Reviews

The production values are excellent but there it kind of stops. The style is overdone, everything feels forced and artificial just like the moody shots of London. Nobody talks like these characters do, it's not remotely natural sounding.

Peter Capaldi hams it right up as is his way, and that's OK. Everyone keeps insisting Cush Jumbo is this amazing actor but I've not seen any evidence of it, here she's pretty artificial and unbelievable. Maybe it's the poor dialogue, script and plot but she's not impressive.

I bailed out halfway through episode one because this was clearly just going to be yet another streaming drama that has about 2 hours of plot stretched out over 8 hours of TV - they just drip feed one main plot point per episode and the rest is filler. Please stop doing this.

So here's the show that Seth Macfarlane really wanted Family Guy to be, but obviously has to tone FG down because it's on a family network.

Some thoughts:

• Ted and the kid are pretty hilarious, really they are the whole show and the other characters aren't nearly as funny or interesting.

• It looks great. The CG isn't always amazing but really you don't notice.

• If you're a longtime FG fan, there are some recycled gags in here. They're funny jokes, but you can spot them.

• Scott Grimes' character is really annoying. He just bellows rubbish the whole time and is clearly just there to be something that other characters react to, but the constant one-note stupid shouting gets very wearing very quickly.

• Even with all that, this is still one of the funniest things on TV .

Ok, this franchise is really silly and most of the characters in it are violent psychopaths. And the real people they're based on must have been vile.

But these are movies, so let's put that to one side.

In this one, the tone is markedly different from before. It's a "proper" film and leaves out the relentless mindless violence and swearing that numbs you that characterised the previous movies.

Here - somehow - is a film that's technically very well put together indeed. The acting is good, the story is ok if a bit too convoluted and the way they keep holding off on a big reveal a few times too many gets annoying.

But the actors in this one are properly acting for the most part, and the camerawork and editing is very very good.

8 "faaaahkin caaaahnts" out of 10.

Look, I'm a fan. I know these movies are daft but the first two were good - the second one especially so when they leaned into the ridiculousness of it all. The third one was awful but even that was better than this.

I'm not going to go over every little thing - other reviews have done that. Let's just do the highlights:

• Abysmal script and story with no stakes, You just don't care.

• Most of the cast have nothing to do for most of the movie.

• Statham is good but he'd never have agreed to this tripe were it not for Sly. Which is fine, but this is far worse than the stock actioners Statham was making in the early 2000s;

• The CGI is just disgracefully bad for a $100m movie.

• You've got some of the world's best movie martial artists and most of the fight scenes are abysmal.

• The female characters have no reason to be there. Like, they do even less than the random men.

• The action is very very badly staged, it's like a parody of an Expendables movie.

Just an absolute car crash all round.

Not sure why this is getting so much hate in the reviews on here. It's a clever little political thriller with enough twists to keep you interested. It's well acted - Brian Cox is always great and John Cena shows yet another side to his expanding acting range - he's just getting better and better with everything he's in. (Not sure Peacemaker can be topped for sheer brilliance though).

Jodie Turner Smith starts off a little wooden but grows into the role as the film goes on, though this may well simply be the journey that her character is on, growing in knowledge and confidence over the course of the film.

An enjoyable and diverting movie, great stuff.

I'm not massively knowledgable about DC beyond its big tent pole characters so I only knew this character from Gunn's Suicide Squad movie, which was decent but a bit all over the place.

This series though is a revelation. From the opening credits that tell you this isn't going to be any regular superhero show, to the hair metal soundtrack, excellent dialogue and action that's almost but not quite rooted in reality.

And John Cena, what a talent. Having only seen him in the terrible F&F 9 movie (no actor could have saved that film), this is like a whole different person. He gives real heart to this character who is a douche, yes, but also traumatised with a sad backstory and quite honestly is doing pretty well considering what a scumbag his father is.

He's funny, has great comic timing, can do the serious stuff believably as well. And I don't know how anyone stays that ripped, it's crazy.

As someone who came to this series with absolutely no preconceptions, it's superb. Hilarious, heartbreaking, compelling. Not at all what I expected. It's just a wrench that we are going to have to wait at least a couple of years for the second series.

I'd only ever seen episodes of this growing up but recently re-watched the entire thing.

The first season is more or less perfect. It's incredibly well-written and the characters'i idiosyncrasies haven't had a chance to become repetitive yet. It's genuinely one of the best comedies ever made.

But then. But then. Almost immediately season 2 starts, the plots start to become sillier and sillier and just continue to get worse. It's the same problem any long-running show set in a single location would have - you can't have every episode about everyday things that happen - but here the rot sets in very quickly.

Plots start to become ridiculous - long lost relatives turn up, someone turns up claiming to have a million dollars, etc etc. They're just plucking more and more unbelievable ideas out of a hat.

The Sam and Diane storyline peaks way too early at the end of season 1 and after that is an increasingly tedious back and forth of will they won't they, it's dangled and whisked away time and again and just becomes ludicrous. We stop caring whether they get together or not because their relationship becomes so annoying.

These two characters in particular are given stories that make them make stupid,, childish decisions again and again and their interactions become incredibly irritating. In the first season they have a genuine chemistry but by the fourth or fifth, they're stupid infants bickering and consistently making the dumbest decisions imaginable. In any given scenario they will pick the worst possible course of acton.

By the time Rebecca arrives in season 6 the show is almost a parody of itself, repetitive and also increasingly ridiculous. It bears no relation to the tightly scripted and very funny first season or two.

There's good stuff too of course. Woody and Norm remain well-written. But a couple of seasons it it's gone from whip-smart comedy to pantomime, and that's a shame.

The first couple of seasons of this were amazing. Really vital and compelling tv. The third season though feels really different. It can't just be that they leave almost two years between series - a terrible idea in itself.

Forest Whitaker looks tired and a bit bored by season 3, kind of phoning it in which is unusual for him. Huge amounts of time are spent on sub and side plots - the increasingly long periods of time we spend following the exploits of Malcolm X are particularly tedious. This show isn't about him.

It's started to feel like yet another show that's struggling to fill an hour per episode. I wish shows wouldn't do this, so many would be better using the limited story they have to fill 30 or 40 minutes. Probably going to have to bail on this, it's really run out of steam.

I have been a fan of Yellowstone from the start. As silly as it can get, it is engaging and the storylines good enough to hold your attention over the series.

So I was excited to start watching the two prequel series and boy, I wish I hadn't. I lasted about two episodes into 1883 and 1923 before giving up.

Why? In short, they're dull. We are expected to care about a whole bunch of new characters - and man, are there a lot of characters - and their various side plots and sub plots. Storylines are slow and unsatisfying and in places the acting poor. Whoever signed off on Jerome Flynn's "Scottish" accent should be fired. He's a decent actor but what is that abomination?

Even Harrison Ford can't save 1923. Here's yet another Dutton, oh look he's tough, oh look he's having the same problems we know Costner's Dutton will have in 100 years' time.

The problem is, I just don't care about any one of these characters. At all. So I can't be bothered waiting 10 hours of TV to find out what happens to them. We know where the family ends up anyway. There was potential here, but it's not been fulfilled. There's too little story, stretched too thinly to "fill out" yet another series to try to get signups.

I'm a huge fan of Fletch and also of Jon Hamm but this movie doesn't really work. The writers have made a grave error by making most of the supporting cast quirky weirdoes with funny dialogue but this is the wrong way round - the reason the first two movies worked is that FLETCH is that guy and most everyone else is the straight man.

Here, Fletch is just kind of sleepy as he goes from scene to scene (don't look for a plot, there isn't one) being upstaged by other characters - again, literally the opposite of what makes these movies work. Hamm does have comic timing but is just too damn handsome to believe. Re-casting the role is basically impossible but while I get that Hamm would probably have looked silly in the scruffy gear that Chase wore, he's nonetheless just too stylish.

I was interested to read that the third Fletch movie was at one time going to star Jason Lee and be directed by Kevin Smith - I'd imagine that would have been a far better - and funnier - take on the character.

A nice surprise this one - lean and well-acted and shot, the story grips you and the performances are excellent. Doesn't outstay its welcome - highly recommended. We need more movies like this with a good story and good acting. 9/10 check it out.

A nice surprise this one - lean and well-acted and shot, the story grips you and the performances are excellent. Doesn't outstay its welcome - highly recommended. We need more movies like this with a good story and good acting. 9/10 check it out.

A nice surprise this one - lean and well-acted and shot, the story grips you and the performances are excellent. Doesn't outstay its welcome - highly recommended. We need more movies like this with a good story and good acting. 9/10 check it out.

A nice surprise this one - lean and well-acted and shot, the story grips you and the performances are excellent. Doesn't outstay its welcome - highly recommended. We need more movies like this with a good story and good acting. 9/10 check it out.

There's the bones of a good movie here, but it's mishandled. Which is odd given that DA wrote and directed it. His bleached out LA-gangs-and-cops movies are good - and Bright was excellent. Fury was great and Suicide Squad was killed by the studio. Overall he has more hits than misses.

This one drops you in without much context and never quite lands. We don't need to be spoon fed but we do need a bit of guidance as to who people are and why what's happening is happening.

I actually thought Sheer theBeef - dreadful person that he is - was alright in this. Who knew?

The ending... well, WTAF was that about?

This feels almost like a TV movie. Not because of the acting but there's just something that's not quite there. He's clearly capable of excellent cinema, but this isn't it.

This is a similar premise in many ways to Wayward Pines, except the first season of that show is superb (avoid season 2 though). This is not really, it's slow, drags things out, and takes 10 hours of TV to still not really answer any questions. This is an annoying feature of TV series now. Fill up hours with teases, never really answer any questions. Keep dragging it out until you get cancelled.

Ummm.. this is just a direct copy of The Office? The uk original office. The format, the way it's shot, the way it's acted, the cringe.

The only thing they've not copied is the being funny.

I don't understand all the people moaning that this is like The Wolf of Wall Street. It isn't and even if it was, they're both about reckless entrepreneurs so what would the issue be? "Waaaah it's like the Social Network". Well they're both about tech startups, genius.

It's solidly acted. It's about things that happened, so again it's unclear why people are whining that it's "unrealistic"?

From the same guys that make the excellent Billions and you can see the stye and the tropes here as well as some of the same actors, which is no bad thing.

It's pacy and dynamic and moves along at quite a rate, doesn't outstay its welcome. Give it a shot.

Narratively this is absolutely all over the place. No structure, no new information, nothing revelatory at all. It careers around regurgitating stuff we already knew, hints at a few things but is such a mess it never even bothers to provide any real interesting information. Crap, even for Netflix.