Reviews

There are series we quite like watching and series which are great. I've only seen episode one of The Day Of The Jackal and I shall carry on, but - I'll be skinned alive for this - it isn't particularly great.

It does the job it is intended to do, but that job is not too hard. Our man, The Jackal, scoots around Europe after on job is completed and hits a snag, our heroine is on his case, though hampered by family issues but generally we've all been here before and have the T shirt.

In a nutshell this series, nicely and expensively shot, is 'exciting-thriller-drama' by numbers. That doesn't mean I know what will happen and because I don't I shall carry on watching. But like several other series over the years if I am sidetracked and come across something better, I shan't pine for this one. Sorry, but that's the truth.

The Day Of The Jackal is, for my tastes, a tad two-dimensional. Compared say to Ozark, Boardwalk Empire or, the daddy of the all from some years ago, The Sopranos, it is dramatically bland, observing all the conventions of its kind of thing, utilitising all the tropes, but not adding anything much at all will would nudge it higher.

Look, overall this gets an 8 here on IMDb, so for many there will be something to like. But for me? Very nice try, very intriguing try, but sorry, no cigar. It just doesn't have the ingredient X.

After watching the first episode of Bad Monkey, I had high hopes. The script was amusing enough and the 'plot' indicated it might also be sufficiently complex without being baffling.

Apart from Vaughan's character, the various other character were also intriguing and I looked forward to each new episode. By the fourth episode I began to get a little restless, though why I didn't know.

One more episode in and my doubts came into focus: Vaughn's initially amusing, sardonic commentary began to grate more and more and more. It was ceaseless and unfunny. He was like one of those folk who describe themselves as 'wacky' - the guys - and 'kooky' - the gals, but are nothing more than an irritating pain in the butt.

My usual observation is that if you like a series or a film (or a friend or partner), you will forgive it (that is them) a great deal. If for some reason you take against as I did after rather too many smart-butt quips from Mr Vaughn, you begin to find fault everywhere.

So guess what happened, and I'm sure you are way ahead of me, but let me carry on anyway.

Bad Monkey is billed as a 'black comedy crime drama', but it doesn't quite hit the spot in any of those descriptions: it isn't very funny, the 'crime' is all over the place, and I've seen more gripping drama down at the laundrette.

After what seemed like. Strong start, it meanders here and there without much purpose. There are at least three storylines, possibly four, and none quite gets the attention is would seem to deserve.

Frankly, overall nice try but most certainly no cigar. An overall 7.4 here on IMDb? Not from me, dear hearts, doesn't even make it to a 6. Sorry, but I have to be honest.

Here on IMDb Taboo gets an astonishing average 8.3 rating, so my minority report will not please some. But it has to be filed. Yes, Taboo is the right side of good, but in some respects it lets itself down.

Some aspects are oddly off-kilter and, oddly, over its eight episodes it meanders a little. Frankly it needed some tightening up, not a lot, just a little, but that attention would have made it worthy of a 7/10 or even an 8/10. As it is . . .

What am I talking about? Well, like it or not, this is a Tom Hardy vanity project and although it certainly does not bear the faults of many another vanity project, one wonders whether as co-creator and producer as well as portraying the central character, Hardy was at times unable to see the wood for the trees.

His character is oddly two-dimensional and one can only assume Hardy either did not realise or, just as bad, did not mind. It really would have added to the series had we seen, if even just a glimpse, of an other dimension of a very damaged character.

I mean all the native voodoo stuff and the demons that haunged him were intriguing enough to start with, but after a while you wanted - well this viewer wanted - some kind context. As it was it became simply a kind of very lurid backdrop and did nothing much at all but provide rather spurious 'meaning'. I'm sure many were impressed, but one or two of use were not.

For me the standout performance was by far Jonathan Pryce as the kind of essentially rather evil, nicely spoken, wall-mannered, cynical villain we Brits have made our own. Equally as intriguing was Jason Watkins as the equally well-heeled and equally cynical secretary to the Prince of Wales.

In fact, all the actors turned in solid performance, though again my gripe - make that my gripette - was that at the end of the day they were perhaps given rather too little to work with. That would be especially true of Stephen Graham, a great actor who was on the verge of having just a bit part.

The various relationships portrayed and various developments often made less than a lot of sense and would have benefited from being fleshed out.

Looking to the positives, 'the plot' was an interesting one, having unusually not two sides opposing each other but three. It might have been made to cohere a little more and the last episode did jump a shark or two. Impressive were the production values, cinematography and direction (which despite its involvement mercifully avoided the dead hand of the BBC, an organisation which often snatched defeat from the jaws of victory as it slavishly follows dramatic fashions long after they have ceased being fashionable).

The involvement of Steven Knight will have helped, however. There is talk of a second series, or there was talk, but it would not be a natural development.

From me this gets a solid 6/10. If the aspects I mention had been tighter, it might have creeped into the 7/10, but that would have been a little kind. So a 6 it remains.

If you like your sci-fi, you'll like this, cod philosophy, illogical outcomes, several deus ex machina (OK, strictly dei ex machina - that's one for the pedants) and all. I am here reviewing the first season and haven't yet seen seasons two and three, but my bet is they'll be more of the same.

Nothing wrong with that, of course, and Missions is entertaining enough, but it does like almost all of its ilk, do a little clever-clever footwork too much and it all makes little sense.

Won't give a way spoilers, but some might choose to argue that its final revelation - possibly expounded in the following two seasons, possibly not - give 'humanity food for thought', but that would be just a little more kidology.

Those who don't mind a little kidology, those who think Doctor Who's 'sonic screwdriver' is a wow, will be well pleased. The rest of us ageing fossilised cynics will remain ageing fossilised cynics.

As the title says: the usual sci-fi hokum, but with a French flavour. You can almost taste the garlic.

Red Eye is B-movie stuff, frankly. It'll will entertain some, but it becomes so silly that you suspect some are nigh-on brainless.

It would be pointless to list all the silliness that makes Red Eye borderline dire, after a promising start I began to fear the worst when, in the first episode, we are served up with the clunky line 'I didn't get a Masters in journalism to spend my days doing data entry'.

Hard on its heels comes and even clunkier line from the director of Britain's MI5 who is 'seeing' the London CIA station bureau chief. When he comes to her office to pick her up for a night of illicit hotel passion she asks 'How are things at the CIA?'

That sets the tone and Red Eye doesn't recover. It also resorts to that old trick of some character or other giving a short 'the story so far' precis to make sure we can keep. Oh, and the 'plot' is ludicrous, contrived and like something from a 1980's TV movie.

Watch it by all means, but you are warned. Why this gets an average 7 baffles me.

In a sense 'the butler did it', or rather the principle behind it - don't mess with the formula - is the cockroach of film, TV and streaming drama: it is indestructible.

Come what may, come whatever 'advances' are made in scripting, direction, production, cinematography, you can't top the old clichés: stick to the old ways of doing things, laddy, and you can't go wrong.

So far, so cryptic, so let me flesh it out. Secret City - and I am reviewing the first series and haven't yet seen the second - intrigues to the nth degree: what is going on? Who cares, let's just watch and find out.

We get a dogged, hard-hitting political journalist and her transexual ex who works for the security services and stumbles on 'the truth'.

We get a devious attorney general who is apparently making her way to dictatorship of Australia and who is in cahoots with other senior government figures.

We get a compromised defence secretary who having a secret affair with the wife of the Chinese ambassador. We get a two security services higher ups who are on the good lord knows whose side - we get a real intriguing mix. And boy what a feast it is and promises to be.

And then what? We get an extremely conventional ending and a twist which a harsher critic than me might declare to be a foul shot and then some.

Call me old-fashioned but when we are marched to the top of the hill, the very least we can expect is to enjoy a satisfying view. What we don't expect and what we should not settle for is immediately to be turned about and marched down again and then, at the bottom of the hill, left to our own devices.

Here's the deal: IF you do set up intrigue in a drama such as this, you are under a strict obligation to resolve it all in a way which - frankly - doesn't cheat. This first series of Secret City cheats like hell.

There are, to be honest, too many loose ends, too many unexplained aspects to the story to relate here and too many to make this, at the end of the day, a great series. Yes, the ride - the march up the hill - is great. But being sent back down again is certainly not.

There is a second series, and in some ways we can see where it is going. But that certainly does not forgive the - well, let's call it cheating - final episode of the first series we are served up with here.

Could have been great. But it isn't. It gets a 6 for the ride, but no more. Had the makings of an 8, but . . .

You either like Guy Ritchie's schtick or you don't. I do. Admittedly as a writer/director he doesn't have a broad palette by any means: I watched Billy Wilder's The Front Page again last night and, as an example, Wilder has a very broad palette - he did witty comedy, drama and crime films equally well and each had that distinctive Wilder touch.

Ritchie has his undoubted gifts but in the versatility stakes, he isn't a patch on Wilder, but that doesn't matter as he doesn't pretend to be: Ritchie does Ritchie better than anyone else, and although it would be fair, though a tad unkind, to call him a one-trick pony, that trick is always interesting and above all very entertaining. And it's a far better trick than many of his peers know.

Apart from 'the trick', Ritchie is also a more than competent producer and director: OK, yet again he doesn't vary it much, but then why should he? It works, and it works well, and don't try to gild a lily. In my book and on his own terms, Ritchie is the man and in his own league he is tops by some margin.

As for this series, however, it falls a little short in one or two ways, but that ain't Ritchie's fault. I think its Achilles heel is the streaming series format.

As far as I know Ritchie's other work has been in film and this is the first series he has attempted (or better, perhaps, involved himself in). I have only seen the first four of ten episodes and have already spotted a flaw.

Whereas in his films Richie has a whole film to play with, and can balance out its various - usually quite ludicrous - elements and overall complexity and tie it up neatly at the end, a series by its nature doesn't quite allow that.

The Gentlemen, the series, as opposed to the film of the same name, has cannibalised several of Ritchies films - a bit of this, a bit of that - and there's nothing wrong with that as it still stands proud on its own. But it is obliged to adapt to the formula, or one streaming drama formula.

So although overall there is 'a story' the formula chosen by Netflix demands that each episode has to have its own 'mini-plot'. OK, some might like it, but I don't much. It reminds me too much of the bloody-awful formulaic 1970s, 1980s and 1990s TV crime drama where everything is neatly wrapped up in 45 minutes (a US hour with ad breaks). HBO and its imitators broke that mould but many streaming dramas still chose to stick to it.

The trouble is that Ritchie's schtick doesn't easily slip into that formula (for which I thank the Lord, by the way).

Still, side-by-side with its streaming rivals, The Gentleman - the Netflix series - more than holds its own. And frankly I might even be picking rather too many nits.

There are some good lines, as we can expect from a Ritchie script and the acting is solid if not spectacular. Vinnie Jones does Vinnie Jones, but there's nowt wrong with that, either, and Daniel Ings as the moronic older son passed over for inheriting the title and estate is a treat.

So far IMDb has given this an overall users's rating of 8.1. That's a tad too high. From me this gets a solid 6 very much edging on a 7.

If you haven't yet seen this and are consulting reviews, be warned that the 'series' aspect, to my mind, rather cramps Richie. But what the hell, after all this is not Shakespeare. In fact, Shakespeare wasn't always Shakespeare, either.

UPDATE: The above was written after four episodes. I have now seen all eight of the first series (I think a second has already been commissioned) and I thought I might flesh out the above a little.

Those wanting a cracking good jokey crime series will not be disappointed. This series does cut a few corners, granted, but most will not bother too much about that. It also jumps a few sharks but, in context, what the hell.

On the other hand those appreciate Ritchie's work for its strengths, its wit and it's slightly oddball take on the crime genre might, like me, be a tad disappointed. As I say above, the 'series format' does Ritchie no favours.

Yes, there are his trademark ticks but what worked in a film becomes just a little forced in a series. It's like a famous comedian risking overstaying his welcome by trying for laughs with his tried and tested catchphrase. After a while it loses the glitz.

So take The Gentlemen more as one of the better kinds of this sort of crime series. If you are looking for vintage Ritchie, as I was, you might eventually feel short-changed.

I came across The Sinner on Netflix by chance, looking for something to watch and did not look up reviews or anything like that before settling is. Because season four was the latest on offer and was prominent on Netflix's website, I began to watch that one, but about 15 minutes in, I thought it would make more sense to watch the seasons in sequence. I did, with the first episode of season one, and I'm very glad I did.

In brief in many ways, the first three seasons and season four have little or nothing in common except that all four feature the dogged detective Harry Ambrose (and excellent Bill Pullman), a murder and a mystery.

Season four is essentially one of those middling TV movie murder mystery dramas, which - if I might risk sounding a tad superior - has all the virtues and vices of such TV drama. Yes, it intrigues in as far as a first little makes sense; but the 'mystery', including one huge red herring, is fake and contrived, cobbled together from all the tropes of other such dramas. Frankly, the loose ends are embarrassing and unforgivable.

The production values in the fourth season are as high as we now expect from Netflix, but the script is lazy and cliched and in a sense cheap. The setting, a New England fishing community, is attractive but then we don't watch TV movie murder mystery dramas for the land and seascapes they offer us.

Had I watched season four first, I would quite probably not have bothered with the first three seasons at all. But I did and they are excellent, in a different league entirely. So anyone considering watching those three seasons is also advised to start with season one and unless you don't mind the standard schlock of unchallenging afternoon TV murder drama, don't bother with season four.

In the first three seasons we get to know Harry Ambrose and understand what a complex character he is and why he seems to have an empathy with those he is investigating which take him far beyond any kind of police procedural box-ticking to close a case and is so dogged in finding out what happened.

Over the first three season we also come to understand why he is so psychologically complex, but no corners are cut: there is no bargain-basement psychological analysis here, no cheap explanations are offered and whatever conclusions we, the viewers, reach are entirely our own.

Especially to the point are that Ambrose's often odd decisions and behaviour, especially one quite bizarre act in season three, make good sense once we know why he did what he did.

It has to be said that the 'quirky, out of the ordinary, unpredictable, even odd' police detective is also one of the many tropes film and TV drama resort to: but it can be used well or badly, and in the first three seasons it is carried off with aplomb. In season four . . . Forget it.

Perhaps it would be better to describe the stories in the first three seasons more as human dramas rather than what they superficially seem to be, murder mystery. From that standpoint they stand proud, treat us the viewer with intelligence and are worthwhile and satisfying and crucially they do not cheat

In keeping with what I don't mind describing as excellence are the performances by the leads in those first three seasons, notably (but certainly not exclusively) by Jessica Biel, Christopher Abbott as, Dohn Norwood, Abby Miller, Elisha Henig, Carrie Coon, Hannah Gross, Natalie Paul, Heather Novack, Tracy Letts, Matt Bomer, Parisa Fitz-Henley, Eddie Martinez, Chris Messina of whom Matt Bomer is particularly good. But let me stress: the 'supporting' actors are all equally as good.

This is not to say the performances in season four aren't also good to very good, just that the actors are very badly served by the script. They do what that can but you can only polish a t**d so much.

I should add that my views on The Sinner overall are not mainstream: elsewhere you will find folk wondering 'what the hell went wrong in season three' and breathing a sigh of relief when the series 'redeemed itself in season four.

Well, I believe the opposite: although season three is not better than the first two seasons - each is as excellent as the others - it is especially satisfying because of the unique problems it presents Ambrose and other cops with when trying to nail the killer.

There you have it: my 8 refers to the first three seasons as I hope I can make clear in my title.

There's the well-known observation that something - a programme, a film, an album, a team of whatever - is more than the sum of its parts. It is meant as a compliment: something works well, over and above what might be expected of it.

Well, this Netflix production, A Man In Full, manages, somehow and I've yet to work out quite how, to be less than the sum of its parts.

It is a 'limited series' - in Netflix speak - of six episodes which purports to be 'the film of the book of Thomas Wolfe's novel of the same name. Well, I haven't read the book but I have read a Wiki page about it summarising its themes and I do know that it is 752 pages long and thus quite a whopper.

I have heard that Wolfe's 'reportage' style isn't to all tastes - and I have so far not read any of Wolfe's books - but I understand in his novel he attempts to examine the complex racial mix of Atlanta, Georgia, society, among other things.

Whether or not he succeeds, I can't say, but it does strike me as wholly unlikely that a 'limited series' will successfully pull off something as complex. And Netflix's version is anything but complex. In fact, it is remarkably conventional drama.

In fact, it doesn't even attempt to do so deal in complexities. We get essentially get two 'stories', possibly three (this third intricately bound up with one of the others, so make that 'two and a half stories', which are only superficially linked, and the emphasis is on 'superficial'. Each could exist on its own without the other.

And although both tales - or is that all three tales - are entertaining enough and well-acted by all, they are oddly inconsequential.

One, in which a 'larger than life' real estate mogul who owes almost one billion dollars in loans to his bank and we follow his attempts to get off the hook, is in a way a tad flimsy. And it ends in a very odd way.

The second, a black man who in a series of unfortunate developments might find himself jailed for several years through no fault of his own, does conclude - in a rather old-fashioned 'it all comes right in the end' (which would satisfy sentimentalists) but it, too, is strangely pointless.

So there you have it: Netflix's attempt to 'film' a doorstop of a novel is, frankly, whittled down into two common or garden TV movies. They stand out because of the quality of the acting, but otherwise seem to have no reason to exist. Odd.

There's the hoary observation which surely by now so hoary that it should be promoted to 'cliché' and join a well-staffed rank, that 'it's not the joke but how you tell it'. Citing it might be a good way into examining why Douglas Is Cancelled misfires and is oddly not all that good.

The central conceit is a fine one: a well-known TV anchor is overheard telling a 'sexist' joke at a wedding and his drunken misstep ends up on Twitter (or X or whatever Mr Musk wants to call it this week).

Where Douglas Is Cancelled consistently loses on points is how that conceit, its ramifications and the associated - somewhat fake - outrage about the media, its values, its attitudes and its cynicism is presented.

At the time of writing I have actually watched only half of the first of four episodes, but I'm confident in already putting down my views because from experience I know that 'the style' of it all will not alter whatever 'plot twists' are in store. And it is because of that 'style', how the material is presented, that Douglas Is Cancelled consistently fires on only three cylinders.

Possibly to blame is that the show was directed by the man who wrote the script, Steven Moffat. Sometimes it works when a writer directs his own work, but that seems to be the exception not the rule.

A good director will spot flaws and iron out problems in a script because he or she is detached. The writer, unless he is exceptional with Moffat is not, will not: it's all fabulous stuff as far as he (she) is concerned and damn the nay-sayers.

All that is to suggest that Douglas Is Cancelled would have benefited from a detached more objective eye. A good director would have edited the slightly numbing obviousness of many of the jokes and refined the 'satire' into something more telling and thus more wounding.

He/she would have paced it all better and resisted the temptation to make almost two-dimensional stock characters parrot the script and instead made it rather more nuanced. What is wrong with this show can be summed up in a few lines of verse from the early 18th-century.

The satirist Alexander Pope (at just 4ft 6in tall something of a poisoned dwarf) had been nasty about his fellow poet Lady Mary Wortley Montagu and she responded and put him in his place:

Satire should, like a polish'd Razor keen, / Wound with a Touch, that's scarcely felt or seen / Thine is an Oyster-Knife, that hacks and hews; /The Rage, but not the Talent of Abuse;

Sadly, Moffat uses an oyster-knife and although he might for some have provided a few common or garden digs at the media and its ethos, it does all fall pretty flat and is all just a little too obvious. That might satisfy many, but it didn't satisfy me. Sorry, Simon.

I shall be watching all four episodes in full but I am not holding my breath that they will improve. Moral: don't let the writer direct his or her own stuff unless they are the best. And few are.

This tale of England and Scotland's homosexual king James I and his favourite and lover, George Villiers, Duke of Buckingham, might look the part but there are too many aspects to it which can only deserve the well-known observation 'nice try, but no cigar'.

This series is like those tomatoes we are offered these days in the vegetable section of too many superstores: they look the part and are certainly pretty, but all too often they taste of very little but water, and mot certainly not of tomatoes.

That analogy is not as silly as it sounds: shop for tomatoes in a Southern European small-town market and you will be offered horribly misshapen specimens, but by God they taste great and do taste of tomato.

We spoiled shoppers, however, are put off aesthetically by such misshapen fruit and lazily settle for tasteless specimens which, however, look fantastic.

That pretty much sums up Mary & George: with its authentic looking sets (filmed in various Jacobean manor houses in England), sumptuous costumes and its cod-Shakespearean dialogue, many might feel Mary & George is the real deal.

But it is nothing of the kind: essentially it is bog-standard soap opera drama portentously puffed up to seem profound, whereas for too many reasons it is nothing but an expensively produced soap opera with pretensions it never lives up to.

The first, and perhaps most important, point to make is that it is fiction. This is not history. Other reviewers have warned that many watching this will imagine it is 'history' and I shall repeat that warning: this is pure fiction involving real historical characters.

Yes, James I was homosexual, and although he fathered eight children by his wife Anne of Denmark (of whom four died in infancy and his eldest son and heir died at 18) and thus might be classed as bisexual, he and Anne lived separate lives and his main inclination was gay.

He was quite open about his sexuality and did not stint himself in public with his gay courtiers. Modern apologists, in a curious form of homophobia, like to argue along the lines that 'we don't understand the kind of male friendships in the 16th and 17th centuries' and that his kind of behaviour was not necessarily gay.

Yes, it was, and James was often the butt of ribald jokes and ballads by what are often condescendingly called 'the lower orders', but he didn't care one jot.

However, the kind of rampant sexual behaviour depicted in Mary & George is fictional: James was very conscious of his 'royal status' - he 'was the king' and people had better believe it - and he would not have jeopardised his role in such a blatant public way.

It is also very probable that George Villiers was mainly gay, and he and James were known to have been very close, with a discrete passageway connecting his rooms to Villiers'. But the arrangement and goings-on set out in the TV series are occasionally ludicrous.

The novel upon which the series is based suggests that Villiers mother Mary patiently schemed to get her son, metaphorically, into James's bed. That scheming is demonstrated in the series, but all the machinations we are asked to believe are never convincing.

The evolution of George from something of a wimp into one of if not the most powerful man in England for a while is portrayed in such a cack-handed fashion that we can't quite bring ourselves to believe it (and thus as drama the piece falls at the first hurdle).

Other aspects of the series are also fatally flawed: we are presented with characters who speak, both in content and manner, in a pseudo-Jacobean fashion, but the writers also have them incessantly effing and blinding and using the C word like dockworkers. And it is incessant and even Mary does it.

It's as though the producers wanted 'an historical piece', but also wanted 'to make it modern'. That's about the only explanation I can give. It ends up being simply silly.

OK, this is fiction, but Francis Bacon would certainly not had wandered around the streets of London (though the same street is put to work several times as it happens) alone as he is shown to do.

Mary might well have had a lesbian relationship - why not, many women do. But it is a cliche too far to have her striking up such a relationship with a woman who was either a brothel madam or even just a simple prostitute. Mary was far too conscious of her status and she would not have ventured into a brothel on her own in the first place.

The vicissitudes of her rise to power are also so convoluted as at times to be more than a little incomprehensible. And would she really have, after being a scorned woman, so miraculously become such a power at court? Don't think so.

As for her supposed gay relationship (which is somewhat gratuitous as it serves no dramatic function at all), it is doubly unlikely in that in the Jacobean era and for the next two hundred years at least the class distinctions were not only vast but important to those at the top. There was no mingling 'with the plebs' by 'nobility'.

If a gay noble wanted a quick spot of how's our father, there were plenty of other gay nobles or palace staff to have it on with without trawling the streets. And it would not have taken place in one of the palace corridors.

It occurs to me that in the muddled thinking of the producers, what with rather a lot of flash-forwards and flash-backs and folk suddenly appearing, Mary & George was perhaps intended as some kind of 'art piece'. Well, it that was the case they get nul points.

At the end of the day one might argue that my gripes are irrelevant because, after all, this is 'only fiction'. To that I would respond 'fine, but overall what with this flaw and that anachronism - the constant use of the F and C words - it is rather badly made fiction.

It might look the part, but it does not convince.

Let's get the good bits out of the way first, though I must tread carefully, as going by many reviews here, Leone's film is apparently cinematic perfection. So many will regard my views as philistine sacrilege. But I'll give them any way.

Carrying on with his 'more realistic depiction' of the West which he began with A Fistful Of Dollars in 1964, Once Upon A Time is miles away from the sanitised and quite ludicrous West that Hollywood favoured in its 1950s films.

In Tinseltown's West, the main characters always wore laundry-clean and seemingly freshly pressed shirts and trousers, their pistols sparkled, they always found time to shave every morning (though off-camera) and the women were good-hearted folk made up to the nines. Where they got their lipstick and eye-shadow from is anyone's guess.

Leone changed all that and Once Upon A Time follows the same aesthetic, though I suspect it is just as phoney as the former clean-cut Tinseltown version. In Leone's West squalor is almost de rigueur, and you can almost smell the chacters, which suggests he rather overshot his mark.

Another 'good bit' is the cinematography which really does become a feast for the eyes, although like much else in the film it does overstay its welcome.

The acting? Well, as Leone shot with American and Italian actors, each speaking their lines in their own language, there is not a great deal of dialogue and a great deal of dubbing. And a great deal of that acting is distressingly two-dimensional the actors can't be blamed: they are doing simply as they are directed. The 'plot' is nothing much out of the ordinary, either.

I must remind myself, though, to be charitable as Leone's westerns were very much of their age and very much the product of an Italian sensibility which, 55 years ago when we first came across it in the English-speaking still novel world and gained many points for being novel. Fifty-five years on, the crows' feet are showing, however.

In an interview with Britain's Sunday Times about making his biopic about Abraham Lincoln, Steven Spielberg said something like 'I felt I had to wear a suit and tie when making that film', and apparently he did.

Usually togged out in jeans and a baseball cap, Spielberg claimed he wanted to be 'part of the finery of that era'. As 'that era' also saw four years of a very bloody civil war in which half a million men were slaughtered, it might not have all been as fine as Spielberg implies.

Reading between the lines, the not-so-subtle suggestion from Spielberg was that as Lincoln was more or less THE American saint, it demanded that he be treated as such, so only wearing a suit and tie would do while he made his film. I don't doubt that had it been practical he might well have directed the whole shebang down on his knees, but - well, it would not have been practical.

Something similar goes on when many consider and review Sergio Leone's Once Upon A Time In The West. He is one of the 'greats' of the film world, it seems, and not to toe the line is decidedly infra dig. OK, the Dollar films stand out, but even by the time he made The Good, The Bad And The Ugly, ol' Sergio was - to be blunt - recycling rather too much and going over old ground.

His famous stand-off routine where we get a close-up of faces, then eyes looking from one to the other as 'tension mounts' was impressive the first time you saw it, but was and is increasingly unimpressive with each subsequent outing.

We got more than a decent helping in The Good etc, and we are served up even more of it in Once Upon A Time. And, frankly, it becomes bloody tedious indeed: You've seen five such stand-offs and you've seen three too many. It no longer 'adds to tension' but contributes more mundanely to boredom.

Ol' Sergio also resorts far, far, far too much 'artistic' longuers, scenes being drawn out for several increasingly dull minutes for no reason except, as far as I can see, to imply 'meaning'. And that in my book is as close to faking it as a respected filmmaker dare get.

Other reviewers describe the film as 'art' and as 'operatic'. I don't disagree, except I am bound to remind the world that 'art' comes in three flavours - good art, mediocre art and bad art. And for my money the 'art' in Leone's subsequent post-Dollar films varies between mediocre and bad.

As for 'operatic', that word, too, is used to suggest grandeur, quality and something of which we should be in awe. Well, forget it. At the end of the day there is a great deal less than meets the eye in Once Upon A Time In The West.

Leone's original film was 186 minutes long. Paramount cut its version by 40 minutes. I suggest what the chap really needed was a very competent, sympathetic but honest and ruthless editor. Cutting the film by at least half might have produced a better film.

There, I've done it, I've insulted one of the saints of 'contemporary cinema'. Well, someone had to. Incidentally, the same criticism applies to Terrence Malick The Thin Red Line. It, too, is 'revered' as 'art' but it, too, is mutton dressed as lamb.

Scoop, the Netflix account - well, the Netflix version - of the BBC Newsnight interview with British royal stuff shirt and pal of the paedophile Jeffrey Epstein and how it came about, is a great watch. But it does come - from me, at least - with a few caveats.

As I have called it a great watch I should explain why I caution. It is first and foremost a piece of commercial drama. It is not a documentary, and lets be honest, there is something at odds about every drama-doc.

The piece is preceded by what is now a standard warning: this film is based on real events - however certain elements have been fictionalised for dramatic purposes. And I don't doubt, if nothing else, Netflix legal department will have insisted on that being made clear.

The obvious question is: which elements have been fictionalised and how much has been fictionalised? I am not at all suggesting it's all a tissue of lies, but I am pointing out the we, the Great Unwashed, the bums which must be put on seats, are always more inclined to believe the legend than the facts.

A few years ago, the Tinseltown film U-571, another effort 'based on real events' described how stouthearted US submariners captured the World War II Nazi German enigma film.

It, too, contained certain elements fictionalised for dramatic purposes, though in this case the whole plot was fictionalised: thed Yanks had damn all to do with cracking the enigma code or anything like that. Ergo: caveat observator - always!

That preamble, though, is just a friendly warning: as far as Scoop is concerned, this might well be how it all happened and I have not reason to doubt it is not pretty close to the truth. But at the end of the day it is commercial drama produced, in the long run, to ring the tills and it is still fiction.

Having said that everyone involved gets top marks: Rufus Sewell, Billie Piper, Keeley Hawes, Gillian Anderson and the rest of the cast and production team. As far as I am concerned it doesn't put a foot wrong.

It is based on the book about scooping the interview with Andrew by the Newsnight producer who swung it, and the film pretty much is from her point of view. There's nothing wrong with that, but that is another factor which should be remembered.

But overall, top marks all round.

I've said it before in another review of one of Guy Ritchies films, you either like them a lot or you hate them a lot. There is nothing vanilla about Ritchie. Me? I'm a sucker for them (well, most of them - I wasn't too taken by his King Arthur effort, but that's for another time).

In one way Ritchie, more or less, tends to make the same film. Each has a slightly different 'story' but who cares: it's a great film and you go away - metaphorically as I've just watched this on Netflix lying in bed - after a lot of enjoyment.

There's an irrepressible energy about a Guy Ritchie film, a dark humour and more then enough Brit-style jokes to entertain most of us. That, of course, if you like his films, but I've already admitted that I do.

This one is his standard convoluted mash-up of about ten plots which all somehow fit together and are all somehow resolved. It's all presented in a - well, I was going to write 'punk' style, but there's more than a touch of sophistication in his direction and cinematography, so 'punk' would be wholly misleading.

But what the hell. You either know what I'm talking about or you don't and if you do, you either love it or you don't. If you do, go for it. If you don't I can't see you and I mixing much socially, either.

Oh, should perhaps mention that it features several of Ritchie's stalwarts but also no a few top-class Hollywood names, and they are not about to lend their talents for any old nonsense. And they don't.

I read that the series producers took some liberties with the facts about Griselda Blanco, and that is usually not a good sign. But thankfully there is no grandstanding in this Netflix series, no phoney set-pieces, no posturing, although it is certainly full of action.

Perhaps, to be on the safe side we should regard this version of Griselda Blanco's rise and fall as the Miami coke capo more as fiction than fact, but that risks doing it an injustice.

In fact, in one sense it would be wrong to regard this six-parter as just the latest 'narco drama'. It certainly is that, but it is far more than that. Without sounding to silly, I suggest this series is more along the lines of a tragedy than just another piece of coke-dealing schlock.

Griselda was no saint but she got a very rough deal in a very macho, misogynistic world. Her main weapons were her pride, cunning and a determination not to give in. Oh, and a very lethal ruthlessness.

She begins to outwit the men one way or another but then it all goes to her head. She also makes the very silly mistake of indulging in her own merchandise too much and becomes murderously paranoid.

That's the story. As for the production, writing, acting and direction, it is top-notch. I'll repeat (and I hope I don't sound stupid) this is a very human story, and it's not that the grandstanding is kept to a minimum, it's that there is none at all.

The characters, from Griselda herself, her two main henchman - both also utterly ruthless - to the female detective are three-dimensional and believable.

The detective in one way is a kind of counterweight to Griselda, but on the other side of the law. She too has to contend with very nasty misogyny but she is also a proud and strong woman who refuses to give in to macho creeps.

You might well have seen this series. If you haven't and are checking out opinions, my advice is to go for it as one of the best of its kind I've seen for some time.

I seem to say what I am about to write rather often, perhaps rather too often. But whether you think The Stranger is 'great' or - well take a look above at my 'headline' - finally depends upon what you expect.

The Stranger starts well and carries on well and we can expect something rather good. But then, over the last two episodes, especially the final episode, it oddly deflates and becomes just another piece of TV 'thriller' drama by numbers.

It's as though there are several templates for this kind of piece and each is used in rotation. The 'denouement' (and, yes, I did look up the spelling because I always get it wrong) was flat, almost predictable and pitiful.

Why that ending, that 'denouement' was tagged on to a series which promised so much in the first four episodes I can't think.

There are so many loose ends, plot holes and slightly ridiculous developments in the last two instalments that it would be futile to list them here (and I also want to be able to tick the 'no spoilers' box).

Overall, buyer beware: this does not deliver what you think it might, not least because - a perennial bugbear of mine - the folk in the drama, as here, don't act, speak and behave like people we know but the act, speak and behave like folk in a TV drama.

Overall a 7.3? As I say, it comes down to what you respect and think is 'good'. From me this is getting a 5. Oh, well. Try something else.

Feedback is perhaps one of the best, if not the best series I've seen for quite some time. It is thoroughly honest.

I don't know how it is billed, whether as a 'thriller' or as a 'drama', but whatever it is, it pulls it off. But even saying that doesn't do it justice. That makes it sound as though it is just another piece of entertainment, and it is not that, by no means.

It's about alcoholism, self-hate, inability to communicate, family dynamics, love, all kinds of things. Best of all there's nothing 'clever-clever' about it at all: as I say it is thoroughly honest and that is very rare, even in films which try to be honest.

Perhaps I haven't made Feedback sound very attractive. Certainly it is sad, but part of its achievement is that it conveys hope in a very unexpected way. All I can do is recommend it and you can take it from their.

One word of warning: it would not be much appreciated by anyone who thinks Suits or Sex And The City acme of TV and streaming. If that is you, Feedback is most certainly not the series for you.

The latest offering from Netflix Polski (or whatever they call themselves) offers something of a dilemma. Forst is the filming of a novel about a 'renegade / maverick' - aren't they all? - detective, the eponymous Forst, and I, for one, suspect that there are crucial elements in the novel which either didn't make it to the series or perhaps could not make it.

In short, in a sense the sum of its parts just don't make it into a whole. We are left to choose: is this 'a thriller', 'a psycho-drama' investigating childhood trauma or perhaps, least likely of all, an 'art film' masquerading as a thriller. Whichever it is - and I'm not at all sure - it leaves just a little to be desired.

Because I prefer to avoid giving spoilers in my reviews rather than tick the 'spoilers' box, I must tread carefully, but I shall do my best. But, frankly, Forst jumps the shark rather too often. Sometimes that doesn't matter - as we say 'it's not the joke, it's the telling of the joke'. But with Forst unfortunately it does matter.

Forst kicks off with two highly unusual murders, which are both so elaborate the staging of the bodies could not have been achieved by just one person. Then Forst is introduced and I have to say he doesn't really come across as the 'maverick' we are invited to accept that he is.

There follow, in the each of the six episodes of the series, a number of initially obscure elements (and perhaps I am a tad thick), but one or three remained more than a little obscure when the final scene faded to black. Another unfortunate development is that the 'plot' or whatever one wants to call it makes 90 degree turn in the last two episodes and although both 'plots' are seemingly related, none of it is too convincing and the connection between them is not at all clear. Perhaps it will all come a little clearer in 'the second series'.

Then there's the cinematography and the soundtrack: both are more than intriguing and interesting, but neither is 'relevant'. In fact, both are in many ways what is 'best' about the series but both add to a suspicion that Forst is rather too much style and not enough content. And again I am left with the impression that cinematography, especially all that weird camera angled stuff and music borrowing heavily from electronica do the heavy lifting in a great many films.

Take away either, especially 'wacky' soundtrack and that 'thrilling', horror or mystifying scene pretty much doesn't stack up. Both before the function - as here in Forst - of informing the viewer 'right this is the frightening bit'. Taking out the garbage or going down the shop can seem 'mysterious', 'horrifying' or 'thrilling' if you slap a soundtrack on the footage of the deed.

I'm stymied in my comments by my stated commitment not to include spoilers, but I can say that when the final scene does fade to black, there are more than enough loose ends - and not just that final scene - to irritate.

As I say, in many ways Forst is the triumph of style over content. That is fair enough if that is your bag and it often is for me. But I do get the feeling Forst is playing both ends agains the middle and wanting its cake and eating it. Sadly, something doesn't quite come off. That's a shame, but that's as it is.

At the time of writing this has a 5.6 rating on IMdB. That might be misleading: Forst is a great ride, but somehow, though, ita doesn't quite deliver.

After Succession ended and I'd seen Ozarks, I was at a loose end as to streaming (though I saw Succession twice and plan to watch Ozarks again, too).

I tried The Gilded Age - despite knowing it was a Downton Abbey spin-off - and soon decided that like Downton it was not for me at all. I attempted The Spy, but that too failed at the fourth episode. Then I hit upon The Recruit on Netflix and I can recommend it. I'll explain why.

In common with both Succession and Ozarks, it is intelligently made, confident and it deftly avoids the usual schlock and pitfalls series of its kind might easily fall into. OK, it is not of the same genre as Succession, but it in some ways it is first cousin to Ozarks in as far as despite the usual demand to suspend disbelief, you do so and you do so willingly.

In short it has none of the standard flaws which make rather too many 'more modern' streaming series insufferable. As an example let me cite Suits and Billions, two highly popular series with many fans, but which I gave up on within 15 minutes after one too many phoney lines of dialogue and oh-so-familiar tropes.

You can look up 'the set-up' of The Recruit elsewhere and that - young lawyer joins the CIA legal department and little by little gets sucked into a ridiculous situation involving a ruthless female Belarusian ex-mafia woman - is certainly fantastical.

But - here I shall use a strange word in this context - everything about The Recruit is curiously 'real': there is none of that grandstanding we get all too often (especially in 'spy' drama and which I loathe), and how the plot develops is not forced in any way. It evolves and you accept how it evolves. And that is down to good writing which does not spoon-feed the viewer.

There is also a very definite seam of very funny humour running through it all which works well, but The Recruit is certainly not a comedy.

All I can say is if you are reading this with a view to watching it or not, go for it. You will not be disappointed. It has already been green-lit for a second series and the final scene in the final episode sets it up well. Recommended.

UFO is one of those films which seems to be more than it really is. It isn't just the incessant - to coin a word - 'mathemising' which is borderline fake, it's the fact that it relies rather too heavily on incomprehension to appear 'gripping'.

OK, I watched until the end but I have no shame in admitting I was baffled by it all. And I would bet my bottom dollar that pretty much everyone else is, too, even those who choose to persuade themselves that the 'understand' it quite well. No you don't.

Equally as unconvincing is our hero - I assume the supposed maths genius at the centre of it all is 'the film's hero - being obsessed with the appearance of a UFO because when he was seven or eight he saw one and Mommy didn't believe him. Oh dear.

I don't doubt UFO has it's champions, but if you haven't yet seen it and are reading up reviews to see whether it is worth 90 minutes of your time, be warned that there is less, perhaps a great deal less, to it all than meets the eye.

As for the appearance of The X Files Gillian Anderson in a supporting role, all I can suggest is that having a 'name' attached to a film otherwise featuring 'non-names' will have secured the necessary finance. Otherwise I can't for the life of me see why she bothered.

Yours sincerely, Underwhelmed of Tunbridge Wells (a joke only Brits would get and probably not even many of them).

As I want to make sure I don't give away any spoilers, I must be careful here and not reveal any plot details. But I can say that elsewhere the 'crime's' central theme has aroused the ire of many. I can't say why, however.

What has aroused my ire, though, is not that aspect of it - which might be described as quasi-political, but one small detail, a detail which in a sense highlights why Vigil 2 (as we must call it) is just more of the same tired old cliched 'thriller' rubbish.

I set the word 'thriller' in quote marks because there is nothing at all 'thrilling' about Vigil 2 - every potential 'thriller' aspect of the piece is fake, artificial, pedestrian and predictable.

That small detail is the sheer disservice Vigil 2 does to women in the police force: I have nothing at all against having the show's two protagonists in a same-sex relationship. In fact, it's refreshing that such can now be shown so clearly. But even there the BBC can't play it straight and opts to play both sides against the middle.

On the one hand we are presented with two adult women, both of rank in the police force and both portrayed as being not just capable but good at their jobs. On the other hand those two women are at times shown to be on the point of tears and emotional, just the kind of cartoonish portrayal which we thought might be long buried.

An added irony is that this lazy regression of type is wholly at odds with the, supposedly 'modern' central theme of the crime which I have described above as political.

As for the six episodes themselves, be very prepared to suspend all disbelief and then swallow a great deal of nonsense: the plotting, dialogue and direction of Vigil 2 are the kind of two-dimensional fare we were served up several decades ago.

Everyone turns up in the nick of time. Folk travel some distances within a short time, Coincidence plays a large part in it all. There is about as much subtlety about the scripting as there is in an episode of The Teletubbies. Folk escape from desperate situations with complete ease. And on it goes, lazy, lazy, writing and direction.

Perhaps most egregious is the continual exposition of the plot in dialogue so that the viewer 'knows what's going on'. That was a trope from crime drama 40 years ago. Other producers have long given up on it, but lazily the BBC sticks to 'the old ways'.

As for that plot, the denouement is as convoluted as only a piece of would-be clever TV drama can be: it is cobblers, frankly, and that is being kind.

Vigil 2 like Vigil 1 will certainly get its champions. Here on IMdB it is given an overall average 7.4. Well, that is down to your expectations. If you are quite happy with bog-standard 'thrillers' of the kind you have seen time and time again, to for it.

If you want a mystery which does treat the viewer with intelligence and discernment, you really are better off with The Teletubbies.

Israeli writer, director and producer Gideon Raff's The Spy is ostensibly an account of the hugely useful work done by Israel's 1960's spy Eli Cohen.

To some extent it broadly - very broadly - is that. In fact, it sadly soon becomes just another 'spy drama' of the ilk we have seen time and again.

It intrigues to begin with when Sacha Baron Cohen's incarnation of Eli Cohen is eventually hired by Mossad to infiltrate Syria's high military and political high command.

Mossad set Cohen up with a complex false identity as an ex-patriate Syrian who life had determined had never been to his homeland Syria. He begins his cover existence in Buenos Aires, which apparently had a thriving Arab community in the first stage of his ploy to get into Syria.

It is there that Raff's drama soon ceases being an intriguing drama-doc and becomes just another piece of schlock spy drama, one which applies its brushstrokes with the subtlety of a house painter and disbelief can no longer be suspended.

We get more than one too many 'spying tropes' and 'exciting close calls' for the mini-series to command much respect. That is a definite shame because the real-life Cohen, an intelligent and resourceful man whose great work was invaluable to Israel in the Six-Day War was a fascinating figure.

The Spy might satisfy some, perhaps many, but at the end of the day it reduces itself to just another mediocre streaming mini-series.

The irony is that the tough life of Cohen's wife who has no idea what he is doing and accepts his absence wholly despite the strain of raising to young children on her own plays in counterpoint to Cohen's life of derring-do in Damascus is dramatically more interesting than the clockwork 'spy's life' which forms most of the mini-series.

The whole thing boils down to middle-brow entertainment trumping what might have been a far better drama.

John Lee Hancock's The Little Things - he both wrote the screenplay and eventually directed it - is something of an oddity. It seems not quite to be able to make up its mind what it is.

Is it a 'art-house' style 'think piece'? Intermittent scenes, the puzzling career of Denzel Washington's LA detective - and we are led to believe in his time a good one - and the film's final 20 minutes suggest it was casting envious eyes in that direction. But - well, it doesn't quite get there at all.

Further hints - and as they are so slight maybe that should only be 'hintettes' - that we are watching 'art' rather than 'a conventional thriller' are conveyed by Jared Leto's 'villain who might, in fact, not be 'a villain' at all. Well, fancy! One of those arty films', eh, and no doubt it won prizes in obscure Scandinavian film festivals or should have done. Who knows?

On the other hand rather too many other aspects of the film suggest nothing more outlandish than an off-beat thriller a la Seven with the kind of police procedural shenanigans we all love so much (or apparently, it depends on how well it is done for me to love them).

What we can say is that - the ever dependable - Denzel Washington and the always slightly bonkers Jared Leto do give us enough bangs for our bucks, which makes it all the more of a shame that at the end of the day the film can't quite make up its mind what kind of film it is, or wanted to be, or wants the viewers to think it is or . . .

I'm one of those who would gladly pay top dollar to watch Denzel Washington recite a New York subway timetable: he most certainly has that ingredient X and is able to add it to every film he turns up in. Why that should be and how he achieves it, I'll leave for others to talk about. Me, I just think he does and I'm quite happy with that.

Rami Malek also turns in a good shift, but like the film itself quite what his character is up to and what drives him on - which in the context of the film is relevant - is so obscure that it's irritating. Either way, and within the confines of the script, Malek does deliver.

That, though, is just half the story: it's not that The Little Things is frustrating in its, frankly, final lack of identity, its just that the very lack of identity almost seems to cheat us, the viewers, out of a film. What HAVE we seen?

I've been careful here not to describe the 'plot' in any way so that I can click 'no' when I'm asked whether my review contains 'spoilers'. But I can say that it deals with - or purports to deal with - a serial killer who targets hookers. To add to the confusion one victim, apparently, was not a hooker.

Yet it turns out that is not what the film 'is about' at all. To make matters worse, it is not at all clear exactly what the film 'IS about'. I have no idea. After a reasonable straightforward build-up - a rather interesting, watchable and suspenseful build-up at that - it all takes a left turn and we are left with more mysteries at the end than what we started with.

Furthermore - and bearing in mind my self-imposed restriction to avoid spoilers - the actions and behaviour of at least three of the characters are unusual to say the least and, frankly inexplicable.

And, to call a spade a spade, that is as close to cheating as it is possible to get without calling it cheating.

Th Little Things should get a 5/10, but given other good aspects of the film, not least Denzel Washington and Jared Leto's turns, I'm giving it a 6/10.