exercise in reputation…
December 27, 2022
Article at Spectator
Graham Hancock’s Ancient Apocalypse has been described by the Guardian as ‘the most dangerous show on Netflix’. What? More dangerous than the undigested, neo-Malthusian eco-propaganda that it serves up in its collaborations with Sir David…
December 07, 2022
Article at Spectator
Russia 1985-1999: TraumaZone – even the title makes you want to scream – is Adam Curtis’s Metal Machine Music: the one where he frightens off his fans by abandoning the trademark flourishes that made him so entertaining and instead goes all…
October 26, 2022
Article at Spectator
We men all think we’ve still got it, even when we’re well past 50 and young women look straight through us and every time we get up or sit down or lift something off a shelf we sigh or grunt with the effort. But sure, if push came to shove and we had…
October 15, 2022
Article at Spectator
Mark Millar, creator of series including Netflix’s forthcoming American Jesus, has a theory that movie and TV fashions work in 11-year cycles and that we’re just starting a new one now. If he’s right – and I think he is – then it would explain a lot…
October 09, 2022
Article at Spectator
The good news – apparently; I haven’t seen it yet so this may just be a false rumour – is that House of the Dragon episode 6 is really exciting, full of incident and drama and intriguing, well-drawn characters. But the bad news, as I can personally…
September 27, 2022
Article at Spectator
Three episodes in I think I’ve worked out the thing that’s most annoying about . It isn’t the gratuitously diverse casting. It isn’t the saccharine tweeness of the hobbity Harfoots. It isn’t the ‘You go girl!’ tediousness of the relentless female…
September 18, 2022
Article at Spectator
I had been so looking forward to seeing The Rings of Power. For all the wrong reasons, of course. In the months leading up to its release on Amazon, it had been hailed – largely on the basis of rumours and trailers – as an epic disaster, perhaps the…
September 07, 2022
Article at Spectator
This prequel to Game of Thrones could do with some of the light relief, however House of the Dragon got off to a pretty uninspirational start, I thought: no major characters brought to a shocking and premature end; no bone-chilling spookiness like…
September 01, 2022
Article at Spectator
About halfway through the first episode of House of the Dragon I found myself squirming in my chair, covering my eyes and muttering ‘Why the hell am I watching this vile schlock?’ I think this is probably a good sign. One of the main attractions of…
August 23, 2022
Article at Spectator
CommentsShare ‘Diversity is woven into the very soul of the story.’ If those words of praise from a rave review in a left-leaning journal sound to you about as inviting as a cup of cold sick, then my advice would be to stay well clear of The Sandman.…
August 20, 2022
Article at Spectator
CommentsShare About ten minutes in to Thirteen Lives, Boy came in and asked me whether it was any good. I said: ‘Well, it’s quite interesting, actually. I think they’ve got the actual cave divers playing themselves, so the acting is really dull and…
August 13, 2022
Article at Spectator
It’s hard to imagine in the wake of GoodFellas, The Sopranos and Gomorrah but there was a time, not so long ago, when the very existence of the Mafia was widely dismissed as an urban myth. What changed was Mario Puzo’s 1969 bestselling novel The…
August 04, 2022
Article at Spectator
Many years ago a man on the end of my cigarette stole my soul. Mr Migarette (for such was his name) wore a tall hat like the one in the Arnolfini Marriage portrait, he smoked a pipe and no matter how often I tried to flick away the glowing fag ash,…
July 23, 2022
Article at Spectator
CommentsShare I don’t think it’s my imagination: it really is getting harder and harder to find anything worth watching on TV. But then, why should it be otherwise? Entropy has afflicted every aspect of our culture from holiday flights to the supply…
June 25, 2022
Article at Spectator
Just how edgy and dangerous is Ricky Gervais? There is no one more edgy and dangerous, we learn from no less an authority than one R. Gervais. He keeps reminding you of this at intervals in his latest stand-up special, for which he was reputedly paid…
June 09, 2022
Article at Spectator