Reviews

The Newsreader is an incredibly watchable, engaging show. It may be surprisingly simple in premise, but overall, it is incredibly well done. The two leads spark off of each other & play off one another quite well. It's interesting to view historic events through the lens of the fictional news crew.

Series 1 was flawless. Series 2 starts well, but it stumbles when the writers veer in to topics of race. This is a common but unfortunate theme in too many shows on the BBC. Why do I say that? Because the writers choose to approach historic topics without really taking the time period in to account. For all of the research that goes in to these episodes, they have the "2023 progressive" take on it as opposed to that of an 80s basic liberal. It gets annoying because it ends up coming off as preachy as you just kind of want certain scenes to end. "I'm done waiting for a chair at the table of democracy," (inset eye roll here) is something you hear from some of the most preachy & monologue-oriented people now... not back in 1987.

I'm a millennial, not a boomer. This trend of everything having to be deep or have some kind of moral message. People are casting themselves as victims and unfortunately, now they're casting shows in the same manner.

I do recommend the Newsreader. The cast is generally enjoyable & they work well together. I hope if there is a series 3 they go back to making it entertaining & watchable as opposed to merely trying to cram today's politics in to any/every show they can.

There have been some amazing shows and unbelievably talented actors that have come out of Australia. Unfortunately, Black Snow isn't one of them.

The premise sounded interesting enough, but the reality is a show that is painfully slow going. The acting in general is far below the quality I've come from Aussie actors.

I don't know about other people, but I watch TV to be entertained. I've ceased watching tv news & posting on social media because I'm utterly bored by the non-stop politicalisation of every topic under the sun. Unfortunately, it seems like every new show that appears on the BBC comes with the same irritating, preachy messages that I hoped to escape by leaving social media.

What kind of weird, victim addicted adult tells a random 16 year old nerd they've only just met that your 2x great grandfather was taken & enslaved so, 'you could have sugar in your tea.' Really? Writers are trying way too hard to make their pet issues in to dramas & unfortunately, none of them have been able to do so in a way that feels natural. It's preachy & it's like they're tying to spoon feed the audience to get an audience of 5 year olds to agree: Super Important Issue™.

Stories run in a zillion different directions & simply put, Black Snow tries way too hard. It ends up being yawn worthy as opposed to having a genuine impact. The singing they've inserted arbitrarily throughout is distracting, warble-y & generally unnecessary.

I simply didn't care for Black Snow at all. Can we please just get back to telly that is entertaining without the heavy handed moral preaching?

Yikes. Just yikes on so many levels.

I am already utterly bored by yet another character who has a traumatic past that is told via an A story line while we have a meandering B storyline that will inevitably intertwine. How many times do we need to keep seeing that?

More than that, what kind of psychopaths are working for the BBC? They really thought this would make for entertaining telly? Calling it macabre would be too kind as I typically have a rather dark sense of humour. This is just, well... effed up. Wolf is trying to be everything at once: a crime show, a drama, a comedy. Unfortunately, it does none of them well. The attempts at humour are awkward and cringe worthy, especially when taken with the disturbing content.

The crimes viewers witness are disturbing and gratuitous, but hey! Here's a dance scene & a Doctor Who reference just for funsies! Just to add to that which already bad, they make it a whole 8 mins 30 seconds before a cop has to comment on the race of an (unseen) victim. It's impossible to tell whether this was the writer's idea of a joke, sardonic political commentary or why it was even needed.

The BBC has been producing some serious garbage recently. Can they please stop? Between the psychopaths who gave Wolf a green light, the Gen Z PC brigade rewriting history in World On Fire & the clown school drop outs behind Queen of Oz, I'm getting really tired of every new series being absolute rubbish.

Champion's biggest selling point is the strong soundtrack. I believe they (half) attempted to make this work with Mood, but failed miserably. When it comes to music and beat, I'd easily give the series 10 stars. There is some serious British talent behind it.

Politically speaking, the show is relevant to current events. Whether that's a good thing in terms of watching an entertaining drama, is going to largely be up to individual viewers & their tastes & preferences. The first episode is quite meta in that it largely feels as if one is watching a news story about a social media video after it has gone viral. I'm unsure whether I'm saying that as a compliment. For anyone who has signed off of all social media platforms because of the continual drama over pretty much anything & everything, Champion starts to feel like you're being shoved back to the hamster wheel. I am hopeful this will get better.

The one thing that detracts from this series is the seemingly over the top selfishness of multiple characters. You can understand it from Vita's best friend, but the self absorption of her brother, and even worse, her mother (?!) is tough to watch. I have a large Greek family & there's definitely drama & people in everyone's business, however, I can't say any parent has tried to force one child to give up everything for their sibling. The mother expecting Vita to act as an assistant to her brother starts to become almost bizarre to the point her behaviour is borderline abusive. Bosco is completely self absorbed and self important.

What Champion offers is something different to other shows on the BBC. It is worth giving it a chance.

Talk about a completely unlikable, narcissistic main character. I'm utterly astounded that Mood is as highly rated as it is.

A wanna-be singer who lives with her mother, stepfather & sister is bent out of shape that they finally have had enough of her BS and stepdad tells her they will be moving... without her. As she's 25 & doesn't appear to have a job, has set fire to her now ex-boyfriend's front garden, comes in drunk and high at 3am and then has a crap attitude when called on her selfish, obnoxious behaviour, one wonders exactly what viewers see in such a person that makes them compelling.

Of course said 25 year old with no marketable skills & looks like she's pushing 40 meets an influencer... because god knows we absolutely needed more content about influencers... and of course, said influencer introduces a wannabe to a world of more wannabes.

Honestly? I could not finish this show, even while utterly bored. I'm not that much older than the main character, but I felt like I was living on a different planet. Nothing about this made me like anyone involved & if anything, I was wishing everything would just implode more quickly. I've no clue who thought this show was a good idea. Clearly it found an audience, but Christ only knows who they are.

If you're a teenager, I'm guessing you may like this. If you've actually done anything at all exciting with your own life, I can't imagine this being entertaining. Maybe it gets better, but I don't hate myself enough to waste hours of my life trying to find out. Hard, hard pass!

'There She Goes' truly has some of the best acting one can imagine. Based on the experiences of a real life family, the daunting, heartbreaking and witty journey through the life of severely mentally disabled Rosie Yates is raw and honest all the way around.

Unlike the new BBC miniseries, 'Best Interests', There she goes offers rich writing & even when Rosie's father, Simon, is acting a prat, it feels raw, real and honest as opposed to superfluous. You can't help but invest in this family and the characters.

The humour is classically British in the best of ways. Life may not look anything like Simon and Emily imagined prior to having Rosie and we see that beautifully interwoven between the past and the present day and how their lives and relationships as a family are moving forward.

There is not a weak actor in this cast. The chemistry is perfect and the cinematography is spot on. The audience is living the ups, downs and day-do-day right along with the Yates family.

What ultimately makes 'There She Goes' so brilliant is that the writers are not afraid to shy away from taboo subjects. Simon and Emily are parents who come across as human. There isn't a push for the two of them to pretend they've adapted perfectly & pretend everything is great. There are no niceties - no falseness to how they feel and why. The cast truly could not be better. How this show hasn't won numerous awards and how the actors themselves have not been widely recognised is beyond me.

I don't tend to rave about most series, but this one is something special. A must watch.

Edit to add: I have Asperger's, a sensory processing disorder and a TBI & I find this to be brilliant television. Clearly, 'ActuallyAutistic' is entitled to his/her opinions, but to suggest that everyone who disagrees with them is ignorant is laughably ridiculous.

Feminist spoken word poetry? Please - just kill me.

I've not read the novel so this is purely a review based on the series itself. I've nothing with which to compare & it isn't a matter of preferring one vs. The other.

The cinematography is understated and beautifully done. It feels appropriately casual; like you're a fly on the wall in the lives of the characters. Oh, the sub-human, vapid characters.

On one hand, it's easy to relate to being a 20-something girl who ends up in a relationship/affair with someone who practically becomes her whole world. On the other, nothing in the writing or in the interactions of the characters really make me believe these people are that cool or that interesting that an apparently famous writer & her actor husband are going to give a toss about 2 dumb uni girls.

The emotional incompetence of everyone involved is intended to generate tension (which it does) but any nuance is lost in a murky sea of opaque, one dimensional characters, all of whom appear to have an issue with speaking. What drives these characters and their back stories is more hinted at than shown & the viewer is left to make quite a few assumptions about what's in the mind(s) of those on screen.

I can't tell if the 'friendship' between Frances and Bobbi was written to be co-dependent and unhealthy. The character of Bobbi is reactionary, self absorbed and a stereotypical Gen Z brat. She's cold, uncurious and frankly, there's nothing at all to help the viewer understand this character, nor is there anything to make her likeable or interesting. Her general contempt for everyone (except herself) make her appear narcissistic and controlling, nothing more.

I've watched the series once in its entirety. The cinematography is easily the best part. Characters don't necessarily need to be likeable, however, they do need to be compelling. These characters are, unfortunately, anything but.

Queen of Oz falls flat from the very beginning. Ridiculous though the premise, I thought I would give it a chance. Unfortunately, Catherine Tate does nothing to draw the viewer in. Her cousin/assistant/whomever is supposed to be a moron, but yet again, the things that are supposed to get laughs generally well... don't. It's not that the audience doesn't get the joke, the joke(s) simply aren't funny. Some manage to be mildly amusing at best, but not nearly enough to elicit the kind of laughs you'd expect.

Where this was filmed & on what budget it's completely impossible to tell. The first episode should make one want to see more, but Georgiana is so irritating that you simply don't care what happens to her or anyone else involved.

While yes, it is supposed to be a comedy & accuracy in certain things can be overlooked, it lacks the same quality and (surprising) realism of some aspects of other BBC comedies, such as Ghosts. At least in theory, one would think something like this may have the potential to be funnier than a show about seeing dead people, but it's just not the case.

From her lines, to her accent to disgusting &/or terrible jokes, the redeeming qualities appear nonexistent. At that, it's difficult to determine exactly who the audience is. The 'humour' is something all its own... and that's not a compliment. Hard pass.

Best Interests is supposed to be 'moving' and 'tug at heartstrings' but by the midst of episode 3, it's hard to really root for any of the characters.

The good is that a major aspect feels authentic, and that is the toll being a carer can take on virtually everything in your life - no matter how much you don't want that to happen. That part is genuine and feeling the inability to talk to to anyone about how difficult it is for those in the midst of it & how difficult it is for those around them to respond or know how to help, what to say, etc.

The bad is that they've tried to pack too much in to a show that doesn't feel conducive to it in an organic way. The writers have a hollow gay sister, an uncle with Asperger's, multiple disabled, but save for a little boy, it feel like they're intentionally type casting disabled actors to tick boxes. The gay sister's friend or love interest (or whatever she's supposed to be) is just as unlikeable in this as she is in Conversations With Friends, and just as hollow.

Best Interests seems to be yet another in an unending line of shows from what appear to be Gen Z or (barely) millennial writers who feel the need to pay lip service to diversity and hating everything about every generation other than their own. In areas where one hopes for dialogue that's genuinely meaningful, someone has to go off on a tangent.

To be perfectly blunt, it's not often I find myself looking at the time left before an episode is over, but I've done it with each episode in the series thus far. You know they want you to empathise and in a weirdly detached sort of way, you empathise with the younger, hospitalised sister for multiple reasons while watching the other characters fall apart and not really feeling much of anything for them. You should, but they're so tedious, intellectually you can empathise in terms of it happening you, yet not in a way that makes you genuinely care about them. That's not exactly a mark of brilliant television or acting.

Best Interests feels drawn out, at times disjointed and a project that could have had a bigger impact had there been stronger execution and better casting. Aside from the little girl who plays Marnie & the lad who plays George, there simply isn't chemistry between the actors that makes you believe these characters are real people or a real family. Individually, most of the actors are perfectly fine and it isn't that they're terrible - they simply lack chemistry.

I was watching because I was bored, but I think I'm going back to re-runs of other shows. There are worse things to watch, but there is also plenty that's better.

In some ways, this show is interesting and vaguely entertaining. In other areas it seems next to impossible to know whether or not the writers are serious or whether they're completely taking the mick and laughing at Gen Z and their obsession(s) with pronouns, feminism, climate change, etc.

The good is that it is a rather raw and reasonable look at teen parenthood. Some aspects seem unrealistic (taking your baby to school and keeping them with you in every class?) however, it's also possible that Australia actually allows that.

The bad is the over the top commentary about every single uber liberal issue there is right now. It's not enough to have say, a gay character, they have to have multiple, including areas where it veers wildly off course from anything resembling a real life circle of friends. Then again, if people are surrounding themselves with an echo chambers, maybe that's not far off.

The acting is solid from all involved. Some of the statements are so cheesy and cringe-worthy, I honestly can't imagine any actors who would do better. In that sense, the cast are impressive.

The one part of this show I can't get past and in turn, hate watch, are the reminders of everything that has made Twitter such an utterly irritating space. Pronouns and all of that nonsense being inserted seemingly at random points feels contrived and forced. The story would be the same were it not there, so why is it? If it doesn't do anything to further a story, it needs to go.

This is a show I would never purchase or watch multiple times, but when I've watched every other show on iPlayer & need something that isn't utter garbage/reality TV, this works. It has a lot of strong points, but the negatives and contrived talking points take away from Bump. All in all, I'd still recommend the watch.

World On Fire has its strengths and weaknesses. That's true of any show, but it's more difficult to overlook the (numerous and glaring) weaknesses if you have knowledge about World War II and the legitimate history.

The positive is that there is a large focus on Poland, something which is so frequently overlooked when in comes to WW II history in Britain and America. The writers have some big plot holes, from the story of the young refugee - somehow his rescuer is able to keep it a secret & say next to nothing to anyone. Frankly, he does that throughout the series to the point that it gets stupid.

I do like the idea of the way they're using characters in different countries and then tying them together as the series goes on. The biggest drawback is that you get the idea that writers have forgotten about or have too many characters of whom to keep track and in turn, parts where they come together can feel forced and there isn't the character development one would hope to see.

The biggest flaw in this series is the way the writers appear to re-write large parts of history to make it more palatable for the Gen Z crowd. Unlike true period dramas like SAS Rogue Heroes and Call The Midwife, World On Fire is lost between its desire to engage in a show about the war and a desire to combine it with a heavier dose of views you'd see in 2019 rather than 1939. Rather than staying true to the time, the writers stray and in turn, parts veer in to melodrama. They produce big, explosive war scenes, but only some of them feel appropriate. A storyline with a German child takes a turn that doesn't feel at all in character for what we've seen thus far.

The women, save for the main character's mother, are straight out of this decade & it can be almost distracting. You also very much get the idea that they're trying to hit a diversity quota without actually tackling the biggest population that was destroyed at the hands of the Nazis: Jewish people.

On one hand, it's yes, it's fiction, however, the number of Polish and French Jews who lost their lives are almost a side note. They show them, but most don't have any real story focused on them. For such a major historic event that nearly wiped out a population, it's almost a crime not to have a strong main character that is Jewish.

In a bizarre way, World On Fire is what I can imagine the outcome should someone who loved Gossip Girl and The Vampire Diaries come up with if they chose to make a current period drama about World War II. This show isn't terrible, but the lack of accuracy when it's trying to be so serious can make for an unsettling watch.

If you have little or no knowledge of history, you'll probably enjoy World On Fire. If you were born in 1999 or later, this was probably written for you. On the whole I recommend it so long as you understand & don't mind the above caveats.

Oh good god, how this show has as many good reviews as it does is utterly mind blowing.

Port Devine is a small, scenic coastal town where everyone knows everyone. The crimes are predictable (of course) while they're trying a bit too hard to make it seem like typical small town crime. Someone dumping waste in the neighbour's farm? Yep. Kid gets his bike stolen? Of course.

That would actually be fine if the writing was actually funny/interesting/entertaining, but it isn't. The absolute worst character & part of this show is a storyline about one character who is infertile and is desperate for a baby. Yes, it happens in real life & were it actually written in anything even approaching mildly compelling it would be one thing. In reality, the character is childish, annoying and utterly lacking in the self awareness most people have developed by the time they're 10.

Do you really want to watch a woman (who has to be pushing 45) intentionally sabotaging her 'friend'/surrogate's date because said 'friend' is supposed to be 'having my baby'? I sure don't. This character was bad all along, but that one thing compelled me to write a review. Don't worry - I've not spoiled a major part of the plot. And that's part of the problem. This has been dragging on for so many episodes, it's ridiculous.

If you're anything like me, you're thinking of watching this because you've already watched everything else on iPlayer (or Britbox). Fine. Just know you're in for one insufferable ride. A few characters are likeable enough, but a lack of overall chemistry in the cast and vapid characters make this a hard sell.

At first glance, it would be easy to give We Are Not Alone a pass. How many movies about aliens coming to earth do we need, after all? Having watched this, my answer is: well, at least one more.

Created & written by Ben Willbond & Lawrence Rickard (Six Idiots, Ghosts, Horrible Histories) We Are Not Alone was a welcome find following repeat viewings of Ghosts. The pair come together to create a sci-fi comedy that is a pleasure to watch.

After their planet, Gu'un, becomes uninhabitable, newly named Trater, Gor-DAN & Greggs arrive in the UK, determined to move the capital from London to the 'centre of the landmass' which they have determined is... Clitheroe.

With a complete lack of understanding of how things on earth work or why (& the inability of newly bought, but not particularly motivated pal/government contractor Stewart to be able to explain-he doesn't know either) shenanigans ensue as the group try to gain their footing in a world that is largely hostile to their presence.

Simply put, what you have in We Are Not Alone is a fun, easy watch. As I understand it, while this is a standalone project, it's also intended to serve as a potential pilot for a future series, which I believe would be a great way to go. There are enough questions & loose ends as to how the newly formed 'Section 78' will function in the long term that I believe it would be well worth developing it further.

The political satire element is enjoyable to watch, especially under the current circumstances. No, it's not heavy hitting, nor is it intended to be. What it is, is easy, fun and pleasure to watch. There are certainly dynamics between earthlings & Gu'uns to explore in future episodes should the writers/creators choose to go that route. I certainly hope they will.

If you enjoy British comedy, We Are Not Alone is definitely worth your time. I don't like hardcore sci-fi (at all) and this has a great balance & perfect humour for someone like me.