TV & Streaming

TV Review: The Feed – Season 2, Episode 55 – 14th May 2014 (SBS2, Australia)

Got the post-budget blues? A daily dose of The Feed could be what you need! Even if we obviously wouldn’t be able to escape the miserable beast’s claws in a half hour news slot. The budget was given a cursory damning in the opening news collection, and as obvious as it was that a youth…

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TV Review: Unplanned America – Episode 1 “When Fantasy Meets Reality” (SBS2, Australia)

Unplanned America is not your conventional reality series. We meet three Aussie blokes, Tim ‘Gonzo’ Ryan, Pawel ‘Parv’ Jarecki and Nick Maher, who have decided to take a break from their lives and go on an epic road trip across America to discover the weird and wonderful side of the Land of the Free; the…

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TV Review: Unplanned America – Episode 2 “Family Matters” (SBS2, Australia)

In Episode 2 ‘Family Matters’ the boys travel to two vastly different events in different cities to discover that family doesn’t have to be about blood relatives and can come in the most unlikeliest of places and forms. The first is the Gathering of the Juggalos in Southern Illinois, a music festival dedicated to fans…

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TV Review: Mad Men – Season 7 Episode 5 “The Runaways” (USA, 2014)

Critics and fans of this current age of television are quick to wax lyrical over the current crop of shows we have to enjoy; “The Golden Age of TV” and “TV is the new cinema!” are two phrases that get bandied about often. Yet for all of the past decade or so of television’s ‘cinematic’…

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TV Review: Fargo – Season 1 Episode 3 “A Muddy Road” (USA, 2014)

With the episode titled ‘A Muddy Road’ this is bound to lead us down an even more twisted and precarious path as we delve deeper into the mysterious and crooked goings-on in Minnesota as one by one our characters become more inter-twined within this dark evil web. We start by taking a trip back to…

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TV Review: Game of Thrones – Season 4, Episodes 4 “Oathkeeper” and 5 “First of His Name” (USA, 2014)

These episodes are being welded together as they both serve the purpose of re-arranging the show after Joffrey’s shocking death in “The Lion and The Rose.” While we are seeing Dany get a bit more innovative with her “roam around freeing slaves” shtick, “Oathkeeper” gave us one of her weaker sequences. It was a grand,…

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TV Review: Fargo – Season 1, Episodes 1 “The Crocodile Dilemma” and 2 “The Rooster Prince” (USA, 2014)

From the opening scene right through to the closing credits Fargo emulates its film forebear with the same intriguing plot, twisted dark humour and spectacular cinematography. With the original Ethan and Joel Coen brothers as executive producers and writing credits the series was destined to have a similar tone. The series commissioned for a limited…

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TV Review: The Feed – Season 2, Episode 52 – 8th May 2014 (SBS2, Australia)

Even as the fine journalists at Fairfax walk out in protest of impending cuts, nothing can stop The Feed. It was this story that opened the episode of May 8 2014, and it really just serves as another depressing chapter in the miserable book that ‘old media’ has become- yet you can’t help but feel…

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TV Review: Mad Men – Season 7 Episode 4 “The Monolith” (USA, 2014)

‘The Monolith’ – what a title for an episode of anything not directly related to 2001: A Space Odyssey. The one shot that recalls 2001 comes early is blink-and-you-miss-it quick; a shot of the SC&P elevator doors, black and imposing against a white background. And like the monolith in 2001, this doors represent all the…

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TV Review: Mad Men – Season 7 Episode 3 “Field Trip” (USA, 2014)

Continuing the show’s dominance of 60s soundtracks, Field Trip concludes with Jimi Hendrix’s If 6 Was 9 – a song that essentially about the counter cultural movement of the 60s and how the hippies are the really aware ones against the white collar conservatives. Whilst the show does flirt occasionally with the 60s counter culture,…

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TV Review: The Feed – Season 2 Episode 46 – 29th April 2014 (SBS2, Australia)

The footage of the captain and crew being hauled to safety from the sinking Sewol ferry is how The Feed chose to open their April 29 show, and good on them for doing so. This South Korean ferry tragedy is being crazily under-reported this week, despite some 190 people now being confirmed dead. The photos…

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TV Review: Mad Men – Season 7 Episode 2 “A Day’s Work” (USA, 2014)

The Mad Men writing crew, whether this is planned or not, seem to always include one or two choice lines per episode that seem to sum up the theme (which certainly makes it fun to write about). Season 7’s second episode A Day’s Work had this line coming from Ted Chaough to Pete; “Just cash…

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TV Review: Game of Thrones – Season 4, Episode 3 “Breaker of Chains” (USA, 2014)

We pick up right where we left off, and the sweet sight of Joffrey’s lifeless, purple face gives us cause to cheer once more before we are reminded of the grim reality Game of Thrones deals with. The realm is a world far removed from our own, and the writers were out to remind us…

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TV Review: Game of Thrones – Season 4, Episode 2 “The Lion and the Rose” (USA, 2014)

The internet is dark and full of spoilers, so if you are reading this review I consider your eyes permission to write about what happened in the outstanding ‘The Lion & the Rose.’ “The viewers send their regards.” It was always going to be a well-received event; the pent up blood lust of every single…

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TV Review: Mad Men – Season 7 Episode 1 “Time Zones” (USA, 2014)

This is the beginning of something – do you have time to improve your life? Would we ever have expected this kind of speech ad pitch Freddy Rumsen? His brilliant opening monologue (impeccably delivered by Joel Murray, in what was his work of the series thus far) belies every notion we’ve had of his character….

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TV Review: Game of Thrones – Season 4, Episode 1 “Two Swords” (USA, 2014)

It’s finally back! The long and torturous wait between seasons is a testament to how deeply involved the world has become in the Game of Thrones universe. The series’ fourth season kicked off with the mostly excellent ‘Two Swords,’ doing a nice job of making sure we’re up to speed while also setting up some…

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TV Review: Rake – Season 3, Episode 8 (Australia, 2014)

This week was the final episode of RAKE Season Three and it is well worth seeing if you suspect, as I do, that a fourth season might not happen. It’s not necessarily that the show should end, but that this finale leaves so few questions unanswered that if it did, nobody would feel cheated. That’s…

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TV Review: The Walking Dead – Season 4 Finale: Episode 16 “A” (USA, 2014)

All that character development wasn’t building up to any big, heartbreaking deaths as many expected. Instead, the Walking Dead crew decided that Season 4’s finale was best used to further the nuanced character arcs and set up a terrifying Season 5. ‘A’ led us through two big sequences, and took it’s time getting through each….

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TV Review: Rake – Season 3, Episode 7 (Australia, 2014)

As we near the end of season three of Rake, let’s take a look back and admire the personal accomplishments that Cleaver Greene has made in the past seven weeks. After prison, Cleaver re-entered the world to find that every facet of his life was in disarray: His career was at a standstill, his family was…

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TV Review: The Walking Dead – Season 4 Episode 15 “Us” (USA, 2014)

‘Us’ had one job and it was to put at least some of the splintered survivors onto the same trajectory. As such, we were given a mildly touching reunion with Glenn and Maggie, preceded by a showing of just how desperate Glenn can get; desperate enough to wander into a dark cave with an unknown…

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TV Review: The Feed (SBS2, Australia) Season Two, Addiction Week – Episode 1

Opening a potentially very heavy week of nightly evening news with a lighter story is a wise move- and that’s certainly what the team at The Feed appeared to be doing by having a story about cane toad licking addicted dogs kick off its Addiction Week. As cartoonish as this story may sound on paper…

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TV Review: True Detective – Season 1, Episodes 5-8 (USA, 2014)

The final four episodes of the new wave HBO crime drama, True Detective, pushed closer to solving the 17 year running investigation into heinous crimes and further explored the personas at the centre of the double barrelled story, Marty Hart (Woody Harrelson) and Rust Cohle (Matthew McConaughey). Episode 5, “The Secret Fate of All Life”…

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TV Review: The Walking Dead – Season 4 Episode 14 “The Grove” (USA, 2014)

It had to be done, right? ‘The Grove’ didn’t move the plot along at all, opting again for a stand-alone type episode in similar fashion to Beth and Daryl’s alcohol-driven journey in ‘Still.’ The third to last episode of season four took it’s time to slowly crush us with one of the most intense episodes…

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TV Review: New Girl – Season 3 Episode 18 “Sister III” (USA, 2014)

This week marked the end of the ‘Sister’ trilogy and the end of Abby’s time on the show, although I’m hoping to see her cameo down the track like Jess’ parents sometimes do. Perhaps the most interesting aspect of the episode was that every character had some sort of development, or lesson learned – and…

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TV Review: Rake – Season 3, Episode 6 (Australia, 2014)

This week’s episode is crammed with about thirty different and not visibly interwoven plot-lines, but let’s put all that aside for now and focus on the most sensational moment in the show: Fuzz (Keegan Joyce) has come home from Africa and he has turned into his dad! A scotch swilling, Tin Tin coif-sporting, loosened skinny…

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TV Review: The Walking Dead – Season 4 Episode 13 “Alone” (USA, 2014)

So Maggie wants to go one way; Sasha wants to go the other way; and Bob is just happy that he isn’t left alone – as he has been two times prior to joining the group. ‘Alone’ presents us with a group that has less ties to each other than the other groups; splintered together…

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TV Review: New Girl – Season 3 Episode 17 “Sister II” (USA, 2014)

With Jess’ sister thrown into the mix, we were expecting only one thing from this episode: trouble. New Girl did not fail us, kicking off immediately with a game of “Sky Knife”, in which knives are thrown into the ceiling. From there, the crux of the episode was gotten to quite quickly: Abby wants to…

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TV Review: Rake – Season 3, Episode 5 (Australia, 2014)

RAKE goes into courtroom procedural overdrive this week when Cleaver Greene agrees to represent no less than four men at four separate hearings in one day. Sydney is in a legal frenzy: there are five royal commissions and seven ICAC hearings taking place at the same time. Every other lawyer in town is tied up,…

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TV Review: Rake – Season 3, Episode 4 (Australia, 2014)

It looks like things are slowly but surely returning to their natural state of comical disequilibrium in the world of Cleaver Greene. His career is given a boost when he receives his first personal request for counsel, and he finally has his bachelor pad to himself, now that Nicole and her crazy mother have taken…

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TV Review: The Walking Dead – Season 4 Episode 12 “Still” (USA, 2014)

With five episodes left, ‘Still’ took a bit of a time-out to redefine two characters we never expected would interact on anything more than a superficial level. When the prison walls came tumbling down and everyone split up, Daryl and Beth was the least likely duo. Fans worried that the writers were messing up; pairing…

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