The Walking Dead – ‘Here’s Negan’ Review

This week The Walking Dead adapts the fantastic stand alone volume of Robert Kirkman comic book series, ‘Here’s Negan’. It’s something that’s been long awaited in TWD community, pretty much since the volume released in 2016, and it was easy to imagine Jeffrey Dean Morgan slipping into the role of pre-apocalypse Negan. And despite this adaptation being part of the run of COVID episodes, no sign of filming hindrances causes by pandemic precautions are on show here. In fact, ‘Here’s Negan’ is not only the best episode of this recent truncated season, it is one of the best episodes of The Walking Dead ever.

Doctor Who – Series 5 Rewatch and Review

I’ll admit that I was weary about David Tennant’s regeneration into Matt Smith. Smith is a phenomenal actor, but I had a few reservations about his time on the show. It was during these years that the show really blew up, becoming a big deal across the pond and cementing the reputation of the actors and creators. But as with things like this, when the goofy, nerdy thing that you like reaches the mainstream, it stops feeling like your thing. Suddenly you have to share it with the rest of the world.

But upon rewatching the first of Smith’s series as the Eleventh Doctor, I couldn’t have been more wrong.

Lost – Season 2 Rewatch and Review

Lost season 2 picks up from pretty much exactly where season 1 ended. The survivors on the mysterious island have finally got that damned hatch open and are about to go inside. I’m not sure what the prevailing theories were at the time of airing, about what exactly was in the hatch. But I’m betting nobody guessed it’d be a Scottish man (with more than a passing resemblance to Jesus) and a doomsday button needing to be pressed every 108 minutes. The season meanders a little bit, here and there, treading water and buying time to pad out the overlong 24-episode long season. But even the unnecessary stuff is loads of fun. And the more out-there elements of the show introduced in season 2, like the various other stations on the island and the beginning of the Dharma initiative, is some of the absolute best stuff the show ever did.

The ‘Final Destination’ Franchise – Worst to Best

Like the ‘Saw’ franchise, from 2000 to 2011, Final Destination became a cinematic tradition. Released every few years, the series hooked audiences in with the promise of ridiculously gory and over-the-top deaths. But it did this with a surprisingly consistent approach, establishing and updating it’s strict set of in-world rules and building a impressively rich mythos. And also someone gets their guts pulled out of their arsehole.

The Walking Dead – ‘Diverged’ Review

This week sees the latest in the series of pandemic episodes for The Walking Dead, and this is the one that perhaps demonstrates the limitations enforced on the show by a global pandemic in which close contact is generally considered a bad idea.

The Walking Dead – ‘Splinter’ Review

The Walking Dead’s COVID episodes continue this week with what is perhaps the smallest scale episode the show has ever done. It’s a quintessential bottle episode; having a limited cast, only one location, and very little effects work. Unfortunately for The Walking Dead, these smaller, less flashy episodes usually don’t go over too well with fans and ‘Splinter’ is an episode focused around a controversial comic book character, a relatively new one at that, and features no zombie or human kills (a first in the shows history). Is it really that bad though?

The Walking Dead – ‘One More’ Review

The Walking Dead continues to knock it out of the park with these smaller, more character focused episodes. I read opinions online complaining about the lack of a wider cast, about each of this COVID-19 episodes only featuring a handful of characters. And I get that, I too miss the season 5 days when all of the 20+ central cast members were interacting together. But these unfortunate precautions have meant large casts aren’t feasible, which has forced the writers to turn inwards and instead make these smaller but much more tightly scripted episodes. ‘One More’ follows the high standards set by the previous two episodes. It’s one of the smallest episodes in the history of TWD yet it’s also one of the most engaging.

Doctor Who – The Specials Rewatch and Review

After the end of series four it was official, David Tennant would be leaving the show, along with showrunner and mastermind behind its revival, Russell T. Davies. To give the production team enough time to prepare for the new series, 2009 didn’t have a full series of the show. Instead, we got five specials across the year, ending with David Tennant’s departure. Let’s have a look at each of these in turn.

Lost – Season 1 Rewatch and Review

It’s been almost 17 years since Lost first aired and TV has changed a hell of a lot since then. The whole TV landscape has turned upside down but has any show since Lost got us all hooked in the same way Lost did? The mysteries, the characters and their flashbacks, Michael Giacchino’s outstanding score – Lost was truly in a league of it’s own. But is Lost still as good as it once was, almost 20 years since it premiered? I’m going all the way back to the beginning to find out.

Doctor Who – Series 4 Rewatch and Review

There’s an argument for the fourth series of Doctor Who being the revival’s strongest. The show had more than found its footing by this point and this series is full of interesting episodes and ideas. On top of that, it has the biggest finale the show has ever done and possibly the best companion in Catherine Tate’s Donna Noble. 2008 was a very good year to be a Doctor Who fan.