Film, TV & Book Reviews

The first half hour of Severance’s pilot may mislead the viewer to mistake the show as workplace satire for prestige television. However, should one commit, Dan Erickson’s magnum ...

Get out the jumpers – well, figuratively speaking, this island has beach weather up until the end of November – pop the kettle on and settle in! October is here and, as ...

What/If is one of those shows that starts with a question that sounds simple enough and then takes things somewhere you really do not expect. What would you be ...

Schools are messed up self-contained microcosms. If you ever went to one, you’ll know what I mean. Unless maybe you were one of the cool kids for whom the ...

The death of cinema has been prophesied many times, but Covid appeared to be the death knell. Streaming during that period reached its peak and photos of almost empty cinemas ...

It is almost autumn. For the rest of the world at least; Cyprus still feels like a hot summer day, and we probably will not get the autumn memo until ...

By Philippa Tracy The narrator of this novel is middle-aged law professor Tom Layward. His wife, Amy, had an affair, years earlier, with a man “she knew from synagogue.” This ...

It is not that often that a movie comes along that shakes the industry, regardless of its story. Jaws introduced the summer blockbuster, The Matrix revolutionised CGI and the Sharknado ...

Even before Alley Cats went live, reviews started popping up everywhere saying how dreadful the new series would be. Well, it’s Ricky Gervais being Ricky Gervais. Not everyone’s ...

At the climax of Triage, one character says to the other, ‘Your romance with grief won’t help the living.’ It’s a moving line that achieves the bold narrative ...

In my search for something to watch, not only did I not expect to find this gem, but I also did not expect it to grip me as it did; ...

Endings are hard. And when you’ve enjoyed two books as much as this reader enjoyed Harlem Shuffle and Crook Manifesto, it was always going to be difficult coming to ...

Fire up the spice lattes and start thinking about bringing down the boxes with the winter clothes, since September is almost here! Sure, in Cyprus, beach weather now stretches all ...

Community follows Jeff Winger, a disbarred lawyer forced to enrol at Greendale Community College after his fraudulent degree is exposed. There he finds himself surrounded by an unlikely cabal in ...

By Philippa Tracy Lanchester’s hit novel, Capital, came out in 2012. It was a dark comedy about the financial crisis and inequality, about the residents of one South London street. ...

Before you proceed, be warned: this article contains MAJOR SPOILERS for Spider-Man: Brand New Day. If you haven’t seen the movie, I highly recommend hitting the big screen for ...

Clickbait is a gripping drama-thriller that explores the dangers of social media and how quickly lives can unravel in the digital world. What begins as a shocking kidnapping soon turns ...

Here are some more movies with twisted endings. Just like the previous entry, there will be MAJOR SPOILERS ahead for these movies, so proceed with caution. The protagonist was having ...

A mother, a maid, a survivor. Three words that describe Alex, the protagonist whose story is delicately told through the seven-part series Maid, released in 2021. A production based on Stephanie ...

Here’s what happens in Man Overboard!: a man falls (or jumps) over the side of a cruise ship; he treads water for 20 hours; while treading water he thinks about ...

Happy endings aren’t for everyone. While a perfect conclusion where everyone is happy, the good guys are triumphant and evil is vanquished is usually the order of the day ...

Alien comes to wipe out human race. Alien’s ship struck by lightning. Alien crashes in Patience, Colorado. Alien loses vital device. Straightforward alien comedy material. The alien – whose name ...

By Philippa Tracy It begins with a memory. A piano lesson. A room with “an orange-tiled floor” and a young female teacher with “deep red” lips and nails. The latter ...

Best Medicine – August 4, Netflix Based on the long-running British comedy-drama series Doc Martin, Best Medicine tells the story of Dr Martin Best, a brilliant Boston surgeon who abandons his prestigious ...