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.
BritBox
Inspector Leach (Matthew Rhys) survived his fall from the Devon sea cliffs at the end of Towards Zero’s premiere. As there were no dead bodies in the first episode, the cliffhanger of the depressed, alcoholic police officer trying to kill himself seemed like it would be the only death
BritBox
The world of Agatha Christie – spread over dozens of novels and decades of big and small screen adaptations – has such a distinct tonal and structural language that you can spend an entire hour inside one of her mysteries and only clock by the end that the inciting murder hasn'
Culture
The name’s Bond, James Bond… But honestly, he’s been hogging too much of the spotlight. When you think of fictional spies, 007 is the first one who comes to mind, and the globally understood glamor and coolness of how he pulls off world-saving missions points to the inherent
Acorn TV
It is common practice for new British dramas to cast established American actors in a lead role – a surefire way to court audiences and funding that has trickled down from international, prestige, or streaming series like The Diplomat, The Gentlemen, Peaky Blinders, The Outlaws, or Industry to modest, terrestrial dramas
Paramount+
Any questions about why there is barely any buzz around Paramount+’s MobLand, which like Netflix’s splashy The Gentlemen, was partially directed by British crime king Guy Ritchie (Ritchie created The Gentlemen, while Top Boy’s Ronan Bennett created MobLand) are swiftly answered by the premiere episode – no-one is
Actors and Actresses
How do you know a British actor is becoming a national treasure in real time? In the case of Stephen Graham, it’s the fact that every type of audience – British TV watchers, exciting thriller fans, and film auteur fanatics – has unanimously recognized the actor’s singular, invaluable talents across
Movies
After a good few years of overlong, cringingly unfunny, and pandering Academy Awards telecasts, this year’s Oscars had a refreshing sharpness and humor to them – led by host Conan O’Brien, whose enthusiasm, wit, and sincerity uplifted a pretty unsurprising and tired roster of awardees. One pack that fared
Netflix
Corby is on the warpath in the second half of Netflix’s Toxic Town – we shift focus to the 2000s where the long-gestating legal case gathers steam against the town council for their negligence that poisoned local pregnant women with toxic waste. But, like a lot of landmark legal wins,
Netflix
Toxic Town is the story of the Corby Toxic Waste case, a landmark court case dubbed “the British Erin Brockovich” that has now spawned a swift, pacy Netflix miniseries that borrows not just from the formula of the crowd-pleasing Julia Roberts film, but also the 25 years of media about
BritBox
There’s nothing cool about a live awards telecast – the scripted bits, teleprompter dependence, and constant pauses to wait for talent in transit sucks a lot of the snappy pizazz that a night of celebrating artists deserves. Added to this is the fact that British showmanship feels weirdly forced and
Better Late Than Never
John le Carré's status as a (spy)master of espionage fiction has yet to be seriously challenged, not least because his 60-year writing career spanned one of the most eventful periods of international relations in human history – from the dawn of the '60s to the equally fractured
Movies
In the Mojave Desert, the United States military built a cluster of Iraqi villages on the grounds of army base Fort Irwin. Here, hundreds of civilian roleplayers (often of Middle Eastern descent) were paid to pretend they lived in Iraqi, Afghani, and Russian villages after an American military invasion – one