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  THE THURSDAY MURDER CLUB There's always a certain theatricality to movies or TV shows about sleuths. Whether it's the adventures of  Hercule Poirot  or  Jessica Fletcher ,  Benoit Blanc  or  Charlie Cale , audiences often have to wade through well known actors delivering very wordy scripts as their characters fall under suspicion for a dastardly crime. As many shows and films have discovered, there's a huge risk in these talkfests of the cast overacting and the direction becoming bland and stale. Netflix's 'The Thursday Murder Club' takes this challenge on, having built up quite an audiencewith a successful series of books. Set in a retirement home where four amateur sleuths meet up and solve crimes while also indulging other interests like baking, knitting and yoga, British TV presenter Richard Osman's series has spawned five books and had huge commercial and critical success. The books have topped best seller lists on both sides of the Atlantic, wi...

  HOSTAGE Channel 5 must be ripping. Usually the UK's fifth terrestrial channel corners the market in ropey thrillers. Yet here's a UK political drama on Netflix that churns out frankly unbelievable plotlines and dreadful dialogue. Written and created by Matt Charman - an Oscar nominated screenwriter no less for his work on Steven Spielberg's ' Bridge of Spies ' - 'Hostage' casts Suranne Jones as a Labour-ish British Prime Minister and Julie Delpy as a conservative French President. Jones' Oldham MP who has risen to the top job, Abigail Dalton is losing her way in the polls, thanks to tight budgets, a National Health Service drugs crisis and problems with immigration. Meeting Delpy's President Vivienne Toussaint, who is preparing to seek re-election, it doesn't help that Abigail was caught off mic calling the French leader a handmaiden to the far right. At a summit in Downing Street, they attempt to patch things up with a deal on immigration and ...

MOVIEDROME: WELCOME TO THE CULT "Television - the drug of the nation - breeding ignorance and feeding radiation." So claimed Michael Franti's hip hop musical ensemble The Disposable Heroes of Hiphoprisy in 1992. That was then, what about now? With the advent of You Tube and streaming platforms like Netflix, Amazon Prime and Hulu/Disney+, you suspect that view is even more keenly felt by Franti. Not all TV is mind numbing and even then, there were shows that thumbed their nose at the dumbing down of the medium. Take BBC2's cult movie show 'Moviedrome' for example - a programme that did much to introduce British audiences to quirky cinema and celebrated unusual films and all their imperfections. Fronted initially by the Liverpudlian indie filmmaker Alex Cox and then the Belfast born documentary filmmaker and critic Mark Cousins, it introduced audiences of all ages to forgotten sci-fi and horror movies, spaghetti Westerns, classic film noir, quirky European tales...

BILLY JOEL: AND SO IT GOES It seems odd to reference the Liverpool Football Club legend Bill Shankly while reviewing a music documentary but here we go. However one of Shankly's best known quotes is his observation that in football "form is temporary, class is permanent". The quote needs amended slightly for the music industry where trends are temporary but class is permanent. That's unquestionably the point of Susan Lacy and Jessica Levin's epic two part HBO documentary 'Billy Joel: And So It Goes'. The New Yorker has for decades been one of the most accomplished singer songwriters to grace American rock, folk and pop. He's enjoyed phenomenal success - selling over 160 million records, winning six Grammy Awards and numerous other accolades, earning acclaim as a live artist with a groundbreaking and record breaking monthly residency in New York's Madison Square Garden. Yet for much of his fame, he was looked down upon and derided by music critics -...

  THE NAKED GUN We all know Liam Neeson can do comedy. We've seen him do it before in small doses. The Northern Irish actor  had the best moment in Ricky Gervais' BBC sitcom 'Life's Too Short'  with his improv sketch. Then there was in  the cereal scene in Seth MacFarlane's 'Ted 2' . There have also been chances to test his comic chops in 'Derry Girls, '  on Stephen Colbert's chat show  and as  Good Cop/Bad Cop in 'The Lego Movie' . But can he carry a whole comic movie? Neeson gets the chance to find that out in Akiva Schaffer's 'The Naked Gun' - a reboot of  David Zucker's 1988 comedy classic with Leslie Nielsen, Priscilla Presley, George Kennedy and OJ Simpson . Produced by Seth MacFarlane and Erica Huggins and working from a script by Schaffer, Dan Gregor and Doug Mend, Neeson has a very high bar to clear - playing the son of Nielsen's bungling detective Frank Drebin. Like Frank Snr, Neeson's Frank Jr is an ...

  MIX TAPE For the pre-Spotify generations, the mix tape is an iconic symbol of the analogue age. A cassette lovingly compiled by music fans, it was a token of affection given to lovers or friends. It was also a chance to share the music you loved and hopefully win over the recipient to an artist or album they had never really listened to before. A compilation of songs recorded from vinyl records, CDs or audio cassettes, it inspired the Yorkshire writer Jane Sanderson's 2020 novel 'Mix Tape'. That novel has been brought to the small screen by Screen Australia, Screen Ireland and the Australian streaming service, Binge. Directed by Lucy Gaffy with a screen adaptation by Dublin author Jo Spain, the four part series is a ' Normal People ' and ' One Day ' style tale of thwarted love. Set over two decades mostly in Sheffield and Sydney, Jim Sturgess plays Dan O'Toole, a rock music journalist who is married to Sara Soulie's Katja.  Still living in Sheffiel...