RIP John Hurt

It was sad to hear that John Hurt has passed away. This is a great loss for the acting world. It's easy to remember him for his role in genre franchises. Harry Potter fans remember him as the actor who played Olivander. Alien fans remember him as Kane. Doctor Who fans like me are likely to remember him as the War Doctor. But let’s not forget that there was so much more to his career than these roles. 

For me personally, his best role was his take on the Emperor Caligula in I Claudius. While John Hurt may not have had the physical presence of Brian Blessed’s Augustus or George Baker’s Tiberius, his Caligula stands out through the power of his voice. He plays the genuinely unhinged, switching from kind to cruel in an instant, alternating between being funny and frightening in his callous attitude to others. The scene where Caligula climbs into bed with his dying grandmother was well judged by Hurt, along with all of the other suggestions by the actor to make the character more distasteful.

Another notable performance was as Quentin Crisp at different stages of that man’s life in The Naked Civil Servant and An Englishman in New York. There was also Merrick in The Elephant Man and as Max in Midnight Express. I could go on just listing his different notable performances. He was always great to watch and always lifted the quality of whatever it was he starred in. My heart goes out for his closest friends and family.

Sherlock 4x03: The Final Problem

Who is Eurus Holmes? What is the significance of Redbeard to Sherlock? What is the purpose behind Moriarty’s video messages? Steven Moffat and Mark Gatiss have set up the first question this series while the other two go back to Series Three. It's time for answers and The Final Problem attempt to address all of them. While the episode certainly answers the questions, the answers themselves are not altogether satisfactory.

The Final Problem has a fantastic premise. Sherlock, John and Mycroft visit Sherrinford, an island fortress, to find out how Eurus has been leaving her cell. When they arrive they fall into a trap set by Eurus, who has manipulated the prison staff so that she can take over the prison. Sherlock, John and Mycroft are now forced to solve puzzles which challenge their ethics in order to save the life of a girl who is trapped on a plane without a pilot. It sounds like an interesting plot but the longer it goes on, the more it starts to fall apart.

Eurus Holmes turns out to be a largely disappointing character. We're told that her intelligence surpasses Sherlock and Mycroft, but here she uses that intelligence in a boring way. She's supposed to be able to manipulate people through words but it's fairly standard Hannibal Lector stuff. Sian Brookes is good but this week but playing cod psychopath gives her little range to work with. Her character doesn't quite add up either. If she’s imprisoned and isolated since her youth then where did she get the education to make her deduce threats to Britain? Her motives are also a little poor. Her reason for committing all these crimes is that she just wants a hug feels trite and no consolation to the families of her victims.

The puzzles set by Euros for her siblings feel dull. The three heroes move to one room, solve the mystery and then move on to the next, like some kind of reality tv game. It’s a structure borrowed from The Great Game but focused more on Sherlock's emotional decisions rather than his deductive skills. It does not come off as well as that previous episode  because all the puzzles are taking place within the same claustrophobic and dull locations. Getting Sherlock, John or Mycroft to kill the prison warden was a neat idea but when John and Mycroft are threatened there is little to no reason to care since we know, instinctively that Sherlock and John are unlikely to die. The most effective puzzle involves getting Molly to say she loves Sherlock. This is because it is cathartic for viewers who have waited for a similar revelation.

The return of Moriarty via video recordings wasn't particularly exciting. It felt more like an obligatory appearance to tie up a loose plot thread. Having Eurus and Moriarty working together came at the detriment of both characters. The Final Problem ends up giving the impression that Eurus was the true power behind Moriarty, even though I don't think this was intentional. Still, it was good to see Andrew Scott again playing the living Moriarty in a flashback sequence.

The final act at Musgrave House was probably better in the sense that the tension was higher but there was still two wobbly plot revelations to go. When Eurus revealed that Redbeard was a childhood friend of Sherlock's, it didn't have the impact it should. It's actually easier to feel more sorry for the dog because we've seen it in several flashbacks in previous episodes. The child’s relationship with Sherlock is too vague. As with the girl on the plane, just having a child in danger is not enough in itself to be scary. We have to care about the child otherwise it's just cheap audience manipulation. The little girl was actually the manifestation of Euros’ madness all along. I guessed that the plane itself was fake due to the amount of time it took for the plane to crash but the actual identity of the little girl feels like a cheat because the girl is played by a different actor to the young Eurus in other flashback scenes. It might have felt more fair if we'd only heard her voice.

Still, it wasn't all bad. The best bit was seeing more of Mycroft. We see his deductive reasoning and the disguise as the sailor and his feelings towards his other siblings. The final scene of Sherlock's parents calling Sherlock the grown up were good.

The final scene was nice. Seeing Sherlock and John solving regular mysteries made me feel sad that we never get to see this. Having Sherlock be a series of movies is a double-edged sword. It means there is less padding but sometimes it feels like we miss the fun of a straightforward case. By the end, Molly is back to being nice with no real transition from her previous sadness. Still, seeing Sherlock and John running out of 'Rathbone place' was funny. This epilogue certainly makes it feel like Sherlock has come to an end but it doesn't have to be. Steven Moffat and Mark gatiss could still do more specials like David Renwick does with Jonathan Creek. This would make it easier for Benedict Cumberbatch and Martin Freeman to take a break and only do a few weeks.

It's perhaps not the best way the series could have ended. There were decent few moments peppered through a script which could and should have been much, much better. Still, it doesn't cancel out the fact that the show as a whole has been great. Here's hoping there's more to come.

5/10

Sherlock 4x02: The Lying Detective

The sense of darkening mood that began in the last episode is followed through in this episode. John is still attempting to cope with Mary's death. Meanwhile, Sherlock is having to find a way to get his friend back and keep his promise to Mary. In order to fulfil this promise, Sherlock takes the case of Culverton Smith a man who claims to be a killer. This is all part of a scheme by Sherlock to bring himself close to death so that John Watson has to save him, all as Mary had planned it.

Culverton Smith, has been appearing in the show trailers, leading some to imagine that he would be a master criminal on the level of Moriaty and Magnusson. In actuality, Smith turns out to be far more banal, far more real type of evil. A philanthropist with a northern accent, who gets up to nasty things in a hospital is certainly familiar type of person to people in Britain. Smith's friendship with the Queen is very similar to a certain TV host's relationship with the first British Prime Minister. In many ways you wonder what else he is up to other than serial killing.

Sherlock nonetheless gets Culverton to confess --- a theme of the episode. John confesses to Sherlock about the death of Mary. In a cynical turn, Culverton enjoys his confessions and thinks they will make him more popular. Only Mycroft does not confess to a secret sibling and it looks as though next week will pay the price for it.

The reveal that Sherlock's secret sibling is actually a sister, Euros, was an interesting twist.  The actor did a really good job revealing that she was disguised as Watson's fling, Smith's daughter and John's psychiatrist. Her agenda will surely be revealled next week.

Benedict Coumberbatch did a good job playing a drug addled Sherlock. Martin Freeman expressed the grief of John Watson well enough.

A highlight of the episode was Una Stubbs as Miss Hudson, who gets to hold Sherlock at gunpoint and drive a fast car. For the first time in a while Steven Moffat address the backstory of her having a drug lord husband. It was also nice to see the return of Billie Wiggins, providing Sherlock with drugs yet again.

9/10

Sherlock 4x01: The Six Thatchers

Although I enjoyed Series Three of Sherlock, there were a couple of points where it felt like the show was in danger of becoming a light-hearted family sitcom. After the ending of The Six Thatchers, and the murder of Mary Watson by Norbury, it would seem that Series Four will be pushing the show in a darker direction.

The story did not get off to a promising start. In order to bring the characters up to date from the previous Christmas we got a slightly dull sequence of Sherlock solving multiple crimes and Mary giving birth to baby Rosamund.  A Scandal in Belgravia used the same montage method to show the passing of time from 2010 to 2012, but this time around it was too familiar to be quite as funny.

Fortunately thinks start to perk up ever so slightly as Sherlock and John attempt to solve the first of the three main mysteries in this episode.  This revolves around the the death of Charlie, a politician's son who was found dead in his car despite the fact that he was supposed to be in Tibet. It's a fairly macabre sequence with the charred body in the car, a sign of the nastier things to come. Although this was a fairly standard mystery, it mainly served as a springboard into the second mystery of the smashed Thatcher stores.

The Six Thatchers plot appeared straightforward with statues being smashed one by one. This led into the welcome appearance of Toby, the sniffer dog from Conan Doyle's A Sign of Four. Again, the plot remained fairly lighthearted, with very little threat to Sherlock himself. It was surprising that Gatiss avoided making much political commentary on this Fortunately, once Ajay, played by Sacha Dhawan was sighted, things became darker and better.Sherlock is involved in a fight for his life and it is revealed that the content of the Thatcher statue was the A.G.R.A flashdrive that Mary had in His Last Vow. 

The final scenario focuses on the mystery of who the traitor to A.G.R.A was. This became more like a spy drama with Sherlock, John and Mary engaged in a fire fight with Ajay in a foreign country.

The showdown with Norbury in the Aquarium was good, linking back to the opening.If there was any real problem in that episode then it was fairly obvious when the audience was being mislead. It was fairly easy to work out the details of Charlie's death. Later on, when Mary left Britain and said Sherlock could never find her, it felt obvious that he would turn up at her eventual destination. Likewise the fact that Vivian Norbury was present when Lady Smallwood was arrested made it felt fairly obvious that  she would turn out to be the real traitor and not. Perhaps Mark Gatiss is just not as good at seeduing surprises as Steven Moffat.

Benedict Cumberbatch has effortlessly resumed the role of  Sherlock. For most of the story, Sherlock is going through the motions and being arrogant. Once Sherlock has been brought down by Mary's death, Benedict gets to do his best acting as the uncomfortable best friend. Him being the one to visit John's psychologist was a nice touch.

Martin Freeman  is good as John Watson, even if the character is  on the sidelines for most this episode. He does at least get his own subplot where he appears to be starting an affair with a lady he met on the bus, although the precise nature of the relationship is unclear. Given that the said Lady is seen next to a poster of Culverton Smith, the villain fromt he next episode, this relationship is far from good. It was a good idea to make John fallible in this way, much as his beating up a junkie did in His Last Vow. His grief at Mary's death was well played.

As Mary Watson, Amanda Abbington, alternates well between super spy and ordinary mother. Some fans have disliked the way that she has entered the show as they prefer it to be just Sherlock and John. Personally I think she's been a decent character and given John a new role to play as a husband and now a widower. It appears that she may live on as security footage.

Mark Gatiss is as good as ever as Mycroft. It is somewhat surprising that he would find Thatcher arrogant. He always stuck me as being a fairly right wing character.

Vivian Norbury made for a very slimy and polite villain. Sacha Dhawan also deserves acclaim for his portrayal of the A.G.R.A agent, Ajay. It's a tougher, very different kind of role to the nerdy archivist he played in the 2013 adaption of The Tractate Middoth or to his portrayal of Waris Hussein in An Adventure in Time and Space. He's proving to be a very versatile actor and worth watching in the future.

The other regulars were understandably sidelined. 'Greg' Lestrade feels more like a family friend than a police officer. It would be nice to see more of the police team in the future. Mrs Hudson and Molly Hooper make brief appearances and they both express a decent amount of grief at the death of Mary.

Rachael Talalay is as good a director of Sherlock as she was on her episodes of Doctor Who. She succeeds in making the aquarium at the climax a cold and mysterious place. She is a director who deserves to go onto greater things.

This new episode gets the fourth series off to a decent start. The episode may have been a little dull at the beginning but really improves as it goes on.  Sherlock and John are now at odds and Moriaty's plan has yet to be put into effect. It will be interesting to see where things go from here.

8/10

Looking back at 2016

You'd be hard pressed to find many good things that happened in 2016. It's been a turbulent time both personally and globally. Once again I have listed a few things I've seen or heard in the year that I liked. Not all of them actually came out this year but are part of my overall experience of this year.

Film: Ran (1985)

One of the later Kurosawa films which proved the director was still good. A re-telling of 'King Lear' in which the ruler hands over his kingdom to his two of his three sons while the other is disgraced. The theme of events spiraling out of control was quite fitting for this year actually.

TV Show: War & Peace (BBC, 2016)

When critics spoke of the BBC adaption of Leo Tolstoy's War & Peace, they tended to focus on the romance and brief nudity scenes, ignoring the fact that this was a genuinly good piece of drama regardless of those elements. Paul Dane is great as Pierre Bezukhov while Lily James is great as Natasha Rostova and there are lots of good guest actors such as Jim Broadbent and Brian Cox. I would definately recommend this to others.

Videogame: Fran Bow (2015)

A psychological horror game about a little girl named Fran who has been placed in a mental institution following the murder of her parents. The cutesy images behind the more horrific elements which include human experimentation, the sexual exploitation of children and madness.

Album: Super (Pet Shop Boys, 2016)
The return of the Pet Shop Boys was decent enough and included some good songs such as 'Pop Kids' and 'Inner Sanctum'.

Personal Event: Completing Higher Education
Getting to the end of higher education which was a long hard slog but paid off in the end.

Other Event: Star Trek's 50th anniversary

The 50th anniversary of Star Trek was a fairly quiet affair in the UK but there was at least the slow and steady development of Discovery to keep an eye on. I'm not the biggest Star Trek fan but I do quite like the Movies and  Deep Space Nine is my favourite series. If Discovery is anything like those movies they will be good. The world could certainly do with the Federation's utopian values these days.

Doctor Who 10x00: The Return of Dr Mysterio

The 2016 hiatus is over at last. The companion introduction was nice, as was the Doctor’s cameo appearance in Class, but there’s nothing like a full episode of Doctor Who to satiate the viewing appetite. The Return of Dr Mysterio is a fairly lightweight episode by Steven Moffat's standards, but even his average scripts can still be more vibrant and entertaining than those middle episodes of Class.

Doctor Who has tackled many genres over the years, from horror to romance, but a superhero story has never really been done properly. The Second Doctor met a superhero called the Karkus in the Mind Robber, but that was very brief. The Doctor himself has had superpowers on occasions over the years, but a costumed hero has never been the focus of the story. Nowadays people can’t seem to get enough of superheroes, what with all the TV shows and films being churned out by Marvel and DC so it makes sense to do this story now more than ever.

The superhero of this story is the Ghost and the pre-titles sequence gives us his origin story.
On Christmas Eve in the 1980s, a young comic book fan Grant meets the Doctor and swallows a gemstone which he mistook for medicine. The gem bonds with Grant, giving the power of  flight and super strength. Twenty or so years later, Grant is grown up. By day he works as a nanny for journalist Lucy Lombard. By night, he is the Ghost, a superhero with a costume similar to Superman’s and with the voice similar to Batman’s. He and the Doctor meet again when the Doctor, Nardole and Lucy are investigating an organisation called Harmony Shoal.  The Ghost rescues Lucy. What follows is a farce between Grant and Lucy while the Doctor and Nardole continue to investigate Harmony Shoal.

The Ghost and Lucy relationship is clearly inspired by the Superman and Lois Lane relationship from the Christopher Reeve/Richard Donner movies.This is a wise move as they are better as family friendly movies than some of the modern darker fare. The dinner scene witht he Ghost and Lucy is similar to the scene in Superman. There's also a nice namedrop of Shuster and Siegel, Superman’s creators. Sadly the budget does not seem to stretch to a flying scene for Lucy and Grant. Justin Chatwin is likeable enough as Grant Gordon or the Ghost. The Ghost is Superman with the voice of Batman. Grant himself is a bit of Rory as the guy who waited. As in some of the best comic books, the hero underneath the mask is more interesting than the hero. Lucy Fletcher nee Lombard was a good enough character if an obvious riff on Lois Lane. At least this is a reporter who is also a single parent, a nice riposte at the comic book creators of the 90s who seemed to think that their heroes couldn’t have families.

While Grant and Lucy are busy, the Doctor and Nardole uncover Harmony Shoal’s plan.
This is to explode their spaceship, forcing the world leaders to flee for refuge in their laboratory where they can swap brains Given the state of current political events, it would hardly be surprising if this had really happened. It's somewhat similar to Aliens of London, with aliens disguised as humans orchestrating a spaceship crash, although the tone works better than the other, slightly wonky, story. This plot also feels slightly disconnected to the superhero plot.  Perhaps a comic book style super-villain would have been more appropriate for this story.

The two plots do eventually come together at the end as Harmony Shoal attempt to gain the Ghost’s body. It all ends on a bit of wish fulfilment as Grant reveals his true identity to Lucy before he and Lucy dispose of the falling space ship. The Doctor dismisses Harmony Shoal rather too easily, although they promise to be back. We’ll see if future episodes end up showing this.

Peter Capaldi is as great as ever as the Doctor. He is much more of a fun figure this time around, which makes sense for a Christmas episode, but I still miss the rebel Time Lord of Series 8. At this point in his timeline the Doctor is still mourning the departure of River Song. It is odd that Clara’s departure is not mentioned through.

Nardole turned out to be a lot better than I as expecting.  The character has undergone a bit of revision and time around he has some insight into how the Doctor thinks. He gets to be the one who tells Grant and Lucy about River Song. It is arguable that he was not entirely needed in the episode as anyone could have been there for

The monsters of the story, Harmony Shoal, were a creepy idea, though their representatives, Dr Sin and Mr Brock, had very little personality. It seems they are related to the Shoal of Winter Harmony from The Husbands of River Song. It seems like an odd connection, unless Moffat is planning an ongoing thread through his Christmas specials from now on.

The best moment came from the idea of superheroes going through puberty. I don't know if Smallville ever did the X-Ray eye gag but it should have done.  The little visual gag about teeenage Grant 'rising' when he sees teenage Lucy was a nice touch

Overall this was a good Christmas special. Nothing extraoordinary. nothing terrible but plainly in the middle. It reminded me very much of Planet of the Dead. A lone event which had to fill up the show until later.

8/10

Class: The Lost

After last week's arguments split our characters apart, something big was needed to bring them all back together again this episode certainly goes for big. As if the murder of Ram's father and Tanya's mother by the Shadow Kin in pre-titles sequence wasn't enough, we find out that Miss Quill has become pregnant. It's a shocking opening, though I am slightly disappointing that we won't be seeing any more of Ram's father. I quite liked him.

To deal with the impending threat, our characters are forced into different roles. April must look after Ram and her own mother. It's interesting that April and Charlie's decision to ignore violent solutions has lead to a drastic situation.

Tanya learns to cope with her grief by learning self-defence from Miss Quill. It's a good development for a character that has been on the sidelines.

The story concludes when Charlie finally uses the weapon to destroy all of the Shadow Kin. The point perhaps that although he has lost his people he still has his friends. April  sacrifices herself to stop Corikanus. However she ends up in the body of a Shadow Kin. What will she do?

Could this really be the end of the Shadow Kin as antagonists? They've not exactly been the most exciting of villains. If this show does come back for a second series, the one thing it can definately do better is to better recurring villains.

The episode ends on a positive and negative. We finally learn a bit more about the Governors  who are allied with the Weeping Angels. It's sad that Dorothea Ames had to die since this was another character that could have stuck around.

The series has been alright. Not terrible not fantastic but alright. It has taken elements of Buffy but not quite been as astounding as that show. Hopefully, the show will get a second series so it gets the chance to enhance itself.

8/10