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© 20th Century Studios, Hulu & Disney+ In the last few days, it was reported Quentin Tarantino's final outing as a director will be a film about a movie critic. Rumoured to be about a character based on the legendary critic Pauline Kael, the story prompted a meditation on the Deadline website about the state of movie criticism . It wasn't pretty reading. Noting the retirement of the New York Times' AO Scott, the article contrasted the world in which Kael operated with that faced by today's critics. © 20th Century Studios, Hulu & Disney+ In Kael's day, there were less entertainment channels vying for everyone's attention. There were cinemas, theatre, radio and TV but no streaming services, no podcasts, YouTube influencers or TikTok videos. Reviews mattered and critics' opinions were respected. With today's deluge of film and television content, critics have a lot of material to wade through. In this context, Scott observes very often they resort t

© HBO Max Sitcoms that muck about with history are nothing new. Richard Curtis and Ben Elton's ' Blackadder ' is probably the best known example of a sitcom that toys with real events in British history. Elton's ' Upstart Crow ' about William Shakespeare is another. Larry Gelbart's Korean War sitcom ' MASH ,' could also claim to be in the genre, poking fun at more recent history. © HBO Max However who would have expected HBO Max to opt for a sitcom very loosely based on two pirate legends? But that's what you get in 'Our Flag Means Death,' a 10 episode comedy which brings Taika Waititi's fearsome Blackbeard into the world of Rhys Darby's out of his depth pirate captain, Stede Bonnet. Known as the "Gentleman Pirate," the real Bonnet hailed from a wealthy English family in Barbados and like Darby's character fell in love with the idea of a life on the sea. He also fell in with Edward Teach, or Blackbeard as he was know

© Sky Cinema & Open Road Films  Even the best directors have projects that don't work. Hitchcock, Ford, Huston, Kurosawa, Fellini, Bergman and Altman all had misfires during their careers. And Coppola, Scorsese, Spielberg, Lynch, Tarantino and Ridley Scott have all had misfires too. But even when their films don't work, you usually find a visual nugget or two  to remind you of their skill.  © Sky Cinema & Open Road Films And so it is with Neil Jordan's 'Marlowe' - a film which on paper should rocket  but never really soars. Adapted from the Irish novelist John Banville's 2014 novel 'The Black Eyed Blonde,' written under the pen name of Benjamin Black, Liam Neeson finds himself stepping into the shoes once occupied by Dick Powell, Humphrey Bogart, Van Heflin, Elliot Gould, Robert Mitchum, James Caan and many others who have played Raymond Chandler's private eye Philip Marlowe. Set in 1939, the 70 year old Ulsterman's character is working i

© BBC "How do you shift three tonnes of gold?"  That's the question posed by Charlotte Smith's Metropolitan Police detective Nicki Jennings during BBC1's crime drama 'The Gold'. In fact, it is turns out to be the primary concern of Neil Forsyth's six part miniseries which focuses on the aftermath of the Brinks Mat heist. Forsyth zones in on the efforts of criminals to conceal their ill gotten gains and also the attempts by Metropolitan Police detectives in London to recover them. © BBC The £26 million Brinks Mat robbery in November 1983 is the stuff of English gangster folklore. A masked gang of six robbers forced their way into a warehouse near Heathrow Airport looking to steal 3 million Spanish pesetas from a vault. They doused security officers in petrol and threatened to set them alight when their attention switched from the contents of the vault to 6,840 gold bars stored outside it in 76 cardboard boxes earmarked for Hong Kong. Taking the gold, th

© RTE and Alibi Boy, those Aherns. They're more cunning than 'Fantastic, Mr Fox' and about as easy to catch. For two series, the Co Clare family have managed to run rings around the Gardai in the RTE and Alibi drama 'Smother' after encountering a run of luck that's almost as bad as the Mayo Gaelic Football team. They don't deal in drugs nor wield guns. © RTE and Alibi The Aherns just get into difficulty in their personal lives and that often results in them breaking the law. Series One  of Kate O'Riordan'scdrama saw the Aherns having to deal with the clifftop death of the family patriarch, Stuart Graham's Dennis. The follow up then saw them having to come to terms with the sudden arrival of Dennis' illegitimate son from Manchester, Dean Fagan's Finn. (SPOILER ALERT!) Not only that but their cover up of the circumstances around Dennis' death were exposed, with Justine Mitchell's Elaine being thrown under the bus and having to go to