I gave in, I succumbed to The Marvelous Mrs Maisel ! For many years my mother and sister have been imploring me to The Gilmore Girls. While they weren't the only to recommend it to me, they were my main beseechers, and while I never denied that what I had seen of it seemed to be well written with endearing characters, I just never found the time. 'There is too much other good TV I need to watch first' and 'I'll watch it one day when I retire' (along with learning to play a MMORPG) were among my favourite excuses. The 1950s period setting for the series, The Marvelous Mrs Maisel  intrigued me (Mad Men still has a lot to answer for), and when I realised it was from Amy Sherman-Palladino , the creator of Gilmore Girls , I knew I'd found an out to my Gilmore Girls shaming. Just eight episodes, released all at once on Amazon Prime would be easy to finish off. Little did I know just how easy it would be to consume. The Marvelous Mrs Maisel is a delightful con

I've sat through far to many hours of silly Marvel shows on Netflix, and it's all basically because of Jessica Jones. The first season was so adeptly executed, the story, the pacing, the characters, the performances, that it's glow managed to rub off on all those other Marvel shows. It didn't need the city/world on the verge of ending to create compelling tension, David Tennant's unsettling villain, with her intimate agenda, up against Krysten Ritter's bruised determination as Jones was more than enough. She was the only good thing about the boring Defenders series, so it's time to get excited again about having a whole story all about her again. If only it was a big screen movie.  

Why aren't you watching the NBC comedy 'The Good Place'? Don't you have friends who care enough to tell you about great shows on TV? Are you some sort of contrarian curmudgeon? In case you're wondering, it stars Ted Danson and Kristen Bell, the later of whom wakes up at the start of the series to find that she has died and is in 'the good place'. It's quickly revealed that there has been a clerical error, that she's there by mistake, and that she is actually a terrible person, and as such begins to cause terrible consequences for the perfect balance there. It's a great setup, but the writers do so much more with the premise than expected. Although ostensibly a sitcom, it borrows from modern box-set trend of having an overarching story and extended character development that you can't just drop down into the middle of (you'll need to start at the beginning), but it never feels leaden with plot. Mixing in a superb cast of supporting

It seems all the online commenters are in agreement that the unanimous consensus online is that True Detective season two sucked. But was it really that bad? There has been a lot of great insight in the recaps and reviews I’ve been reading as the series progressed ( Vulture , Salon , The Atlantic , all the good ones), but I wonder if perhaps the disappointment from the second series stemmed in large part because expectations were so high. For example, season one of True Detective was criticised for being almost exclusively male focussed, with no substantial female characters. Season two seemed to take that criticism on board fully, and address it head it, giving us a compelling female protagonist, and variety of other women, with complex motivations, relevant to the plot. Yes, there are still things that could have been better in that respect, (there always are) but that was a huge step forward, and it’s not common for shows to so overtly attempt to address criticism directed at the

Aah, Tuesday night television. First there is Two and a Half 'men' . What crap. It disturbs me that this show is popular, and it's just ruined Holland Taylor for me now, I used to like her in The Practice and Ally McBeal . Then there is the absurdly awful 10 Years Younger in Ten Days . Why do I feel that the show was made in Sydney. Maybe because the goal seems to be to make real people look plastic and fake, and possibly make the yuppy aging producers feel better about themselves. One of the few make-over shows that makes me want to vomit when they do the reveal at the end. Perhaps I just don't watch enough of them. Turning people into alien latex heads might be amusing, if it wasn't so depressing that they are so willing submit themselves to such hideous humiliation. So are the contestants on Hell's Kitchen , which is somehow supposed to justify Ramsey's behaviour. Oh, they chose to be treated like shit, so it's ok. Never mind the fact that he is a fu