Television reviews – Page 4

Dept. Q–”Slow Horses” Wannabe?

Written by Diana Paul on June 10, 2025. Posted in Television reviews. 2 Comments on Dept. Q–”Slow Horses” Wannabe?

Written and directed by American Scott Frank (of “Queen’s Gambit”), the Netflix series Dept Q in nine episodes is based on Danish author Jussi Adler-Olsen’s crime thriller The Keeper of Lost Causes. Filmed in Edinburgh, Dept. Q opens with a terrifying misfiring (literally) of a crime scene gone wrong. Detective Morck...

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The Handmaid’s Tale (final season)–An Acknowledgement or Acceptance?

Written by Diana Paul on June 2, 2025. Posted in Television reviews.

Keeping things fresh in the sixth and final season of Handmaid’s Tale, this award-winning drama moves the story ever closer to authoritarianism embedded in a hellscape of a misogynistic dystopia. Gilead is attempting to remake itself, presumably for public relations more than anything else. Smoothing the edges of its own...

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Towards Zero–Where is Agatha?

Written by Diana Paul on May 19, 2025. Posted in Television reviews.

This three-part BritBox series, Towards Zero is set in 1930s England, based upon the 1944 Agatha Christie’s eponymous novel. It opens with Lady Tressilian’s lawyer, Frederick Treves (Clarke Peters), giving a warning, a not-so-subtle foreshadowing of events to come: “Every murder has its moment of origin, its point...

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The Gardener–Root Rot??

Written by Diana Paul on April 28, 2025. Posted in Television reviews.

In this six-episode Spanish psychological thriller (now #3 on Netflix), we see two mother-son pairs who are cold-blooded killers. The Gardener (Spanish: El Jardinero) showcases a quiet studious young gardener, Elmer, who lives with his mother, China, owner of a nursery. He has frontal lobe damage from a car accident. Avoiding a...

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Jewel in the Palace–Shining Through

Written by Diana Paul on April 15, 2025. Posted in Television reviews.

Based on a true story about the first woman physician in Korea, Jewel in the Palace (2003) takes the viewer on a 54-episode journey. Part melodrama, part court-intrigue, part-Shakespearean. An orphaned little girl, Jang Geum, born of aristocratic parents who were betrayed at eighteenth century court, finds herself homeless and...

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Bad Sisters (Season 2)–Not a Bad Season

Written by Diana Paul on April 7, 2025. Posted in Television reviews.

The sophomore season of a much-adored and praised debut always seems like a Sisyphean task. Usually, the return is the dreaded sequel. But there are exceptions, of course. In the case of Bad Sisters’ second season, the writing (by Sharon Hogan) and narrative surpass the first.. The four Garvey sisters are still being hounded by...

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