Film, TV & Book Reviews

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 ...

FOMO is ruling the world. That’s Fear Of Missing Out and though it tends to resolve itself as one gets older, both children and adults feel it. Now, imagine ...

If Wikipedia is to be believed (and what kind of a world would we be living in if we couldn’t make our way with this one certainty to hand?), ...

By 2050 a total of 72 per cent of Cyprus will be at risk of desertification, according to a climate change report issued in 2022. Although if you stepped out at any point ...

Step into the world of Ina Garten, where everything is perfectly in its place. The table is perfectly set – with linen napkins, of course, and white wine glasses – and the ...

I’ve never really been a fan of parades. A long stream of people and things marching past with seemingly the whole point being made up of waiting for the ...

Movies are the great escape, the fantastical way out of an otherwise boring and mundane existence. We love movies but we fall in love with those that cross with our ...

What does the world’s most famous cheerleading team have in common with Cyprus? Nothing right? That’s what I thought too – until I sat down to watch Netflix’ newest ...

By Philippa Tracy In this short novel about first love, growing up and relationships, Rose Tremain’s 17th, she brilliantly recreates an England of the 1950s and 1960s. It is ...

Everyone saw the Deadpool and Wolverine success coming. The irreverent, R-rated superhero movie about a fourth-wall-breaking merc had everything going for it: being the third part of a highly profitable ...

The acting and the scenarios that paint the devil in a different light than the one depicted in most horror films and movies about religion make Lucifer a great watch. ...

Given the splash Joseph O’Neill made with Netherland and the 10 years that have elapsed since his last novel, there is a tendency in the critical media to want to ...

Deadpool & Wolverine, the third installment in the Deadpool saga, is out in cinemas and it is everything fans wanted it to be. It’s hilarious, irreverent, comically violent, and ...

As the title suggests, MH370: The Plane That Disappeared promises to delve into the mystery of Malaysia Airlines Flight 370, which vanished in 2014. However, this mini-docu series is as much about ...

At the very end of Rufi Thorpe’s fourth novel, her narrator and eponymous protagonist declares, ‘…that’s all art is, in the end. One person trying to get another ...

Deadpool & Wolverine opens this week and is projected to not only be the biggest commercial success of the summer (expected to make over $165 million on opening weekend, which will ...

One squirrel has the caloric equivalent of two pizza slices. Fish-head soup is better with lingonberries. The semi-digested contents of a rabbit’s entrails are nutritious and delicious. Fun facts ...

By Philippa Tracy Who doesn’t love a good murder mystery? I certainly love a page-turner, a crime novel as well as a good family drama searching for some deeper ...

With Beverly Hills Cop 4 being a huge success for Netflix, it seems the cynics were right: Hollywood is out of ideas. Sequels, reboots, remakes and spin-offs are all the craze, ...

In the early 1990s, Italy was rocked by a sweeping judicial campaign aimed at cleaning up the pervasive corruption within its political system. The period, known as Tangentopoli or Bribesville, ...

The dual narrative juxtaposes a troubled teen suffering from obsessive compulsive disorder and an elderly woman sliding inexorably into full-blown dementia. They both hear ‘voices’: Cat’s include telling him ...

In the past villains used to be two-dimensional, with no depth, and mostly cartoonishly evil. Bad for the sake of being bad. But modern writers understand that villains need to ...

Overshadowed by Papakaliatis’ Maestro, there is another Greek series on Netflix that is worth the watch. A second renowned and beloved Greek screenwriter has managed to get his show on ...