sci-fi
Better than Hollywood: Netflix’s The Eternaut reviewed
‘Next time you do a review, you’ve got to find something you like. You’ve been far too negative,’ said the…
Cartoonish, sub-Armando Iannucci comic caper: Mickey 17 reviewed
Mickey 17 is the latest film from the South Korean writer-director Bong Joon-ho, who won an Oscar for Parasite and…
The Terminator is still the best
The Terminator is James Cameron’s first film, made a star of Arnold Schwarzenegger, is celebrating its 40th anniversary – there’s…
Please stop making Alien movies
In the Alien films, a xenomorph is a monstrous, all-consuming life form that exists only to make more and more…
Why you should never watch sci-fi series on streaming channels
Jason Dessen, the hero (and, as you’ll discover shortly, anti-hero) of Apple TV’s latest sci-fi caper Dark Matter, is a…
Minority Report is superficial pap – why on earth stage it?
Minority Report is a plodding bit of sci-fi based on a Steven Spielberg movie made more than two decades ago.…
Double trouble
A Number, by Caryl Churchill, is a sci-fi drama of impenetrable complexity. It’s set in a future society where cloning…
Tolkien rubbish
A couple of years ago, in that near-forgotten era when we could travel almost freely, I canvassed social media as…
Who dares wins
BBC1 continuity excitedly introduced the first in the new series of Doctor Who as ‘bigger and better than ever’ —…
Victorian values
Blackeyed Theatre is another victim of the virus. Its production of Jane Eyrewas midway through a UK tour, and due…
Spotted dick and custard
I’m Sorry I Haven’t a Clue has just been voted the greatest radio comedy of all time by Radio Times,…
Dumb and dumber
I think I am supposed to say that Bill & Ted Face the Music, the third in a franchise about…
For love or money
There can’t be many programmes that bring to mind quotations from both Henry Kissinger and Boney M., but BBC2’s The…
Spooky delights
One of my perpetual gnawing terrors is that I’ll recommend a series that looks initially promising but turns out to…
Stranger things
Of all the many things I’ve learned from the radio so far this decade, the most deranging is that the……
Beyond belief
Sky’s latest bingewatch potboiler Cobra can’t quite make up its mind whether it wants to be an arch, knowing House……
War of the Worlds is as bad as Doctor Who
Edwardian England deserved everything it got from those killer Martian invaders. Or so I learned from the BBC’s latest adaptation…
The best Terminator film since the first: Terminator Six reviewed
The first Terminator film, which came out in 1984, was a high-concept sci-fi serial killer thriller. You can just imagine…
Back to the future
Ridley Scott’s original Blade Runner first came out in cinemas 35 years ago, which I was going to say probably…
Loose ends
On Sunday night, Holliday Grainger was on two terrestrial channels at the same time playing a possibly smitten sidekick of…
Just what the doctor ordered
Every now and then, a costume drama comes along that’s so daringly unconventional as to make us re-examine our whole…
Bad robots
You’d think scientists might have realised by now that creating a race of super-robots is about as wise as opening…
Back to the future
How Ridley Scott’s Blade Runner, made 33 years ago, foresaw the way we live today, by William Cook
Dumb and dumber
Christopher Nolan’s futuristic epic Interstellar isn’t a clever film, or even a dumb film with a clever film trying to…
Mis-en-Mars
You have to hand it to the Russians. They beat us into space, beat us to sexual equality, and a…
