Rings of Power (season 1)

A thousand years before a certain hobbit stumbled across a certain piece of jewellery, Middle Earth was already a land on the brink of turmoil. Although we begin in relative peace, the Commander of the Northern Armies, aka Galadriel (yes, that one!), is hunting for Sauron, lieutenant of the fallen enemy, Morgoth. Her search takes …

The Sandman (season 1)

I've loved the Sandman stories since I first stumbled across them in the local library. I'm not the hugest graphic novels fan, but these are easily my favourite and more than that the whole concept just kind of blows me away. The Endless: a family of, more or less, anthropomorphic personifications of the Big Ideas such as …

The Umbrella Academy (season 3)

(Usual spoiler: talking about how season 3 starts is kind of a spoiler for how season 2 ends) Meet the Hargreaves: seven 'siblings' who were brought together as babies by an eccentric millionaire who decided their highly unusual births - none of their mothers having been pregnant the day before - signalled something special. And …

Dune (2021)

In a universe controlled by dominant noble houses, a political power struggle is about to erupt on the planet Arrakis, also known as Dune. The emperor has decreed that House Harkonnen will no longer control the planet and the universe's only source of Spice, the substance required for interstellar travel and thus the most valuable …

Nine Perfect Strangers (season 1)

Tranquillum House is an exclusive and upmarket wellness retreat, run by the mysterious and ethereal Masha (Nicole Kidman with a dodgy Russian accent). Attendance is by invitation only, so when nine highly stressed guests arrive, it's a guessing game as to what might connect a family reeling from suicide, a formerly successful romance novelist, a …

Alien 3: The Lost Screenplay – Pat Cadigan & William Gibson

"Homo sapiens had been gazing up at the stars for about three hundred millennia before they finally managed to launch themselves off the planet of their origin toward those countless points of light." After the success of the first two Alien movies, the early nineties tried to replicate the success by continuing the franchise. We'd left Ripley escaping …

Jupiter’s Legacy (season 1)

There's nothing like a studio/company cancelling a new show when you're halfway through watching it - cheers for that, Netflix. But, was it deserved or should it be offered a reprieve? Jupiter's Legacy is split between two timelines. In the 'now', we have a modern world where superheroes are real and have been for 90 …

Chaos Walking (2021)

Todd Hewitt (Tom Holland) is the youngest resident of a town full of men, and we're told early on that all the women were killed by the native, alien species of the planet they have tried to colonise, so he may well be the last. The real strangeness of this world, though, is that everyone's …

Altered Carbon (season 2)

I thoroughly enjoyed the first season of this adaptation of Richard Morgan's book(s), but it took me a while to get around the the second. Truth be told, I have very little recollection of the second and third books, so it took a bit of research to say that this second series is based on …

Secret Garden (2020)

As more and more of the 'big' movies are pushed back for a 2021 release, Friday night movies are tending more towards the low-key. Things like this: another adaptation of Frances Hodgson Burnett's Secret Garden. Mary Lennox has grown up in luxury in India, but when her parents die she's sent back to England and the …