Review: The Out-Laws (S1 E3/9), Friday 29th July, More4

And so this Belgian dark crime comedy continues, but the real breakthrough is that I’ve figured out how More4 is numbering the episodes. A few people have asked why there have been discrepancies, and it’s been frustrating (I care about such details). So, originally in Belgium there were 10 episodes of The Out-Laws, but in the UK More4 is showing eight. Why? The British channel tagged the first two episodes (shown in one feature-length wodge) as episode one, so even though we should be onto episode four, we’re not – we’re on episode three. Thankfully that wasn’t the most interesting thing about episode three.

The 10 Best Crime Dramas This Week (Monday 1st – Sunday 7th August)

It’s the Olympics from next Friday so expect a relatively quiet time of things for the next few weeks – a few half-decent continuing series, and a new series of the semi-improvised Channel 5 series, Suspects, heading things up. But let me take this opportunity to have a bit of go: Spike TV (which is scheduled by and part of the Channel 5 family) have dicked around with YET ANOTHER fantastic US show, Justified. It used to be on at the pretty late time of 11pm, but now the channel has moved it to 1am. It really does begger belief.

Review: Beck (The Silent Scream), Saturday 30th July, BBC4

Poor Martin Beck (Peter Haber) is not having a good day; the milk for his breakfast has boiled over and he has a raging toothache. To compound this, he hears on his kitchen radio that there’s blood on the tracks in his patch at Stockholm’s Flemingsberg Station.

The Night Of coming to Sky Atlantic in September

The Night Of, a curiously named eight-part series based on the BBC’s Criminal Justice series, is getting good reviews over in the US. It’s being broadcast on HBO – so there’s a stamp of quality, right there – and it’s coming over to the UK in September, via Sky Atlantic. Let’s take a look…

Netflix debuts Winona Ryder Stranger Things featurette online

I know I’ve already posted something about Stranger Things today, but it’s being talked about and there are a lot of fans out there, so here’s another post. Netflix sent out an email telling journos about a new online featurette, focusing on Winona Ryder’s character Joyce Byers, mother of the missing boy in Hawkins Indiana in 1983. In this little film, Ryder (in her first ever TV role) describes what it was like to return to the 80’s – the era her career began – and portray a time where life was seemingly less complicated… until a boy vanishes into thin air. Take a watch after the jump.

No Offence hires Deutschland 83 director for season two

Paul Abbott’s award-winning cop show, No Offence, is about to start filming its second series, and the show has hired a director who has gained critical acclaim for a show that has also appeared on Channel 4. The fifth episode of the seven-part series two is to be directed by Deutschland 83’s Samira Radsi – her first British drama project.

Stranger Things second season likely to be ‘sequel’

Hands up who are currently engrossed in Netflix’s latest must-watch series, Stranger Things? Yes, me too. I’m two episodes in and I’m enjoying it greatly. One of the reasons I’m enjoying is because, as a child of the 1980s, it feels like a pitch-perfect mash-up of everything I loved about mainstream movies back then, right down to the explicit references from the likes of ET, The Goonies, 80s-era Stephen King and John Carpenter, all the way to its fabulous artwork, titles and soundtrack. It’s the most talked-about show on TV at the moment (bar Channel 4’s naked dating show Naked Attraction, which is a crime for different reasons), and even though it has a big supernatural element, it is a crime drama – it comes complete with a weather-beaten, tormented cop, a missing child and a group of pesky, investigating children. And now we have news about series two.

New Twin Peaks likely to be summer 2017 at the earliest

Regular readers of this site will probably know by now that I’m excited by the return of Twin Peaks next year. It has had a rocky road to completion but with everything in place the only thing we’re waiting for now is information on when it’ll be played out, and in how many series it will be split up into. Over the weekend the Comic-Con in San Diego took place, where the great and the good of the movie, gaming and TV industry got together to show off their wares, and while David Lynch and other Twin Peaks acolytes weren’t in attendance, one of the stars was, and he let slip some crucial information. 

Review: The Secret Agent (S1 E2/3), Sunday 24th July, BBC1

(C) World Productions LTD – Photographer: Des Willie

I woke up this morning after last night’s second episode of The Secret Agent to news of more shootings and suicide bombs, in Florida and Germany respectively. It’s a hard, awful world we’re living in at the moment, and The Secret Agent, although set a hundred years ago, has themes and arguments that are extremely topical. Joseph Conrad probably didn’t foresee a world where a novel he wrote would have huge relevance 109 years later.

The 10 Best Crime Dramas This Week (Monday 25th – Sunday 31st July)

It’s very much as you were in crime drama land this week, with lots of continuing series. New US procedural, Rosewood, starts on Alibi, though, so at least that’s something new. And there’s also a rare chance to see the very first episode of doughty Jessica Fletcher classic, Murder, She Wrote.