Incomprehensible and epically anti-climatic: Netflix’s Bodies reviewed
Bodies is another of those ‘ingenious’ time-travel apocalypse mash-ups so tricksy and convoluted that by the time the ending comes…
Surprisingly addictive and heartwarming: Netflix’s Beckham reviewed
If you’re not remotely interested in football or celebrity, I recommend Netflix’s four-part documentary series Beckham. Yes, I know it’s…
Beyond the cringe
Big Brother is Nineteen Eighty-Four rewritten by Aldous Huxley. The detail that George Orwell got wrong is that far from…
Arresting visual spectacle and superb fight scenes: Netflix’s One Piece reviewed
What would you say is the most successful comic-book series in history? If you’re thinking Tintin you’re not even close.…
Aussie rules
Why is Australian MasterChef so much better than the English version? You’d think, with a population less than a third…
Blood sports
In the year 2023, the Neo-Roman Empire was at the height of its powers. A potentially restive populace was kept…
Jesus returns
Some years ago, Mark Millar (the creator of Kick-Ass, Kingsman, etc.) hit on yet another brilliant conceit for one of…
Good cop, bad cop
It has been quite some time since I’ve been able to bear watching UK crime drama. All right, I do…
Death by a thousand cuts
I wish I could say that Bamber Gascoigne would be turning in his grave at what has happened to University…
Rewriting history
If you don’t subscribe to every last detail of the LGBTQ+ agenda, then basically you are a Nazi. This was…
Plane speaking
Idris Elba would have made a perfect James Bond. Not the James Bond that we knew and loved when he…
Downhill fast
I’m ideologically opposed to bicycles for all the obvious reasons: they don’t have lovely big nostrils which you can blow…
Let’s twist again
Imagine if you had the power always to tell whether or not someone was lying. You’d have it made, wouldn’t…
Inside story
Back once more to our favourite unhappy place: the dystopian future. And yet again it seems that the authorities have…
Vaudeville villainy
Tetris is a righteously entertaining movie about the stampede to secure the rights from within the Soviet Union to what…
Scandi crush
War Sailor (Krigsseileren), a three-part drama on Netflix about the Norwegian merchant navy in the second world war, is one…
If I were a rich man
I have a theory that many great artists’ strength is a product of their weakness. The flaw of the relentlessly…
A Rock and a hard place
Chris Rock was paid $20 million for his 70-minute Netflix special, so by my reckoning his riff on whether or…
Sporting greats
My new favourite tennis player, just ahead of Novak Djokovic, is Nick Kyrgios. Up until recently I’d barely heard of…
So damned German
I was almost tempted not to watch Kleo because it sounded like so many things I’d seen before: beautiful ex-Stasi…
Still in the game
The Last of Us is widely being hailed as the best video game adaptation ever. Maybe. But it’s still a…
Made to order
Kaleidoscope is a fairly routine eight-part heist drama with a supposed novelty spin: apart from the beginning and the end,…
Turkish delight
A strange new virus has infected half the world but the cure is worse than the disease: authoritarian tyranny, in…
The Recruit might be the worst show on Netflix
The Top Gun series received generous support from the US Navy because it was such an effective recruitment tool. I…
Sheer delight
Graham Hancock’s Ancient Apocalypse has been described by the Guardian as ‘the most dangerous show on Netflix’. What? More dangerous…
