The Lord of the Rings- The Rings of Power: Halls of Stone

 "It will open with a password known only to friends..."

This episode is, perhaps, the most exciting yet to those of us who have read only The Hobbit and the Lord of the Rings, pointing strongly towards the future we know. We have Durin's gate of course, but we see Sauron to continue manipulating Celebrimbor to makerings not only for Dwarves but also for Men... nine rings for the kind of the nive noble realms. We know well where this is leading.

We also have hints of the doom that awaits Khadad-Dum. Oh, King Durin III may have saved his realm in the short term, but he shows signs of the greed and the ring addiction that we shall soon come to know so well,charging a "ring tax" and forcing the other sixdwarven kings to make a tribute in return for their own rings. Worst of all, he wants to dig, despite the fact that ancient evil lies beneath.

Then there's Gil-Galad's dilemma between Sauron and Adar. Adar seeking an alliance with Galadriel. And the darkness beginning to envelop Numenor. Pharazon already threatens to be a tyrant, and his son seems worse. Elendil is not having a good time, and nor are his many friends. Even his daughter has betrayed him.

And yet... despite this series being more about epic events than character, what shines here is the detail of Sauron's manipulation of the proud but gullible Celebrimbor. The Rings of Power is on fire as never before.

Dead Set: Part 5

 "This makes you the winner of this year's Big Brother".

That quote up there... yeah, it's an empty prize, but aren't they always, zombie apocalypse or no? Blimey, this is far more Hobbesian than I remembered. Utterly, splendidly bleak.

The dark catalyst of a character is, of course, Patrick- a toxic boss and an utter wanker, a liability in normal ligfe but absolutely impossible in a situation of base under siege. This isn't a message of conformity or that individualism is bad; the group are diverse, different and act as a democracy. But the Patricks of this world have no time for the collective. Here, his pointless escape will open the gate and risk everyone. He has to die, as decent people must realise. It's horrible.

Worse, we have Joplin- weak, pretentious, not as clever as he thinks, the perfect pause. And so things degenerate into utter hopelessness. Kelly's heroic last stand consists of just an immediate short scream. We end with a landscape of only zombies and cameras. Metaphor much?

Wow. Zombie apocalypse? Thatcher's children stand no chance. Simply superb.

Dead Set: Part 3

 "I'm only on the front cover of Heat!"

These episodes following the first are only twenty minutes long and the whole thing isn't obviously structured in an episodic way. Was it originally planned as a TV film? Never mind, this is good stuff, mixing typical zombie tropes with good characterisation and social commentary.

Thus we get to see the scary, pointless, power tripping behaviour of the police once society has collapsed, interesting to see on the day when a scathing report into the Met is published. Concepts like looting are now meaningless. We hear, via the radio, that France is swiftly following the UK to zombie apocalypse.

Yet there's still time for Joplin to show himself a perv and a coward as well as a pseud. For Patrick to poo his pants, yet indeed. And for the pathetic laddishness of Marky to be contrasted with the loving joy of Riq discovering Kelly is alive. Humanity is often pathetiuc, yet there is hope. This is very, very good and, oddly, far less bleak than Brooker's later Black Mirror despite the premise.

Dead Set: Part 2

 "Does this mean we're not on telly any more?"

After all the Big Brother fun of the first episode we were always going to slip into more of a standard zombie story. Hence the characterisatyion as everyone adjusts to the fact civilisation is over... and we have the tension of knowing that Angel will die and become a zombie.

We get more of Riq, and are introduced to the magnificently blunt Alex. I love her. Meanwhile, the gloriously rude Patrick and the delightfully stupoid Pippa keep up the comic relief. They're both doomed. The fun bit is working out who else is, Angel aside. Marky? His sense of guilt for pretty much killing Angel is palpable.

It's the 2000s: zombies were in the zeitgeist. But this is Charlie Brooker and, much though the metaphor of poular telly consumerisn has to break down a bit from now on, this is still brilliant.

Dead Set: Part 1

 "Please do not swear!"

Long before Black Mirror, in 2008, when Charlie Brooker was still giving us his excellent Screen Wipe on BBC4, we had this, what is at first glance a high concept bit of fun about the Big Brother house during the zombie apocapypse. But it's so much more than that and, indeed, so much more fun than that.

I first watched this as it aired. Watching it today reveals starkly how long ago 2008 feels- the "edgy" vibe, the toxic workplaces and bad bosses, the pre-#MeToo mores, Heat magazine, the phones, trashy pop culture on mass market telly as opposed to the online ghettos to which it is now rightly consigned. Reality TV is well made, and there's an art to it, but in the same way that there's an art to Sun journalists managing to present the news in words of one syllable. It's genuine talent, wasted.

And the zombies are the most bleeding obvious of metaphors. They first attack the screaming crowd after a Big Brother eviction. Are the ensuing ravenous zombie hordes really much different from what they replaced? There's a glorious shot of a dead eyed zombie watching the feed from the Big Brother house. It says it all.

The script is wonderful. Charlie Brooker gives us a fun and real-seeming set of housemates and, in Jaime Winstone's Kelly, a star we can identify with: a runner, probably an unpaid, exploited intern, The satire of the TV industry and its working is splendid too, from a writer who knows his stuff. And, of course, zombie Davina McCall. Need I say more?

First class stuff.

The Crown: Season 3, Episode 7- Moondust

 "Do I need to show symptoms of despair? Should I sigh and moan dramatically?"

The Crown doesn't do bad, of even average episodes: this is a rather well-crafted (and, I admit, performed) character piece for Prince Philip as the Moon landing- the most sublime human achievement ever- acts as the catalyst for a full examination of his mid-life crisis, which everything in this episode points towards.

And yet, while admiring this, I'll admit I find the episode difficult to love. Perhaps its the strong Christian context for Philip's existential angst; he eloquently describes at the end, during his rather effective concluding soloiloquy, how terrible a thing it can be to have faith in God, and lose it. I sympathise and respect that- this atheist is no Richard Dawkins- but, for those of us who were brought up without religion, and have never had any faith to lose, it's all rather abstract. 

Similarly, I'm forty-three but, while I'll not deny life can be stressful working full time while looking after a five year old and caring for a chronically ill wife, there's no mid-life crisis in sight for me. I'll never walk on the moon, but I've worked hard to look after my family. That doesn't make me unusual, but it does mean that, while my achieements are ordinary, I feel unsatisfied with my life so far. It's tempting to see the mid-life ennui of a pampered royal (there's no evidence, of course, that Philip had any such thing) as a decadent indulgence. But, of course, mental health issues can affect anyone, and being privileged does not mean one does not suffer.

But it is, I think, at the end that we reach the underlying point. Philip has just lost his mother, a woman whose faith never wavers. He's an orphan. And that is not a pleasant thought to dwell on for a middle-aged man with parents in their seventies.

Doctor Who: It Takes You Away

“I see the sheep have moved on. Probably off plotting.”

You know how I’ve spend the whole of the season so far whingeing that yes, many episodes are good, but none of them have wowed me? Well, with one episode to go, this season has finally gone and bloody done it. Ed Himes, you can write for Doctor Who again. This is a splendid fifty minutes of television. It still doesn’t mask some underlying issues with Chibnall’s reign, though; still no arc beyond very basic character stuff, leading to a sense of drift. And, while Jodie Whittaker is excellent as ever, it’s becoming increasingly obvious that her Doctor isn’t getting any character development.

Still, bravo. Big sci-fi ideas, for a start; a sentient universe that just wants to be friends but isn’t very good for the health of reality, and the subject of a bedtime story from one of the Doctor’s seven grandmothers to boot, plus of course the whole scene with the frog. It’s also about something; Hanne’s dad is a parallel bad dad to Ryan’s father at first glance, although he’s addled by grief and sees the error of his ways. And Graham’s own grief gets played with horribly by the “resurrection” of Grace. Yet the whole thing brings Graham and Ryan together sufficiently for Ryan to call him “Grandad”, an earned and powerful moment.

All this, and the lines about the sheep. And the flesh moths. And Kevin Eldon A’s a nasty, duplicitous demon. And the whole concept of “antizones”. And so much subtext I’m sure I’ve not even noticed half of it.  I don’t know if we’ll ever see another Neil Gaiman episode, but this is pretty damn close, and just as good.

And yet... it’s a one off episode, full of one off brilliant and a Doctor Who does Doctorish things but isn’t written with any inferiority. Sometimes it’s the exceptional episodes what make you worry about where things are headed.

Gunpowder: Episode 1

"Would you rather that I conform?"

Well. That was well-acted, well-directed and... violent. It's entertaining, historical religious persecution was indeed wrong but, well, it feels somewhat jarring for a historical drama to be so... polemical.

We begin with some text intro telling us that it's 1603, Elizabeth I has just copped it and King James VI of Scotland has gained a second throne and a chance to shag his way through the pretty young men of the English aristocracy, although not in many words. There are some nice shots of the Queen looking on in her stoic Scandinavian way while James flirts with his latest boy tart.

Then the story proper starts as a mass is disrupted by agents of an intolerant state and, with practised efficiency, a whole panoply of priest holes and mattress turning springs into action, and there follows a brilliantly tense scene in which the scarily young boy priest is arrested, and the very brave Lady Dorothy takes the flack as a furious, sword-waving Robert Catesby looks on furiously, and we know he's important because we know our history and we've seen Game of Thrones.

So, after being introduced to the sinister Robert Cecil- scion of the Marquesses of Salisbury, don't you know, and archetypal spymaster- we can only conclude that he could be played by absolutely no one other than Mark Gatiss, who has himself a minor bit of typecasting as sinister eminences grises in historical dramas but wears so many hats in the TV world that he can afford to be utterly unbothered. He is, of course, perfect casting. And we see him slowly manipulating the relatively tolerant James into supporting his sinister agenda.

And then comes the really nasty bit; Lady Dorothy has refused to plead- a guilty plea would disinherit her children- so she is stripped naked and publicly pressed to death. This is closely followed by the hanging, drawing and quartering of the boy priest, as graphic as these things get although at least we don't see the castration. This is all, of course, quite realistic, but an artistic choice has been made to dwell on the gory details. I'm not going to go all in and join the chorus of complaint here, but this is quite blatant in its didacticism, and that can be self-defeating in a drama.

More spying, skulduggery and misfortune for the persecuted Catesby brings us towards the end, and Guy Fawkes. Let's see where this goes.