Year: 2024

Black Doves–”Slow Horses” meets “The Americans”?

Written by Diana Paul on December 30, 2024. Posted in Television reviews. 2 Comments on Black Doves–”Slow Horses” meets “The Americans”?

The six-episode Netflix mini-series Black Doves is being promoted as a Christmas holiday spy thriller, full of such fun scenes as explosions, intense gun-fight street battles and stylish upper-class British banter to mix up with the tinsel and ornaments. Helen Webb (Keira Knightley of “Pirates of the Carribean”, “Pride and...

Day of the Jackal–Hunt or Be Hunted

Written by Diana Paul on December 22, 2024. Posted in Television reviews.

In this Peacock mini-series released November 2024, British assassin-for-hire and super-sniper is known only as the “Jackal” by police and those paying him millions. Of course, he has multiple aliases and disguises. An update of Frederick Forsyth’s 1971 novel and the 1973 movie, Day of the Jackal is a modern high-stakes thriller of...

The Americans–Cold War at Home

Written by Diana Paul on December 16, 2024. Posted in Television reviews.

In this multiple award-winning six-season Hulu series (2013-2018), The Americans has invaded the hearts of countless viewers. The Americans takes place during the Reagan era of 1980-1987, the Cold War with Gorbachev and what was known then as the Soviet Union. Philip (Matthew Rhys) and Catherine (Keri Russell) Jennings are...

Paranoid–Someone’s After Me

Written by Diana Paul on December 9, 2024. Posted in Television reviews.

Paranoid, a British police procedural crime series (2016) set in the small town of Woodmere, opens with a brutal murder of a general practitioner pushing her young son on a swing in a public park. The woman is murdered in public by an unknown man in a black hoodie. Who could be the murderer? And what can the...

Penguin–A Waddle of Weirdness

Written by Diana Paul on December 1, 2024. Posted in Television reviews, Unhealed Wound.

Based upon the DC Comic Batman and one of his nemeses, Penguin, this HBOmax mini-series is a spinoff of the 2022 Batman movie. Premiering on September 19 as a weekly installment, each episode tightly leads the viewer to the next surprising and noirish plot point. Oz Cobb (Colin Farrell), rather derisively called Penguin...

Disclaimer–Truth or Fiction?

Written by Diana Paul on November 25, 2024. Posted in Television reviews.

Five-time Oscar winner Alfonso Cuaron (of “Roma”, “Y Tu Mama Tambien”, “Pan’s Labyrinth“, “Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkhaban”, and more) directs Disclaimer based upon Renée Knight’s novel of the same name. The middle-aged protagonist, Catherine Ravenscroft (Academy Award-winner Cate Blanchett), receives a career-defining award...