Film, TV & Book Reviews

Why are we so drawn by true crime shows? What is it that keeps us glued to the screen while we watch horrible acts of true depravity? Is it because ...

Set in 1348, The Decameron follows a group of young people who flee to the idyllic Villa Santa in the countryside to escape a plague ravaging Florence. This might sound familiar ...

By Philippa Tracy These days fewer unmarried people choose to tie the knot. Perhaps this is why divorce rates have been falling over the last 20 years. In 1937, when Laurence Olivier ...

“Leave the gun, take the canolli,” says the mobster to his partner, moments after carrying out an execution. This bone-chilling scene from The Godfather will forever be etched in our ...

I am not really a fan of Benedit Cumberbatch’s acting. He always seem to play the same character, stuck on the right (or wrong?) side of the UK’s ...

By Xavier Aldana Reyes In the 1980s, film scholar Barbara Creed coined the term “monstrous-feminine”. It refers to the way that female monsters are typically portrayed as threatening and disgusting ...

Everybody knows that Arthur is the once and future king of Britain. The premise of Lev Grossman’s latest sprawling fantasy is to explore what happens in the early part ...

On May 26, 1897, Irish author Bram Stoker unknowingly gave birth to a whole genre of literature and art, when he published Dracula. While the nocturnal, blood-feeding monster that served as his ...

Most 17-year-olds are to self-absorbed to try and solve a murder, let alone when it has happened to a person in the same school. Not so Pip Fitz-Amobi (Wednesday’s ...

The very short version of this review reads as follows: If you haven’t read High Fidelity, read that. If you like High Fidelity, read Good Material (after watching the ...

By Richard Howells I have to be honest – I didn’t actually watch the first episode of the classic TV series Friends when it originally aired in the US on ...

I have three children and tbh at times it can be slightly overwhelming. So I am intrigued by those who appear on my social media feeds with eight or more ...

By Philippa Tracy JD Vance has been making headlines again. This time following the recent deadly shootings by a 14-year-old boy at Apalachee High School in Georgia. He has been ...

Stephen King is perhaps the most influential author of the century in popular culture, and his works have often been adapted into movies, series, games and even serve as a ...

I was engrossed in this story of two ghosts working to solve a series of mysteries. The boys of Dead Boy Detectives are helped by a psychic medium, who can ...

Dave Eggers has been a big name since the publication of A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius, which I saw around but never bothered to read since the title was ...

Nobody has time to waste. There are so many things to do. So, when it comes to sitting down and watching a film or series, nobody likes to feel they’...

The idea was too tempting to pass up: taking one of the most outlandish tweets from then-President Trump in 2018 – his plan to establish a military branch dedicated to defending and ...

If you’re going to tell a story that even your narrator acknowledges is unoriginal, you’ve effectively got three methods of ensuring your story is better than other, similar ...

The streaming platform Netflix’s decision to air the series Famagusta led to a spat between Turkey and Greece on Monday, with high-ranking government figures from both countries expressing their ...

Life is not a fairy tale. There’s no knight in shining armour, no happily ever after and the princess doesn’t need saving. She just wants equal pay. But ...

When Too Hot to Handle first launched four years ago, I was sceptical, to say the least. The premise sounded absurd: a group of fit, single people “stranded” on a ...

By Philippa Tracy Claire Lombardo’s debut novel was described by The Observer, as a literary love child of Jonathan Franzen and Anne Tyler. How could I resist? Two great ...

Movies are supposed to be the great escape, the pathway to the fantastical where the mundane and boring are left behind. We love movies for the lies they tell us ...