pliget

Bored to tears by this; thank goodness I only borrowed it from the library. The history is all wrong, The casting of Henry shows the level they were going for. Instead of a credible Henry, tall and well-built, with red hair and a huge presence (like Steven Waddington who actually plays Buckingham) we get a dark-haired, short Irishman. Softporn masquerading as history. I did enjoy the cod-history by Mr Meyers on the extras giving us his "knowledge" of Henry; it made me laugh though I suspect I wasn't supposed to. And as for the scene of Meyers masturbating what was that all about? Lowest common-denominator stuff in all respects.

Really rather plodding fare with some very poor casting. Stacy Keach is good (as always) and Wentworth Miller seems to have something about him. T-Bag is a fun character and well played also but the rest just seem wooden. Peter Stormare who I liked in Fargo was awfully miscast as an Italian gangster; I can't remember a single wise-guy looking quite as shabby as his character.

The basic premise does seem interesting but there seem to be too many implausibilities which we are just expected to take on trust. The cliffhangers flow thick and fast, most of them rather boring and not really resolved very cleverly. They just got a bit tedious as they rolled around every ad break and before the credits. I felt none of the involvement that I had with 24 and even with the first couple of episodes of Alias. There were some interesting moments and about half- way through I recall I did want to see what might happen next but mostly it seemed pretty mindless - the sort of thing one could probably knit to. If I wasn't mildly autistic with a thing about completeness I probably would have given up before the end.

If you like Prison Break you'll probably like Alias too. Me, I think I'll give series 2 a miss. If you want to see a good prison series try Oz.

A quite wonderful story from Series 1 episode 1 to the final series 5 episode. I loved (and hated, in parts) the characters and lived their lives with them. The casting was faultless with some really captivating actors and a thoroughly believable and beguiling script.

Series 3, in my view, started to drag a little but then things picked up in series 4 and 5 and the last episode had me enraptured and not a little tearful as we said goodbye to the characters.

If you like to be entertained emotionally as well as cerebrally you will love the Fishers and their story. Easily up there with The Sopranos and The West Wing as Classic TV that will stand the test of time.

Still splendid TV but the debate on Scott has moved on. After the glorifying of the early years to buoy up a country stunned by the losses of the Boer War came the debunking by Huntford. Since then there have been many novels questioning his motives, principally by Sir Ranulph Fiennes and Susan Solomon. I have just read David Crane's excellent book which, at last, seems to provide a balanced account of a remarkable man, rooted in Victorian values but with an enquiring and open mind ahead of his time. If your interest is piqued by this film there are books galore on Scott for you to read to explore the debate for yourselves. You can even try to find The Race by Kare Holt "a writer as determined to rubbish Amundsen's reputation as Huntford was to rubbish Scott's". All in all good entertainment, especially for those who love a good anti-English polemic a la Braveheart, but don't confuse this with the truth.

I was quite amused by the first series of Alias and am now ploughing through series 4, having seen the quality drop remorselessly since the opening. Excess can be amusing in moderation but not episode after episode after ... I was interested to see what happened with Rambaldi but I think I realise now nothing ever will; we will just continue going round in circles since any form of conclusion will kill any form of suspense however minute. I now watch it looking to see how many times they use the word protocol (loved the inferno protocol - hard to top that for over-thetopness) and to see if the actors will surprise me with a new expression beyond their stock-in-trade bemusement (Vaughan), bewilderment (Jack Bristow) etc. Hard to blame the actors when the script is so inane and one-dimensional. It reminds me constantly of the parody-line in Notting Hill "inform the pentagon we need black star cover". The whole script is full of this line over and over. And for a bunch of supposedly mentally toughened CIA agents they do fall apart when family comes up. It is clear if Sydney (or anyone else for that matter) were to find out her mother had been hurt she would either break down in tears (to a suitable song of course) or raze the whole of the USA to find the antidote. I also carry in my mind a (slight mis-)quote from the end of episode one which I am still waiting for Jack Bristow to say; it sort of sums up the experience so far in this show where nothing is as it seems yet everything is totally predictable - "Sydney, I'm not your father, I'm your mother".

Well, I think I shall be leaving the show after series 4. It was amusing in the beginning but enough is enough. If it had ended after series 1 with a good resolution of Rambaldi I would have given it an above-average mark. Unfortunately episodes 3 & 4 dragged it down.