Reviews

For now I give it 6 stars, and though I haven't seen all the 7 episodes released so far, I'm not surprised the k-drama fans are out in force as usual to blow smoke up its backside. It's pointless to come here for a balanced review on anything k-drama because everything is "must see" and the "best drama" of the year, whatever the actual quality.

No-one does monsters quite like the Koreans and there's been a glut of shows featuring monsters and zombies in the past few years. Because of this there's some high bars to reach and overcome and there's really nothing here we haven't already seen. There's an uneasy mix of occasional comedy thrown in with the drama which might settle and gel as time goes on but in the early stages comes across as jarring.

I'll update this when I've seen the whole series, but right now I'm just here to say that if it really is as marvellous as all the 10 star reviews, I'll happily eat my hat. Until then I'm reserving judgement, despite being an admirer of the two leads. That's not enough for this to be an automatic masterpiece.

For every exasperated review explaining this is NOT season 2 of Squid Game, there seem to be many more complaining that it is, and that it's rubbish.

It's a game show, a reality GAME SHOW replicating as far as possible the games/ordeals of the original drama contestants without the shootings being real. It's a great idea and it's fun to watch - that is if you are bright enough to understand what you are watching and do not spend your time fuming over your own mistaken impressions.

With 456 participants to begin with it's not difficult to see why they concentrated on some obvious characters in the first few episodes - a mother and son, a bunch of college jocks, an elderly doctor (reminiscent of the old man in the original series) and various others, but as the games start eliminating vast numbers (including some that had featured fairly prominently) it becomes easier to spot and recognise people, watch relationships develop and root for some while hoping others don't make it.

I haven't watched it all yet, but enough episodes to find it fascinating, especially how people's minds tick, their perhaps misplaced self-confidence, dismissive attitudes towards others, or (just as bad) their gullibility. I'd like to think my own strategy would be to stay sharp but be kind to others where I can, which is why I haven't thoroughly insulted all the confused reviewers, and any blood spilled in the writing of this review is just ink.

At the time of writing this, there were 42 reviews (presumably from BTS fans) and every single one rated this show 10/10.

How honest and realistic is that? Typically some had only watched one episode but insisted it is a 'must see'. Skewed ratings and reviews really don't help anyone, so here's a more balanced view of it.

I am an avid watcher of K-dramas and many of the "variety show" spin-offs that put actors into reality situations where they live in the countryside, cooking and working on farms, or working in restaurants, supermarkets, guest houses that they take over and manage for a couple of weeks. These shows are fun to watch and interaction with the locals contributes to the entertainment.

I'm halfway through this and have to say it's really quite boring. If you are happy to watch pretty actors washing up, frying corn dogs and doing the dishes for a couple of hours before wanting to close and leave for the day, this is for you. They worked a couple of hours here and there, took a day off after being open for only 2 days, turned customers away because they were having a break - a perfect recipe for how you don't run a business.

If you want to watch actors really work and run a business instead of playing at it, then 'Unexpected Business' featured a supermarket that opened at 7.00 am and closed at 10 pm, sold bus tickets, snacks, meals with alcohol, and served as the hub a small town revolved around. The celebrity "owners" became a part of the local business community, their famous part-timers who showed up one after the other to help out chatted to the customers, getting to know them, drawing out stories from them and the interaction between everyone was funny and interesting.

All that happens in Jinny's Kitchen is diners coming and going, saying "mmmmmmmm", then "thank you", and leaving. There is no interest, no entertainment, no personality to any of this whatsoever. It is bland and tedious, despite Choi Woo-shik and Kim Taehyung's friendly appeal. They seem to understand there should be some entertainment value in what we are watching, but the boss and the gimbap lady are totally colourless with zero personality. The glorious Park Seo-joon is trapped in the kitchen studiously boiling and frying behind the scenes and his interaction with the customers is basically nil and they have no idea he is there.

I will finish it and adjust this review if it picks up, but right now it's just meh and I'd recommend Unexpected Business as an example of how this kind of thing can be done successfully.

I'll start by saying I am female and I also drink alcohol but even having these things in common with the three female protagonists did not make me warm to them. The first episode was funny and had me laughing out loud but after that ... what happened? I watched half of this series and dropped it when I realised it wasn't snapping back to its early promise.

Ladies, If you are going to drink then at least enjoy it and don't drink out of frustration, anger, self-pity and boredom, have some fun and get witty and outrageous instead of whiny and obnoxious. I couldn't find anything in episodes 2-6 that even touched upon the strong introduction to the main characters in episode 1. What a let down, and whether or not any of them have an epiphany at the end and belatedly decide to slow down, I simply don't care. They are the usual ditzy/aggressive/clumsy k-drama female lead split over three characters, making the usual stock fool of themselves like spoilt toddlers.

I get the feeling we are supposed to admire and applaud their graceless behaviour but my own drinking days have left me with enough working grey matter to understand this show is the equivalent of the tedious drunk that thinks he's funny. If we laugh beyond episode 1 the jokes on us.

I would have waited until the whole drama had aired, and maybe not even reviewed it all, but the 10 or so gushing reviews so far prompted me to say something after episode 12.

I get that ladies love LJS (and I am one of them) but he wants to be known for his work as a good actor, and not just to be uncritically promoted by his fans in incoherent posts that praise everything he does. Ditto for the Yoona fans who get together and bombard every platform with positive messages. This is a review section not a fan wall.

Yes it's fun guessing who Big Mouse is, and events move fast with a lot of twists and turns, but just as with sleight of hand and card tricks, sometimes so fast it disguises improbable plot progression and also attempts to hide the holes. With four episodes to go, it's all action and no explanation, lots of icing and maybe less cake than expected. Viewers are put in the position of having to accept this or abandon the ability to suspend disbelief and start asking awkward questions instead.

The acting across the board is very good with compelling performances by Kim Joo-hun as the dodgy Mayor Choi and Yang Kyung-won as the over-the-top media king Gong Ji-hoon. With an overwhelmingly male cast, the handful of females manage to hold their own, and Lim Yoo-na does a decent job. However the acting honours go to LJS, whose performance as Park Chang-ho holds the whole thing together.

The speed at which events travel, the constant ups and downs of just about every character, is slick but exhausting. I may return to this review when I've finished the whole series and I hope it manages to keep all the balls in the air until the very end. For now, I could wish for more sense and less sensation, but let's see how it goes.

I have no idea what everyone else was watching, reading so many 10 star reviews. This was boring, tedious, and I only finished it because it was a fraction of the length of other k-dramas, made mercifully shorter by skipping through the songs.

One star each for Ji Chang-wook and Hwang Il-yeop, both of whom could have been better employed in other dramas and no doubt have been. Far too Mary Poppins but without the laughs from Dick van Dyke. The ludicrous lurch towards gritty melodrama in the final episode was as grating as the previous episodes were sentimental.

"Real magic" is better than this.

It's a no from me.

Many people are scathing about the source material being changed, but as I have not read any of it I don't have a gripe on that score, other than keeping it might have improved matters. My big beef is the terrible lead actress who can't act (how DID she get any part, let alone the lead?). I simply cannot watch her she is so appallingly bad. Any scene she has with Jared Harris shows this up and he seems to be smirking at her ineptitude much of the time, while Lee Pace is positively Shakespearian in his delivery, perhaps inspired by his emperor role and seems to have wandered in from a nearby stage.

The whole thing is extremely silly, disjointed and superficial, and the acting by the supporting cast is no better, with the exception of Alexander Siddig. I am 1/3 of the way through episode 2, writing this to pass the time while my dinner finishes cooking.

The timer has now pinged, so that's me done with this tripe.

The closest comparison I could come up with was that of a long uncomfortable flight that feels like it will never end, full of interruptions, shrill annoying noises and irritations that keep you awake when you fervently wish to sink into unconsciousness until it is time to land. Not having experienced space flight, I can only imagine it is far far worse and the three members of the crew that went aboard in suspended animation were the lucky ones.

I'm sorry, I do usually have a lot of patience but this was pretentious af and extremely disjointed. The meeting addressed by the doctor, the pretence of a virus to keep visitors away, the decision to keep populations in the dark about the lunar discovery to avoid causing "culture shock", the visit to look at the monolith, all seemed to have wandered into the film accidentally because the director wasn't even interested in that. Either have a story or rely on images and special effects, but don't periodically wake us up with snatches of Dialogue only to plunge us back into nothing.

Despite its grand sweep it was clumsy and tedious. The monolith tried to warn us but we still went there, and 2.1/2 hrs later we wished we had heeded the warning. Just terrible, and I'll never watch it again. My advice would be to eat some mushrooms instead and visit a planetarium.

I've read a lot of these reviews and the criticism they contain, but wonder how many people ventured past the first episode, which was somewhat overwhelmed by all the superficial flash employed as an early attention-grabber. The first half of episode 1 seems a confused jumble of excess rather than an introduction to character and story, making me question if it would settle and actually not be crap, but gradually it began to extricate itself, tone things down and draw the viewer in.

By episode 2, the only truly irritating thing for me was the voiceover of Julie Andrews as Lady Thistledown, a silly attempt at aping Dame Edith Evans as Lady Bracknell. Every other anomaly - the ethnicity of some elements of the ruling classes, the unlikely modern fabrics and patterns, the orchestral arrangements of current popular music, the Duke dressed as though he is about to take to the stage at the Swan Theatre to play Romeo - all these things exist alongside what we expect from a traditional period piece without replacing them, and it only needs a small shift of perception, one click of the kaleidoscope and everything falls into place.

This isn't period drama based on strict rules of time and place, but set in a time and place that has been reimagined, occupied by people who are different but the same - backward-looking, forward-looking, trapped by convention, ignoring convention, struggling with moral dilemma and hoping for rescue, all within the shifting landscape of a society where everyone competes to belong but no-one is truly safe.

This is not period drama infected with modern woke ideas either, as some have accused. Just about every societal repression you can think of is there, just as it would normally be in a traditional telling. Interestingly, the cast (some of whom seem to belong in other eras conveyed by their behaviour and dress) all seamlessly occupy the same story, their triumphs and disasters are those of any time, their concerns and problems those of any century.

The story takes the usual romantic twists and turns, plus a few unconventional ones which are explored and resolved inventively. The performances are good, although one or two of the minor characters could have been better. The leads are an engaging pair and their dilemma preposterous but entertaining and absorbing. This series was well-plotted and gained more assurance with every episode, which is why I think it a shame so many gave up too early, wrote 1 star reviews and dismissed it for historical inaccuracies.

Lighten up. It's not a history lesson, and whatever colour people are, whatever clothes they are wearing, the fact the Queen is seen in the bath when that would have been equally unlikely - it's a tale told with style that follows the usual path of English period drama while giving it a mischievous tweak at the same time. The result is a glorious mix that is well worth watching.

I'd give it 10 stars but for the annoying Julie Andrews, so it's a 9 from me.

I'll come clean and say I am halfway through ep 2 and only watching that because I feel honour bound to give it a little more time. It's so boring and unengaging I decided to write a short review to help pass the time. Almost the whole way through episode 1 it was like some alien idea of human history. Nothing hung together, it was a series of vignettes that followed each other where nobody had an authentic conversation, and everything seemed designed to feel off balance. It was jarring and kept this viewer at arm's length.

I have no real idea about what's going on and I don't care. This is the hardest Fargo to date to get into and I'm not going to try past the end of this episode. I'll give it a star for each episode because it would be churlish not to. Perhaps I'd up the score if I watched the whole series but I'm not prepared to force myself. 2020 has been trying enough already.

Turgid.

If watching a third of a 10 part series and guessing the rest to fill in the gaps would work for you, I suggest you do it. Anything you can come up with will be better (and faster) than watching this turgid series to its conclusion.

I am not a horror lover and am easily spooked and jumpy, so would not ordinarily watch something in this genre but reading the 9 and 10 star reviews changed my mind, given the number that said it was more than just horror. I decided to give it a go and hide my eyes if need be.

Nothing made me jump and the first few episodes were interesting, working out the relationships and following the flash forwards/backs. Once that was straight, there was very little left but interminable mumbling monologues, stagey family arguments, vast swathes of time given to indulgent repetitive navel-gazing and the odd shock, often experienced by more than one character but they don't discuss it, preferring to continue blaming each other for family drama and disagreements, as though supernatural phenomena is less surprising than the unexpected chance to bring old scores to the surface and settle them.

It is a long plodding journey to the final episode which is a silly mish-mash of meaningless tosh interlaced with the by now routine endless discussions about feelings, coupled with confused memories and hallucinations, and we are supposed to accept this kaleidoscope of gibberish as an explanation (and perhaps apology) for the lack of horror, not to mention the lack of a real story. It took forever to get to the end and unfortunately, once there it took forever to stop.

I'd like to be kind, but I can't.

I'll make this short. Gyllenhall's Nessa is smug, unlikeable and extrenely irritating. Her brother is shifty and suspicious, given to bouts of passive/aggressive resentful behaviour for no good reason I can see. The housekeeper doesn't seem to care that much about getting her kidnapped son back and all of them put plenty of energy into not helping the police. We get it - they have secrets, even from each other, but .... who cares!

The only one behaving like a normal person is the sister-in-law, who is incredulous, very impatient, and clearly wondering what kind of stupid family she has married into. She is the only one I felt any sympathy for, the others being creepy, evasive and apparently uncaring.

I detested them all and did not get beyond episode 3 - not because it was boring and slow, which it certainly was, but because I just didn't care about their silly secrets and nor did I believe they were important enough to keep, certainly not at the expense of a little boy.

The nonsensiccal behaviour of the FBI woman (who ever hailed a cab in London that had an American driver?) the childish British security services, the silly gung-ho bodyguard with more detecting capabilities than Sherlock Holmes,, the extremely unprofessional nurse, the bereaved wife that happily swaps the life of her husband for fifteen fahasand pahnds ... who behaves like this? Really? It was all so utterly stupid.

Verdict based on almost 3 episodes - Ghastly rubbish which should have been buried in the desert never to be unearthed. I know everyone that liked it said it picks up after 4 episodes but do the characters become more likeable and less annoying? Probably not.

There are plenty of plot summaries in other reviews so I won't bother repeating. This series is so clever, so well acted and filmed that even when a scene freezes or goes into slow motion all the expressions captured are honest, true and heart-rending.

Anything with the great Ann Dowd is always worth watching just for her performance alone. All of the leads are believable. I could not fault any of the performances and would give it a 10 but for a small amount of sagging in the latter episodes when large chunks of the action take place outside Offred's community. It is valuable to see just what is happening in the outside world, and to those who, after a lot of bravery and persistence, eventually find themselves back there, but inevitably some momentum was lost.

Bravo to all concerned. I look forward to the second series.

I say "possible spoiler alert" because no matter what I describe, the reader will be no wiser anyway. The 2 is for the scenery, as a few others have already said. Yes the pace was slow but that doesn't bother me if it is building up to something. Unfortunately nothing is resolved, though plenty of herrings are thrown into the mix at a surprising rate for a show that merely crawls along.

I love anything to do with strange goings on in remote wilderness, lights in the sky, possible alien activity, confused lead characters with mysterious memory loss, strange mutations, hidden government facilities, taciturn locals and long-buried secrets, and this series seemed to promise at least some of these. Well it promised a great deal more than it delivered and the abrupt editing and fascination for shooting so many scenes in either semi or absolute darkness was confusing as well as infuriating.

The taciturn locals all seemed to be sharing the same part. I could not tell one from another until 2/3 of the way through, and when anyone referred to an absent character by name I had no idea who they were talking about. Some characters who started out downright weird (Dutch, the woman doctor whose name I still don't know) swung from possible villain to seeming OK, to ... what exactly? Nobody knows, not even after the final episode, when the only thing we were presented with was more questions.

Poor Fergus the earnest police officer, eternally perplexed and as frustrated as any viewer, tries manfully to work out all the answers. He seems the only halfway normal person in a community where people disappear, are murdered, forcibly abducted and left in the woods, mysteriously caused to crash their cars on the road, sometimes just popping up again as though it hadn't even happened. Watching this I began to wonder if I had mirror cells duplicating in my own body, such was the fractured, nonsensical narrative I was trying to make sense of.

Surely someone, somewhere could have come up with an actual story? Even a far-fetched one, rather than an endless series of scenes that didn't connect or have any relevance to each other, and the ultimate betrayal of the viewer was no ending at all. All I can say is now Anna is down a hole in the dark, hopefully Fergus will just leave her there.

This is a comment on "Undercover", rather than a full-blown review. Sophie Okonedo is a very expressive actress and the range of emotions she displays as Maya are believable. She makes her real and at times extremely irritating with her relentless right-on, goody two-shoes behaviour. She loves her husband, she loves her kids, she is dedicated to her job, she has time for everyone and never snaps that she just wants to loll in the bath reading a book for some peace and quiet.

Every trendy box is ticked here - high-achieving black family, social conscience, human rights, epileptic heroine, autistic son, women's lib, house husband, fighting to save death row inmates - it's a full-frontal assault that dares us to disapprove or even have a fleeting selfish thought, because by golly Maya never does.

All this places a rather brittle and fake veneer on a storyline that does have its dark moments and dirty underbelly. The moral dilemmas are real and imaginable but what a shame the lead character is so upright and certain of her path that these dilemmas are not wrestled with in a realistic way. Nothing in life is clearly black and white, but that world view is not something Maya subscribes to. It must be nice to be so certain of everything.

For a long time now on television we have had flawed cops, private eyes, detectives, reluctant mediums, lead characters "battling their demons", all with messy private lives that are supposed to make them interesting as they react in unpredictable ways to all the various plot twists they are put through. In "Undercover" we have a lead character that acts in a totally predictable way to everything, apparently suffers no doubts or misgivings, and is firmly waving her righteous sword, never losing sight of the moral high ground or how to stay there.

This is a story of deceit and the sheer mountain of lies that can be constructed over a period of 20 years. What a pity it had to be wrapped in a politically correct blanket that suffocates any real exploration of the plausible grey areas in life. If it's not right then it's obviously wrong, and that's that.

12 Years a Slave, had it been conceived, written and directed by a 12 year old, might have deserved its lavish praise. As it was not, it is unfortunately the most over-hyped movie in a while. For youngsters who were not yet born, nor old enough to remember the TV series "Roots", 12 Years a Slave may well seem shocking, and a serious and meaningful stab at bringing this subject to life, but the superficiality, plodding pace and relentless sermonising killed any emotional impact it could have had. It wasn't short on suffering, most of it endured by the audience who suffered right from the start, as the first 10 minutes or so was irritatingly shot in semi-darkness and extreme close-up, making it jerky and difficult to follow. This broke any rule of "grab their attention right from the beginning", as the stream of apparently unrelated scenes made it seem as though the director couldn't decide on how or where to begin.

Worse was to come, with good actors asked to play stereotypical characters in stereotypical scenes, and even less forgiveably, a complete failure within this mess to meaningfully depict the real horror and despair of an educated man being stolen away and brought so low. This chance was passed up in favour of trotting out the usual overseers with whips, drunken plantation owners, bitter and frustrated wives, and of course the apparently kind and enlightened white man who nevertheless shows his true colours when the chips are down.

This film simply does not compare to the sweeping story told so movingly and effectively in "Roots" decades before. It also has nothing to add. 12 Years a Slave is Roots-lite, with added pomposity. Why it was nominated for best picture and best director is beyond me. Why it actually won an Oscar for best picture says more about the right-on public face of the Academy than the calibre of the work being judged. It is unfortunate that subject matter holds such sway over voters. My verdict is watch it, and then do yourself a favour and watch the vastly superior "Roots".

I had no idea what this was about when I began watching it but am so glad I did. This film really shows what can be done with a small budget and a lot of vision. The character progression of Wikus is shaped by his deteriorating situation and increasing problems. That he is unequipped to cope is not surprising, given the predictable and thoughtless cushioned life he has led until now, but just as every human is driven by the instinct to survive, he begins to shake off his naive ineptitude and meet adversity head-on.

The fact that each forced step away from familiar boundaries and taboos is met with initial reluctance, demonstrates that despite the dehumanising treatment he is forced to endure, and the pressing need to ensure his own survival, Wikus never loses his own humanity or sense of who he is. Interlaced with the dramatic and relentless rush towards his fate, his fussy adherence to rules he can't quite let go of is tested to the limit by the constant discovery of betrayals perpetrated by the authority he once represented.

Many heroes, even reluctant ones, having taken that fateful step towards action-hero, become something else, something super-human or possibly less than human. Despite the clear physical changes he is undergoing, Wikus finds the mental strength he never knew he had to do the right thing. He takes a stand and remains his own man - just a faster, motivated and more enlightened one. His growing relationship with Christopher Johnson is the extra-terrestrial equivalent of all those mis-matched cop movies where reluctant partners are forced to work together and eventually gain a grudging respect and fondness for each other.

This is a very touching film but also a very funny one, as the bumbling Wikus we see at the start is literally transformed in the most startling ways. It is so well-judged, that the desperation of his circumstances and the humour in the script run happily along side by side and are never at odds with each other. This is a very human film about men and aliens. The smile never left my face.

To say I hated this film would be an understatement. I knew little about it, other than reading a review in Empire magazine a couple of days before. Approximately one hour in, I went and retrieved the magazine to read the review again because I could see no resemblance on screen to the reviewer's glowing praise on the page.

Here I must admit to being female, and also totally appalled at the misogynistic, vile portrayal of just about every woman in this film. The only one that isn't pawed over, stripped and slapped about like a piece of meat is Jordan's first wife, but she is lied to, sidelined, betrayed and dropped as though she never meant a thing. The new wife that replaces her gets a 5 minute courtship, a honeymoon period of approximately the same duration, and is then firmly placed on the humiliation conveyor belt.

As for the legions of whores and other apparently inconsequential women, just about every scene is filled with their degradation. Not even key colleagues get any respect, as one scene determinedly shows the only woman at work to be named down on her knees in a glass lift with her face firmly stuck to the front of some moron's flies.

Yes, I am sure that being a woman has coloured my view of how women are portrayed in this film (and yes, the Empire reviewer was a man) but I notice I am not alone in being disgusted by the over-the-top porn and sheer vileness of behaviour that is revelled in and served up for what I am assured in other reviews is 2.1/2 hours. I probably lasted just over an hour before I gave up. Gave up hoping for any kind of story, gave up hoping for different characters instead of the same character assigned to just about every actor on screen. Gave up hoping that somebody, ANYBODY of the opposite sex might actually be treated fairly, even for half a minute.

Where was the story? What was this about? What was the effect on the victims that were sold useless penny stocks? No, they don't feature either as the film relentlessly focuses on the bullies and morons that relieve them of their hard-earned cash with no glimpse of the consequences. When these heroes stop their carousing it is only to have pointless gibbering conversations about nothing which just serve to delay the orgies momentarily. Nothing is said that advances the story as the only story here is sex, drugs and exploitation. It is the pornographic equivalent of an evening looking at someone's boring holiday photos.

There is zero progression, zero development, and - as far as I am concerned - zero interest in actually telling a story and entertaining the audience, just a determination to portray every excess known to man for no reason or purpose. Who cares if the real Jordan did any of this? I kept waiting for Vince Vaughn to show up as it was more like one of his puerile comedies than an Oscar-nominated film.

I am old enough to have worked in a corporate environment in the City of London during the 80s. Yes the place was awash with money, but every woman was not treated like an expendable whore. Shame on Scorsese and all involved. I am no shrinking violet but so much emphasis on misogynistic, negative behaviour means little or no emphasis on anything else that could have made this a worthwhile film to watch. Ultimately it has nothing to say except F U, and does nothing but relieve the public of its entrance money with little return (true to its subject matter in that respect).

This morning I watched District 9 which I had recorded on a whim and also knew nothing about. A film with plenty of heart, made on a tiny fraction of the budget blown on The Wolf of Wall Street, and to much greater effect. No prizes for guessing which of these films I would recommend.

As many have said already, this is a great idea but poorly executed. There is zero tension or excitement, and only a few minutes in when JT's mother is down to her last few seconds of life and racing towards him as fast as she can, she might as well be running in a vacuum because no-one cares if she makes it or not and JT's unbelievable "crying" when she drops dead in his arms was so hard to believe in I laughed out loud. There are countless movies with stirring scenes when the main character is stripped of everything and kneels, tears streaming, in pouring rain/desert dust/ruined landscape, vowing NEVER to be put down again (Scarlett O'Hara for one) but "In Time" takes a time-honoured device, uses it too soon, messes it up and throws it away.

And so it begins on its relentless downward spiral, with the googly-eyed Amanda Seyfried, as vacant as a plastic doll, playing the role of stupid pointless bimbo being dragged along by the hero. Even Replicants have more personality. Nobody here seemed as though they were trying, and don't get me started on the super-wooden Alex Pettyfer with his London bloke accent. Maybe it was a deliberate decision to have the desperate masses with their lives running out before their eyes seem mechanical and unreal, while the villains (the rich, the timekeeper) are infinitely more real. Perhaps they alone can afford the time to develop a real character.

Vincent Kartheiser gives a slightly detached performance (having clearly placed his feelings in a bank vault along with his centuries) but where we might reasonably expect some menace we get very little. He is even quite amiable for someone who must by now have seen it all and has the economic freedom not to have to suffer fools gladly. He has been more chilling in certain episodes of Mad Men, so blame must be placed on the script and the careless flabby direction.

Cillian Murphy does a good job with stupid dialogue, giving his performance a world-weary spin that indicates he just can't believe what he is being asked to spout. Occasionally he wanders around with his hands clasped behind his back thinking deeply, but this unfortunately does not result in him questioning the power of those he represents, nor the system he upholds on their behalf. And really he needs to, because it is so precariously designed a criminal five year old could see opportunity in the yawning gaps.

For an elite group of people to apparently rely on only one timekeeper to keep things ticking along in the various time zones (and he constantly operating on dwindling minutes - when do we ever see him with more than about 45 minutes between life and oblivion?) they must have the utmost faith in his ability when he is little more than a time gambler himself. Every step he takes away from his car is tempting fate, and I would not sit easily at my boardroom table in the rich district if he was the only guarantee of my safety and continuing time-wealthy existence.

Justin Timberlake is just OK, but then he isn't really asked to give more than that, with a storyline and silly script that doesn't stretch his abilities, other than the ability to take his shirt off and peer through dirty windows in between bouts of running and driving. My criticism is reserved for the writer/director (whose name I have already forgotten and cannot be bothered to check) and for whichever individual did not dispense some well-needed discipline in his direction.

Other than that, the truly terrible Amanda Seyfried needs singling out for her empty one-dimensional "performance", which was so bad I will make a point of avoiding her in anything else she ever appears in. Sorry.

I have now watched 5 episodes of The Paradise and find myself hooked in, and irritated, in equal measure. Love the pantomime villain, Mr. Jonas and the smooth but threatening Lord Glendenning. Katherine Glendenning, quick-witted, manipulative, but never quite decisive enough to stick to her choices, is also proving to be an interesting character. But oh dear - Mr. Moray seems to have studied at the Gordon Ramsay school of acting, with ** every other ** word studded ** with pregnant ** pauses ... This, coupled with an apparent inability to look at anyone he is speaking to, makes his performance so wooden and laughable he is reduced to a good-looking plank dressed in nice clothes. How he ever managed to find the shop each morning is a mystery, let alone make a success of running it. His right-hand man is a younger, right-on version of Gordon Brown, concerned more with equal opportunities for the staff than turning a profit. Most of the characters are fairly ludicrous, although the toffs are making a better job of believability than the staff. A special mention to Sarah Lancashire as Miss Audrey, a crude caricature in the first episode that has now settled nicely into a cross between Hyacinth Bucket and Lady Grantham. The few good performances only serve to highlight the more numerous bad ones, and among them I include Joanna Vanderham as Denise, who plays every scene with either a trembling lip, smug conceit or a jolly hockeysticks grin. I shall keep on watching but god knows why.

I grew up in England and left school to start work in the 70s. The boring drudgery of it all and the sense of feeling trapped does come across in this film, but the fairly middle-class view of things means the traps here are all pretty comfortable. In reality, life in Britain then was much grittier, violent, and hopeless for many people, and some of this feeling comes through in the characters of Bruce and his father, but life was also much funnier than this too. There is not much fun in this film, despite the attempts to raise a laugh through the character of Snork, who in reality would not have been making public announcements at a railway station - hierarchy at work was very much based on age and he would likely have been making the tea and sweeping up.

This was a time of glam rock, soon to be followed by punk rock. It was also the hey-day of Monty Python, but any silliness in this film is puerile rather than inventive and the exploits of the three youngsters incredibly tame. People's lives may have felt a bit dead but they were not all brain dead as well. Things bode well at the start with Roxy Music on the soundtrack, but the music seems divorced from the story itself, and the gulf between them just gets wider and wider.

It is set in some fictitious version of Reading (which is close to London) and real youngsters back then were hopping on trains and going "to the Smoke" every weekend, frequently further afield (and not just waiting until the end of the film to do so). Individuality was alive and well, not yet stamped out of the population and made a crime. The problem with this movie version of Reading is that it looks nothing like the town itself, and more of a chocolate box rendition of middle England. Anyone wanting a real flavour of how Reading might have been in the 1970s could take a look at "My Beautiful Laundrette", a film set in South London (admittedly a decade later) but not a million miles away. The real Bruce would more likely have been found skulking under a similar set of railway arches, and not hanging around with a fat kid and a colourless nerd in a suit.

This is a film devoid of any authentic characters, has no vibrancy and represents its subject in such a mundane way that I didn't feel any nostalgia for a time and place I knew well (except perhaps for the train at the end that still has separate compartments and handles on the doors). If Ricky Gervais and Stephen Merchant were going to suck the life out of an era and just go for the feeling of hopelessness, of being destined for the scrapheap and taking that very short step towards it, they could have made this film more claustrophobic, hopeless and real than it is, but still have injected some great laughs too.

I had no idea what this film was about before watching, so had no preconceptions approaching it. Ricky Gervais is witty and astute enough to bring something like this to life, particularly as it was his era too - a pity it didn't happen. It seems to have been made to appeal to the American market and anyone who wasn't actually living through these times, but it really could have been so much better.