Undercover Brits
Undercover Brits: ‘Star Trek’s Anglophile Spacefarers
In honor of 'Star Trek Day' and the franchise’s 60th anniversary, we are rerunning our Top 10 British actors from across its many series.
Rory Doherty
Rory Doherty is a writer of criticism, films, and plays based in Edinburgh, Scotland. He's often found watching something he knows he'll dislike, but will agree to watch all of it anyway.
Exclusive
James Callis & Nick Mohammed on Getting the Call Up for 'Slow Horses' Season 5
To say that Slow Horses has an uneasy relationship with authority is an understatement worthy of an eyeroll and withering insult from Slough House commander-in-chief Jackson Lamb (Gary Oldman). Outside of the well-meaning but often hapless spies, Season 5 is brimming with pompous, ambitious men in suits
Apple TV
'Slow Horses' Season 5 Gets Going with “Tall Tales”
Each season of Slow Horses is a serial, one unfolding story divided into serialized chapters, with very few time jumps and surprising plot turns that lead us straight from one episode into another. When the dramatic inciting incident kicks in – in Season 5’s case, a mass shooting that left
Apple TV
'Slow Horses' Season 5 Opens with Multiple “Bad Dates”
Slow Horses is back – one year after its superlative fourth season, the down-and-dirty modern London spy saga returns for another messy adventure with MI5’s least loved and, by this point, criminally undervalued department. In Season 4, we lost agents, confronted harsh truths, and uncovered long-buried secrets
Amazon Studios/Prime Video
'The Girlfriend' Is a Prime Example of How Cheap Streaming Shows Have Become
Over the past decade, streaming platforms have increasingly claimed ownership of material typically found in anonymous airport paperbacks and Lifetime movies. These are scandal-driven tales of taboos, secrets, and betrayal, all couched within a sleek facsimile of domestic luxury and social ambition. Sure, there are critiques of class biases
BritBox
Family Thriller 'Playing Nice' Plays Unpleasant & Repetitive
Does it have urgent, modern themes, or is it an old-school Gothic drama with a contemporary coat of paint? This question arises in all four episodes of Playing Nice, a thriller miniseries written by Grace Ofori-Attah that premiered in Britain around the New Year. The series takes a
Feature
'Hostage's Trend of World Leader Thrillers Should Be Impeached Immediately
In Netflix’s Hostage, Abigail Dalton (Suranne Jones) is eight months into her first term as Prime Minister, and there’s a severe shortage of cancer drugs all across the United Kingdom. As the leader of the opposition tells us in a House of Commons address, she bolstered the flagging
Actors and Actresses
Undercover Brits: The 'Alien' Franchise
The Alien series has many originators, but a crotchety British director bears responsibility for the serene but chilling atmosphere that helped propel the slasher-in-space original to global, enduring franchise status. Ridley Scott had only made one other film when he took us onboard the USCSS Nostromo, a towing
Feature
Apple TV+'s 'Chief of War' Explores Colonialism From the Other Side
The indigenous language of the Hawaiian islands is Ōlelo Hawaiʻi, and it’s critically endangered. When sovereign nations are subject to colonialism, native languages are often suppressed, and government-run schools run by American missionaries and eventual “English only” policies in schools and government ensured that generations of Hawaiians were
Classics Revisited
Classics Revisited: 'I, Claudius' (1976)
There’s something arresting about the texture of I, Claudius. Watching the legendary BBC miniseries from 1976 that — with plenty of cynicism and snark — charts the conspiracy and coups of the first four emperors of the Roman Empire, you’re struck by the theatricality of the performances, the sets, and
Apple TV
Apple TV+'s 'Smoke' Is Hot Enough to Belong in Theaters
When was the last time you saw Taron Egerton in cinemas? The Welsh actor enjoyed a stratospheric breakout role in the smarmy, sexy spy thriller pastiche Kingsman: The Secret Service, and for the second half of the 2010s, his reaffirmed his confident and charismatic screen presence with projects of increasing
BritBox
'Towards Zero's Finale Is Best as The Matthew Rhys Mystery Hour
Credit to Towards Zero, a good murder mystery solution should feel, in retrospect, inevitable, even if we didn’t necessarily see them coming. Granted, the small number of suspects in Towards Zero meant that the grand reveal of Neville Strange (Oliver Jackson-Cohen) as the killer was pretty likely. Purely