Ani Bundel has been blogging professionally since 2010. This is her second major independent site launch. A DC native and Keyboard Khaleesi, she spends all her non-writing time photographing her cats. Regular bylines also found on MSNOW.
Mystery
Happy Valley Season 2 aired back in 2016, two years after the show's initial debut on the BBC. The series, which stars Sarah Lancashire (Last Tango in Halifax) as Sgt Catherine Cawood and James Norton (Grantchester) as the man who raped her daughter and drove her to suicide,
Documentary
The Beatles only existed as a band for about ten years, from 1960 to 1970. However, their effect on the Western world in that brief time is still being processed over half a century later. Moreover, their career as a band neatly divided into two halves: Beatlemania, when they were
Comedy
Aardman Animations is beloved for its Plasticine stop-motion storytelling. Though the studio launched in the 1970s, it wasn't until 1989 that it became a household name on both sides of the pond with the introductions of Wallace & Gromit. The former is a beloved, bumbling English inventor whose
Movies
The gift of the 2021 lockdowns in the U.K. is that they cleared the schedules of every Downton Abbey actor, making it possible to bring back the entire ensemble for a second big-screen production much quicker than they might have otherwise managed. The first film spent a couple of
Drama
The PBS Masterpiece lineup in 2021 was something of a start-and-stop affair, as the delays from the 2020 shutdown in the U.K. rolled across the pond, causing Call The Midwife, Grantchester, Unforgotten, and Baptiste to debut in the second half of the year. But no such delays will exist
Mystery
When Manhunt premiered in the U.K. in January 2019, it was the biggest debut on ITV for a new series in six years, since Broadchurch began back in 2013. The three-part series, which aired over three consecutive nights, was based on the memoirs of real-life former Met police detective
Comedy
Taika Waititi has become synonymous with a particular brand of irreverent comedy based on specific genre brands. His What We Do In The Shadows was a modern vampire comedy that launched an American spinoff on streaming. His Thor: Ragnarok revitalized the Marvel comic book hero's stand-alone brand after
Drama
When Sanditon Season 2 was announced in the spring of 2021, the fandom was shocked and overjoyed. But into every life, a little rain must fall. Though the show was returning with stars Rose Williams and Crystal Clark as Charlotte Heywood and Georgiana Lambe, Sanditon's leading man, Sidney
Drama
J.R.R. Tolkien famously said that he wisely started with a map when writing the original The Lord of the Rings. Amazon's Jeff Bezos started his studio's adaptation of The Lord of the Rings far less wisely, paying out $250m (the same amount he paid
Drama
On Christmas Day, Netflix brought fans of regency romance a Christmas present as it released the announcement for Bridgerton Season 2's arrival. Though some fans (including me) thought the streaming service would make us wait until December 2022 for more of the Quinniverse, the wait turned out to
Mystery
When Netflix's Young Wallander arrived in September 2020, it wasn't much like the Wallander that fans had grown accustomed to in the mid-aughts, either the Swedish television series starring Krister Henriksson or the British remake starring Kenneth Branagh. All three are technically adapted from Henning Mankell&
Mystery
In Season 1, Vienna Blood was interesting in its usual setting and some of its characters, but its mysteries were frequently too simple. Making the lead detective an early Freud student leaned into "these aspects of mental health are so new" allowed audiences to feel more competent than