Reviews

This started off promisingly. It looked like it was going to be an intelligent drama about astrophysics and the universe. My ears pricked up when the name. Richard Feynman was mentioned.

Then it went downhill from there. They go out at night and they see that the "universe is winking at then'! What the hell are they talking about? Many of the bodies we see in the night sky may no longer even be there because the light from them left maybe thousands of years ago! So how can the universe "wink".

However, I feel this kind of junk is quite prevalent these days as so many people have no idea about astrophysics, science etc.

Netflix seems to be going downhill.

Leave The World Behind? They should have left this idiot script behind. I think it's typical though of the declining quality of TV movies/series these days. And Netflix is not what it once was.

This piece of junk was so unbelievable we just abandoned it after two episodes or so. The mysterious bloke with his irritating daughter turn up at this so-called get away from it all holiday home, looking all sinister...and nothing happens.

Nothing that is, apart from ludicrous happenings such as a ship randomly ploughing up the beach and loads and loads of sound effects.

We gave up when all the white self-drive cars came hurtling down a country road and ploughed into each other. Disgusting nonsense!

I came here, expecting to see 9.5/10 or even 10/10 for COMA. However, I see the aggregate reviews for this masterpiece are 6.5/10! What were these other people watching? Was it the most riveting tense drama in years? Was it the ingeniously written plot? Or was it the absolutely incredible acting by all concerned, particularly Jason Watkins?

Right from the start, the tension builds and builds as we see an ineffectual harmless man plunged into a nightmare not of his making. His life is literally collapsing around him. The actor who played the main villain was off the scale and his love of fine red wine was such a clever unexpected touch.

Please ignore these other reviews,. There are other programmes entitled "Coma" so maybe they were watching another programme, I don't know. Watkins and Ben Edwards deserve BAFTAs for this.

The ad for "It Snows in Benidorm" carries so-called five star reviews by "GLAMADELAIDE" and "FILMDIAGNOSTIC". So, I thought, these people think it's great, so who are "GLAMADELAIDE" and "FILMDIAGNOSTIC"?!

I Googled "glamadelaide" and it said "did you mean glam adelaide?" This is a magazine about South Australia. Then I Googled "filmdiagnostic" and it said "showing results for full diagnostic" and it took me to Halfords' website, who are offering a full diagnostic car check!

So, did Halfords themselves actually review this awful tedious waste of two hours? All I can say is, that "It Snows in Benidorm" is in urgent need of a full service and probably also a new engine.

10 stars isn't enough to describe this work of genius. It is warm, life-affirming and absolutely hilarious!

The title of my review says it's as good as the brilliant John Sullivan creation and it is in some way similar. A wonderful "sitcom" about ordinary downtrodden folk who somehow survive and thrive despite all the vicissitudes of life. I don't even have a favourite character because they are ALL incredible.

The writing is off the scale, the acting is off the scale. I am lost in admiration for this beautiful series. The worst episodes are good, the best are inspired. And unlike lots of sitcoms, it constantly rings the changes, new situations, surreal moments abound. If only there was still comedy as good as this today in 2023!

So loads of people, including critics, actually thought this was great?! WHY?

The acting was brilliant. The direction was brilliant. The editing was brilliant. But the writing was rubbish - as so often it is these days.

There was no real story progression and what there was was unbelievable. So she's running a great restaurant that is hugely popular then suddenly in episode 4 it skids to a halt as some faceless investor says he has to "pull the plug on it" because of "financial reasons".

It was however typical of lots of modern drama with incredibly fast jump cuts and moody music and almost impossible to hear incoherent shouting.

Worst of all, there was the shameless exploitation of one of our greatest actors, Stephen Graham. He kept making cameo appearances where he mooched around and said "alright?" a bit.

Using Stephen Graham like this was a bit like staging a concert featuring the best of R'nB and soul music, starring Stevie Wonder and Stevie just comes in at the end, doesn't sing, doesn't play, says a few lines and disappears! Another metaphor would be someone owning a Ferrari who only drives it to and from the shops.

Quite literally a complete waste of 1 hour 28 minutes. A disgusting compilation of gratuitous violence. Unfortunately at this point it says I need another 450 characters for my review to count.

This vile movie doesn't warrant another 450 characters. I see other reviews here that amazingly are positive! Maybe they are themselves sadists? All it has is VIOLENCE and MORE VIOLENCE - no suspense just VIOLENCE from start to finish.

The main character slices someone's balls off, he just chops a person's hand off and cauterises it by forcing it on to a burning stove. Also, the main character is initially seen miraculously escaping from a burning caravan and is the shot twice but he's absolutely fine when we see him a few years after these events!

I'm fine with violent, tense movies but this is absolutely disgusting and if Netfix (where I saw it) was not otherwise so good, I would cancel my subscription now.

Fools and Horses is an absolutely perfect sitcom. John Sullivan may have been "an ordinary bloke" but was I would say, as good a writer as William Shakespeare.

It's so sad that he died so early. The writing in the later episodes of Fools and Horses was literally genius. I mentioned Fools and Horses to a young woman in her twenties and she said "I I love Only Fools and Horses".

And then there's the actors. David Jason is total perfection as Del Boy - he IS Del Boy and he's not acting it! All the other characters are also beyond brilliant.

We watched the "Time On our Hands" episode for about the fifth time and it is incredible.

I saw one user review of this piece of junk with the headline "Don't Waste Your Time!"

I couldn't agree more. We started to watch it on Netflix because in my experience, Michael Douglas has never made a rotten film. It is confused and confusing. An absolutely shocking film that should never have been made. Imagine paying money to watch it at the cinema!

We turned it off after just over an hour. An hour of my life I will never get back. A ludicrous plot that involves Michael Douglas as a psychiatrist being forced to get a mentally ill woman in deep shock to reveal some 6 digit number that will allow the robbers, led by Sean Bean, to get access to cash and jewels etc from their robbery.

As I and another reviewer said, never mind "Don't Say A Word" - don't waste a second of your life watching this junk.

I've seen some rotten films in my time, but "Drive" was literally the worst film I have ever watched. It was so bad, we had to abandon it before the end.

Was Ryan Gosling being paid by the word? Those endless moody looks, while other actors had about 10 lines he would just begrudgingly utter a short sentence or a grunt. It was so very very "arty". It had those typical long silences, with Gosling gazing into the middle distance, and then without warning he would kick someone's head into a bloody pulp, more silence and it would cut to someone eating or something.

Absolutely shocking. "Drive" is so typical of modern films. They often have very little dialogue and are packed with gratuitous brutality. And as for the dialogue - what the hell were they mumbling!? I think there should be a new category in the Oscars - for Best Movie Subtitles. Because without them this awful movie would have been TOTALLY confusing and even harder to follow.

The writer responsible for this, Sally Anne Wainwright has a similar problem to David Renwick, another masterly writer. She obviously cannot get titles right!

David Renwick is responsible for "One Foot In The Grave" and "Love Soup" - both awful titles to two fantastic TV series.

We didn't bother with this when it appeared in 2014, because "Happy Valley" sounded a bit like "Nappy Valley". Sounded like some drippy, "Call The Midwife" thing about mums up north.

But just a couple of weeks ago we started to watch season one. And WOW!!! It is right up there with "Breaking Bad". The writing is awesome as is all the acting and direction. The plot surrounding the Steve Pemberton character is so gripping and as usual his acting is off the scale.

Well, they say you can't judge a book by looking at the cover - I'll add that you can't judge a drama serial by looking at the title!

As far as I'm concerned, Clint Eastwood in this movie and also High Plains Drifter is the very best cowboy character of all. He's better even than John Wayne.

This is an incredible movie, not only because of Eastwood's great charisma but also the fantastic mountain landscapes and how many cowboy films have snow!?

In the final shootout with Stockburn, Clint Eastwood looks incredible and he's got the best cowboy stetson ever! I think The Pale Rider character is the kind of guy most of us men would love to be. He's totally mesmerising.

From the haunting beginning right through to the atmospheric ending, it's a masterpiece of the genre.

This must be one of the most poorly written dramas of the past 30 years. It was so fantastically boring I almost had to go to the shops and look for some reinvigorating shower gel, as Sean Bean's character did in episode two, I think it was.

It is not enough to just cast two great actors, which they did. You also have to be able to write a script in a way that engages the audience, or at least one that stops them dozing off.

The editor must have had an incredibly easy time with "Marriage". Usually he or she has ensure that a sequence tells the story but finishes at a certain moment. Not so in "Marriage". To fill in some time, all Sean bean's character had to do was to stare into the dishwasher for another 15 seconds or so.

However, there was one aspect that effectively stopped me dozing off. And that was the ludicrous, pretentious and vile theme "music" - "to the left, to the left..." As a songwriter and music producer myself I was so infuriated by it. I'm sure whoever did it is good mates with the producer or director of the series.

Junk.

"Does this review contain spoilers?" I'm asked. No, but "Camping" certainly does contain a massive spoiler in the shape of Julia Davis's Giant Ego.

"Camping" COULD be an absolutely fantastic comedy series. It starts great with the gloriously funny Vicki Pepperdine and Steve Pemberton and a very creepy farmer...but then The Author inserts herself and begins to spoil everything.

There is so little great comedy around these days. The terrible shame is that Julia Davis is a really great comedy writer who then proceeds to ruin her own work with her ego. She is absolutely in love with herself. Yes she is sexy, as most blokes would agree, but that is not what comedy is about!

Comedy requires some form of vulnerability and Julia Davis has none. She is obsessed with herself and actually likes to surround herself with less than attractive, albeit talented, actors. She did this in "Nighty Night" and she does it again in "Camping".

If Julia Davis hadn't insisted on inserting herself in it, if you'll pardon the expression, I would have given "Camping" 10 stars. She needs to get over herself.

I started watching this on BBC2 not expecting much. Initially I was captivated by the absolutely stunning animation (one reviewer actually refers to it as "decent"!).

But then I got drawn into it, deeper and deeper. I have to admit that towards the end it actually made me cry and I almost never cry watching films or anything I guess.

And yet it was just drawings! But the thing is, when it's live actors, even great ones like Olivia Colman or Michael Caine for example, you still can tell yourself that no matter how brilliant their depiction, they are still actors and they are not really the people on the screen.

But with stunning animation, writing, dialogue and indeed unseen brilliant acting, something changes and you see maybe aspects of your own and all human existence in the unfolding images on screen.

Every single person involved in this glorious film should be so proud.

"Our House" has a really great story, full of cleverly devised twists and turns. So full marks to Louise Candlish.

Indeed, I would have given it 10 stars, but for the appalling "trendy" production which is so often evident in modern drama. This is the infuriating and confusing editing technique of jumping back and forth in time. It starts in the present, then it goes back 10 years or so, then it comes forward a bit, back a bit, then you are in the present, then you're back 7 years or something.

The producers of so many dramas these days feel compelled to do this jumping about in time, a bit like those infuriating "previously..." and "coming up..." inserts into reality shows.

The thing is that with all of the arts, it's never about originality as most people fondly believe, it's about "follow my leader", keeping in with the latest trend.

What a total waste of a brilliant story and great actors too!

The wonderful Toast of London deserved 11 stars, particularly the transcendentally funny episode involving an African princess who Ray Bloody Purchase changed into Bruce Forsyth! But sadly, Toast of Tinseltown is such a huge disappointment and these are I believe, the 6 main reasons why...

1) It's set in America. Toast is "Toast of London" for a reason.

2) There's no Jane Plough (pronounced Ploff) with her great retro office and telephone.

3) So far there is no Ray Bloody Purchase!

4) So far no Mrs Purchase - so Toast is possibly going to be rather sex-starved.

5) Hardly any Ed Howzer-Black, played by the great Robert Bathurst.

6) No Colonial Club and the fantastically right-wing Blair.

Fortunately, Clem "I know who your are" Fandango and his sidekick have survived the ill-conceived move to the States.

"Toast" is as much about his environment both built and human and it is sadly not surviving him going to Hollywood. To Matt Berry - please move Toast back to where he belongs and once again, to be one of the most hilarious sitcoms of the 21st century.

Once upon a time the BBC was the go-to place for imaginative, biting innovative comedy - The Office, Mitchell & Webb, Extras, Catherine Tate etc etc. Then it wasn't.

HOWEVER..."The Outlaws" with a fantastic plot line and characterisation is just outstanding in every way possible. It's hilarious, it's tense, it's exciting, it's warm and above all it's human.

So my verdict is... Writing: 5 Stars.

Direction: 5 Stars Acting: 5 Stars Photography: 5 Stars

And I would have rated it 11 stars overall but that's not available. Please keep it up, BBC!

And Series Two is just as good!

We heard that this film was really great - a must-see. It cost £3.49 as a Sky Store rental. £3.49 was way overpriced!

Why the hell it's called "Chinatown" I don't know. Gittes had been stationed in Chinatown and it sort of ground to a halt there with lots of Chinese extras no doubt being directed to walk across in front of the camera.

It was only two days ago we viewed it but I have almost forgotten the 'plot' already. Basically some tedious investigation drama with Jack Nicholson following up leads as to who killed a water company boss or something. It was however pretty muddled and there was hardly any dramatic moments. But there were loads of men in trilbies.

A total waste of two hours. The only good thing about film for me were Faye Dunaway's cheekbones.