Reviews

The outer world of Madrigal is invaded by the alien Covenant forces. The Spartans, a war like race of soldiers who the locals of the planet are suspicious of come to repel the Covenant.

However the people of Madrigal are wiped out with just one survivor. Teenager Kwan Ha Boo, she follows the MasterChief to find out an artefact that the Covenants were after.

The opening episode begins with a prolonged action scenes as the aliens invade Madrigal and do battle with the locals. Then the Spartans arrive. It is a while before the opening title sequence.

It cannot last as then the various political machinations come into play.

I am not familiar with the console game Halo. It was a big hit on the Xbox. There is some Dune style world building and elements of the Mandalorian.

Good special effects but it got stodgy very quickly.

Is it just me that thinks some stories from The Lloyd Bridges Show had a propaganda element.

The show was made in the height of the Cold war, things like the Cuban missile crisis.

This story involves post war Japan. Adam Shepherd is on a ship and comes across a newspaper headlines that is a few days old. Ann allegation made by Communists about local farmers being displaced by the American air force.

The farmers are being asked to move as the Americans need to build a runway for their planes. They will suitably compensated but the villagers do not want shift. They also do not trust the Americans.

Sergeant Keefer has been entrusted to help out the farmers. Specifically bring water to the fields.

This is a comedic episode with Keefer and his men do not inspire much confidence.

Still I found the end a little too jingoistic considering what will soon take place in Vietnam.

As Red Eye progresses, I still think it is a mixture of good and bad. Some shoddy writing stops it becoming a good thriller.

Jess Li turning up alone and late at night at the door of Sir George Chapman. He greets her with a gun. Chapman has links with the security services, he is also rightfully paranoid.

Someone is out to get him. So he leaves all the drapes of his house open. Anyone can take a potshot at him.

Dr Matthew Nolan does know Chapman and did some work for him. The business of passing information via unwitting couriers. Only Nolan keeps going to the galley to make furtive phone calls from that secret mobile phone. He should had just gone to the toilet. At least he would had some privacy.

At least Madeline Delaney seems to have an inkling what is going on with the Chinese. Just who from the security services might be helping them or trying to cover their own backs.

Sid takes Tony for a cruise. A chance to relax and chat up the women. Something Sid is adept at sea.

Only Tony is bored going round the ship. He is being pursued by an amorous lady (Hattie Jacques.)

Suddenly Tony is overtaken by panic. He is convinced that the ship is in danger. The captain has disappeared. He even makes the other passengers panic.

Eventually the ship's doctor has to sedate him. Sid has to couch to look after his friend.

It took a while for the episode to get going. It finds it groove when the ship's captain (John Le Mesurier) tries to talk sense to Tony.

Then there is the later party as Tony tries to avoid the advances of the amorous lady who wants to dance with him.

Business partners Chuck Clark and Harry Bright were good friends as well as successful in business together.

When the older Clark marries young bride Margaret. The two men drift apart. Harry regards her as a gold digger and he goes to Perry Mason for advice.

Perry tells Harry to dissolve the partnership. He goes to see Clark and talks to Margaret. She jokes that she only married Clark for his money. However her brother seems to be hanging around like a leech.

When Margaret is found dead, Harry is arrested as the main suspect. He had come into some vital information that Margaret and her brother were not siblings.

There are no shortage of suspects. There is a sympathetic look at Margaret the victim, maybe she really did want to settle down with the older Clark.

The ending was surprisingly rushed. I had a good idea of the likely suspect but the motive and everything else had to be explained in the epilogue.

Muriel McKay was an Australian woman married to a senior News International executive Alick McKay.

While Rupert Murdoch was abroad, he had loaned his Rolls-Royce to Alick. It seems the kidnappers thought they were kidnapping Murdoch's wife.

The police were called in but Alick also got the News International newspapers involved with the case.

At first the police thought that the mafia was involved with the kidnapping. They also suspected the McKay family members.

It turned out two Indo-Trinidadian brothers who arrived in Britain as visitors were involved in the kidnapping. They demanded one million pounds in ransom but provided no proof of life.

Another crime story that sticks with the facts. It was obviously a bungled kidnapped attempt as it was a case of mistaken identity. No insight is offered about the brothers. The program could had been more interesting.

Mrs McKay's body was never found. Nizamodeen Hosein one of the kidnappers later stated that Mrs McKay suddenly died of a heart attack. He and his brother hid the body.

As of 2024 he is assisting the McKay family to locate Mrs McKay's remains.

Psychiatrist Dr Bosanquent (Ronald Colman) is the one who has ladies on his mind.

Three of his patients talk to him about their problems. His mind drifts as he has a reverie about being involved in their stories.

The first patient has marital issues. The second is torn between two men, the third seems to have a hen pecked husband.

I think this story might have been inspired by the Salvador Dali inspired dream sequence in Alfred Hitchcock's Spellbound.

Unfortunately this does not work. It is just uninteresting and dull. Only Hillary Brooke makes an impression as a dominant wife that Dr Bosanquent dreams of poisoning.

Based on a Ray Bradbury story from 1946. Set in London, Alice Leiber (Susan Wooldridge) has given birth to baby boy, but she is not bonding with him.

He cries incessantly, so much so that Alice hates her child. He shuts up the moment the baby's dad David (Leigh Lawson) arrives home. Starting again once he goes to work in the morning.

Doctor Jeffers (Cyril Cusack) hopes things will eventually settle down, he is loathed to split mother and son up. Alice talks to Doctor Jeffers how she remembers being born, being pulled away from the comfort of her mother's womb. Maybe the baby has experienced the same and now resents Alice.

The demonic child story has been overtaken by Rosemary's Baby, The Omen,, We need to talk about Kevin. So there were little surprises here as no one wants to believe a baby could be evil.

It does end in a disturbing manner.

All of a sudden we are back to an all filmed episode. It features a young Baroness Floella Benjamin. Who still looks the same in 2024.

I expected this story to involve a young black man called Dallas getting arrested and interrogated back at Dock Green police station. He helps out someone who is either drunk or very ill. A passerby phones the police that a black man is mugging a white man who appears to be unconscious.

Instead the episode goes down a totally different and unusual route.

The drunk/ill man goes by the name of John Smith (Anthony Steel) who has flashbacks to jungle warfare in Africa. Both Rhodesia and British mercenaries in Africa were the in thing around that time.

After Dallas helps Smith get into his flat, Smith pulls a gun. It sends Dallas scurrying out of the house and he calls the police as well.

When DI Crawford arrives on the scene. He sees a striped tent with workmen. A sure sign that someone else is also watching this Mr Smith. The men in the tent appear to be Special Branch. They expect a war criminal to come into contact with Smith.

I felt the story meandered a bit. The scenes with the foreign office woman who owned the house that Smith was living in. Surely she would have a fair idea of what was going in Africa.

It did tackle some grey areas. Smith feeling he owed this war criminal for saving his life. I did wonder just how Dixon would tackle race relations in mid 1970s Britain, if Dallas was arrested.

All About Eve is often compared with Sunset Boulevard. A waspish look at Hollywood and a cynical view of social climbers.

Eve Harrington (Anne Baxter) is the devoted fan of diva and veteran stage actress Margo Channing (Bette Davis.) It is all a cynical ploy. The stagestruck Eve wants to gain entry to Margo's inner circle and slowly devour all.

There is one giveaway when Eve pretends to be on stage and taking a bow. A mark that she is not wide eyed and innocent but to take out the ageing Margo. Once she has absorbed all that Margo has to offer.

The film has a narration by theater critic Addison DeWitt (George Sanders) who regards himself as even more cynical and manipulative than Eve. Only he might have met his match.

Sanders, who won the Oscar for best supporting actor. All About Eve won the Best Picture Oscar.

The movie is a dark bitter look at showbusiness, everyone is out to get a piece of the action. There is a subtext about ageism.

Davis has a more sympathetic role here as Margo, although I felt disappointed that she decided not to take out Eve. In the end the movie pulled its punches.

Daffy Duck is the lawyer that Elmer Fudd did not need when he is just about to pay a $30 parking fine.

The inexperienced Daffy Duck guarantees that Elmer will not have to pay a fine with Daffy by his side.

A promise that Daffy actually delivers on. Just a shame that in defending Elmer Fudd, the defendant ends up in even more trouble.

The middle short involves Beaky Buzzard as he swoops in to catch a mouse. Only the mouse was running away from another predator.

Wile E Coyote has got on his motorbike to catch the Road Runner. He is no easy rider as the Road Runner is the wild one.

Once again Wile E Coyote steals the show. I liked his expression how he survived a fall only to end up crashing in another way.

Significant Other is a genre bending movie. Is there something malevolent in the woods to science fiction to horror to wilderness survival.

It starts off as a domestic drama. A couple are hiking in the woods in the wilds of Oregon. Ruth (Maika Monroe) and her boyfriend Harry (Jake Lacy) have been together for some time.

Harry wants to marry her. She is happy as they are, annoyed that Harry wants to propose. Why disturb what they already have, it seems Ruth had a traumatic past.

When a red meteor strikes. Ruth eventually notices something about Harry, something subtle but significant.

The movie is a slow burner, relaying on the action of both the leads. It does look it is going nowhere until the rug is pulled. Then it adheres more to the conventions of a survival movie.

Somehow the movie just felt half finished, the script needed more work. The direction was effective.

It is Thor and his thunderbolts. When she hears that her uncle Sir Edward de Courcey is in danger over in Ireland.

Maid Marian persuades Robin Hood and Friar Tuck to accompany her to Ireland. Only to find the locals are scared of superstition and the old Norse gods.

They are even nearly taken out by Thor's thunderbolts, but it looks more like a boulder that was deliberately thrown at them from a mountain.

It is the local chieftain Rolf that is indulging with the old gods. It seems he might have taken Sir Edward and later Marian away.

Robin Hood needs to demonstrate to the locals that Rolf has been using trickery to fool them.

I was amused by the idea that Ireland was regarded as some backward land. Although there is an interesting contrast about a land where supposedly Christianity has still not infiltrated it.

Paul (Charles Boyer) a charming and well known actor/director goes for a walk after a poker game.

He encounters a desperate woman Amy (Marcia Henderson) contemplating suicide. He takes her to a hotel for the night. When Paul checks up on Amy, she has disappeared.

Fearing that Amy might have killed herself he desperately searches for her. Ignoring that his new play is about to open and it has lost its leading lady.

There is an acidic performance from Hillary Brooke who plays a woman who shines a torch for Paul.

The teleplay very much is a riff on the movie All About Eve which was released several years earlier.

Worzel Gummidge's head is turned left and right when he spots two Aunt Sallies walking down the opposite ends of the street.

Can there be two of them. Worzel gets John and Sue to chase them and given them some flowers.

It leaves Worzel confused. Of course the Crowman has an answer. There were loads of Aunt Sallies made for the fairground.

One of them is the vain selfish Aunt Sally. Only sweet to Worzel when he asks her out for tea with plenty of fresh cream cakes. She eats them all.

The other Aunt Sally (Connie Booth) is much nicer to Worzel. Just the kind of girl Worzel wants. She even lets Worzel kiss her.

I'm surprised that Worzel did not notice the American twang of the other Aunt Sally. The best bit was Worzel offered a kiss, the excitement in his face.

Jurassic World: Chaos Theory follows up from Jurassic World: Camp Cretaceous animated series some six years later.

This time it goes the noir conspiracy route. Something bad happened to the Nublar Six.

Now they are in a world where dinosaurs and humans have top co-exist and this is uneasy. Humans are not good at sharing and let talk radio know how they feel.

Darius (Paul-Mikél Williams) has withdrawn from the others. Living in a cabin, he cannot get over the death of Brooklyn. Even phoning her answerphone message just to hear her voice.

That is until Ben tries to coax him out. He is paranoid looking into the Dark Jurassic website. Something strange is happening.

The episode opens with a dinosaur on the loose, the park rangers finding themselves out of their league. Until Darius shows up, he also used to be a ranger.

This is a darker series, about these grown up kids suffering from some kind of PTSD. I did find the first episode hard going as it sets up its premise.

Roy Tagger is not exactly a client of Clay Culhane. He asks Clay advice about the double jeopardy rule.

Tagger was cheated by his business partner and then spent time in jail for killing him. Now Tagger will kill that man and he cannot go to jail. He will take what is owed to him.

Clay figures that the man Tagger is after is Virgil Britt. He has some beef with Culhane over a court case about water rights. A case Culhane won.

When Virgil Britt is killed Clay ends up in jail while protesting his innocence. Then there is a second death and Clay Culhane is blamed for that.

It is left to Clay to clear his name.

Maybe Clay Culhane should had gone straight down to see Marshal Gib Scott after Tagger revealed his plans.

Tagger did not have much of a plan. He kills Britt and swans to his property thinking he could just help himself.

Not sure how Marshal Scott could hold Clay responsible for the second death. He was in the cell at the time and the body would had been still warm.

Ben leaps into the body of rushed off her feet public defender Elena Ramirez and has to turn into Perry Mason.

18 year old Camilo Diaz is on trial for the murder of a gang member that was trying to recruit his younger brother Leo. Camilo protests his innocence but was seen fleeing the crime scene. The evidence against him is strong.

In the original timeline of 1985, Elena entered a plea deal with ambitious ADA Bill Barnes. It ripped the Diaz family apart.

Now Ben decides to go to trial but he knows nothing about being a lawyer. Jenn helps out as she has a law degree and was on trial for hacking.

Only public defenders are overworked, underpaid and rely on plea bargaining.

With the help of Magic Williams and the team. They figure out that Barnes hid some evidence. It is costly for Elena. She was having an affair with another ADA.

It does take a leap that someone can suddenly become a trial lawyer. Also no one noticed especially Elena's girlfriend that suddenly she was a rubbish lawyer.

It does make barbed comments about the justice system. The public defence system is al; about making deals than actual justice.

The third season premier of Superman & Lois eventually focusses on Bruno Mannheim (Chad L Coleman) the intergang crime boss.

He is the big bad behind Atom-Man who challenges Superman.

Until then you have Clark Kent and Lois Lane as a family unit. The boys Jordan and Jonathan celebrate their 16th birthdays.

Jordan seemed to have got a better hang of his powers such as flying. Only his dad ain't that keen on Jordan on helping him out on rescue missions.

Whereas Jonathan has just passed his driving test.

As for Lois she thinks that she is pregnant. News that takes a surprise Clark Kent by surprise.

So there are some plot threads being formed. Superman & Lois has always been about the family unit balancing the action part of the story. A solid but not amazing opener.

A tape sets out the mission and destroys itself. Once again Daniel Briggs, the leading man has a lighter tole.

Not to worry Mr Sulu will pick up the slack. George Takei guest stars as scientist Roger Lee who is picked by Briggs.

The MI Team have infiltrated an enemy spy ring. The east european block that has set up a fake American town. To train sleeper agents.

Rollin Hand, Cinnamon Carter and Roger Lee are there pretending to be Americans. They learn that sleeper agents will unleash a biological weapon on American soil.

Only Rollin Hand becomes infected and a carrier. Lee needs to find and antidote.

There is a nice race against the time element to the story. The fake American town is quirky enough, although done on other shows.

This is a kind of musical episode that spoofs Gunfight at the O. K. Corral.

The Ballad of Jed Clampett summarises the latest state of play. With Jed, Jethro, Elly May and Granny go gunning for the Drysdales.

All because Sonny Drysdale has ran out on Elly May after courting her. Granny is very upset, as she leads the charge.

Only to find Milburn Drysdale is working in the bank and Sonny has fled to Boston. So Jed goes to the bank with a shotgun only t get arrested.

As Jed claims to have $25 million in the bank. Two psychiatrists are sent to assess him.

Well Granny is a hoot in this as she strides to the Drysdale estate in oversized boots. It seems no one asked Elly May if she wants to get married.

Manhunt the silent movie. There is a lengthy recap to bring the viewer up to date. After that it is all action and no talk apart from isolated tannoy announcements.

This is an experimental episode. Jimmy and Vincent team up with the French resistance members such as Anton and Allard. Even Adelaide is there to help.

It is all to lead an attack the secret aircraft development unit of the factory where Jimmy was working.

To obtain a sample of the top secret aircraft metal, the ones the Nazis have been developing in secret. It has caused a high number of deaths in the testing stage.

Jimmy and Vincent have to bring it back for London so it can be examined.

Although there is no talk, it certainly has a number of loud explosions, some fighting. A few grisly deaths, one man gets his legs run over by a tank.

It almost feels like a grown up Mission Impossible episode.

Not all of it works. At times it feels like a gimmick, when you expect the characters to talk to each other.

Andrew Fenwick (Richard O'Sullivan) is a young boy whose father has gone missing. He asks for Sherlock Holmes for his help and has a few shillings to pay him.

Sherlock Holmes is willing to oblige. From his observations of young Andrew. He concludes that Andrew's father comes in with some money and lavishes him with clothes. At other times there is a lack of money. Some of the clothes are delipidated.

The father is a gambler. Both Holmes and Doctor Watson search for him in the gambling underworld of London such as boxing clubs. Only to learn that he may have killed himself.

Holmes believes that the des[erate father might carry out a robbery and is determined to stop him.

A young Richard O'Sullivan and a sentimental ending. The poor innkeeper who is taken away.