Whatever the truth, it appears that Sam Nelson is going to find out just how many lives are on the line…

*some spoilers*

There are some people with whom you really do not want to share public transportation.  Bruce Willis was always Die Hard‘ing at Christmas, Sandra Bullock was a magnet for bad guys whenever her Speed reached 50mph, Kiefer Sutherland had to survive one bad 24 hours after another and Steven Seagal was always Under Siege or On Dangerous Ground somewhere before he moved to Russia. If you saw any of their characters enjoying a nice break in the next row you might as well include nefarious terrorists and ne’er-do-wells in the vicinity of your holiday plans … and then head for the emergency exit.

So, when Apple tv (previously Apple+) announced that there was going to be a second season of their 2023 hit Hijack, returning star (Sir) Idris Elba seemed to be joining the repeat-offender club, one where heroic sequels are greenlighted, but not guaranteed to be equals.

Elba (whose career has spanned the likes of Ultraviolet, Thor, Luther and Hobbs & Shaw to name but a few) starred in the first self-contained season of the show as Sam Nelson: neither a soldier, spy or convenient martial-artist…. just a great business negotiator whose flight home to see his estranged family goes awry when, yes, those pesky terrorists decide to take control. He’s the ‘right guy, at the wrong time’ etc etc., more akin to an everyman (if we were a bit fitter, smarter and once in line to be Bond) than Jack Reacher, but it helps he has the physique, gait and stare to spare in a crisis. In the first mini-series, the story was told in (almost) real time, Sam managed to splinter the hijackers’ loyalties, save most of the passengers and stop the aircraft being blown out of the sky above London. However – spoiler alert – this was all less about an ideological kamikaze mission and an attempt to send stocks surging/falling in a way that would profit certain parties on the ground. Almost every bad guy was either killed or incapacitated and even those holding Sam’s family were brought to justice. However, as Sam was allowed to return to normal life on terra firma, at least one of the bigwig financial felons got away – cue a potential escape hatch to a potential follow-up.

But even the most loyal viewer might have thought giving Sam another bad day was pushing the suspension of disbelief, even if the action moved from the open skies to the more enclosed subway train system of Berlin, Germany. In many cases you just have to go with the flow and be entertained in the moment, but how would the show actually justify it within its story? Given the ratings of the original, many viewers will have chosen to at least give it a try and… will have been pleasantly surprised by an opener that weaves its literal and narrative way through claustrophobic train carriages and begins to suggest that Sam’s presence on the European subway may actually be far from just taking a random bad turn. So far, so potentially taking a Pelham 123 approach, but the show, as ever, isn’t going to take us on a straight line to our final destination.

Bottle-episodes or ideas (with the story being contained in a limited location) rise or fall on how that situation is used and characters connect and here it’s once again used to great effect – with Nelson moving from carriage to carriage and seemingly all-too-aware of things that might be evolving around him.  He points two patrol-officers in the direction of a ‘suspicious’ commuter – though he appears innocent enough in the end and when the regular train driver takes an unusual unscheduled break he immediately gets the platform guards to check him out. Is Nelson just demonstrating paranoia or PTSD or is he already in the midst of something suspicious? (This is a tv show with eight new episodes to fill, so let’s go with the latter).

The show also alternates between studio and location shoots, creating the kind of enclosed sweaty stress of a daily commute that many will recognise even if they’ve never been actually hijacked on the way to an early meeting. While some shows bend over backwards to be overtly-inclusive, the close-quarter collision of cultures, class, ages and agendas of a traditional train carriage provide an organic setting for potential unrest. Will the ex-colleague who ‘randomly’ appears to be on the same train be more than she appears? Is the nervous middle-eastern commuter with a back-pack hiding something? Will the school-kids look up from their smart-phones enough to know what’s going on? All these questions and more begin to shift around and affect outcomes.

Hijack heavily relies on Elba to shoulder the load – as a singular character around which the maelstrom circles its wagons and which he does with a self-deprecating weariness – and works so well because it alternates between the audience thinking it knows more than Nelson and Nelson knowing more than us… but we’re not always sure which is which. We know Sam Nelson is a great observer, monitoring actions, reactions and body-language and as a viewer, but he’s realistic enough to not break the laws of physics or wear a cape. He’s essentially a pissed off dad with a cynical view of the human condition. We also know incoming drama and high stakes will be a given.  Sometimes we know what’s behind a door, sometimes we didn’t know there even was a door there until Nelson opens it! In the opener, we see a man whose radar is always active, shifting from foot to foot indicating he’s ready for anything or might simply want to be where he’s going. We slowly find out that he’s way ahead of us in most respects, but even the actions we see unfold might not add up in the way we expect. It’s revealed by the opener’s end that far from accidental, Nelson is pro-active not reactive and – ironically – appears to have engineered a situation to get the cops off the train deliberately. He then convinces the knowing but panicking train driver to go through with whatever plan was already in motion because… it’s Nelson who is hijacking the train? Clearly, we’re going to need some more back-story! (And having just watched the equally-entertaining second episode, those answers aren’t yet forthcoming).

First planes, now trains… can automobiles be far behind? (Next season, Sam Nelson is held captive in a Ford Escort?) In reality, Elba will soon be reprising another key character and fan-favourite, compromised ex-cop Luther (alongside Ruth Wilson) – hopefully a return to gritty basics after a bizarrely OTT mini-series Luther: The Fallen Sun. In the meantime, Hijack will more than suffice as solid tv and a continually great calling-card for everything Elba has to offer…

There’s an investigation into her death, with lingering rumours of police corruption and even suggestions that someone within her own team may have betrayed her. However, all of them seem to be determined to bring her killers to justice. Lieutenant Dane Dumars (Matt Damon) tells his team they’ve had a tip-off of a significant amount of dirty drug money, somewhere between $100-350K, being stored at a house in an otherwise quiet cul-de-sac. It’s a time-is-a-factor situation and so an already tired unit speed off to the area with a plan to search the property. The lone occupant is Desi (Sasha Calle), who says she has no knowledge of any hidden contraband but lets the team enter, supposedly looking for drugs.

The team eventually find the illicit contents, but it is neither $350K nor narcotics… the seizure or ‘RIP’ is at least $20 million in cold, hard cash. Usual rules stipulate that any amount of money has to be counted on-site and verified to prevent any amount  ‘disappearing’ thereafter, but Dumars points out that such a huge amount creates a series of problems. Will a cartel let such a huge amount go so easily and for that kind of money, could police corruption lead to the team’s safety being jeopardised? Dumars demands everyone’s cell-phones so that news of the vast haul doesn’t leak until they’ve fully contained the situation, but his team begin questioning his actions and worry he may have an agenda of his own.  Then a call comes in to the property, telling them to take what they expected to find and get out or suffer the consequences, even his second-in-command Detective Sergeant J.D. Byrne calls Dumars out on his contradicting stories…

Time may have run out as gunfire erupts and a siege situation begins…

*Some spoilers…*

In recent years Netflix has produced and platformed a number of mainstream movies with A-List casts. Some of them genuinely excite and might well have made their way to the multiplex had they not been for squeezed launch-dates and pandemic problems. Yet there’s also a large swathe where it’s easy to see why a title landed away from the big screen – either due to over-used tropes or simplistic set-ups, they are more disposable, guilty pleasures at best rather than solid audience-pullers.

So, going into The RIP there’s every suspicion that it could be the latter – something full of familiar faces and names but with an all-too familiar trench of good cops vs corrupt cops and nothing new to say. However, it turns out that as well as having the sheen and stamina, this is a production that knows the familiar ground it’s going to subvert and so slow-burns its way through its story, acknowledging the genre signposts but exuding enough confidence and structure and shifting alliances to make the tension build and even the most die-hard film fan settle in – not too comfortably – for the journey.  With elements of both Michael Mann’s HEAT and Bryan Singer’s The Usual Suspects, The RIP isn’t as unflinchingly great as either of the stone-cold classics and might still be a marmite outing, but it is definitely superior to most of the usual robbery-gone-awry thrillers and instead ends up being a thriller where a film playing its cards close enough to the bullet-proof vested chest throughout to keep you watching.

Director Joe Carnahan delivers what’s needed… letting his cast handle the heavy-lifting and letting the punchy pot-boiler bubble away. There’s a lot of tension, punctuated by gunfire, stand-offs and nervous set-ups… It’s good to see a film that attracts success but isn’t just some deliberate loose-end set-up for a franchise…

Admittedly, it all wreaks of barely-contained testosterone from the start. Affleck and Damon – friends since long before their awards for Good Will Hunting – have become Hollywood mainstays in the years since and they anchor a film which, to its credit, quickly becomes an ensemble piece with members of a Tactical Narcotics Team charged with tackling the cartels pushing product through Florida. (Sue me, but I liked the simple fact that one team member chastises investigators for calling it the ‘TNT team’ because the ‘T’ in that anacronym already stands for Team, similar to the complaint about the NAVY NCIS title with which that the hit show originally began!). The often rough and ready TNT don’t have many friends in the force and even their superiors are frustrated by tight-budgets and rumours of innate cop corruption throughout the area. An early scene, reminiscent of many a Fast and Furious cook-out also makes us believe that we’ll be in for might-over-right and banter-over-brains entry, but once we establish the bravado status of all involved, things get far tighter and more claustrophobic. Beyond the catnip re-pairing of Affleck and Damon, there’s also a solid supporting cast. There’s The Walking Dead‘s Steven Yeun, Lanterns‘ Kyle Chandler, Nestor Carbonell. Scott Adkins (one of the UK’s best martial-artists) might be reduced to brief appearances as a shirt-and-tie FBI agent with a particular axe to grind, but he goes toe-to-toe with Affleck even in an office setting. Catalina Sandino Moreno (the first Colombian to be nominated for an Academy Award for her work in Maria, Full of Grace) and One Battle After Another‘s Teyana Taylor play members of the strike team and prove to be far more than just the decoration lesser films might have provided. Sasha Calle, so briefly the DCU‘s Supergirl in The Flash, is also in the mix as the lone occupant of the house that TNT are investigating.

Despite picking up on some supposedly throwaway lines early on, this was one of the few films where I genuinely didn’t know where the film was going to end up. The idea of a close-knit team suddenly looking at each other and wondering whom they can really trust in a good, classic recipe for drama. Like the promotional materials note, you can try to surmise the nooks and crannies of the obvious duplicities on show and you can’t really afford to trust anyone or, at least, you have to question everyone’s motivations.  Some of the decisions and story points are there for the service of the plot and the scenery (all the TNT members drive suspiciously nice cars etc, etc.) and some aspects rely on luck and timing, but that’s somewhat par for the course and The Rip keeps things consistently taut enough that you’re swept along. And to be fair, the minute you might raise a mental query, the film tends to give you a possible answer and asks you to believe it. The film has the confidence to play a majority of its story in the house and cul-de-sac with the aforementioned cartel payload, though it doesn’t quite have to the courage of its convictions to stay there for the eventual denouement – which involves embracing that Fast and Furious formula of a thankfully brief car-chase. There’s the sinking feeling that it might yet waste the goodwill it’s maintained and just settle for a sub-par ending (the fate of far too many wannabees), but though your mileage may vary, it just about works and holds together as the credit roll. It’s good to see a film that attracts success but isn’t just some deliberate loose-end set-up for a franchise.

Director Joe Carnahan delivers what’s needed, cutting back on the sheer bluster of The A-Team movie, Bad Boys for Life, the Death Wish remake etc, and letting his cast handle the heavy-lifting and letting the punchy, pot-boiler bubble away. There’s a lot of tension, punctuated by gunfire, stand-offs and nervous set-ups. Some have complained about the frequent profanity that runs through the film, and though there’s a multitude of profanity along the way, it never seems to be there as a crutch for the story. If swearing is what really bothers you, then there’s other fare to choose from across the streaming platforms.

Definitely a movie I’d have actually paid to see at the cinema, The RIP is a ripping yarn that is worth the slow burn start…

But to do that, there will be high risks and hard choices. Is Nahla Ake really the best choice for Chancellor – even she doesn’t think so? Is Caleb Mir, torn from his mother’s arms a decade earlier and still seething with resentment against Ake and Starfleet really a good choice for the training program? Where will the Academy choose to make its base? Will a disparate class of cadets, who have previously made their own way in the galaxy choose to come together and putting aside their differences?

When an old face from Caleb’s past returns and puts the crew of the Academy’s USS Athena in mortal jeopardy, it seems those choices may have to be made quicker than anyone intended…

*some spoilers*

The basic premise of a show centred on Starfleet cadets has loitered around the fringes of the Star Trek franchise for several decades. Though there have been variations on the specific theme offered up for consideration (ranging from comedic hijinks through to more serious fare), none ever saw the light of day, with many a loyal fan offering up a silent Vulcan prayer of thanks, less the result had reflected their lack of great expectations.

So, when the official news came last year that a Starfleet Academy show would launch in 2026, just as Trek celebrated its 60th anniversary, the reaction was… mixed. The decision that it would be set in the far-future 30th century where we left the marmite and  time-displaced Star Trek: Discovery did nothing to quell concerns and when a promotional poster hit the interwebs late last year, see above, there was a notable disturbance in the Force (okay…wrong franchise, but correct sentiment) that this would be a show more at home in the ‘golden’ days of America’s youth-trending The CW than Paramount+. More 90210 than 2010. More extra-curricular than extra-terrestrial…. well, you get the idea.

There’s a plaque in a classroom I know that states ‘The leaders of tomorrow are in this classroom today‘, a maxim that can spark pride or fear depending on the day it’s read and who is in the room at the time.  It feels a similar situation reviewing Starfleet Academy…with its two episode launch this week, does it fare better than those misgivings?

The opener, Kids These Days, is perhaps a little darker than expected and settles on providing the most backstory for Sandro Rosta’s rebellious Caleb Mir. Almost literally ripped from his mother’s arms (She-Hulk‘s Tatiana Maslany as Anisha Mir) after she makes an ill-fated deal with ‘space pirate’ Nus Braka (Paul Giamatti) he hasn’t had the best of starts. Despite extenuating circumstances, Anisha is imprisoned and later vanishes and has been AWOL since. The young Caleb escaped Star Fleet custody and has been on the run for over a decade, hoping to be reunited with his mother. We will see the efforts of Star Fleet – to reboot its Federation remit and produce its Academy’s first new recruits for decades – mostly through Caleb’s eyes.

Caleb, played as a young adult by Sandro Rosta, will likely be a divisive character. For the younger audience he’s designed to prove a catnip and perfect-complexioned anarchic flyboy with an eye for the ladies, but for older audiences he’s simply a warts-and-all, smart-mouthed kid who gets away with far too much and needs far more consequences to his actions. The other main cadet characters are Karim Diane as unusually zen-lite Klingon Jay-Den Kraag, George Hawkins as the entitled Darem Reymi, Bella Shepard as Genesis Lythe (the daughter of a Starfleet general who is smart and resourceful and perhaps too perfect) and SAM, who we soon learn is actually an over-enthusiastic holographic-life-form played by Kerrice Brooks. They are all Starfleet cadets but there’s another regular character, joining in the second episode, a self-aware Betazoid called Tarima Sadal (Australian actor Zoë Steiner), daughter of a previously-isolationist diplomat who’s making the most of spreading her wings and joins the parallel ‘War College’, setting up some love-triangle diversions.

Starfleet Academy  provides plenty to enjoy on a basic level and revels in its innate nostalgia and easter eggs a’plenty, but it’s far too early to tell whether (the show) is an entry of huge distinction or just mass distraction… and we made need to see a full semester to tell if it makes the grade purely on its own merits rather than just leaning into its lineage…

For the older, veteran casting, Holly Hunter is an interesting choice for the main ‘command’ role, Nahla Ake… reluctantly returning to the formal Academy to command the USS Athena and as the Academy’s Chancellor after past decisions (including her treatment of Caleb) and institutional restrictions led to her continuing her long life-span away from formality. (Though she looks human she’s actually a Human/Lanthanite sharing characteristics with SNW‘s Pelia (Carol Kane) that include a good timeline in snark and thumbing her nose at pomposity). It’s one of those dual responsibility/roles that’s loosely written enough to accommodate whatever situation arises each episode, rather than being wholly logical, but Hunter’s dismissive southern drawl paves over a lot of the narrative seams.  However, purists may seethe at her physical disrespect for the command chair, in which she simply curls up as if ready to read a good book!

Veteran Paul Giamatti, one of the best actors out there and a long time sf fan, relishes his entry into the echelons of Trek villains and positively chews the entire scenery as the insidious space-pirate Nus Braka with a boo-hiss arc that will likely extend the whole series or beyond. It’s cool to have such a name attached and if it’s played with the broadest of strokes, then you just have to sit back and enjoy.

The rest of the adult cast know what they’re doing from the outset. Robert Picardo returns as ‘The Doctor’ (the holographic character from Voyager, not the Gallifreyan variety), Oded Fehr reprises his Discovery character, Starfleet Admiral Charles Vance and Tig Nataro as Jett Reno brings back the engaging engineering snark to a teaching role… all of them slipping into comfortable shoes and characters they know well. New to the Trek universe, British writer and comedian Gina Yashere plays Commander Luna Thok, the hard-driving Cadet Master of Starfleet Academy. She’s a hybrid Klingon/Jem’Hadar which does feel a little like the writers’ room rolled the dice and picked two unlikely species to combine for the heck of it.  Listen closely and you’ll hear, rather than see, Another Earth/OE star Brit Marling as the voice of the USS Athena computer and no less than the great Stephen Colbert as Starfleet Academy’s Digital Dean of Students.

For long-term fans, the show has fun with the different arms, or tentacles, of Trek to date. Beyond the Voyager and Discovery actors, there’s a ‘wall of honor’ and academic ‘wings’ providing name-checks for a multitude of familiar crew-members from across time and space. There’s production-design nods to TOS, The Next Generation and Voyager (confirmation that Harry Kim finally got promoted!).  Watch out for a Rok-Tahk-esque character from the animated Star Trek: Prodigy strolling around. Hey… there’s even some whales! Whether fan-service or lip-service, it’s all in good fun and can add a little depth to proceedings without making newcomers feeling adrift. Either that or it’s all merely sparkly decoration designed to divert from a rather familiar set-up.

The second episode Beta-Test, certainly gives off a feeling that the show could be more than leaning heavily into a Hogwarts-in-Space template with an array of shenanigans and teachable moments. Yes, its star-crossed developments clashing with diplomatic relations feels more like early Next Generation fare than anything else.

Some will talk of the wider ‘swings’ that the Trek franchise has been trying over recent years, hoping to continue its once-assured dominance by alternating its classic lore and new trends. Yes, Strange New Worlds gives the pre-TOS era a wash-and-brush-up, the animated Prodigy and Lower Decks were drawn to humour and Picard may have partially-satiated the TNG faithful… but at best it’s a law of physics and diminishing returns if you go to the existing space-well too many times and all of the above are now off-the-air or will soon boldly go into reruns. From its two episodes so far, Starfleet Academy feels genetically designed to appeal to the widest possible audience and tilt towards all the current windmills, though that decision could still see it flounder if it seeks breadth over depth. (The third episode looks set to show inter-department sports competitions and pranks, so how long before we have a DumbleWorf declaring ‘Ten points Tribblepuff?“).

But, listen… I’m long over the silly, knee-jerk criticism of modern Trek being ‘woke’ (a critique which speaks to planet-sized ignorance – especially for a culturally-significant franchise that’s has purposely featured welcome inclusivity, diversity and fundamental moral questions since the 1960s and inspired real-life success). However, there’s no denying that in fulfilling its next, next, next (etc.) generation remit of different planetary societies pulling together after the cataclysmic and isolating ‘Burn’, there does seem to be a range of overt representation that sometimes teeters close to being a safety-net checklist of tropes. To slightly appropriate Herman’s Hermits, it’s “Second ‘verse, same as the first…”

The attempt to provide something for everyone could be satisfying or its own worst enemy and it’s hard to imagine that Starfleet Academy, entertaining enough in the moment, will ultimately resonate down the decades. That being said, older fans have to realise that the franchise, like – say – Doctor Who, has to regenerate over time to include an incoming younger audience and sometimes have a style that isn’t intended to satiate the existing longer-term viewers. The show provides plenty to enjoy on a basic level and revels in its innate nostalgia and easter-eggs a’plenty, but it’s far too early to tell whether Starfleet Academy is an entry of huge distinction or just mass distraction… and we made need to see a full semester to tell if it makes the grade purely on its own merits rather than just leaning into its lineage…

What he doesn’t realise yet is that he’s somehow been hacked. For some nefarious reason, an unseen agitator can see and hear almost everything he does. Those headaches? That’s actually the outgoing signal being turned on and off.  But he’s suddenly promoted and given the task of helping to find a possible mole. When going through a cache of mission files, Alexander starts to put two-and-two together and realises the unlikely truth, that he might well be the mole everyone’s looking for. What should he do? Does he inform his superiors and be at risk of being terminated (perhaps literally) or try to find out what is going on himself?

Who can he trust when he can’t even trust himself?

*spoilers*

With its mixture of subtext and terrorism and a patriotic central figure finding trouble from all-sides, Peacock‘s The Copenhagen Test will most likely (and quite reasonably) be compared to the likes of 24 (or the more recent, one season Paramount+ show Rabbit Hole which also featured Kiefer Sutherland) and certainly fills that niche. Though full of the shiniest, sleekest tech, this is a premise that could have been brought to the screen decades ago (and one can point to similar variations along the way) but 21st Century VFX and hi-resolution cinematography and post-production (not to mention current feelings of distrust, accountability and paranoia) amp up the tension. You aren’t here for the originality of it all: it’s more a case of old-fashioned dramas of distrust, cloaked in bespoke modern tech… or, more bluntly, to discover who’s doing what to whom and why. It asks you: if in a similar predicament, how would you deal with it and try to circumvent it? The series offers some imaginative options, though its strengths are deciding whom to trust. At eight episodes there’s an argument it could have been even tighter at six chapters, but it all pushes along nicely, giving you enough time to ponder but not too much to think about the cracks.

Simu Liu is probably most recognised for his title role in Marvel‘s 2001 release Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings, a character he will reprise in the much-anticipated upcoming Avengers movies – still almost a year away despite the slow trickle of weekly teaser trailers. Here, devoid of actual ancient eastern magic, Liu still demonstrates his prowess in impressive hand-to-hand sequences that never look explicitly pre-choreographed or too glossy and balletic. Perhaps not as bone-crunchingly overt as, say, the opening episodes of the (then) Netflix‘s Daredevil or a Saturday night out in Glasgow, the combat sequences are kept speedy and as organic as a spy thriller of this kind will ever get. It’s clear that Liu is more than up to that physical challenge and though those encounters are frequent, they’re never there to prop up inadequacies elsewhere.

Mexican actor Melissa Barrera (whom you may well have seen in several Scream movies and Lin-Manuel Miranda’s musical In the Heights) is the bartender to whom Alexander pours out highly edited versions of his predicament and it’s really spoiling nothing to reveal that it’s quickly established she’s another operative hired for the exact purpose of keeping an eye on him. Barrera is equally good in what turns out to be a shifting set of allegiances – her character is pragmatic to a fault – able to flirt, joke, set you at your ease and coldly accept a kill-order on you in quick succession. Yet despite the viewer’s own suspicions, she quickly becomes a character you want to like even if she might yet be a real threat.  She has the exotic, come-hither looks and balancing snark of a Morena Baccarin (Firefly/Homeland) or Isabella Merced (The Last of Us, Alien: Romulus) and the moves of an Alias-era Jennifer Garner with a touch more brutality. Rumour has it that she’s a contender for the reimagined Wonder Woman which would absolutely fine.

The supporting cast are also impressive.  Brian d’Arcy James is the ultra-pragmatic Peter Moira, to whom all operatives report and who has little time for failure;  Sinclair Daniel is a rookie, but very instinctive analyst trying to assess Alex’s motivations; Veteran Saul Rubinek is Victor Simonek, the ex-operative turned masterchef and a family friend from which Alexander seeks sage advice. Kathleen Chalfant essays the role of ‘St. George’ the creator of The Orphanage, and whose own past plays a factor in the chaos that’s now starting to envelop the agency.

The basic building blocks add up to solid spy-fi, but are delivered with characters you get invested in, rather than them being mere interchangeable action figures. The idea of an agency with an enigmatic nom-de-plume is hardly a new one and requires a requisite suspension of disbelief. In 24 it was the ‘CTU’ acronym, in La Femme Nikita it was ‘Section One‘ and here it’s ‘The Orphanage‘ none of which have a title that should really compel any sane person to expect a long-life span or want to join them. The Orphanage exists as oversight over all the other alphabet agencies and if its history and creation are duly a factor in the developing story, there’s still enough gaps to neatly gloss over the way its mere existence would be tolerated by the likes of the NSA, the CIA, the FBI never mind international organisations. Its decades of operations might not be flawless, but it’s supposedly never had a successful breach of security and if anything awkward did happen, it was neatly and quietly contained with extreme prejudice. It’s the kind of the literal ‘upstairs’ (complete with staff having ornate, exclusive ye olde keys for no real reason) to the standard operations ‘downstairs’ that’s only found so obviously in tv drama, but you go with the flow of the basic set-up.

The conceit of a person having their sight and hearing hacked is both a great idea on which to hang a plot and bizarre enough to play with to crank up tension. As a viewer it keeps you on your toes, but you will likely find several moments where you’ll wonder if some of the narrative rules are truly consistent. For every in-story solution that’s genuinely clever, there’s a few that don’t make a lot of sense or rely solely on good fortune rather than planning. The first half of the run is clever and subversive, in the sense that it’s hard to predict what characters motivations are and what they’ll do next. (The Copenhagen Test of the title is not a real-life quandary but is the sort of exercise that evaluates tough decision-making in the field that Alex has to make in Belarus and on a bigger scale on his latest venture). On that note, the idea that a top-level operative like Melissa Barrera’s ‘Michelle’ is seemingly used so frequently on missions that she is inconveniently recognised/not recognised according to plot needs seems questionable and problematic both on an operational level and a story beat…

There’s some unreliable narration along the way or presumptions that are nicely and effectively undermined. The second half is more about the consequences of that, more traditional espionage derring-do and dangerous agendas, but still delivered well enough to keep you entertained. No specific spoilers, but amongst all the answers we eventually get, there are some contradictions that still seem iffy and there is one revelation at the very end that feels like a layer too far in what is otherwise a fun and satisfying story in which you can’t quite be sure of loyalties and consequences. The Copenhagen Test is neither brainless guff nor too darkly realistic but occupies the middle-ground of guilty-pleasure and entertaining espionage. On that level, I don’t think it’s saying too much to suggest that while this is technically a self-contained mini-series, it also feels like a potential springboard to a tv franchise that could give Jack Bauer a run for his money…

*spoilers*

After near-misses, near-hits and lots of things going horribly wrong, our heroes combined efforts save the day – mostly. You expected anything less? This is a finale that tries to appeal to everyone and that means there’s some hits and some misses. In what seems a Return of the Jedi moment, we get clarity on how Jamie Campbell Bower’s Henry became Vecna and he gets a chance to free himself as a puppet of the extra-dimensional Mind-Flayer, though, sadly, there’s no Darth Vader last-minute redemption as Henry feels it’s far too late to claw back his humanity. It takes everyone to defeat him on a physical and mental level, but they do so in fine form and in a scene that likely has the GDP  budget of a small European country. However, it’s far from over. Though it’s technically the second time it’s happened in the run, we get a singularly memorable F-bomb which, of course, goes to Winona Ryder’s Joyce who may have been reduced to a more of a supporting role this season but has – as a montage shows – been through hell and back with the loss of loved ones and near-death experiences over the run. (Seriously – go back and watch the first season and her slow breakdown after Will goes missing for just how good she can be, indeed… that first run is full to the brim of powerhouse moments for all the cast). ‘You fucked with the wrong family!‘ she defiantly announces, delivering the satisfying death blow and beheading to an already impaled Vecna, making sure he isn’t going to escape death once more.

The show itself had overtly embraced its homages so that it ultimately feels less like something unique in its own right and more a celebration of everything that inspired it… and the longer it continued, the harder it was always going to be to offer a fully-functional ending on its own terms. But  ‘The Rightside Up‘  finishes things off nicely, a little scrambled but far grander than the ambitions of the first season… yet with the same feeling that its true power comes from family…

The show has always boasted good VFX, but here the already impressive Upside Down had to exist in the shadow of further dimensions and the resulting set-pieces are outstanding, giving some big-screen feature films a challenge (and those who caught the finale at one of the sold-out simultaneous multiplex screenings of the finale certainly got value for money). With Vecna vanquished, the massive Mind-Flayer – the real bad-guy of the piece – strode across the rocky terrain like some huge spider-like entity and gave us what felt like a full-on boss-level ending to a video ‘game’ and the eventual destruction of the upside Down felt like a higher resolution of those old nuclear bomb destruction videos of old.  Suitable meta-level soundtracks often help period pieces – transporting the audience back on a sensory level and that’s true here. We’ve already had Kate Bush‘s Running up that Hill making a huge impact in Season Four and the Season Five’s trailer gave us Queen‘s Who Wants to Live Forever? theme from Highlander. There’d been mention that there’d be at least one song that had never been licensed for television before and in the end we get not one but two perfectly-appropriate tracks from Prince (When Doves Cry and Purple Rain).

There were plenty of rumours of major character deaths and every reason to believe that the show might feel the need for some significant casualties given the nature of ‘final battle’ mythologies.  There were gunshots, explosions, big monsters and sudden cuts to black that suggested unsurvivable threats, but most bullets missed their mark by such a degree that one wonders how many Stormtroopers were on day-player rates. (Though the under-used Kali – not the potential traitor we thought she might be – was felled early-on by army bullets). However, when all was said and done, this was less the Joss Whedon approach of having a true tragedy or fickle fate inform the eventual win, but more so the Steven Moffat approach of threatening a lot and setting up a string of heart-wrenching fatalities but having some plot device mean that the sharper edges were rounded off and, at most, things were delivered with a bittersweet wink that it was all going to be okay. There’s that moment when the story appears to be over and the heroes have won and you look at the clock and realise that there’s still forty-five minutes of the Rightside Up to go. Uh-oh. That can only mean that there’s a chance defeat will be snatched from the jaws of victory. The pesky Army, led by Linda Hamilton’s Doctor Kay, arrive just after the nick of time and screw things up. Eleven, who had apparently decided to stay alive – despite Kali’s observations that they need to sacrifice themselves otherwise Kay’s forces will never leave them alone and could once again create monster – makes sure everyone else is safe before apparently deciding Kali was actually right and she stays at the edge of the portal and is wiped from existence along with the Upside Down. Or was she?

At the very end of the episode, Mike, as Storyteller, suggests some inconsistencies in what they experienced and suggests that with her dying breath, Kali spun some of her magic to allow Eleven to only appear to die, enabling her to disappear and removing the threat of pursuit. It’s a nice way to reassure the audience that maybe things were okay after all. (At the risk of being Grinchy, while Mike is right that the power-dampeners/inhibitors should have stopped Eleven from using her powers in those final seconds, she also shouldn’t have been able to reach into his mind for one last goodbye and surely Kali was dead long before the main stand-off?  However, like the cast and Fox Mulder, ‘I want to believe…‘).

Packed as it was – the Duffer Brothers have a tendency to introduce lots of new characters without losing the old – some characters still felt a little surplus to requirements. Though they have their parts to play in how events play out, both Linnea Berthelsen’s Kali and Linda Hamilton’s Doctor Kay feel underwritten, often barely there for entire episodes or reduced to a few lines until they had to do one prescribed action. Honestly, Hamilton in particular feels like indulgent stunt casting in a role that anyone could have played. She’s never quite the real threat she could have been and after the denouement she’s basically discarded with no real resolution.

Leaked photos had shown some of our characters appearing several years later, with some suggesting time-travel might be a focus of the finale. In the end, it was actually just the almost-standard-episode-length epilogue (move over Lord of the Rings) which was set eighteen months later as some of the characters graduated Hawkins High School and the older kids meet up to discuss what they’re now doing and reminisce their stories of survival. Dustin suggested to the audience that the awful things Hawkins had endured did, at least, break down barriers and united everyone be they geek, jock, friend or adolescent foe. he also flicked the physical and metaphorical finger at the establishment, celebrating Eddie with a Hellfire t-shirt which gets a resounding cheer from the students and watching television audience. For a series that has favoured homages to the forces of the Eighties, it does feel more than a little John Hughes and I can’t have been the only person wondering for a second if the graduation would go the way of Buffy’s Sunnydale ceremony. Max is all mended, and together with Lucas, Nancy is stretching her wings, Jonathan is off to make films and Steve is a… sex-ed teacher? Now, that’s stranger. But on another anticipated note, Hopper (David Harbour) finally proposes to Joyce (Winona Ryder) – she says ‘yes‘ of course -and tells her that he’s considering taking a job as a police chief in Montauk, Long Island. That’s a slightly deeper dive into the history of Stranger Things as the Duffer Brothers’ original pitch for the show was located there until a last-minute switch to Hawkins and Indiana.

At the very end, it was only right that we finished Stranger Things by going full circle. Mike, Max, Dustin and Will are seen finishing a game of Dungeons and Dragons and then it’s handed off to a new generation that includes Holly and Derek. In many ways, this was always going to be the kind of final scene the show would provide. If the final battle with the Mind-Flayer felt like the climax of IT (but dialed up to 11), then the very final minutes are pure Stand By Me – even depicting Finn Wolfhard as a writer looking back on what’s happened. It honestly felt a little too tied up, a little too safe, pedestrian even twee for a show that’s always embraced the power of magic and grown darker by the turning of its seasons. Personally, I think we needed the brave sacrifices of more characters and there to be a little more consequence. We should celebrate the survivors, but not feel like it’s all been a bad dream and now they’re off to face the world. The laughter and camaraderie is welcome, and people process trauma in different ways, but come just a little too easily, like the finale of a much lighter-toned sit-com. So, no, it’s not a perfect sign-off for the ages, but a solid enough one to enjoy…and, truth be known, the multitude of threads and collective high expectations meant it was never likely to satisfy completely. The show itself had overtly embraced its homages so that it ultimately feels less like something unique in its own right and more a celebration of everything that inspired it… and the longer it continued, the harder it was always going to be to offer a fully-functional ending on its own terms. But The Rightside Up finishes things off nicely, a little scrambled but far grander than the ambitions of the first season… yet with the same feeling that its true power comes from family. Both may demand a rewatch.

Everything else is the roll of a dice…

Those with very short memories will recall that we left our heroes in the aftermath of Will hacking into Vecna’s abilities and saving his friends from imminent death. That’s all fine and dandy, but the bigger threat isn’t over, so what happens next and will it involve Kate Bush?

Episode 5 ‘Shock Jock‘ gives our ensemble a few minutes to breath after Will’s last-minute save and power-upgrade and discussing a range of options as they realise the anniversary of Will’s original disappearance is about to get an anniversary and the conclusion of Vecna’s plans. The next two episodes ‘Escape from Camazotz’ and ‘The Bridge‘ build on the subsequent revelations about the true nature of the Upside Down. (Our baddie now has most of the kids he needs for his diabolical plan – or, at least, has most of them in place, despite Holly and Max’s attempts to thwart him. Yes, as fans would demand, Max finally makes it back to the land of the living (by way of more whispers of Kate Bush, Holly’s indomitable determination and nods to The First Shadow, the series’ officially-sanctioned  stage/theatre prequel) and Sadie Sink certainly gives Millie Bobbie Brown’s Eleven a run for her money as MVP at the moment, even with Max’s body still broken.  Holly (Nell Fisher), sadly, remains trapped when her exit route doesn’t lead home. We get some kind of for-the-moment resolution to the only mildly-irritating love triangle between Jonathan (Charlie Heaton), Nancy (Natalia Dyer) and Steve (Joe Keery), with the first two confessing their love and doubts as they think they’re about to die. (And Nancy/Natalia showing extra fiery initiative in the Discover credit-card commercials tie-in). Cara Buono as Karen Wheeler also gets another triumphant moment protecting the kids. With the likes of Max, Karen, Robin and Nancy being so pro-active this season, it’s nice to see female roles that are as strong as their male counterparts (sometimes more so) but still believable in the context of the story.

Over the holiday season, I’ve also watched both versions of IT which underlines the nostalgic Tetris that Stranger Things has become. The show continues to rattle off and treasure the connective tissue that many a show throws to the wind, to the extent that there does sometimes feel like a list of plot-devices that need to be referenced and influences to be ticked off.  Vecna’s layer… yeah, that’s suspiciously like a tracing of the Skeksis’ castle in The Dark Crystal, the downgraded-to-grunt-duty demagorgans (continuing to look like a cross between the hyenas from The Lion King and the war-wolves from Marvel Comics‘ early Excalibur run) make the ‘surviving the kitchen’ scene a direct riff on Jurassic Park and the mindscape is all kinds of Alice in Wonderland  – but these are all openly nods to iconic origins, so it’s more an over-effusive love letter to the genre rather than outright theft. Madeleine L’Engle’s novel A Wrinkle in Time also continues to be an important touchstone to the extent that the Episode Six title namechecks the book’s fantastical land. (But I’m truly surprised no-one’s yet entered the Upside Down through the back of a wardrobe – maybe there’s still time for Narnia…). The moment where Robin has to convince her girlfriend Vicki (Amybeth McNulty) about the kaleidoscopic plot to date and Viki’s very logical response – especially as a nurse – is “What drug are you in withdrawl from?‘ underlines the fact the show has become more complicated in its narratives but that there’s plenty of people in Hawkins who are probably still shrugging off events as weird but not that weird.

Of course, in some quarters, there was the inevitable accusations of The Bridge being too ‘woke’ (a word with so fluid a definition that it’s nowadays used to describe a concept that the individual wants to hate but can’t explain why and which may change daily. Honestly, how long before we get ‘The good guys won? That’s so woke!‘ as their foot-stomping, pearl-clutching lament?). In particular was the revelation that Will was gay.  The thing is, anyone complaining about a forced, overt storyline here either has the memory of a goldfish or doesn’t get the underdog maxim that the show has had since launch. As far back as the first season – and even from his own father – there were derogatory comments about Will’s possible sexuality and it’s being alluded to a various points throughout the run but rarely getting in the way of the wide plot. It began to solidify in the last episodes of the fourth season. Here, as the series gets close to drawing to a close, Vecna is actively using the kids’ fears and insecurities against them and the fact that Robin offers him non-judgemental friendship and experience and Will ‘comes out’ to his family and friends and they (thankfully) say they still love him… and it changes nothing  for them is a double-win for our heroes. It negates Vecna’s use of Will’s ‘secret’ as a weapon to be used against Will and also reaffirms that real family don’t care about it as long as he’s happy. It’s a powerful scene – delivered with real emotional wallop by Noah Schnapp – but just one in a season full of people finding out what makes them tick and how to survive monsters (both human and supernatural). Some will say the 80s were, in reality, far less forgiving of outliers at that point… yes,but the 80s were also, in reality, not plagued by multi-dimensional monsters and super-powered governmental projects, so c’est la vie and fa la la la la.

The cast continues to be expansive, to the extent that I was pleasantly surprised so many are catered for, but that we don’t have more significant deaths so far – I was presuming at least one of the main core of younger characters would have met their demise. There’s too many characters to name-check in a review without it sounding like a Who’s Who, but they all do  pretty well (That being said, Linnea Berthelsen’s Kali seems to have very little to do except suspiciously undermine Eleven’s plans and screen heroine and hard-ass Linda Hamilton does feel like under-used stunt-casting given that she’s really had nothing to do but bark a few orders. If she’s anything more significant we have only two more hours to find out).

I’m enjoying this final run, even if it sometimes feels over-reverential to the genre. Early-negative-review-bombing seems disingenuous and hasn’t helped, neither has the rumour of many deleted scenes and calls for a longer ‘Duffer Cut’ to reinsert them – which seems ridiculous as all shows and films have edits for the sake of the final product and there seems no truth that the fundamental shape of the finale has been changed. But the end is nigh… or rather Night and New Year’s Eve night to be specific.

So, what’s next? Is Kali conniving; is Vecna going to be vanquished, is Eleven going to get eradicated or is all this death and destruction merely D&D with a RND budget???? Nearly two hours left to stick the landing… well, stranger things have happened.

Prtevious review: When A Stranger (Thing) calls: Can Netflix’s genre giant join all its dots..? – echochamber.online

People have different reasons for taking part, different tactics for surviving and different dreams of what their ‘wish’ will be.

But as the hours turn into days and contestants literally fall by the wayside, is there any time or point in making friends? Who can possibly win and what will be the cost?

*spoilers*

The Long Walk defies the usual structure of many a feature film. Like the unrelenting road itself, there’s a solid throughline with very few chances for detour or dalliance and though the backgrounds change as the story progresses, the camera frames a singular procession and mission statement:  we’re not here as a part of some travelogue or day-trip through the countryside, we’re watching a gradually diminishing group of desperate people traipsing along a road, likely to their death. There is punctuation along the way, sometimes bloody, sometimes sudden, but the question is the same throughout, from the first frame to the final: who will be the last man standing?

The concept itself demands two deceptively tricky things to succeed – the cast of characters have to keep us invested in their fate and the camerawork has to be more than simply pointing its lens and hoping for the best. Thankfully, The Long Walk achieves both: though it doesn’t push as many boundaries as it could, it delivers a consistent and growing sense of dread, making even widescreen shots seem dangerously claustrophobic.

Stephen King released the original novella in 1978 – during his time using the pen-name Richard Bachman – and has spoken that he wrote the story when in college and there was an all-too-real fear amongst young men of being drafted to fight in Vietnam. In that sense the subtext definitely becomes the text. The printed tale is tense and unforgiving and though there are tweaks to the narrative (on screen it’s 50 participants rather than 100, the lowest speed they can walk is 5 mph in the novel and now 3.5mph on the screen and central character Ray Garraty is a little younger on the printed page), the changes appear practical ones and the intent remains the same.

By its very nature of its men-only participants (the film never addresses the gender factor), The Long Walk is a testosterone-filled story, but more the sense of enforced fraternal camaraderie of prison dramas (such as The Shawshank Redemption) rather than the grunting, sweating, bullets-and-chrome variety of, say, Zack Snyder.

Pragmatically, not all fifty participants get equal time and even those that get named don’t always last long, but, generally, the main ‘walkers’ themselves all offer solid performances.  Cooper Hoffman (son of the late Philip Seymour Hoffman) continues to make his own mark as Walker #47/Garraty. He makes the character sympathetic yet driven, making him the person you hope wins while fearing he won’t. Walker #23  Peter McVries (Alien: Romulus‘ Andy) plays David Jonsson, a realist who befriends Ray as they support each other along the way, yet knowing that they can’t both survive. We also meet Garrett Wareing as the solemn #338/Stebbins, Charlie Plummer as the troubled, abrasive #5/Gary Barkovitch, Karate Kid: Legends‘ Ben Wang as the chatty but wholly unprepared #346/Hank Olson and Joshua Odjick (also on show in another King entry IT: Welcome to Derry) as the proud Native American #48/Collie Parker.

Ultimately, The Long Walk achieves the feat of being solid, knowing adaptation of a Bachman/King novella (in and of itself, no mean achievement), but misses out on greatness for exactly the same reason. In making the decision to strip the adaptation back to basics, director Francis Lawrence (Red Sparrow, The Hunger Games: Catching Fire/Mockingjay) does a good job of making us care without a ton of bells and whistles on which inferior feature films often rely, but simultaneously side-steps the opportunity to expand the ideas and push the frame with any real world-building. We get glimpses and mentions of the regime that’s created the nihilistic journey to entertain the masses but no real sense of its particulars (perhaps think a slimmed-down The Hunger Games without any of the garish prêt-à-porter or over-the-top obstacles). There’s the idea that the walk is more fixed crowd-control than a lottery, but that public perception is reduced to seeing a few weeping family members (including Judy Greer) wave goodbye and then the thin, strangely apathetic voyeurs who litter the route like wraiths and show little emotion either way.  You’d expect such an undertaking to be of interest to the baying masses, (a la The Running Man remake from yet another King novel), but it’s so self-contained, that we rarely see beyond the immediate tarmac and roadkill.  That’s a perfectly fair artistic choice, concentrating on the main characters and echoing the text – and it works better on some occasions – but it would have been interesting and informative to understand the wider peril and parameters rather than stick with a sprinkling of backstories from a small group of characters (most of whom, we understand from the start, won’t survive).

For example, Mark Hammil, cast against type, is the unforgiving military commander watching over the shuffling mass from the back of a jeep, alternatively yelling toxic encouragement and sterile recriminations. One of the few disappointments is in how little he’s used. Initially introduced with a self-serving speech about effort and survival, you expect him to be the malevolent boogeyman hanging over the entire venture, but for the most part the threat comes from interchangeable soldiers merely fulfilling the rules of killing anyone who deviates from the path or can’t keep up to the set pace. Hammil enjoys chewing the scenery and we get a few drops of why he’s generally loathsome but it would have given the film a sharper edge if we didn’t have to dislike him from afar. If you want to keep the oppressive state faceless, you leave it to the imagination and inferences along the way, but if you cast Mark Hammil – or for that matter the versatile Judy Greer – you’re asking the audience to believe there’s something important in that portrayal. In this case, Hammil’s character doesn’t even get a name beyond ‘the Major’.

If the original novel was brutal, the screen version of The Long Walk is both angry and resolved but isn’t so nihilistic as to turn off its audience nor so sweet as to squander the subject-matter. It has a running (walking?) time of just under two hours which feels like good pacing and it walks the line between moments of nihilistic carnage and a celebration of the human spirit. It might not have the historical staying-power of some of King’s signature best known work, but its strong cast make it a worthwhile entry.

Now creatures once branded as ‘Sea Devils’ have decided that enough is enough. It becomes clear that ‘Homo Aqua’ are demanding not just reparation but an immediate stop to the pollution and behaviour that has damaged their home. They might be prepared to share the planet, but only under new formalities. They send an ambassador named Salt to confront the surface-dwellers, but things become complicated when it turns out that the human, Barclay, whom they want to be their opposite number in the negotiations, has actually been seconded there quite by accident – he’s the guy who usually handles paperwork and transport.

With the weight of the world possibly in the hands of Barclay and Salt rather than governments and businessmen – and no Doctor to swoop in to save the day – history is destined to be made, but not everyone wants the negotiations and compromises to go well…

*spoilers*

*SEE UPDATED REVIEW FURTHER BELOW FOR FULL SEASON REVIEW*

The success of The War Between the Land and the Sea or ‘TWBTLATS ‘(a descriptive title so long, even the acronym feels a bit  unwieldly) may well depend on your expectations. Certainly, the sweeping vistas and the production design of the first two episodes indicate that televisual time and money have been spent on this Time-Lord-adjacent but standalone tale, so it’s all down to the telling. Launching with a double-bill on a Sunday night sets out its intent and credentials – it’s not really Christmas Day material and it’s not quite Saturday primetime, but with a Sunday schedule-domination definitely worthy of note – it’s technically something within the Whoniverse but standing just a little off.

One wants to judge the mini-series purely on its own merits, but the Whoniverse has had so much turbulence of late that it’s not entirely possible to do so cleanly. Rather than achieving new heights or pushing boundaries, it seems that Russell T Davies’ mission statement is to, quite deliberately, cast his narrative net as wide as possible without losing his core catch. In that sense he succeeds: there’s a little of something for everyone here: for long-term Whovians (there’s definitely a feel of the older, classic series being given a wash-and-brush-up), for more casual, modern mainstream viewers (those that tune in to see what’s going on and doesn’t want to plough through years of continuity) but also an opportunity to deal with weightier issues that can’t be resolved in 50 minutes (there’s a – literal – deeper dive into environmental aspects that don’t offer easy, immediate solutions).

With The War Between the Land and the Sea, it doesn’t seem as if Russell T Davies is seeking out new heights or attempting to push new boundaries, it’s more a case of  slowing things down, taking the lay of the land (and the sea) and then casting his narrative net as wide as possible within a specific subject-matter. This is Davies without his thumb pressed firmly on fast-forward –  producing not so much a course-correction but perhaps a more nuanced story and a calculated opportunity to attract those less enamoured with the looser tone and format of the ‘mothership’.  On that level, he probably achieves the intended result…

Though you will have to watch the entire five episode run to assess the over-all tone, the two episodes work intro pretty well in finding the pragmatic middle-ground between the mainstream, speed-along, one-story per week pace Doctor Who and, say, the critically-acclaimed (and very dark) Torchwood mini-series Children of Earth – another story about diplomatic relations and conspiracies gone awry with a far darker, even nihilistic outlook. It’s easy to preach about general lack of due planetary care, but  it is harder to tell from the opening two episodes where Davies will ultimately take his story (I predict now that even amongst the overt lessons of tolerance and environmental care, we’ll have a denouement that won’t  require CoE‘s potential full-on child-sacrifice territory this time!). On one hand, it’s clear that humanity is on the moral back foot, rightly being chastised for its rubbishing of the Earth and it’s easy to side with ‘Homo Aqua’ about the stretched limits to their tolerance. We’ve seen different factions and duplicitous plans going on in the surface world, but one suspects that to make this more complex and less one-sided, there may have to be a few wrinkles beneath the waves with which Salt will have to contend.

The casting is solid. Both Russell Tovey (as Barclay) and Gugu Mbatha-Raw (as Salt) have appeared in Doctor Who as other characters, but they quickly assume their new pivotal roles. (In about the only mention of the Time Lord, Barclay reminisces about briefly meeting him in a UNIT hallway but notes that it changed his perspective on life). Mbatha-Raw emerges from under carefully-designed thin-cyan-hued prosthetics that don’t make her look too alien, but in these first episodes it’s Tovey who anchors it all, instantly relatable as an apparently unassuming everyman he’s accidentally dragged into historical events. Jemma Redgrave as Kate Lethbridge-Stewart, Ruth Madeley as Shirley Anne Bingham and Alexander Devrient as Colonel Christofer Ibrahim also reprise their roles, though Kate’s demeanor feels far more authoritarian now that the Doctor isn’t around.

Indeed, if this is a Doctor-less show, then it’s interesting how it uses UNIT. The Time Lord has had a mixed time with the military force over the years – close friendships with the Brigadier, his daughter (and current chief) Kate and various soldiers and officers not withstanding, he’s been wary of people too eager to carry guns and solve problems through firepower. Over the years the taskforce has been seen in various shades, some more positive than others, but TWBTLATS manages to make them a mixed bunch of good-intentioned, pragmatic reactions and human foibles.  It’s another chance to see how they operate without Gallifreyan oversight.

VFX-wise it’s all pretty shiny, though the shadow cast by James Cameron’s 1989 ground-breaking The Abyss (especially the extended version where we see a montage of the potential for conflict and destruction between the world above and the aquatic civilization that Ed Harris and Mary Elizabeth Mastrantonio discover) still remains a long one. Even adjusting for inflation, Bad Wolf doesn’t have a fraction of that budget and it keeps most of its early plot above the surface. What it does have it uses well enough alternating between the intended mundane situations (Barclay’s personal life is a balancing act) and the more eye-catching (the air/sea-lock constructed for the first ‘diplomatic’ meeting drawing on CoE designs but on a more wide-view scale).

The financial input of Disney is all on show, but the recent BBC/Disney split means that international viewers unable to access UK programmes or the BBC iPlayer or unwilling to use a VPN won’t be able to see the mini-series until early next year (Disney+ hasn’t specified the airdate). It seems likely that die-hard fans will have found a way to see it before then, so expect Disney+ ratings to be less than stellar on official broadcast.

With The War Between the Land and the Sea, it doesn’t seem as if Russell T Davies is seeking out new heights or attempting to push new boundaries, it’s more a case of  slowing things down, taking a breath, getting the lay of the land (and the sea) and then casting his narrative net as wide as possible within a specific subject-matter. This isn’t a ‘fix’ because though it was legitimately divisive, plenty of people did like the recent Doctor Who run. However, this is RTD without his thumb pressed firmly on fast-forward –  producing not so much a course-correction but a more nuanced story and a calculated opportunity to attract those less enamoured with the looser tone and format of the ‘mothership’.

On that level, he probably achieves the intended result. It has potential and we’ll see how the way it plays out affects the future of the Whoniverse…

UPDATE (21st Dec):

As the tide went out on the final instalment of the five episode mini-series, how did it all fare?

While Doctor Who speeds along, sometimes at the glossy detriment of development and depth, the opposite seems true for The War between the Land and the Sea. Certainly better than the recent run of Doctor Who but falling short of Children of Earth‘s darker and more dynamic telling, this latest mini-series seems in no rush to tell its story and by the time the credits finish rolling, there’s the feeling that it’s a story that might have been strip-mined and detrimentally squeezed into a standard episode, but probably best-suited to a two or three-parter.

It’s a decent mini-series and placeholder, a welcome chance to let UNIT move centre-stage, but there were still several problems that are worth noting.

For a story about conflict between species, it’s pretty one-sided in presentation – there is not a lot of time spent with Homo Aqua. Excepting Salt and a few representatives that come to the giant tank for diplomatic negotiations, the rest of the sea-faring species are largely reduced to long-distance shots or (in the final episode) floating bodies and collateral damage.

Gugu Mbatha-Raw is good as Salt but is ultimately hampered by a lack of individual character development as the story continues. At the start she’s a dynamic and not-to-be-messed-with representative of her species and there’s an interesting development in the revelation that she can shift between female and male characteristics. But come the mid-way mark and right until the final denouement Salt then becomes little more than a damsel in distress, apparently smitten with Barclay. Later scenes above the surface also show the limitations of the costume/prosthetics. (To be fair, even with a huge budget James Cameron’s underwater empire also looked less impressive when it rose above the waves).

A RTD favourite, Russell Tovey proves his acting chops yet again, but it’s Jemma Redgrave’s performance that will likely be just as remembered – showing a spine of steel and nerve that she often doesn’t get to show when the Doctor’s around. Her PTSD, pill-taking and a deliberately unnerving encounter with a beach-side litterer amid the closing credits bode well for follow-up whenever there are future Who-related projects. (Though RTD touting the scene ahead of broadcast to his usual bombastic level mayhaps didn’t help).

The villains of the piece are nefarious, duplicitous and cowardly – and human (there’s no real slights-of-fin from our aquatic characters), but we really don’t get an idea of their plans until the final episode. They are boo-hiss baddies but throwaway threats – like lightweight versions of the compromised characters in Children of Earth, but far less developed. (Peter Capaldi’s CoE John Frobisher is more memorable in a handful of scenes there than Vincent Franklin’s spineless PM Harry Shaw in TWBTLATS).

We’re left with a world that’s secretly used morally abhorrent weapons to win a war but left a world that must now be aware that they share the planet with another intelligent species that has rights. Little is also made of the story-point that the world’s ice-caps have been seriously-depleted in an act of Home Aqua’s desperation and therefore the world must have massive, historical, nation-affecting flooding, but there’s no mention of that and its implications thereafter.

Fandom’s speculation can often be a precursor to inevitable disappointment, but as a story about mankind’s ambivalence to the planet and the environment, this a good enough tale, easy to enjoy in the moment but  – as with many RTD ventures – the moments of smart, sardonic and heartfelt introspection are balanced by hand-wavery, non-dot-joining scenes that should be just as important but are not really addressed.  It’s a one-sided mini-series that could have been down-sized to make its salient points or expanded to feel more nuanced, but as pure entertainment it’s easy to recommend as long as you adjust your expectations accordingly. Reminiscent of Marvel‘s Secret Invasion, the ideas that motivate it are excellent, yet the execution leaves a few too many gaps to be as ‘epic’ as promised.

Technically, it could and indeed should change the Whoniverse, otherwise it loses all import, but if it’s still sometime before Who returns in any regular form, it may lean more into the illusion of change rather than change itself.

But Sarah can’t let it go, hiring a private detective to look into the possible deceit and its implications. However, there are those very determined to make sure the story dies… and – if necessary – Sarah as well.

*spoilers*

Coming from the pen/quill/keyboard of Mick Herron, the author behind the Slough House books (brought to the screen as the acclaimed Slow Horses series) and once again adapted by Morwenna Banks, you can rightly expect dark humour, banter and a touch of brutality in an evolving story that smashes together the murderous and the mundane, the secret service and the local bus service. Running to eight episodes, the pacing is just a little off around the centre and the tale might be perhaps better suited to a tighter six-episode run, but there’s enough going on to get invested. Like Slow Horses, the story is driven through events spiralling out of control – often the characters that are good at one thing are hopeless at others – they aren’t always doing the best option (indeed there are  some illogical moments when you actively roll your eyes) but you’re all-in for our heroines’ survival and coping with a changing situation as best they can.

Emma Thompson has had an enviable career. In the beginning she managed to balance being both a favourite of the Shakespearian societies and a key member of Cambridge’s Footlights troupe (which included Stephen Fry, Hugh Laurie, Clive Anderson, Sue Perkins, Peter Cook, Eric Idle and Tim Brooke-Taylor). Through the years she’s embraced musicals, comedy, serious thrillers and become one of the pillars of UK entertainment and established  an on-screen persona as someone who can handle anything thrown at her with a certain self-deprecating wit and charm. Here, as private investigator Zoë Boehm, Thompson grounds Zoe as a realist – someone who genuinely cares but tends to keep people at an arm’s distance. She’s compassionate, outwardly cynical yet determined – a role that could have been written specifically for her.

For the record, I could watch Ruth Wilson read a telephone book (ask your parents what they were). She’s become another of the UK’s most reliable and interesting actors, able to essay vulnerability and menace, confusion and intensity in her roles. On stage it’s no surprise to know she’s tackled roles such as Anna Christie (the title role for which she won the Olivier Award for Best Actress), Karin in A Streetcar Named Desire (for which she was nominated for an Olivier Award as Best Supporting Actress) and Hedda Gabler (another nomination for Best Actress from the Oliviers). On television she made her mark as Jane Eyre, the controversial The Affair and in Luther she was (and will still be in the upcoming revival) Alice Morgan, an uneasy, dangerous ally to the titular Idris Elba.

Here her Sarah Trafford is at the opposite end of the spectrum to Morgan or Zoë Boehm. Sarah is an art restorer whose instinctive eye for detail leads her to spotting inconsistencies in the aftermath of a house on her street suddenly exploding. It’s an event that throws her life into chaos, straining her relationship with her unfaithful financier husband Mark (Tom Riley) and leading to her approaching a detective agency to check her doubts. Things continue to spiral and bringing in Emma Thompson’s investigator and agitator starts a growing body count as a governmental cover-up goes dangerously awry. Wilson/Morgan radiates confusion and concern and desperate fury in equal doses, her character is completely un-coordinated and out of her depth, but singularly driven in her mission to find a missing girl that the authorities refuse to say ever existed.

Somehow, Down Cemetery Road manages to be simultaneously a mess and a delight, silly and intriguing, sharper than you expect but at least in-the-moment satisfying. There are plenty of potholes along the way, but the view is fine. Not without fault or pacing issues, it still marks an introduction to a set of characters I’d gladly see return for another run.

Either through his own hubris or simply not caring about the cost, one of Hitler’s most senior officials, Hermann Göring expects to escape confinement but is quickly captured and taken to Nuremberg. A man as confident as he is ruthless, will he be able to escape the justice that the world commands? A psychiatrist named Douglas Kelley is brought in to analyse Göring ahead of proceedings and realises that his observations may hold the key to the outcome…

*spoilers*

The Nuremberg Trials, run by the International Military Tribunal between 1945-1946, attempted to bring the people responsible for the genocide and war-crimes of WWII to account on a precedent-setting legal stage. Despite of – or perhaps because of – the determination to make those in charge pay for their atrocities, there was much to decide before and during the trials of senior Nazis. Such events are as rich in drama as they are in tragedy and that means they are enticing elements to recount. So, it’s no surprise that they have been portrayed on screen many times to varying effect.

The problems with any historical drama (especially one that isn’t claiming to be a documentary) is what you accurately include, what you leave out and what you change.  A two-hour movie on anything of magnitude will likely truncate events to make sure it covers the basics. It’s also a general Hollywood maxim that a film needs a central character through which to guide the audience along its narrative. Real-life elements are often abbreviated, combined or skewed to fit the momentum needed with a carefully-worded, small-print disclaimer attached.

The truth of the matter here is that army psychiatrist Douglas Kelley (here in the form of Rami Malek) is not only that pair of guiding eyes, but the central character of the 2013 book The Nazi and the Psychiatrist by Jack El-Hai on which the film is based. To its credit, the film makes Kelley smart, a charmer and driven professionally but also a flawed man, one who embraces the opportunity of getting face to face with ‘evil’ more as a way of discovering enough insights to write a (hopefully best-selling) book about the motives of men responsible for historical levels of genocide. He’s deeply affected by his conversations with Hermann Göring (Russell Crowe) who is portrayed as a deeply manipulative but confident man who is tolerating his imprisonment only as an opportunity to take the right moment to further push the Nazi rhetoric in front of the millions who will follow the trial. Much of the film revolves around the power-play between them – and therein the film finds its hook.

We see Kelley compromise himself in an effort to understand Göring but also the pressure of not letting him get away on a technicality. In real life, Kelley – originally hired to establish the accused’s competency to face judgement – was long gone by the time Göring and his gang of Nazis actually entered the dock, but the film invents a ‘Road to Damascus’ moment where Kelley actually sticks around to help the Allies avoid the prosecutorial traps the Nazi general has laid.

Over half the film is carefully laying the groundwork for the trial – looking at the competing agendas of all involved in a legal event that would set so many precedents for dealing with those accused of international war crimes. Those wanting the ebb-and-flow of courtroom tensions have to wait a while but get there eventually and though it doesn’t reach the levels of the Jack Nicholson / Tom Cruise stand-off at the end of A Few Good Men, Crowe in particular rises to the challenge of portraying a man who doesn’t recognise the authority for which he has been incarcerated and for whom the trial is a mere annoyance likely doomed to failure. Crowe has always been an enigmatic actor. The rough-and-ready Kiwi carries a Richard Burton-esque swagger and the essence of a man who has thunder behind his eyes and deeds in mind, but has proven equally capable of a diverse range of roles that defy easy ‘leading man / action hero’ labelling. Assuming the role of Göring requires someone can own a room the same way that Jack Nicholson (A Few Good Men) or Anthony Hopkins (Silence of the Lambs) could command and Crowe – sure to get some award nominations – positively glowers with serpentine confidence to the last. Rightly, you are never asked to like Göring or even sympathise with him, but there is an enticement to understand why he thinks and acts the way he does.

In an industry that likes templates and interchangeable performers, Rami Malek’s has also been intriguing in his roles to date including Elliot Alderson in the surreal cult series Mr. Robot and Freddie Mercury in Bohemian Rhapsody. His unique, ever-inquiring face often beings us characters that are hard to pin down. There’s a feeling here that there isn’t thunder behind Malek’s eyes so much as a really annoying algebra problem. But that drive to know the unknowable is what drives the character of Kelley from the outset. The psychiatrist never quite evolves out of the need to be recognised, lauded (and profit) for his research, but his understanding of the danger Göring invokes also grows and directs his journey and proves key in finding Göring’s weaknesses.

The likes of Michael Shannon as American Justice Robert H. Jackson (aware of how much pressure a conviction and justice is needed, even at personal cost), Richard E. Grant’s Sir David Maxwell-Fyfe (the UK representative at the trials), Mad Men and The Rainmaker‘s John Slattery as Colonel Burton Andrus and Colin Hanks as Kelley’s rival Dr. Gustave Gilbert all play significant, pivotal and effective parts.

James Vanderbilt, best known as a writer on the likes of Scream, The Amazing Spider-man, White House Down and Zodiac  rather than a director, foregoes big set-pieces and much of the film is about personal relationships and setting up a powerhouse procedural – though by the time it gets to the courtroom scenes (intense though they may be) the audience may be left wanting more than they get.  More ‘glossy’ than needed, the film does manage to convey the importance of what we’re seeing and the ‘perhaps controversial/perhaps necessity’ of using real footage of the liberation of the concentration camps (complete with skeletal survivors and pyres of burning corpses) will make you catch your breath.

There are several moments in the film that trace Hitler and Göring’s rise to power and question how they could wreak so much damage so quickly  – providing both historical commentary (how Germany and its citizens reacted to their defeat during the First World War and the restrictions placed on its populace) and to the moral disbelief that a holocaust could happen without the world immediately knowing of the depravity of the ‘Final Solution’. (Göring’s defense is that he can’t be held responsible for events that he wasn’t actively there for). It is impossible to take note of the scenes where people talk of ensuring ‘this never happens again’ and the insidious way that patriotic pride can be turned into an oppressive cudgel with which to crush all dissent… and not draw some parallels with how history has learned little from it. Wherever you stand politically in real-life, the modern populace now seems to be less than shocked hearing of people being disappeared, calls for opposition to be locked up (or worse) and for the egos of politicians to rise to unprecedented bravado. Godwin’s Law (comparing anything to Nazis usually being an argument-ending position) aside, there’s undeniably a parallel to be seen.

The landmark 1961 film, Judgment at Nuremberg and the critically-acclaimed two-part Canadian/American television docudrama (also ‘Nuremberg‘) broadcast in 2000 (featuring Brian Cox as Göring) both cast a long shadow film and this latest 2025 venture is solid enough if not as truly ‘great’ as it could have been. It finishes with acknowledging the fates of both Göring and Kelley and with a quote from R G Collingwood, reading “The only clue to what man can do is what man has done…“, underlining aspects of the film and the events it depicts as warning bells to time.

Nuremberg can be seen theatrically in the UK and on streaming platforms such as Netflix and Prime Video in the US and internationally…