Tag Archives: Television

Television Review – My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic

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We were a little surprised when Olivia Cottrell first asked to write a review of the new My Little Pony series. After all, she’s not exactly the girly-girl type. But then, from the sound of it, neither is the series… 

When you hear ‘My Little Pony’, what springs to mind? Chances are you’ll think of the pastel, plastic doe-eyed monstrosities that were advertised with an equally vapid cartoon- strictly the territory of little girls, and not particularly discerning ones at that. However, if you’ve spent a little time on the Internet recently, you might have noticed the growing popularity of a modern version of the cartoon. Entitled My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic, this new series has enchanted a new demographic of 18-35 year old males (among others) and consequently taken the Internet by storm. Fan art, fan fiction and pony-dedicated websites abound in every corner of the web. So what has made this show so popular? Has the Internet finally gone mad? And what on earth is a Sonic Rainboom?

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Torchwood Review – Miracle Day 5, ‘The Categories of Life’

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James Willetts is back to pick over the bones of the latest episode of Miracle Day. Warning: may contain traces of Buffy.

So that was it. Torchwood’s big twist was that there was no twist. The concentration camps are just concentration camps and Oswald Danes really isn’t a nice man after all. Yes. It’s not exactly The Sixth Sense. Hell, it’s not even The Village, but Torchwood should really be applauded for its enthusiastic willingness to play it straight.

The only problem is, no one seems to have told the show runners, who breathlessly announced that this was the point at which PhiCorp’s true intentions would be revealed. Except, as it turned out, they were the same intentions that were revealed last week.

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Game of Thrones Review – Ep 9: ‘Baelor’

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War. Huh! What is it good for? Reviewer Kieran Mathers finds out, and wonders whether the show will deliver on all its promises. Be warned that there are mild spoilers ahead. And, for those of you not yet up to speed, check out our Game Of Thrones primer.

How to talk about this episode without ruining it? Not mention the end, I suppose. Fans of the book, you know what’s coming and they don’t change it one bit. Those of you who have not read ahead … well, you’ve got such a treat coming. It’s the one moment in this show that I wish I hadn’t known about in advance. It’s brilliant, and one of the bravest things I’ve ever seen from a major TV show. I don’t know if the popularity of this show will continue, but if it fails after the properly commissioned second series; well, at least they have their integrity. Bravo, everyone involved, bravo.

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Game of Thrones Review – 1.08: ‘The Pointy End’

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If you want a job done properly, do it yourself. But, as Game of Thrones plunges ever closer to its bloody climax, Kieran Mathers wonders if authors are the best people to adapt their own works. Our usual mild spoiler warning applies.

This week’s episode was written by the man himself, G.R.R Martin, author of the entire A Song of Ice and Fire series. Normally, I’d wonder why they called on the author to adapt his own material, as it calls for different skills – you don’t see Joanne Rowling writing the scripts for the Harry Potter movies, for example. But in this case it works. Martin has a huge amount of experience in writing screenplays for shows such as The Twilight Zone and I think it’s clear that, like Douglas Adams, he also understands the difference in format.

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Torchwood Review – Miracle Day 3, ‘Dead of Night’

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James Willetts shares his thoughts on last week’s episode of Torchwood. It seems he’s a glutton for punishment. Don’t forget to download our commentary for Episode 4: ‘Escape to LA’, available immediately after the UK broadcast tonight!

Torchwood, Torchwood, Torchwood. What the heck is going on here then?

Whilst the last few episodes have been all over the place in terms of realism, characterisation, plotting and holding an audience’s attention I’m still happy to watch this. No matter how bad it is, the innate draw of sci-fi, or just a neat ‘what if’ are enough to keep me going. Something has to be really bad to lose me entirely. I’m not one of these people who think life’s too short to waste on bad TV, or low budget B-Movies, or spending an evening of my life trying to find some Superhero themed music*.

Some people might see it as a character flaw. Personally, I think it’s more of a triumph. Anyone who’s read anything I’ve ever written, knows that I frequently dislike the shows I watch. Just because I have a tolerance for nonsense, doesn’t mean I can’t recognise it when I see it.

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Game of Thrones Review – 1.07 ‘You Win or You Die’

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Things are hotting up in Westeros but Kieran Mathers wonders just how far a show should go to keep its audience interested. Perhaps the Starks just need a brisk walk…

An awful lot of Game of Thrones is exposition. It’s not a police procedural, after all, and the world has to be defined through dialogue as there is little else to relate it to an unfamiliar audience. Disguising this exposition is one of the hardest tricks for a writer to pull off. One solution is to have a distraction or a gimmick to make such scenes more visually interesting. TV is a visual medium and has been taking advantage of this for a long time.

A great example of this is The West Wing. To keep expository scenes interesting, writer Aaron Sorkin made the characters walk. It didn’t matter where they were walking, just that the dialogue had some action to it. He later admitted the only reason he had done this is to stop characters talking to each other statically, and in the process created a new verb: ‘To sorkin’ – the act of walking fiercely in one direction while holding a rapid-fire conversation. Intelligence and a good sense of direction is required.

However, Game of Thrones has discovered something different in the form of visual gimmicks: noble butchery and … sigh … lesbian tryouts. I wish I were kidding.

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