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TV DVD Review: Brilliant Creatures (Australia, 2014)

Brilliant Creatures is a two-part television series that celebrates four iconic Australians. Feminist and libertarian, Germaine Greer; writer/broadcaster/memoirist and poet, Clive James; the late firebrand, art critic, Robert Hughes; and savage satirist Barry Humphries all share things in common. The most important thing is that they left Australian in the fifties and sixties in order…

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TV DVD Review: Anzac Girls (Australia, 2014)

It’s fair to say that the nurses of the Australian Army didn’t get nearly enough credit for the job that they did during the First World War; that’s criminal, really, when you realise just how close to the front they were, the conditions they lived in, and the trauma they endured, all while facing massive…

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TV DVD Review: Kids On Speed? (Australia, 2014)

Kids On Speed? is a factual and fly-on-the-wall series which follows five children who are suspected to have Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD). It’s a powerful and revealing show that looks at this much-maligned, misunderstood and stigmatised illness that has been met with controversy (due to its resulting in more children being medicated). This documentary…

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TV Review: Doctor Who – Season 8 Episode 2 “Into the Dalek” (UK, 2014)

“Clara, be my pal. Tell me: am I a good man?” – It’s the question that fans first wigged out over when the BBC first started rolling out its teasers for the eighth season of the revived Doctor Who, Peter Capaldi’s first. For long-standing fans, it’s a question we know has been plaguing our favourite Time Lord…

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TV Review: Doctor Who – Season 8 Episode 1 “Deep Breath” (UK, 2014)

When Peter Capaldi was announced as the new Doctor – the 12th Doctor (not counting, of course, John Hurt’s brilliant turn as the War Doctor last year) – it was met with much fanfare and excitement. Not to mention YouTube clips and meems anticipating the newest Doctor to echo Capaldi’s much lauded character of Malcolm…

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Exclusive Interview: Eamon Farren talks about his role in ABC TV’s Carlotta.

Now available on DVD after screening on ABC TV last month, we had a brief chat with actor Eamon Farren (pictured above, on the right) to talk about his role as “Ava” in the made-for-TV film Carlotta. How did you come to be involved in the film? I had heard about the project & Jess’ involvement…

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DVD Review: Carlotta (Australia, 2014)

The latest in a series of fantastic historical telemovies from the ABC, Carlotta is a crowd pleasing – and emotional – retelling of the life of Australia’s most famous transgender pioneer. Richard Byron (Jessica Marais) is an unhappy kid from working class Balmain, when as a teenager he finds work in a Kings Cross department…

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Doctor Who Season 8 Air Date and Teaser Trailer Revealed!

Exciting news, Whovians! The first teaser for Doctor Who season 8 has landed, and it’s brought a release date with it. The sci-fi powerhouse will be returning to our screens on August 23rd, which is less than two months away! Although the trailer itself doesn’t reveal much, it does involve  the new Doctor (Peter Capaldi)…

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TV DVD Review: Two Men in China (ABC TV, Australia, 2014)

One country. Two men. Three cities. Two Men In China sees friends- comedian and writer, John Doyle (who is best known as “Rampaging” Roy Slaven) and scientist and activist, Tim Flannery once again taking a trip. This is the pair’s first overseas sojourn as the two have previously travelled across the Great Divide as well…

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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: 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: 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: 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: Rake – Season 3, Episode 3 (Australia, 2014)

At last! Cleaver Greene is back in the legal saddle with a case we can all get excited about. Scarlet has been promoted to Senior Counsel and now has an enormous workload, so at Barney’s suggestion, she agrees to take Cleaver on as one of her juniors. It seems like a pretty illogical decision for…

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TV Review: Rake – Season 3, Episode 2 (Australia, 2014)

Well, that was surprising. Not the fact that Rake is back on the streets— that was to be expected— but the fact that everything in his outside life has become so egregiously shithouse in such a short amount of jail-time. This is the episode where Cleaver Greene gets thrown into a landfill-sized hole, so that…

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TV Review: Rake – Season 3, Episode 1 (Australia, 2014)

When Cleaver Greene was sent to prison at the end of Season 2 of Rake, I have to admit that I was pretty dubious about how the next season would play out. Surely they’d have to think of some legal fandangle that would have Cleaver waking up to find it was all a bad dream— a…

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TV Review: Lessons From The Grave, Episodes 1-3 (Australia, 2013)

Most people would have heard of, or at least recognise actor Bryan Brown, he’s an iconic part of Australian film, prolific in the 70s and 80s. There’s no doubt he’s brilliant, but it’s his daughter Matilda Brown who’s come into her own acting, writing and producing, that deserves kudos for creating this gem of mini-series….

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TV Review: Ja’mie: Private School Girl – The First Three Episodes (Australia, 2013)

Forget the Big Brother finale or the latest instalment of Underbelly, Australia’s television event of 2013 comes with the return of everyone’s favourite (or least favourite) polarising comedian. Chris Lilley’s Ja’mie: Private School Girl essentially picks up where we left off after Summer Heights High – it’s Ja’mie’s last year of high school, she’s the ‘quichest’ girl…

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