Reviews, views and occasionally other things…
If movies are my true love, TV is my dirty weekend fling.
Charting the origins of Osama Bin Laden and the formation of al-Qaeda from the 1990s through to the tragic events that unfolded on September the 11th, “The Looming Tower” is a real-life historical “Homeland”. It peers behind the intelligence curtain and reveals the internal squabbles and intense rivalry between the FBI and the CIA that … Continue reading The Looming Tower Series Review
It’s the late nineteenth century in New York and delinquent children are starting to go missing. Future President and newly appointed Police Commissioner Theodore Roosevelt (Brian Geraghty)contacts criminal psychologist Dr Laszlo Kreizler (Daniel Brühl) and illustrator John Moore (Luke Evans) for help to solve the case. When Dr Keizler and Mr Moore realise that the … Continue reading The Alienist Season Review
The three Baudelaire children (Malina, Louis and baby Sunny) become orphaned when their parents perish in a mysterious fire. Too young to take care of themselves, the bank that manages their fortune puts them into the care of distant relative Count Olaf; an eccentric failed actor who is penniless. What becomes apparent to the children … Continue reading Lemony Snicket’s A Series Of Unfortunate Events Season 1 Review
Sam Loudermilk is a recovering alcoholic and acerbically witted counsellor who provides emotional support to his congregation of miscreants and layabouts whenever they encounter trials and tribulations. When he becomes the guardian of Claire, a recovering substance abuser, he realises that there is more to life than just his job and rediscovers love in the … Continue reading Loudermilk Season One Review
The Netflix production line of comprehensive documentaries on fascinating stories continues with this six-part study of Rajneeshpuram and its expansion from an obscure Indian following to a world-wide “cult”. What the Duplass Brothers (“Togetherness”, “Animals”, “Safety Not Guaranteed”) have produced is an encyclopaedic study of the ‘religion’ and its origins, its polarising leader Bhagwan Shree … Continue reading Wild Wild Country (2018) Series Review
25 years ago, on 3rd January 1993, “Star Trek: Deep Space Nine” made its TV debut in America. It wouldn’t reach UK TV screens until 22nd August later that year. To celebrate the 25th Anniversary, What The Craggus Saw is taking the time between those two premiere dates to revisit and review each season of … Continue reading Star Trek: Deep Space Nine 25th Anniversary Retrospective: Season 4
Previously on “Sneaky Pete”: Conman Marius Josipovic (Giovanni Ribisi) befriends Pete Murphy (Ethan Embry) when they become cellmates. When Marius is released, he decides to assume the identity of his still incarcerated friend to evade the wrath of a local gangster. But to successfully assume his identity, he’s going to have to convince Pete’s estranged … Continue reading Sneaky Pete Season 2 Review
Previously on “The Santa Clarita Diet”: Joel (Timothy Oliphant) and Sheila (Drew Barrymore) Hammond are real estate agents in a sleepy Santa Clarita suburb when Sheila suddenly transforms from mousey middle-class soccer mom of Millennial teen Abby (Liv Hewson) to an undead zombie that must regularly feast on the living to remain ‘alive’. The Hammonds … Continue reading The Santa Clarita Diet Season 2 Review
Flint, Michigan is one of the most dangerous cities in America, if not the world and has been consistently in America's top ten for over three decades. After the abandonment of the motor industry, the town has spiralled into poverty, substance abuse, violence and crime. This is further compounded by crippling budget cuts to the running … Continue reading Flint Town Season Review
Lauded Hollywood screenwriter Scott Frank (“Out Of Sight”, “Minority Report”, “Logan”) brings a refreshing tale of a plucky band of women’s struggle with life in the Wild West to the small screen in his first foray into the medium as a Director. What’s he’s ended up with is not only one of the best Western … Continue reading Godless Season One Review
Craggus had planned for this to be my first review, but I wanted to get into the reviewing groove before tackling this. It should be apparent from what follows but if it isn’t, I want to make one thing clear: the concept of “Altered Carbon”, along with its execution, requires a considerable amount of talent … Continue reading Altered Carbon Season One Review
Sticking with the baking competition theme, Netflix has followed up its acquisition of “Zumbo’s Just Desserts” with an original six-part series based loosely (enough that they don’t have to credit it) on the phenomenon of Cake Wrecks. Famously one of those sites you can spend hours on, laughing until the tears stream down your face, … Continue reading Nailed It! Season One Review
Reality TV is an odd fit for a streaming service like Netflix, but it must help fill up those ‘original’ content quotas to buy up international shows for markets they were never broadcast in. So it is with Australian Willy Wonka-inspired “Great British Bake Off” knock-off “Zumbo’s Just Desserts”. Headed up by celebrated Australian pâtissier … Continue reading Zumbo’s Just Desserts Season One Review
25 years ago, on 3rd January 1993, “Star Trek: Deep Space Nine” made its TV debut in America. It wouldn’t reach UK TV screens until 22nd August later that year. To celebrate the 25th Anniversary, What The Craggus Saw is taking the time between those two premiere dates to revisit and review each season of … Continue reading Star Trek: Deep Space Nine 25th Anniversary Retrospective: Season 3
When the BBC announced its New Year’s line-up of “McMafia”, “Hard Sun”, “Collateral” and “Requiem” there was a great deal of hype and hope for their upcoming drama slate. Unfortunately, all of them have been a complete waste of licence payer’s money and clear evidence that the broadcaster needs to take a long look at … Continue reading Requiem Series Review
Sky have been desperate for years to mirror Netflix and Amazon in producing quality original dramatic content. To say this has been hit (“Tin Star”) and miss (“Britannia”, “Fortitude”, “Lucky Man”, “Jamestown”) so, err…mostly miss, would be an understatement. However, it appears that they may be a glimmer of hope with this superb gritty, harrowing … Continue reading Save Me Season One Review
Given the escalating events over the past few years involving the treatment of young black men in the United States, “Seven Seconds” is a show that feels like it’s been a long time coming but, hopefully, will not age well as time goes by. Peter Jablonski (Beau Knapp), a young white cop starting out as … Continue reading Seven Seconds Season One Review
In this age of box sets and binge marathons, one of the advantages of an anthology series is there’s no need to have seen season one to jump aboard season two because each is a standalone story. There is one actor who does return from last season but it’s not quite in the same league … Continue reading Channel Zero Season Two: No-End House Review
To understand a show like “Channel Zero”, you need to understand its roots, especially in The Golden Age Of TelevisionTM where most everything tends to homage or borrow from something else; history, previous shows of a different era, another medium, or a mix and match of all of the above. Each season of “Channel Zero” … Continue reading Channel Zero Season One: Candle Cove Review
An HBO made for TV movie from 1995, “Citizen X” offers a fascinating glimpse behind the crumbling Iron Curtain of the 1980s, into a society where political corruption and ideological hubris led to the deaths of dozens of young men and women at the hands of the Soviet Union’s first identified serial killer. When a … Continue reading Citizen X (1995) Review
Friday night is trailer night and it’s me, Superb Owl, back to look over the teasers and trailers which dropped over the past week. Did you have a nice Valentine’s day? I didn’t bother with any romance myself – with all the wind and rain, it was too wet to woo. Ahem. The Incredibles 2 … Continue reading Superb Owl’s Trailer Hootenanny #2
*SPOILERS* I’d be lying if I said I was boldly going in to the season finale. The going has been pretty rough at times and with a series that’s proved itself so inept at delivering payoffs to its (often admittedly impressive) setups, part of me dreaded the thought of what such a series would do … Continue reading Star Trek: Discovery – Will You Take My Hand? (S1E15) Review
25 years ago, on 3rd January 1993, “Star Trek: Deep Space Nine” made its TV debut in America. It wouldn’t reach UK TV screens until 22nd August later that year. To celebrate the 25th Anniversary, What The Craggus Saw is taking the time between those two premiere dates to revisit and review each season of … Continue reading Star Trek: Deep Space Nine 25th Anniversary Retrospective: Season 2
*SPOILERS* Oh man, have you seen “The Cloverfield Paradox”? No, of course not because Monday night is “Star Trek: Discovery” night! As we learned last week, the USS Discovery has been missing for nine months and the baby of destiny that’s gestated in that time is an imminent Klingon victory. While they wait to make … Continue reading Star Trek: Discovery – The War Without, The War Within (S1E14) Review
*SPOILERS* By this point, “Star Trek: Discovery” has used more quotes as titles than you could shake a spear at (it’s also batting way above average in getting characters to announce the episode title in dialogue) and after last week’s dip into the Scottish play, this week’s is lifted from “The Tempest”: ‘What’s Past Is … Continue reading Star Trek: Discovery – What’s Past Is Prologue (S1E13) Review
*SPOILERS* The ambition may be vaulting, but it’s certainly not boundless as “Star Trek: Discovery” brings us an episode that’s barely thirty-eight minutes long (including recap). Still, to rewind a bit from ‘vaulting ambition’, if it were done when 'tis done, then 'twere well it were done quickly. Unfortunately, this is “Star Trek: Discovery” and … Continue reading Star Trek: Discovery – Vaulting Ambition (S1E12) Review
*SPOILERS* Still stranded in the Mirror Universe, Burnham, Lorca and Tyler remain under cover on the ISS Shenzhou while on Discovery, Tilly and Saru deal with Stamets’ deteriorating condition. The episode may be titled “The Wolf Inside” but the latest episode of “Star Trek: Discovery” seems more interested in taking us on a foxtrot. This … Continue reading Star Trek: Discovery – The Wolf Inside (S1E11) Review
Previously, on “Star Trek: Discovery”: This; This; And this; This too; And this; Not forgetting this; And of course, this; Also this; And finally this. *SPOILERS*And…we’re back. It’s been, what? Nine weeks since we left our heroes stranded amidst Klingon debris in a mysterious galactic location and you know what? I’d be lying if I … Continue reading Star Trek: Discovery – Despite Yourself (S1E10) Review
25 years ago, on 3rd January 1993, “Star Trek: Deep Space Nine” made its TV debut in America. It wouldn’t reach UK TV screens until 22nd August later that year. Often thought of as the neglected middle child of the “Star Trek” offspring, looking at it now, it was simply two decades ahead of its … Continue reading Star Trek: Deep Space Nine 25th Anniversary Retrospective: Season 1
Forty years ago, at 6:00pm on Tuesday 2nd January 1978, the BBC launched a new science fiction adventure series: “Blake’s 7”. With its prime slot on the New Year Bank Holiday Monday, this certainly wasn’t a low key launch for Terry ‘Creator of the Daleks’ Nation’s latest sci-fi extravaganza and it proved to be quite … Continue reading The Great British Blake Off: The 40th Anniversary of Blake’s 7
*SPOILERS* Christmas is, famously, a time for indulgence and “Twice Upon A Time” finds demob happy showrunner Steven Moffat and his leading man in very indulgent mood indeed. Still refusing to regenerate following the events of “The Doctor Falls”, The Doctor (Peter Capaldi) finds himself at the South Pole, a very familiar South Pole as … Continue reading Doctor Who: Twice Upon A Time (S10E13) Review
Opening with a bright and cheery fuzzy felt scrapbook retelling of the story of the “Trolls” movie, “Trolls Holiday” picks up where that story left off, with the Bergens seeking a replacement for Trollstice. When Queen Poppy (Anna Kendrick) realises the Bergens now have no holiday, she’s determined to set things straight. With her usual … Continue reading Trolls Holiday (2017) Review
As long-time readers will be aware, I’ve not been overly impressed by the efforts of the DCEU thus far. What better way, then, to cleanse my cinematic palate before “Justice League” than by taking in the 1997 failed pilot “Justice League Of America”, a film that sets the bar so low, it buries it? When … Continue reading Justice League Of America (1997) Review
Apologies for the delay in getting this review out there, but as I was writing, it started out as one thing and sort became something else as I went along. Not unlike “Star Trek: Discovery”, actually, but we’ll get to that in due time. In the meantime, let’s go into the woods today, we’re sure … Continue reading Star Trek: Discovery – Into The Forest I Go (S1E09) Review
*SPOILERS* If you type the title of this week’s episode into Google Translate, you get “If you want peace, prepare Geller”, but you can quash those fanfic dreams of the Discovery crew encountering the cast of “Friends” – this episode is all about confirming that any suspicions you might be harbouring about Ash Tyler are … Continue reading Star Trek: Discovery – Si Vis Pacem, Para Bellum (S1E08) Review
*SPOILERS* Previously, on “Star Trek: Discovery”: Holy shit, do you think Lorca knew the rendezvous was a trap and saw it as a way to avoid being relieved of command? Is Ash Tyler a Klingon imposter? One so sophisticated that he’s fooled every conceivable process, procedure and device on the ship? And what’s the deal … Continue reading Star Trek: Discovery – Magic To Make The Sanest Man Go Mad (S1E07) Review
*SPOILERS* Fresh from last week’s shocking revelation that white male privilege is still alive and kicking in the 23rd Century (Lorca loses his starship, kills his entire crew rather than let them be captured and is rewarded with command of Starfleet’s most advanced experimental secret weapon while Burnham withholds information from her Captain, disobeys an … Continue reading Star Trek: Discovery – Lethe (S1E06) Review
Way, way back before 2012’s “Avengers Assemble”, The Hulk and Thor came face to face in “The Incredible Hulk Returns”, the first in a trilogy of TV movies reviving the much-loved show. David Banner (Bill Bixby) has been living quietly, without the emergence of the Hulk, as Dr David Bannion, a research scientist at an … Continue reading The Road To Ragnarok: The Incredible Hulk Returns (1988) Review
Stretching the definition of ‘Original’ almost to breaking point, Disney Original Movie “Descendants 2” takes us back to the world where all the Disney Classics have been reimagined and remixed into a glossy tween fantasy soap opera. As Mal (Dove Cameron) struggles to acclimatise to a life of being good, back on the Isle of … Continue reading Descendants 2 (2017) Review
*SPOILERS* There’s plenty to chew over in this week’s cold open but chew it well because you might choke on what follows in the rest of the episode. Having been called in by Starfleet Command to be told off for doing exactly what he was ordered to do, Lorca finds his journey back to the … Continue reading Star Trek: Discovery – Choose Your Pain (S1E05) Review
*SPOILERS* Don’t you just love the episode title? Very “For The World Is Hollow And I Have Touched The Sky”. Sadly nobody actually says the episode title but it’d be tricky to drop it into casual everyday conversation unless, I guess, the conversation started with ‘What would be an overly-florid way of summarising Lorca’s command … Continue reading Star Trek: Discovery – The Butcher’s Knife Cares Not For The Lamb’s Cry (S1E04) Review
*SPOILERS* Oh, “Star Trek: Discovery”, you’re a cunning one. Here we are on our third date and you know what that means. Do we have a future together or was it just a brief fling? No wonder you kept the best of your new goodies until this episode. Because make no mistake, “Context Is For … Continue reading Star Trek: Discovery – Context Is For Kings (S1E03) Review
*SPOILERS* Well, here we are after the first flush of rekindling my romance with Trek. Can “Star Trek: Discovery” manage the ‘tricky second date’? TL;DR version? Yes…and no. With Burnham’s mutiny halted, Georgiou confines her to the bridge and awaits Starfleet reinforcements. When her attempt to communicate peacefully with the Klingons results in the Klingons … Continue reading Star Trek: Discovery – Battle At The Binary Stars (S1E02) Review
Things haven’t been great between me and “Star Trek” for some time. Oh sure, we still go through the motions, remembering birthdays, anniversaries all the while secretly reminiscing about the good old days when we were inseparable, glued to the screen as Kirk, Picard, Sisko and even Janeaway roamed the universe. The magic died around … Continue reading Star Trek: Discovery – The Vulcan Hello (S1E01) Review
A lot of people have been going back to rewatch (or maybe watch for the first time) the 1990 TV movie adaptation of Stephen King’s “It” in anticipation of the forthcoming feature film remake. And why not? Dated as it is, there’s a lot to like but it’s almost solely renowned for one central performance: … Continue reading It (1990) Review
Remember a couple of years back when we were being teased by Vin Diesel about his potential casting as Black Bolt as the MCU geared up to introduce The Inhumans in a big budget feature film? Good times. Flash forward to the present day and instead, we get ‘visionary’ showrunner Scott Buck’s take on Marvel’s … Continue reading Inhumans (2017) Review
Why can’t we have nice things? There was something almost inevitable about the pre-release critical and cultural bashing “Iron Fist” received. After a run of small screen Netflix success, I guess Marvel was due a backlash, and after constantly outgunning their rivals cinematically, the great and the good of Twitter and beyond, as well as … Continue reading Iron Fist – Season 1 Review
After his star turn in “Jessica Jones”, I was looking forward to seeing Luke Cage’s solo adventures and Netflix’ latest MCU adventure doesn’t disappoint. Luke Cage (Mike Colter), an escaped convict who was left with superhuman strength and impenetrable skin after being experimented on in prison, is keeping a low profile in Harlem. But when … Continue reading Luke Cage – Season 1 Review
When I reviewed Season 1 of Daredevil, I dared to hope that the characters from Marvel’s Netflix MCU offshoot would make the leap to the big screen to join in the “Infinity Wars”. While it seems that’s increasingly unlikely, the disappointment is somewhat mitigated by the depth and breadth being brought to life in Marvel’s … Continue reading Daredevil – Season 2 Review
As I hope #SharkWeak has proved, I’m a huge fan of Shark movies, be they the prime cuts like “Jaws”, the gourmet burgers such as “Deep Blue Sea” or the dirty kebab van sustenance of SyFy original movies. I can tolerate wooden acting and look past the occasionally shoddy special effects (I grew up watching … Continue reading Sharknado 5: Global Swarming (2017) Review