LeftHandedGuitarist

This is the follow up season of True Detective we deserved but never got.

A furious evisceration of the hypocrisy of organised religion, while also seeing the value of faith - be it in those you love, yourself or your own moral compass. This horrific true story walks the line between infuriating and fascinating, remaining a stunning watch from start to finish.

I'm not sure I've ever seen Andrew Garfield be as compelling or so fully inhabiting a character as he does here. He plays a Mormon detective and it means he needs to navigate completely different worlds. I particularly enjoyed the relationship between him and his partner Bill.

The true crime dealt with in this story is not for the faint hearted, and the portrayal of the corrupted people behind it is strong. I won't highlight any names here for fear of spoilers, but some of the cast members put in truly disturbing performances.

The structure of the series is a little odd, being told with multiple flashbacks and timeline jumps. I think that mostly this is put together really well, but the 1800s stuff was probably unnecessary. I would have appreciated more time spent with Brenda's (Daisy Edgar-Jones) story instead.

One thing I really liked here was the slightly longer episode lengths. They ended up benefitting the story and really allowed me to get immersed. I wish I'd watched this sooner and would recommend it in an instant. Just take a few deep breaths because the behaviour of these people, especially their treatment of women, is a lot to take.

The episodes continue to be very small scale and very low stakes, but I found quite a bit to like here. The character focus was welcome and there was a sense that the episode wasn't in any hurry. In particular the scene with the bridge crew recording a message for school children back home was excellent. It gave several of the characters a moment to show who they are and did it playfully. Enterprise was at its best when it embraced its concept of showing us how a human crew first adapted to exploring outer space, and simple things like this are a wonderful reminder of it. It's also something that would have been out of place in another Trek show, so felt uniquely suited to this.

Other parts of the episode largely worked too. The awkward relationship humans have with the Vulcans is quite fun and being developed nicely. The T'Pol stuff here was fairly intriguing, and certainly sets up the beginnings of a friendship with Trip. Less interesting was all the stuff on the ice comet, mostly because it all felt so plodding and basic. Those bland rocky "alien planet" sets were looking so dated by this point (and yet, they are SO Star Trek). At least the captain reminding them they are being observed was funny. Archer's prideful arrogance really is feeling excessively immature even this early on in the show, though.

For all that this episode does well, it still does end up feeling like a bunch of unconnected stories being mashed together. The fact that it comes out of that fairly well is a testament to half decent writing, I'd say.

I do love a good pecan pie.

My plan was to review episodes of Enterprise as I rewatched them, but I'm finding I have almost nothing to say so far. The episodes end and I give a shrug and within an hour or two I've kind of forgotten them. 'Unexpected' at least has some more meaty material to think about.

At this point in the show we are still very much in a "getting to know you" mode with the characters, and the characters are currently very much defined by single traits that are being pushed to the fore. Archer is headstrong and wants to try things his way no matter the good advice he gets. Hoshi is unsure of herself but is becoming confident in her language skills. T'Pol has more common sense than the entire crew put together and will regularly remind them of that. Phlox is optimistically open-minded. Trip is Southern.

This episode manages to both allow the crew to use their traits but also throws them in unknown waters. There's a delightful sense of them just having to muddle through to deal with this situation. And it's a very silly situation, falling back on tired tropes of not being able to deal with hormones and making light of that. By and large I didn't think it was handled as poorly as it could have been, as nobody outright makes fun of Trip, but it's hardly shining a light on Trek's virtues.

The best humour comes from T'Pol, showing off the sarcastic side of Vulcan culture rather expertly, admonishing rather than mocking. And the Klingon captain's wonderful line, "I can see my house from here!".

The episode really takes a while to get going though, with the first part not quite clicking for me. All the slow semi-drugged stuff on the alien ship was unpleasant to sit through. But seeing a holodeck in action was great, along with Trip's amazed reaction to it. Once the Klingons enter the story it's more interesting and I quite like these early meetings between them and humans. Archer has no idea how to talk to them, whereas T'Pol is able to appeal to their nature.

So, I'm giving Enterprise another go! Does it deserve the bad reputation its seemed to gotten over the years? I tuned in for the initial broadcast of this pilot episode and had more or less checked out by the time the appalling theme song began, figuring that maybe I was done with Star Trek. It was several years after the show had finished that I decided to give it a proper chance and watched the whole thing through. That was quite a long while ago now and my memories of it are that I slogged through the first two seasons before finding a lot to enjoy with the final two.

The show starts out just okay. Enterprise retains a lot of the '90s sensibilities that its predecessors had and fits very much in the same style. The exception to this is that the producers finally moved into the 21st century and shot it in HD widescreen. Much appreciated. Other than that it looks like '90s Trek, sounds like '90s Trek and is performed just like '90s Trek. It's not surprising that a sense of fatigue kicked in amongst fans.

Scott Bakula is rather welcome though, even though Captain Archer comes across fairly one-note. He's easily annoyed and quite aggressive in how he gets things done. He unfortunately leans more towards arrogant than confident and shouts a lot of his lines. Voyager had a huge problem (for me) with one-note characters, and I'm not sure that Enterprise ever makes this work either. But it helps that we have some fun actors in the main roles. Trip is sarcastic and fun, similarly quick to anger, while T'Pol shows signs of being a far more adaptable Vulcan that some others. This seems to be an attempt to recreate the original series trifecta of Kirk/Spock/McCoy. But the rest of the crew have very little to distinguish them at this point, and as I recall at least one of them will have virtually nothing to do for the entire show's run.

In fact, the Vulcan aspect of this show is the most interesting thing at this point. Humanity seems to have a difficult relationship with them, making their severe disapproval of Earth's actions quite entertaining and rich.

The episode itself isn't very memorable, but does its job. There's the introduction of Klingons and Suliban (the Suliban suck), some hints about a temporal cold war, a ridiculous "decontamination" scene and lots of shooting/punching in between. It feels safe even with the more rough-&-ready explorers approach. At this point its honestly hard to care about anyone, but let's let things grow.

I'm disappointed that all of Paul Wesley's singing moments weren't done as spoken word, as a tribute.

So, this was a mixed bag for me - It's very difficult to overcome my negative feelings towards musicals. I found parts of this quite entertaining, and there was also parts where I was cringing in embarrassment. I'm not sure it's going to have any rewatch value for me. I appreciated that they at least incorporated the songs into the storyline as a mystery that needed to be solved, but am never a fan of when they lean into the music as a way to dwell on a character's emotional state. Just move the damn story forward instead of sitting in a single moment for three minutes!

Some musical parts were definitely better than others, but this was always going to be a difficult one for me. There were just too many songs here, and they were too much in the musical theatre style. I didn't like the "finale" at all (the Klingon moment should have been hilarious but literally made me cry out "oh GOD NO").

At the same time, I really appreciate that Strange New Worlds is taking risks and experimenting. This is a thousand times more interesting than the super safe Berman-Trek, even when the results don't completely work for me. The problem is that we are only getting 10 episodes per season, so episodes like this can feel like a monumental waste of storytelling time.

The best stuff here was everything that dealt with character relationships - Chapel/Spock, Pike/Batel and La'an/Kirk.

An entertaining if slightly odd beginning to season 2. It was nice to see a shift in focus to other crew members, even if that choice felt kind of jarring as a reintroduction to the show. Side-lining Captain Pike was quite bold and honestly I missed his presence, but giving a chance for Spock, Chapel and M'Benga to have centre stage was also rewarding.

Still, I found this whole episode to feel like it was throwing us into something that was already progressing and it was a little difficult to stay fully engaged with it. There was a whole backstory to the situation and characters on Cajitar IV that was reduced to fleeting dialogue, instead trusting us to just go with it and not worry about the details. I felt that could have been handled better. Obviously this episode drew from the Klingon War that happened on Discovery, and featuring its repercussions so heavily here required a shift. The deep trauma that M'Benga and Chapel seem to have experienced came out of nowhere and fundamentally altered their characters. It was great material for the actors to work with, but flew in the face of what they've established previously.

It also led to the scene which was the weakest part of the episode for me; an extended action sequence in which Chapel and M'Benga expertly fight their way through hordes of Klingons with the assistance of a drug. Exciting, yes, but tonally bizarre and again not fitting the characters. This was WAY over the top, leading to M'Benga torturing a Klingon.. Again, wrong tone.

Thankfully there was a lot of great stuff outside this. La'an has really come into her own and felt like a well balanced character here. And Spock got all the of the episode's best moments. It's great to see him playing the lute and being in charge. We're going down an interesting narrative path here with his losing his grip on his emotional stability, and honestly I'm quite up for it thanks to Ethan Peck's wonderful take on Spock. Yes, we're edging on breaking canon in several areas here, but I'm really not that worried if I'm enjoying what I'm seeing.

Overall, this episode felt kind of unsettled and over-enthusiastic in it's return, but I'm in.

Initially coming across as a little odd, this grows into a highly tense and deeply emotional story. The tragic life of Anne Frank is well known, but this elects to tell things from the perspective of the woman who agreed to keep her and her family hidden from the Nazis.

I'm often drawn to the more detailed, personal stories of World War II and this delivers. Life in Amsterdam under Nazi occupation is depicted as more complex than the image we may have in our heads. People are confused, angry and absolutely terrified and they deal with it in different ways. Some choose to resist. Some choose to stay out of it as much as they can. Some choose to become collaborators, either out of fear or out of opportunity.

An initial hurdle with this miniseries is that the dialogue and characters all feel very modern. It was taking me out of things, but after a couple of episodes it started to feel like quite a natural choice. It enabled me to relate to the characters easily, and eventually I wasn't even noticing. The character's accents are also confusing, with a mixture of English and German voices and not much I could tell to differentiate what they represented. The Frank family alone are a big mix of accents, and I would have appreciated some clarification.

The performances here are fantastic, with Bel Powley, Joe Cole and Liev Schreiber being the standouts. The rest of the cast don't get as much screen time and less opportunities to make their mark, but everyone fits in very well. While this chooses to stay largely family friendly, that doesn't mean it isn't powerful, and while the horrors of WW2 aren't explicitly shown they are certainly felt and this doesn't attempt to gloss over the darkness.

And in the end anything that shows a new generation what utter evil bastard scum the Nazis were is good, especially when the message is delivered as well as this.

Another strong episode that balanced fun with some great emotional material. I think Worf might be stealing the show already at this point, and the Picard/Beverly discussion was simply fantastic with both actors really giving their all.

I really wasn't expecting the Changeling reveal, and I have to say that it was an extremely pleasant surprise. It's got me wondering if Riker might not be himself.

It's not all perfect - spending an entire two episodes now on a single encounter is feeling slightly tiresome, and the back and forth nature of the Picard/Riker argument was really pushing things by the end of the episode (which also gives me further fuel for the above spoiler). Part of me wanted to scream to get on with things and move the story forward, but the other part of me was delighting in just hanging out with the characters. Jeri Ryan is doing great work here even with the limited screen time in this one.

The fact that I'm very eager for more at the end of each episode is a sign that it's doing things right, but it's also very hard to judge what the overall season arc is going for right now. I feel like I know nothing about what's going on.

The de-aging effects for Picard and Riker weren't great.

Well, that's a bit more like it. While I didn't hate seasons 1 and 2 as much as a vocal minority seem to enjoy screaming, I must admit that I was always hoping for something a bit more akin to TNG 2.0. This might be it, although at this point its too early to say with any certainty.

The characters feel more alive, more energetic. There is a powerful chemistry between Patrick Stewart and Jonathon Frakes and their happiness at working together again comes flowing out of the screen. It helps also that the words they are saying feel much more like the characters we used to know. The script reflects the friendship and bond that grew between the original cast over the course of 7 years of storytelling (plus four films), allowing for a playful tone. It's got me excited to see what's going to happen when all of the original cast are reassembled.

Speaking of which, we got some wonderful stuff from Gates McFadden as Beverly Crusher, who seemingly hasn't missed a beat. Her voice was there, and it was Beverly. Jeri Ryan was on fire and felt like she was channelling aspects of the Seven of old while continuing the evolution of her character. It was also remarkable at how much the Titan's new captain set me on edge, not least by essentially deadnaming Seven; he seems to have a chip of his shoulder over the Borg and I wonder if there's going to be some interesting revelations there.

But the real magic may have been the gorgeous musical score recalling older themes and styles - I can't understate what that added to the overall vibe. It was like a warm blanket of reassurance, and the way the soundtrack flowed between styles and motifs was absolutely beautiful.

The only complaint I have is the dark, dreary lighting for the Starfleet ships. But I can live with it if the story and characters deliver. I hope this is the start of a truly exceptional season. At this point I'm optimistic, but we shall see. Also, did anybody else think, "ah, so the bad guys have played Portal"?

Wow, it just keeps getting better. Trek has done its fair share of horror stories, some poor and some good, but this is probably most effective scare episode the franchise has done. I loved the way it riffed off moments from the core Alien trilogy and managed to do some properly unsettling things in the process. Besides from having a fantastic design, the moment the blue alien dude started having trouble breathing was a wonderfully staged sequence full of dread.

The Gorn looked great and felt vicious even as infants. I love how this series is setting them up. I also appreciate how we've come to understand La'an's character up to now and her own reactions to this situation.

The most interesting part here may have been Spock. While I'm not sure the actual execution of his emotional barriers dropping was, the effect of it on the character is certainly fascinating. Ethan Peck has been KILLING IT so far and is handling this stuff so well. It's an angle that works. I quite like that the franchise is acknowledging the more emotional Spock we saw in 'The Cage' and working to bridge things to the more stoic version we are familiar with.

And damn, the episode blindsided me with the death of Hemmer. I clocked those two new away team characters as dead from the moment we were introduced to them, but Hemmer was a real shock. Especially given that he seems to have become a fan favourite. What a way to go out too - compare it to the lacklustre death of Airiam over on Discovery, which had zero impact despite the character having been there since the start. This one hit hard, with the reactions of the rest of the crew really doing it justice too.

Much like the previous comedy episode 'Spock Amok', I struggled to click with this one. It wasn't particularly bad with some massive TOS vibes, and I always loved holodeck-gone-wrong style episodes, but the problem was that once again it just felt lifeless. The jokes raised a small chuckle at most, with the majority missing the mark entirely.

This time around something I noticed was the lack of musical accompaniment to help lift the comedy. Without it there to help, things feel remarkably dead. Music was there certainly, but so completely subdued.

For the positives, I thought that Dr. M'Benga lead the episode extremely well. I was also pleased to see Hemmer back. Uhura hammed it up brilliantly. Pike/Anson Mount was kind of delightful as the coward, pitching his performance just right. Wizard Spock looked fantastic. And Ortegas seemed in her element, jousting verbally with Pike. It's just a shame that so few of these elements ended up working well together.

The episode was saved for me by the ending, where it managed to hit me hard. The performances here were top notch. At first I was a little surprised at how easily M'Benga willingly gave up his daughter, but then I realised that she is literally at death's door and has no time left (the show hasn't made this quite as clear as it could have). He knew that holding on to her only means her death.

A weaker episode, but not a terrible one. It feels a little too early in the run to do something like this when the characters haven't been fully established.

There's something off about Torchwood. The premise is interesting enough, being given a nice setup in series 2 of Doctor Who, but the tone is bizarre. It's an adult show that exists within the Whoniverse, and therefore piles on the sex, violence and swearing. Doctor Who is a family show aimed more at the kids, but adults are a huge part of its audience. So it made some sense to create a spinoff that could be more mature.

But Torchwood isn't mature. It throws in the aforementioned sex and blood and swear words, but its writing is still at the level of Doctor Who. By that I mean it still has people running around shouting silly dialogue, giving us tons of exposition, plot contrivances, poorly designed monsters and only glimpses of emotional maturity. This stuff works in Who, in fact it works quite well because we know we're watching a fun kids adventure show. But this is supposed to be an adult drama, so immediately things feel iffy. The pantomime vibe is still here.

The characters do the show no favours either. I quite enjoy Captain Jack portrayed by John Barrowman, but I think it's fair to say that dramatic acting is not his forte. The issues with the rest of the characters are numerous, but it's a real problem when they are so completely uninteresting (Tosh and Ianto) or absolutely impossible to like (Owen). Gwen is our way into the story being the newcomer, and she's handled better but she makes odd choices. The character has nowhere near enough depth to give us the information to understand why.

The writing is not able to do justice to the stories being told. This isn't the fault of the actors (...mostly), but down to the laughably weak dialogue and direction. It doesn't help that visually it's all so poor, inheriting the cheapness from it's parent show of this era. Through all this there is fun to be had. There are good episodes in there and a sense of camaraderie does build within the cast. There's so much room for improvement though.

I could make the same complaints about series 2 as I did with the previous, but I can't deny that the show moves forward with much more confidence here. David Tennant injects some wonderful energy into the lead role and has a stronger chemistry with Billie Piper. Ecclestone did a fantastic job, but Tennant is more charismatic, more playful and more interesting.

I'm coming to accept the inherent cheapness of the show and the super kid-friendly writing, just enjoying the stories for what they are. It's very noticeable that for a show about being able to travel anywhere in space/time, they keep ending up in the contemporary UK. I would say that this sort of thing could never win any awards, but somehow the episode 'The Girl in the Fireplace' came away with a Hugo. Shows what I know. The bad guys still look terrible but they are done with a bit more style here. The special effects are low quality even for 2006, that's just unavoidable given the show's budget and scale.

It's the characters. They work, they're fun. Their relationships become irresistible. There are some real high points in this series and they all come down to powerful character moments for me. My favourite thing here was the two part 'The Impossible Planet'/'The Satan Pit' in which everything clicked. The episodes benefited from atmospheric location shooting and effective lighting which made them look better than anything else the show has done so far, as well as liberally borrowing from things like Event Horizon and Aliens, but it was the material between the Doctor and Rose which made this into something magical. 'School Reunion' was also a wonderfully fun exploration into the Doctor's history.

However, when the show got bad it was almost unbearable. Episodes like 'Love and Monsters' and 'Fear Her' were tacky and dull and so poorly made, seemingly full of afterthoughts in every department. The first includes an embarrassing Scooby-Doo chase scene and a woeful Peter Kay. I also couldn't get into 'Rise of the Cybermen'/'The Age of Steel' despite its impact on the story going forward, largely due to the bad acting and overblown danger from a very silly enemy.

Fortunately the good outweighs the bad here and the series culminates in some truly emotional scenes.

Doctor Who has always been a tough sell for me. I grew up watching the Sylvester McCoy years and have a fond memory of watching the 1996 TV movie premiere on the BBC (Paul McGann was GREAT). But as I grew up I desired more sophisticated sci-fi (that had a better budget behind it). By the time this new era of the show began, I was enjoying things like Stargate and Battlestar Galactica which had visuals and ambitions which put Doctor Who to shame.

Yet something always kept telling me I should enjoy this show. I had tried to watch it in the past and couldn't make it more than a couple of episodes in. This time I think something has clicked and the show has got its hooks in me.

But lets be honest, the quality in this first series is not there. The show looks awful, extremely cheap with terrible lighting that adds a weird glow to things. The sets still look iffy and the alien/monster designs are laughably bad (the Slitheen stood out here as especially weak). The cinematography and editing is awkward. The writing is full of exposition and good actors are somehow reduced to giving pantomime-like performances as they spout the silly dialogue (shouting it more often than not).

The saving grace is the emphasis on character relationships. Eccleston is superb in the lead role, but the real star turns out to be Billie Piper who manages to act circles around everyone else. The dynamic that grows between Rose and The Doctor is endearing and eventually gripping. The show absolutely shines when it focuses on the moments where they just stop and talk.

And at the end of the day this is a family/children's show and accepting that has enabled me to somehow find the enjoyment. I can get through trash like 'Aliens of London' and 'The End of the World' if I also have episodes as good as 'Dalek' and 'The Parting of the Ways'. I'm quite excited to see what's ahead now.

I can't say enough good things about the performances from Lily James and Sebastian Stan here. James in particular is completely transformed into Pamela Anderson and the results are incredible. For a lot of the time I completely forgot I wasn't watching the real her. The recreation of the 1990s is also done with skill (God, I miss the '90s).

This miniseries tells the true story (undoubtedly with a lot of embellishments and creative license) of the theft and distribution of a private sex tape featuring two celebrities. It changes tone a lot throughout, flitting between a dark comedy, crime/legal drama, earnest romance and lurid sex adventure.

These different moods are held together surprisingly well. Each episode is treated as its own thing with its own style but there's still a cohesion to it all. A lot of focus is given to the effect the scandal had on Pamela and it's all the stronger for it, treating her respectfully and clearly showing the line between what she was happy to do publicly and what was an invasion of her privacy. The romance between her and Tommy Lee is incredibly sweet but also shows the reasons why they didn't work out.

The changes in tone also cause issues though, because the pacing of this is all over the place. Episodes will completely abandon storylines and characters to focus on something else and the fact is that some of those things just aren't as interesting. The best stuff is when Pam and Tommy are on screen, and there are long segments without them. Seth Rogen certainly does a decent job but his story stays one-note a little too long, and while I started out rooting for his character that all went away as the show went on.

Content-wise this definitely isn't for everyone, and even I was getting annoyed with the amount of swearing by the second or third episode. That's a sign of extremely lazy writing for me. Most of the sexual content is contained to the first few episodes and while it doesn't go as far as the marketing may have lead everyone to believe, a no-holds-barred sequence in which Sebastian Stan has a conversation with his own cock is certainly memorable.