Spartacus: Blood From An Angry Sky

Television

In another walk down memory lane we revisit one of our most popular posts, by Spank the Monkey, probably because it contains the line My cock rages on, my cock rages on. 

Spartacus: Blood and Sand

Blood rains down from an angry sky
My cock rages on, my cock rages on

– Traditional gladiators’ drinking song. Apparently.

This is the story of a television drama that everyone thought was a bit of a joke. Except that the joke was on the people who abandoned it after the first couple of episodes, and failed to spot it slowly turning into one of the most deliriously entertaining shows on the box, despite the untimely death of its leading actor. The most recent season of Spartacus is about to be released on home video: let me explain why you should be buying it.

Continue reading Spartacus: Blood From An Angry Sky →

Engrenages: Avec La Participation De JIMMY

Television, , ,

With a 12 new episodes of Spiral being filmed in Paris at the moment,  Europe’s Best Website reminds you that it was there at the beginning with Ricky Young’s 2013 billet doux to Paris’ finest

Reasons why the French remake of Star Wars failed #1. The trash compactor scene.

BBC Four Scando-drama just doesn’t do it for me.

A shocking notion to some – what, you don’t like to spend your Saturday nights watching thick blocks of oft-rudimentary police procedural drenched in existential gloom as if that’s interesting in and of itself? Well, no. Put it this way, if noted idiot Emma Kennedy can write a cash-in book about something, then I want no part of it.

The overseas drama that kicked off the trend for exotic coppers doing exotic police-work is back for a fourth series this Saturday, however, and I couldn’t be more pleased. It’s dirty, it’s brutal, it’s sexy and it’s French. The BBC calls it Spiral, but everyone else, including Europe’s Best Website, calls it Engrenages. So let’s pull up a chair, sit on that chair, realise that chair is in the interrogation room of a dingy Parisian police station, and let’s get punched repeatedly in the face by an angry foreign policeman.

Continue reading Engrenages: Avec La Participation De JIMMY →