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.
BritBox
When lead actor Douglas Henshall announced at the beginning of Shetland Season 7 that the season would be his last, it seemed unlikely the series would continue. The show was initially based on the novel Red Bones by Ann Cleeves and had been roughly following her books for the first
Documentary
Ismail Noor Muhammad Abdul Rahman, better known as Ismail Merchant, moved from India to New York in 1958 at the age of 22 to study at NYU. A year later, he met 30-year-old American director James Ivory at a screening in New York of Ivory's documentary The Sword
PBS
Annika picks up not quite two weeks after last week's disastrous open-mic experience. Honestly, I'm not sure what Annika thinks she's doing. The obvious answer is opening a deck chair on the roof to enjoy an ice cream, but it's all gone
Movies
Anthony Hopkins is making a play for the Oscars this year in One Life, where he plays real-life "British Schindler" Sir Nicholas Winton, who saved the lives of 669 Jewish children during World War II. It's perfect Oscar bait — real-life hero, biopic, period piece, tear-jerker, war
Netflix
It's Pastry Week in the tent, and while that sounds like an easy week, it's not necessarily a picnic. However, the good vibes flow with Noel and Alison, and a mishap winds up with Prue wearing her own cake as a jaunty hat while reading in
Netflix
There are few things that are assured in life. Death, taxes, and the U.K. monarchy seem to be three of them, though it takes a lot of work for the last of them to maintain that illusion. However, the passing of Queen Elizabeth II and the remarkably smooth way
Acorn TV
In the 21st century, most of us take DNA testing to solve crimes for granted, but it was not that long ago that such evidence was not even possible, let alone routinely used. Moreover, it certainly wasn't possible for anyone to trace the DNA of someone after they
BritBox
When it was first announced there would be a TV series about Boris Johnson's role in dealing with COVID-19 in June 2020, it was decried as "too soon." After all, the crisis had barely started at that point; most people had only just realized that "
Disney/Hulu
Hulu, BBC Three, and RTE hit upon a winning strategy of unlikely romances in 2018 with back-to-back hits of Normal People and Conversations with Friends. The newest collaboration doesn't include the Beeb, but it does have a series that qualifies as an unconventional romance... of a sort, anyway.
PBS
We've reached November, and the holidays are just around the corner. World on Fire, Annika, and Hotel Portofino are half over, and the Christmas specials are going to be descending upon us in a month or so. Sunday nights are packed with British mysteries; Thursdays (for some local
Feature
Unforgotten continues to be a hit despite casting upheaval and a new DCI at the head of the cold case division. However, series creator Chris Lang has managed to keep the show humming along, and the arrival of DCI Jessie James (Sinead Keenan) helped the series ratings soar to even
William Shakespeare
The United Kingdom is a tiny island in the Northern Atlantic that once ruled a vast expanse of the globe. While today, that empire is a vestigial tail of what it once was, but its primary export still reflects that legacy: Culture. For centuries, the British way of life has