police
DVD: The GuiltyFriday, 22 February 2019It’s another night in an emergency services dispatch room in Copenhagen. Policeman Asger Holm has been taken off active patrol pending a conduct investigation and is stuck on the phones. Drunks, druggies, posh blokes complaining of being mugged in... Read more... |
Crackdown 3 review - spectacular super-powered action that was great fun many years agoThursday, 21 February 2019Did you play videogames back in 2010? If you did, there’s a reasonable chance you played Crackdown 2. Only a reasonable chance as the game was just on Xbox 360 – this was back in the days when there was a lot more console-exclusive titles. But if... Read more... |
Endeavour, Series 6, ITV review - reassuringly accomplished return of the brainy copperMonday, 11 February 2019The end of series five of Endeavour found PC George Fancy shot dead, Cowley police station closed and the old crew dispersed. With Led Zeppelin on the soundtrack (it’s 1969), the sixth series opened minus WPC Trewlove, but with Fred Thursday demoted... Read more... |
Destroyer review - Kidman shines in middling crime dramaSaturday, 26 January 2019Destroyer. It’s an apt name. Like the film, it's grandiose and blunt. Nicole Kidman is almost unrecognisable (a requirement when aiming for nominations) as Detective Erin Bell, a damaged survivor of an undercover heist gone wrong. When her target... Read more... |
Monsters and Men review - an impressive debutSaturday, 19 January 2019This well-crafted addition to the films inspired by the Black Lives Matter movement is subtler and less commercial than last year’s The Hate U Give but covers similar terrain. Writer-director Reinaldo Marcus Green sets Monsters and Men in... Read more... |
Luther, Series 5, BBC One review - welcome return for Idris Elba's maverick 'tecWednesday, 02 January 2019“Can you breathe?’ “Yeah.” “Shame, that”. Another ne’er-do-well is being banged to rights after a chase through container stacks in the dark. Luther is back, and he hasn’t upgraded his Volvo or changed his tweed coat – but we don’t really mind, do... Read more... |
Boris Akunin: Black City review - a novel to sharpen the witsSunday, 16 December 2018It is 1914 – a fateful year for assassinations, war and revolution. The fictional Erast Petrovich Fandorin, the protagonist of Boris Akunin’s series of historical thrillers, is an elegant, eccentric sometime government servant, spy and diplomat, as... Read more... |
Michael Connelly: Dark Sacred Night review - a pairing of loner detectivesSunday, 04 November 2018The master of the Southern California police procedural is back. In Dark Sacred Night Michael Connelly puts centre stage his oldest creation, the Vietnam veteran turned original, ethical policeman who marches to his own moralities, Hieronymous – aka... Read more... |
Olga Tokarczuk: Drive Your Plow over the Bones of the Dead review - on vengeful natureSunday, 09 September 2018In a small town on the Polish-Czech border where the mobile signal wanders between countries’ operators and only three inhabitants stick it out through the winter, animals are wreaking a terrible revenge. The bodies of murdered men, united in their... Read more... |
Unforgotten, Series 3, ITV review - death on the M1Monday, 16 July 2018So it’s back to London’s Bishop Street police station for a third series of screenwriter Chris Lang’s cold case saga. The understated rapport of lead duo DI Cassie Stuart (Nicola Walker) and DS Sunny Khan (Sanjeev Bhaskar) has become one of TV’s... Read more... |
DVD: The Nile Hilton IncidentFriday, 06 July 2018The world was captivated by the Arab Spring – thousands of citizens rising up in unity against longstanding dictatorships, filling squares and refusing to bow. But for many of us, it was a world away; the crowds were a single organism, thinking and... Read more... |
The Bridge, BBC Two, series 4 review - Scandi saga is darker than everSaturday, 12 May 2018In the 1990s, which brought us Morse, Fitz and Jane Tennison, an idea took root that all television detectives must be mavericks. They needed to be moody, dysfunctional, addictive, a bit of an unsolved riddle. These British sleuths were all... Read more... |