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02 Sep

Suranne Jones’ Best Roles From New Drama Vigil to Doctor Who, Gentleman Jack & More

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We’ve seen her sew knickers, spew out Artron Energy, run a coal mine, solve and commit murders, and now thanks to BBC One thriller Vigil, we’re seeing her gumshoe her way around a nuclear submarine sniffing out a naval conspiracy. There’s very little Suranne Jones can’t do. To celebrate the breadth of her on-screen work, here’s a selection of Jones’ finest performances so far. Karen Macdonald in Coronation Street The Street’s where it all started for Jones, playing the mouthy, ambitious Karen McDonald (née Philips) to audiences of almost 20 million four nights a week. Jones won two ‘Most Popular…
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13 May

Link Tank: Monster on Netflix Is a Must-Watch Legal Drama Film

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Monster on Netflix is a courtroom drama film about the all-too-familiar story of a Black teenager versus America’s criminal justice system. “Three years after its debut at the Sundance Film Festival and a short-lived name change to All Rise, Monster has finally landed on Netflix. Based on Walter Dean Myers’ 1999 novel of the same name, the legal drama shoehorns the viewer into a horrifying, yet all-too-familiar, scenario in which a Black teenager named Steve Harmon (Kelvin Harrison Jr.) is facing decades in prison while on trial for a crime that he swears he hasn’t committed.” Read more at Thrillist.…
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02 Apr

Netflix’s The Serpent True Story: the Book That Inspired the True Crime Drama

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French-Algerian actor Tahar Rahim first learned about serial killer Charles Sobhraj as a teenager in the 1990s. He picked up the book On the Trail of the Serpent from his older brother’s nightstand, and read about a manipulative murderer who drugged, stole from and killed a series of mostly backpacking victims along South Asia’s “hippie trail” in the 1970s. Two decades later, Rahim would be cast as Sobhraj in true crime drama The Serpent, an eight part series now on Netflix. In it, the actor sought to channel the unnervingly still, hypnotic but fast-striking cobra-like quality the book’s descriptions of…
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24 Feb

Age of Samurai: Battle for Japan Is a Netflix Docu-Drama Written in Blood and Ink

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Age of Samurai: Battle for Japan, a new historical documentary series on Netflix, is being billed as a “real-life Game of Thrones” but it’s much more than that. This is actual history, which is far more compelling than fantasy because it really transpired. “It is like something out of a movie,” says showrunner Matt Booi. “If you wrote this down, no one would believe it. And if you saw it, I think you’d say, ‘Nah.’ But it happened.”  According to Booi, the show covers one of the most violent periods in Japanese history. The six-part series begins in 1551 with…
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14 Feb

White House Farm Episode by Episode Breakdown: True Crime Drama on Netflix

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White House Farm is a dramatisation of the Jeremy Bamber story, a horrible case that saw the killing of five members of the same family including two children. The show came to ITV in 2020 in week by week episodes and has now arrived on Netflix in a full boxset. It’s a compelling look at what happened in 1985 at a remote farmhouse and the man who was convicted of the murders, as well as the dogged cop who wouldn’t settle for the obvious answer despite the negative impact it had on his career. While elements of the story are…
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13 Feb

Chinese TV Drama Apologizes For Plagiarizing His Dark Materials

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Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery… but not in the world of corporate copyright. New Chinese fantasy drama Douluo Continent came under fire after its premiere last week when viewers noticed that some shots in the drama’s magical opening credits, created by third party company Visual Impact Digital Production, looked quite similar to shots in the magical opening credits for the His Dark Materials TV show… You can watch the Douluo Continent credit sequence here: And here’s the opening credits for the first season of His Dark Materials, designed by Clarissa Donlevy at Elastic… As you may notice, the…
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19 Jan

Peaky Blinders: The Real Story the Gangster Drama Has Been Telling

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Warning: contains spoilers for Peaky Blinders season 5 and the creator’s plan for the overall finale. Two episodes into Peaky Blinders, the Birmingham-set gangster drama that thundered onto screen in 2013 and grew into a global obsession, Tommy Shelby says that he has a broken heart. He’s drunk and melancholy, talking to Grace, the woman he’ll eventually love, marry, and lose to a bullet that was meant for him. When Grace warns Tommy that the sad song she’s about to sing will break his heart, he tells her, “Already broken.”  In 1919, Tommy’s heart isn’t the only thing about him that’s…
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19 Jan

It’s a Sin Review: Russell T Davies AIDS Drama is a Soaring Tribute

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Here’s a rule you can’t go wrong with: when Russell T Davies writes a TV show, watch it. His dramas are full-size orchestras of the heart. They do everything: joy, agony, love, sex, sorrow, laughter, and increasingly, righteous anger. In state-of-the-nation BBC drama Years and Years, the Queer as Folk creator looked ahead to the nightmarish world of the near future. In Channel 4’s It’s a Sin, he looks back to the 1980s and the pall cast over gay male lives by the AIDS epidemic.  With an impeccable cast led by the luminous Olly Alexander, It’s a Sin is Davies’ best yet; a joyful…
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15 Jan

The Pembrokeshire Murders and the Comfort of Formulaic True Crime Drama

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True crime dramas have become a staple of British television and streaming services. Their popularity seems endless and ever growing. Episodes are devoured at incredible rates as the true stories behind the dramatizations are the start of many an internet k-hole.  The British true crime drama has fallen into a somewhat formulaic way of being made. The narratives are almost classical; a clear, yet flawed hero, triumphing over an unquestionably evil villain. The focus is either on the lead police officer investigating the case, or the perpetrator of the crimes. Both or one of them is usually white, they are…
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30 Nov

The Undoing Finale Ending Explained: Nicole Kidman Drama Closes With a Bang

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HBO’s glossy six part drama The Undoing has come to a close providing answers to some burning questions, not least of which is who killed Elena Alves (Matilda De Angelis). The show closed with quite the bang though, raising other issues that had been playing out in the background throughout the series.  The Undoing was created by David E Kelley and is loosely based on the 2014 novel You Should Have Known by Jean Hanff Korelitz – Susanne Bier is the series director. Nicole Kidman plays Grace Fraser, a wealthy and accomplished clinical psychologist, married to charming Oncologist Jonathan (Hugh…
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30 Nov

The Last Kingdom: How Historically Accurate is the Netflix Drama?

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Den of Geek is speaking to Professor Ryan Lavelle about Early Medieval ruler ealdorman Aethelred of Mercia. “The leading question I think you’re asking,” he laughs, “is was he really such a complete shit?” That’s exactly the question we’re asking. In Netflix historical drama The Last Kingdom, “complete shit” doesn’t begin to cover Aethelred. Toby Regbo’s character in the series is a cowardly, scheming, abusive rapist who tries to have his wife murdered and plots to overthrow his father-in-law, King Alfred of Wessex. Aethelred’s a dangerous egotist driven by self-regard, with no concern for his people. But what say the…
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09 Nov

Industry Review: HBO Finance Drama is Softer-Hearted Than You’d Expect

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In 2020, it’s hard to imagine a workplace that engenders less sympathy than the trading floor of a City bank. A puppy-kicking farm, perhaps? The Trump Campaign? Being asked to experience fellow-feeling for the people who choose to work in the gurgling bastard tank of corporate finance is a tall order. We all recognise City traders as the bad guys – to a one, rapacious, conscience-free, Patrick Bateman-alike monsters who’d sell their grandmother a bundle of toxic assets if it turned them a profit. A viewer could be forgiven then, for approaching a drama about a cohort of graduate interns…
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04 Nov

The Behind the Scenes Casting Drama That Reshaped Forgetting Sarah Marshall

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Judd Apatow-produced rom-com Forgetting Sarah Marshall is beloved by many, and managed to create so many incredible comedy moments with a cast who seemed happy to take a leap of faith with writer and star Jason Segel in that particular stage of their careers. Along with Segel, director Nicholas Stoller cast Kristen Bell, Mila Kunis, Bill Hader, Jonah Hill, Paul Rudd, Jason Bateman and more in the tale of a jilted boyfriend who is struggling to get over his famous ex, but Segel had written the special part of insufferable rock star Aldous Snow for his close friend Charlie Hunnam,…
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26 Sep

Warrior Season 2: What to Expect From the Return of the Martial Arts Drama

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When Warrior premiered in April of last year, Cinemax knew they had a hit right away. Helmed by Fast & Furious director Justin Lin and Banshee co-creator Jonathan Tropper, Warrior was renewed for a second season after just three episodes. “Warrior comes from the pitch Bruce Lee brought to Warner Brothers,” Tropper says, the writer of the show. “It was an eight page treatment Bruce Lee had written that Shannon [Lee] held onto, and that was where the initial ideas for this show come from.”  The show exists largely through the efforts of Shannon Lee (Bruce Lee’s daughter and the…
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16 Sep

Des Episode 3 Review: a Serial Killer Drama With Brains and Heart

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This Des review contains spoilers. Serial killer dramas have a grimy reputation. The phrase conjures up lurid magazine headlines promising Sick! Twisted! Depravity! and Never-Seen-Before Crime Scene Photos! Think ‘true crime serial killer’, you think of Jack the Ripper tours and David from Psychoville poring over victim stats and working himself to a froth over all the gory details.   To shake off those associations and emerge as nuanced, intelligent and non-exploitative, a drama has to work hard. It has to foreground the human cost and trace a story that doesn’t revel in gore. It requires scripts that build in context and narrative…
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21 Aug

The Northman Vikings Drama Begins Production in Ireland, Adds Björk to Cast

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Robert Eggers’ new Northern European thriller just added some Icelandic authenticity to its credentials with singer and songwriter Björk joining the cast in an unspecified role. This puts Björk in a company of performers that includes Bill Skarsgård, Anya Taylor-Joy, Nicole Kidman, Alexander Skarsgård, and Willem Dafoe, just in time as the movie begins its production in Ireland this week. Beginning filming after the coronavirus pandemic delayed filming earlier in the year, The Northman marks the third historical drama from Robert Eggers after he made two of the most interesting horror movies of the last decade in The Witch (2016)…
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13 Aug

The Devil All the Time Trailer Teases Dark Netflix Drama with Tom Holland and Robert Pattinson

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Netflix movie The Devil All the Time has released its first trailer, showcasing an impressive ensemble within a bleak piece of dramatic Gothic Americana. Indeed, the film is headlined by Marvel’s current big screen Spider-Man, Tom Holland, opposite DC’s imminently-debuting big screen Batman, Robert Pattinson, setting up a collision course of characters so seemingly epic, it might just make you forget to wish they were in their respective crimefighting outfits. The film was directed by Antonio Campos, who worked off a script he co-wrote with brother Paulo Campos, adapting Donald Ray Pollock’s 2011 novel of the same name. Bearing a…
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06 Aug

The Rain Season 3 Review: A Mixed Send-Off For The Underrated Dystopian Drama

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Danish Netflix show The Rain has returned for its third and final season in the middle of a very real global pandemic, and has landed in a landscape that’s suddenly thinking a lot more about what might happen to the world a few years after a deadly virus has wiped out most of humanity. A cheery thought? Absolutely not, but a concern that surely permeated the late-stage creation and marketing of the show. From the first episode, it’s clear that there have been some revisions in the writers room since last season, with the driving force for the characters proposed…
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DVD Guide reviews current dvd releases of movies and TV shows. The reviews of these dvd releases are my thoughts and understandings of the movie, dvd releases or TV show and not be taken as fact.

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