Review: Backstrom
Catch Backstrom while you can, because the Fox series about a misanthropic and irascible police detective isn’t likely to last long in the US television landscape. The show is a delight to watch,...
Category: Commentary
Is The Chapel Hill Shooting An Atheist Hate Crime?
On Tuesday night, gunshots rang through a neighbourhood in Chapel Hill, North Carolina, leading a neighbour to call police. When they arrived, they found three people dead: 23-year-old Deah Shaddy...
Amazon’s “Transparent” is Transphobic Bullshit
Transparent is part of Amazon’s answer to Netflix, an attempt to make itself relevant in a new television landscape by producing indie web content for subscribers; and it’s getting rave reviews,...
Contemporary Arabic Music – A selection of great new pop songs.
Unfortunately, the Arab world these days is only in the news in the shadow of ISIS and their cut-throat shenanigans. The images from the region are those of an Arab spring turned on its head; of...
Downton Abbey Returns… But Do We Still Care?
Series five of Downton Abbey premiered in the UK on Sunday night, which normally would have had ISPs across the US humming as people furtively downloaded the hit British drama. Yet, something curious...
Review: Frank
How do you get inside the head of a man whose head is inside a papier-mâché head? In the 80s and early 90s Frank Sidebottom’s painted noggin was a strangely familiar sight on Britain’s...
What Went Wrong With True Blood?
True Blood finally lurched to an end after seven seasons on 24 August, but how many readers actually cared? Enough, apparently, for Twitter to momentarily flare with irritation and distaste over the...
How Blaming the Victims of Photo Leaks Shows Our Victorian Values
It’s almost touching, really, to remember the era in which we could be scandalized by a single celebrity nude. In the 2000s, a simple photo of Britney Spears getting out of a cab without panties,...
Should TV Actors Really Be Earning So Much?
If video killed the radio star, TV stars sure are making a killing today. Perhaps in keeping with the new gilded age in the US, television stars are making more than ever before, and a roundup of...
An Older, Wiser Doctor Who: Peter Capaldi Takes Over
With the revelation of Peter Capaldi as the new Doctor, I was deeply skeptical, and a bit dismayed: Yet again, the series had gone with a white man, refusing to buck a long tradition in which white...