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It starts out promising some all out action. There is a robbery from a safe in a casino. It looked like the thieves had inside knowledge. They shot a doorman dead as they escaped.

Simon Templar who was also at the casino hobnobbing with actress Oonagh O'Grady. He gives chase and even catches up with one of them. The robber is shot dead before he can give The Saint more information.

Soon The Saint becomes a target for assasination as he has become a danger to the baddies. The gang has a bigger heist planned and Templar needs to be eliminated.

It was no surprise just who the gang leader was. The assassination plan was a bit silly. As for the second heist, it was too loosely plotted. Where was Inspector Teal and the boys in blue in all this.

By this point, I went to see Fast X without a clue as to what happened in the last one. I think some people went to space.

The F&F series is one where villains become friends, people come back from the dead and cars defy the laws of gravity. No one has an idea of the story soon after they watched it.

A plot inspired by Fast 5, where they stole a safe and rode it along the streets of Rio de Janeiro.

Dante Reyes (Jason Momoa) is the sociopathic son of Hernan Reyes (Joaquim de Almeida) and he wants to make Dom Toretto and his family suffer for what happened to his dad.

The main action starts by dropping a big rolling bomb in Rome and aim it for the Vatican.

Plagued with behind the scenes issues. Original director Justin Lin departed soon after shooting started. Director Louis Leterrier does a workmanlike job. As he showed in the Netflix series Lupin, Now You See Me as well as The Transporter movies. He can do car stunts as well as sleight of hand. Some of the CGI looked cheap though.

As for Momoa, the director obviously told him. Man you will never play the Joker, too Polynesian. So Dante is your Joker and dial it up to 12. He is loud, camp and is having a ball. Especially with those two IT guys with a funny grin on their faces.

Some of the characters are even more tiresome. A few should had showed up but did not like those two Brazilian guys from the earlier movies. John Cena plays lovable Uncle Jacob, he was the main villain in the last one.

The movie actually has four Oscar winning actresses. Not one of them told Vin Diesel how to do dramatic. When Dom had these small tender scenes, I nearly fell asleep.

It looks like for the second series the client element has gone. The makers have fun raising some moral conundrums.

Marshal Gib Scott's horse has gone lame and he has to separate with Clay Culhane.

Scott pays for a ride in a passing wagon driven by George Scales. He has no time for the law, his father is a drunk.

When they come across three people including brother and sister Bill Logan and Nedda Logan (Suzanne Pleshette.) He is injured and his arm has gangrene. The Scales recognise him as a wanted man with a $1000 bounty.

Later Bill Logan asks Scott to shoot him dead and give the ransom money to his sister. When Bill is later shot dead, Nedda thinks her brother was gunned down in cold blood.

Not the kind of erudite episode I expected. You can see how this kind of story would later influence moral conundrums in shows like Star Trek.

The Night Visitor is a thriller set in Sweden. Director László Benedek reimagines this a psychological movie made by Ingmar Bergman.

Salem (Max Von Sydow) has escaped from his asylum, runs across the snowy landscape in his underpants and kills his sister Emma in their farmhouse. Salem arranges it so that his other sister's husband, a doctor would be framed. Salem then returns back to his cell at the asylum.

It is revenge Both Dr Anton Jenks and his wife Esta (Liv Ullmann) framed Salem for the murder of a farmhand a few years earlier. His lawyer got Salem to plead guilty by reason of insanity.

The local inspector (Trevor Howard) keeps an open mind despite the evidence against Dr Jenks. The problem is just how does Salem manage to escape from his cell.

There is a prolonged sequence as to Salem ingeniously leaving his cell. He must have some endurance to get from the castle to his farm on foot with hardly anything on in the snow.

This is an odd movie, the ending is bird brained. There is a lack of forensics. No one catches Salem's footprints in the snow and he would be covered in blood after some of the murders. It is an early example of Scandi noir.

BBC children's television is coming to Great Slaughter. The Jolly Roger is on its summer roadshow.

The nuns of St Vincent will be demonstrating their homemade wine.

There would be a daring stunt as one of the presenters scales the Broadway Tower.

The show is run like a tight ship by its feared editor Dinah Morgan. She takes no nonsense but it seems she might have tipped someone over the edge.

Her dead body is found when the program is broadcast lfe. It looks like she was suffocated.

Sister Boniface thinks the show's mascot, Poopdeck Pete, a macaw might be an important witness.

The second series of Sister Boniface Mysteries is a thinly disguised tribute to Blue Peter. Biddy Baxter it's early editor and who is still alive, was a woman with a fearsome reputation.

It was notable how the story delves into the backstory of the presenters and the Korean war which Britain got involved with in the 1950s.

I've never done the Benidorm type all inclusive holiday. The type that is cheap as chips with eat and drink all you want.

Writer Derren Litten introduces a cross section of holidaymakers. They range from class to geographical regions.

The main characters in the first episode are the Garvey family led by father Mick (Steve Pemberton.) A bit of a tight wad and not averse to a little flirting.

This contrasts with the more posher Weedons, unhappily married as wife Kate (Abigail Cruttenden) does not want to be there at all.

A portrait of Brits abroad. There was a lot I recognised in the first episode. Even though the hotels in the Med I have been to tend to be more cosmopolitan. The type you wake up early in the morning to claim the sunlounger from the Germans!

Maybe the show knew it was in rating trouble. This episode has the popular folk trio of the time The Kingston Trio making a guest appearance.

They are playing at the campus and the tickets are selling like hot cakes. Mrs Green is only interested in classical music, a performance given by the string quartet featuring Professor Crayton is also taking place on the same night.

The tickets for the string quartet cannot be given away.

Mrs Green manages to charm the folk trio to play with the string quartet. A fusion of folk and classical. Music to flunk by.

It really was primarily to cash in on the popularity of The Kingston Trio. They sold a shed load of records at the time.

What a cast with three Oscar nominees. Bruce Dern, Diane Ladd and James Whitmore.

Whitmore poses as fake priest Francis Xavier Murphy who has checked into a swanky hotel. It is a stakeout, he and his gang plans to steal valuable diamonds from a jeweller's convention to be held at the hotel.

Captain Matt Holbrook needs to send his team to guard the jewellery along with a private security outfit that the hotel have hired.

The heist goes almost like clockwork but one of the robbers, Jud Treadwell (Dern) is shot by the police and is hiding out. He also has the loot.

This could had been expanded like a noirish B movie. It is well acted, nice bit of action. Several characters that are well sketched for episodic television such as one of the robbers who was always a loser. It has an ending that smacks of poetic justice as the fake priest goes to give the last rites.

For their streaming service, Warner Brothers have shaken the dust off one of their own properties.

Gremlins came out in the cinemas in 1984 with Steven Spielberg as Executive Producer. For this animated prequel both Spielberg remains as well as Director Joe Dante.

Shot in 2d cell animation. From the very first scene of Mogwai, it is clear that the inspiration is Baby Yoda/Grogu. There was no other reason why this series was greenlit.

Mogwai has been wrested away from his ideal homeland and is now a circus attraction in 1920s Shanghai. Young Sam Wing and his Grandpa (voiced by James Hong) decide to rescue Mogwai but there are others after him as well.

The elder Sam Wing appeared in the movie. The Grandpa character knows about these creatures and the havoc they can create. Hence the rules, the first being never get them wet.

The series is aimed at both children and those who were kids when the movies were released. It got a bit too talky in the middle before a big action set piece. I could sense younger children would had got bored in the middle of it.

Mills (Adam Driver) is an astronaut who is on a mission to another planet. He will leave his sick daughter behind but the job pays well.

His ship hits an asteroid and crash lands on Earth 65 million years ago. The passengers that were cryogenically frozen have died apart from one girl, Koa. She is from a different part of the planet from Mills. She cannot speak his language.

Both need to get to an escape pod on top of a mountain and fly off before the asteroid hits. The planet is also full of dinosaurs.

This is Jurassic Park reimagined not as a theme park out of control. What if a person had so survive an entire planet full of monsters.

65 would had been more interesting if it had a director with Spielberg's trademark techniques when it came to action adventure films.

With a short running time, even the producers realized that this was a misfire.

It is the Burke and Hare story redone in a cheaply made B movie filler.

Tod Slaughter hams it up as William Hart in 1828 Edinburgh. Together with another Irishman Moore (Henry Oscar) they murder the locals and sell the corpses to Dr Cox for his medical research. It is easy money and less back breaking than digging up corpses.

The good doctor asks few questions about the still warm bodies. Young Jamie Wilson delivers the corpses to Dr Cox but Hart has his greedy eye on him as a potential victim.

However ship's doctor Hugh Alston (Patrick Addison) is onto them. Especially as one of his friend's is missing and his lady friend was so near to get killed.

Slaughter is never short of a quip or two. Addison is wooden and always alerts the men that he suspects them.

The film is weak, too cheap looking and goes on for too long. Slaughter at least makes it entertaining.

Women in prison could be the basis of an exploitation story. Director Arthur Hiller goes for a social issue angle.

Terry Farmer (Lynn Loring) is the teenager charged with armed robbery with her boyfriend. Infatuated with her no good boyfriend, she hopes he will come through for her.

At the very least her mother might get her bail. Only mom is too busy with her work life. Boyfriend is too selfish.

Luckily for Terry, Paul Marino takes an interest. He knows that if Terry is mixed with inmates in a women's prison. She might not survive the experience.

There is no room for her in a youth remand institute. Paul and the detective in charge of the case needs the boyfriend to cough up and exonerate Terry.

For the early 1960s, there are some strong scenes about prison life for women. The upshot being Terry entered prison as a girl and left as a hardened woman.

This is the kind of story where Target: The Corruptors is good at, stories with a subtext.

Interestingly Lynn Loring became a top television executive in the late 1980s.

Somewhere in here is the plot of Ghost Light. Light (John Hallam) has taken human form and came to Earth in his spaceship to catalogue everything. Only to learn that everything keeps changing.

The catalogue for the planet is never ending and a frustrated Light wants to destroy the planet.

Meanwhile Josiah plans to assassinate Queen Victoria and take over the British Empire. While Control wants to be her own woman.

There certainly is a lot of story here but it had to be cut down. Control with her Eliza Doolittle story. Ace and her backstory regarding the house and its evil presence.

Josiah's plan is just absurd and Light's confusion is based on the concept that other planets do not evolve.

Some of the acting was all over the place. Like the director could not have a consistent tone. McCoy lets himself down in one scene where he just cannot do dramatic.

It is a grisly story with one set of characters turned to stone and Inspector Mackenzie into primordial soup.

Ghost Light had some cracking lines that hark back to Douglas Adams. It was all a sign of what Doctor Who could had been if it continued.

Shadowlands started out as a 1986 BBC television film. Actor Joss Ackland regarded playing CS Lewis as one of his favourite roles.

William Nicholson later adapted his own screenplay for a movie version directed by Richard Attenborough. This was a small chamber piece for a director better known for epics with a cast of thousands.

For Anthony Hopkins it was another opportunity to show he can do subtle and nuance after winning an Oscar for The Silence of the Lambs.

Inspired by the true story of dusty dry Oxford academic CS Lewis. Who fell in love with divorced American poet Joy Gresham in 1950s Britain.

It is a story of how a middle aged man, known for his children books. Turned friendship into a marriage of convenience (in order for Joy to remain in Britain.) To romance by which time she is dying of cancer.

Just as Hopkins did in 84 Charing Cross Road. It is a portrait of a hemmed in repressed grey 1950s Britain. In this case the upper echelons of academia which seemed to have been consisted of single old men.

The acting is top notch. The direction is retrained. It's a bit of a tearjerker.

The title fonts make it clear that this show is a homage to Columbo. By the end Charlie Cale (Natasha Lyonne) is on the run, just like the Fugitive.

The series is created by Rian Johnson who did the Knives Out movies.

Natalie is a casino hotel maid who sees something on the laptop of a high roller. She reports it to her casino bosses and is killed for her troubles.

Her friend Charlie is not satisfied with the answers. Charlie has an ability to know when someone is lying, her boss Sterling Frost Jr (Adrien Brody) is hiding something regarding Natalie's death.

There was a slight confusion that after Natalie's death it goes to a flashback until the story catches up. Hence why that clip of John Travolta from Pulp Fiction is an important clue.

As the first episode was a set up, it was a bit uncertain. You have Charlie solving the crime and getting her revenge on Frost Jr. It then leaves her at the mercy of his father who is a man not to be messed with.

The Gallardos criminal trial is about to begin and Perry mason has no idea how to approach it.

At the moment the only strategy is to discredit Brooks McCutcheon as some kind of saviour. It is the Gallardo family who offers Perry a hope that someone else would want Brooks dead.

Meanwhile after rebuffing Perry's offer of a plea deal. Hamilton Burger puts once on the table. Maybe as a ploy to stop Brooks McCutcheon's name being dragged through the mud.

Despite everything Perry Mason finds a forensic breakthrough regarding the fingerprint evidence.

Paul Drake gets an opportunity to atone for getting small time gangster Melvin Perkins into trouble. It means using his fists to get information that could help the Gallardos.

The episode opened with some backstory to the Gallardo family, giving them a motive to hate the McCutcheons.

Even though still a novice defence lawyer, you see the Perry Mason from the books in this one.

There is still too much filler that slows the story down. Sometimes having a production looking gorgeous is not enough.

After they save a zookeeper (Bernard Bresslaw) who is about to throw himself off a bridge. All because the newly built monster house has no monster to exhibit.

So the Goodies set off to Scotland to catch the Loch Ness Monster. They know they might be in for a long wait.

In the meantime they fight off the Scottish bagpipe spider. One bite and they do the Highland fling until they collapse.

In the meantime they find themselves fleeced by the Tourism agent (Stanley Baxter) who sells them all the provisions to bag a monster.

All the indications that the Loch Ness Monster is just another monster money making scam.

Enlivened by a sterling performance from Stanley Baxter. This contains all the Scots stereotypes and monster jokes. Even a quick glimpse of Andy Stewart, who usually was never allowed out unless it was Hogmanay.

It's another moody slow burn episode and the watchword is truth.

Stella wants the truth about her daughter's murder and goes to see Charles Stone again in prison to learn more.

However Charles might be playing a game and he has got his son involved in a complex web. Meanwhile Charles father, dying of cancer wants his son to be honest.

Yet Charles is not safe in prison. A new inmate arrives in the wing and warn Charles to keep his trap shut.

Stella also finds out more about her ex husband Paul. He might have been tangled up somehow in their daughter's murder as he took cocaine.

Only for Stella to discover he was always having an affair with his now fiancé. No wonder he managed to move on so quickly in his life.

There is a lot of intrigue and you just know that not everyone is being truthful.

There is no client for Clay Culhane in this one. It is essentially a flashback episode.

Clay and Marshal Gib Scott capture three escaped convicts and Clay comes across a familiar face. He is David Trench, the estranged son of Judge McKinney.

When Clay was injured after a shootout where his brothers were killed. The Judge nursed Clay back to health and even saved his life.

Over time Clay learned legal principles by studying the volumes of legal tomes the judge had. Eventually passing his legal test to become a lawyer.

However David Trench was a fly in the ointment. He hated his father, McKinney was once feared as the hanging judge. His twin brother had killed someone and Judge McKinney had sentended his own son to death.

An interesting episode that sheds light on Clay Culhane's background. With the added tragic story of Judge McKinney.

Ada's birthday is coming up. Jeff and Alf are constructing a new clothes horse for her. However Ada wants a washing machine for her birthday and she expects it.

Alf as ever worries about whether they can afford one, maybe buy it on hire purchase. Luckily Ada had saved some housekeeping money up.

Only Eddie is sent to get the second hand washing machine for £20. He ends up conned with buying an old jalopy by a dodgy car dealer.

Now Alf has to make amends, he gets a brand new washing machine on a free trial. It will go back in seven days.

This is almost the Jack and the Beanstalk story. Eddie gets sidetracked by the salesman and later claims he knows all about cars. At least he miraculously managed to get the old banger fixed.

With Eli turning up drunk again after another night out. Nellie decides to move out.

She rents a crummy flat with a landlord (Ken Jones) who has strict rules about gentlemen friends.

Only with the amount of men visiting Nellie. The landlord is convinced that Nellie is some kind of lady of the night.

Meanwhile Eli is struggling living on his own. There is no one to do his cooking and cleaning. He even resorts to his lady friend like Celia (Julie Goodyear) to do some housework. Eli needs Nellie to come back home.

One of the parties leaving home is another staple of British sitcoms of yesteryear. Here the joke is that Nellie is a bit of a trollop.

It was all rather weak with only the malapropisms keeping it amusing.

Big Foot is a serial rapist that has been stalking young women. He manages to evade TJ Hooker after he attacked a jogger at an athletics field.

With the pressure on the police. Hooker comes into conflict with police detective Sgt Wayne Conrad (James O'Sullivan.) He is in charge of the case, he is arrogant and ambitious. He has new fangled methods such as using computers.

However the police think they have their man when Romano catches a man running away wearing shades. He confesses but Hooker realises that this man just wants attention.

The real Big Foot is still on the prowl and has his ear close to the ground.

I like how Hooker and Romano still manages to inject a bit of humour as they talk about healthy eating and exercise. Romano's latest girlfriend is into keep fit.

I also noticed how any random member of the public could get inside the police station and wait for a detective outside a room where the police discuss the latest case.

I wonder if the radio station had a review of the kind of people they employed.

The second episode carries on with the mocking of Darwin sceptics. Josiah Smith makes a monkey out of Reverend Matthews.

Ace is attacked by two monsters, they looks like a product of some kind of experimentation. Lucky for Ace, Nimrod arrives to save her. There is actually a spaceship below the house, only the Doctor has an inkling as to why it arrived on Earth.

Meanwhile the Doctor awakens Inspector Mackenzie from Scotland Yard whose body in inside a drawer. He has been asleep for two years and is now very hungry. He had originally arrived to investigate the disappearance of George Pritchard, the owner of the house.

The Doctor also makes a deal with a woman called Control who has been held captive in the spaceship by Josiah. He is not human but is now metamorphizing to human form.

This is a very cryptic story, even more so than episode one. It seems no one was interested in explaining the story to the audience. It seems the ship arrived to catalogue all the specimens in the planet.

While Part One had atmosphere. Part Two showed up the limitations of studio recordings. The outside shots and special effects of the lightning were too obvious of a studio setting. Especially when Ace opens the drapes to startle Josiah Smith's sensitivity to light. It was just darkness outside of the window.

Enrique Vidal (Frank Thornton) has duped Sir Walter Barling, an esteemed banknote printer to produce 5 million pesos for the fictional South American country of Gueron.

It is all a ploy by General de Santos to destabilise his country's currency. The waltz in as the saviour and establish a dictatorship.

Barling's wife calls in Ben Manfred MP. He is a co director of the company and tasked to save their reputation and save Gueron.

The story was made at a time when many central and south American countries were banana republics. This story demonstrates how fragile democracy can be.

However Manfred has no real plan in this episode. He really seems to be making it up as he goes along to try to get the Pesos back.

Tom Wyatt has developed a treatment for gill fever, a disease that afflicts tropical fish. His boss Frederick Rollins had agreed to share the invention together.

Only Rollins had sold his business to Jack Huxley. He now owns the intellectual rights to the formula. This angers Wyatt, even making threats against Huxley.

The arrogant and greedy Huxley asks his intoxicated chemist Darrell Metcalf to analyze the formula to it can be replicated.

The next morning Huxley is found dead and Wyatt is arrested.

There are a whole host of suspects. This include secretary Sally Wilson who is engaged to Wyatt. She was forced to work late that night by Huxley. His wife Norah who disliked her husband and has a flaky alibi herself. Huxley's business partner who also wants a piece of the formula.

There is a nice bit of cut and thrust in the courtroom as Perry Mason looks to hone in on the alternatives. At the end you have a modicum of sympathy for the actual culprit. I thought the story was a cut above but still too run of the mill.