Category Archives: TV Reviews

NCIS: Sydney – Brother In Arms – TV Review

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TL;DR – There is nothing quite like a shark to ratchet up the tension in the water.

Rating: 3.5 out of 5.

Disclosure – I paid for the Paramount+ service that viewed this series.

Waves crashing into the rocks.

NCIS: Sydney Review –

If you ask someone about Australia, the first thing they will likely mention is the wildlife and how it wants to kill you all. In reality, as long as you take some sensible precautions, you’ll be fine in nearly every case, bar drop bears. Oh, and sharks, because they are apex predators for a reason.

So to set the scene, it is a beautiful day down at the Malabar Ocean Pool, that is, until the swimmers discover a shark has made it into the pool from the ocean, even more so when a bloody hand drops out of its mouth. But what happens when you have a missing Navy SEAL but you have no missing SEALs? We will be looking at the episode as a whole from here, so there will be some [SPOILERS] ahead.    

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Monarch: Legacy of Monsters – Secrets and Lies – TV Review

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TL;DR – After grounding our story, we start escalating this week.

Rating: 4 out of 5.

Disclosure – I paid for the Apple TV+ service that viewed this series.

a cammera lens

Monarch: Legacy of Monsters Review –

While I did not attend this to happen, this week has been very MonsterVerse-focused, with us exploring the first episodes of Monarch, as well as a dive back to the original 2014 Godzilla film that set this universe off (only this cinematic universe, I know Godzilla has had several of them in its lifetime). Well, all good things have to come to an end, well, an end till we come back next week, but it is time to look at the third episode of this opening bunch when things start unravelling fast.  

So to set the scene, at the end of Departure, Cate Randa (Anna Sawai), Kentaro Randa (Ren Watabe), and May (Kiersey Clemons) found an old Lee Shaw (Kurt Russell) living in a retirement home. However, it was not just an average home for the elderly. It was also a Monarch prison facility. Well, a short tour and a cut ankle monitor later and Shaw escapes, and well, if Monarch was not after them before, they sure are now. We will be looking at the episode as a whole from here, so there will be some [SPOILERS] ahead. 

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Monarch: Legacy of Monsters – Departure – TV Review

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TL;DR – The mystery starts to catch up with people as enemies loom over the secrets of Monarch.

Rating: 4 out of 5.

Disclosure – I paid for the Apple TV+ service that viewed this series.

USS Lawton

Monarch: Legacy of Monsters Review –

In the last episode with Aftermath, we got to dip our toes into this multi-generation mystery surrounding the Monarch organisation, the group behind monitoring/studying/controlling/exploiting the Kaiju of the MonsterVerse. It was enough to intrigue, but today’s episode needs to take it up a notch, which it does.

So to set the scene, we open in Manila, 1952, as Lt Shaw (Wyatt Russell) sporting a shiner on his left eye. When he is given a mission by General Puckett (Christopher Heyerdahl) to escort a Japanese scientist on a mission, some awkward introductions later, he and Keiko Miura (Mari Yamamoto) are crashing through the jungles of Mindoro hunting down odd radiation. Meanwhile, back in 2015 Tokyo, the revelations that Hiroshi Randa (Takehiro Hira) had two families echoed through the lives of Cate Randa (Anna Sawai) and Kentaro Randa (Ren Watabe). We will be looking at the episode as a whole from here, so there will be some [SPOILERS] ahead. 

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NCIS: Sydney – Snakes in the Grass – TV Review

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TL;DR – It is time for NCIS Down Under to discover our wildlife kills.

Rating: 3.5 out of 5.

Disclosure – I paid for the Paramount+ service that viewed this series.

Sydney.

NCIS: Sydney Review –

It would be best to amplify the oddnesses when you get into the weeds of collaborative work. It is here where the humour can be found, and why set something in Australia if you do not make the most of it? And I think we started to see some of that today.  

So to set the scene, along Cowen Creek in New South Wales, Australia, a couple of fishermen cast their lines until one catches a big one. A scuffle occurs until they land in the creek and discover a floating body under a tree branch. That body belonged to a staff sergeant running one of the most significant military depots in the southern hemisphere who found himself on the wrong side of a snake. But not a snake from this area. We will be looking at the episode as a whole from here, so there will be some [SPOILERS] ahead.    

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Scrublands: Season 1 – TV Review

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TL;DR – This is a solid mystery that does not outstay its welcome. It hits hard at the start but does lose some energy throughout.  

Rating: 3.5 out of 5.

Disclosure – I paid for the Stan service that viewed this series.

Warning – Contains scenes that may cause distress.

A road in the outback.

Scrublands Review –

If there is one setting that Australian literature loves to explore, it is a small town. They litter the continent, becoming part of a country’s tapestry, but can also be insular places full of secrets. This juxtaposition creates the tension that can be mined for drama, which we see today.  

So to set the scene, one Sunday morning, Father Byron Swift (Jay Ryan) was greeting his parishioners at the end of a service when he dips back into the church only to return with a rifle and murders five people in front of the screaming masses fleeing the carnage. One year later, journalist Martin Scarsden (Luke Arnold) arrives at Riverside to discover why a man of the cloth became a mass murderer. But no one in town is talking, are they just upset about the torture porn, or is there something more going on. We will be looking at the series as a whole from here, so there will be some [SPOILERS] ahead. 

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Musings on The Leftovers (or did Nora Lie?)

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TL;DR – In which I wax lyrical or ramble about the series The Leftovers and its exploration of faith and truth.

Warning – Contains scenes which may cause distress.

Disclosure – I paid for the Binge service that viewed this series.

Two men on a roof after an apocalypse that didn't happen.

The Leftovers Review –

Today, we will do something a little different than usual in that we will be less of a review and more of a retrospective on a series. Well, it’s not quite a retrospective, but more some musings that have been rumbling around in my head for months and that I better put down on paper somewhere so I can let them go rather than pondering on them all the time. With that in mind, we delve into the world of guilt, trauma, religion, faith, and crisis.

So to set the scene, three years before the start of the series on October 14th, 2011, two per cent of the world’s population vanished instantly. One hundred forty million people were gone in a moment of time, with no rhyme or reason as to why they were chosen. A child was screaming one second, gone the next. A family was eating breakfast one moment and gone the next. The person you were holding hands with during a science experiment, the person you were making love with, all gone. How do you move on after an event like this? Can you? Can society? Can the town of Mapleton and the Garvey family? Now from here, we will be looking at the whole series as a whole, so there will be [SPOILERS] ahead.

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Loki: Glorious Purpose & Full Season 2 – T.V. Review

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TL;DR – They absolutely stick the landing in such a way that I might have a touch of hope that the MCU finally knows where it is going.

Rating: 4.5 out of 5.

Disclosure – I paid for the Disney+ subscription that viewed this show.

Post-Credit Scene – There is no End Credit Scene.

The whole team.

Loki Review –


We have reached the end of Loki’s second season, and I have to say that I am in a much better position with this show now than I was this time last season. The writers have condensed the width of the show, but by doing that, they have given it the depth it needed. But the question remains: can they stick the landing? And we will look at that and then the season as a whole in our review today. (Spoiler: the answer is yes)

So to set the scene, things are bad: the temporal loom has exploded, the TVA has been abandoned, and only Loki (Tom Hiddleston) and Sylvie (Sophia di Martino) can remember their time there. But in Science/Fiction, Loki discovered how to control his time-slipping. It is not about how, it is about who, it is the driver who is to protect his friends that is the driving push behind is control. Loki is no longer the God of Mischief, a loner messing with people for japes. But what has he become? Well, that is a fascinating question. We will be looking at the episode and the series as a whole from here, so there will be some [SPOILERS] ahead. 

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NCIS: Sydney – Gone Fission – TV Review

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TL;DR – This is a clunky yet interesting start to NCIS Down Under.

Rating: 3.5 out of 5.

Disclosure – I paid for the Paramount+ service that viewed this series.

The Sydney Opera House.

NCIS: Sydney Review –

Growing up in my era, it felt like everyone and their dog watched JAG and NCIS at the start. Since then, we have run to Los Angeles, New Orleans, and Hawai’i, but where will they go next? Australia? Well, as an Australian media reviewer with an international relations degree, and who taught Australian politics, it is a perfect time to see how they pull this off.

So to set the scene, at Fleet Base East, Woolloomooloo, the USS Navajo is standing by as a presentation about Operation Talisman Sabre is given. It symbolises unity between Australia and the United States of America. But when everyone is distracted by a protestor, they miss a sailor in distress before he falls into the ocean. It is a public relations disaster, so the AFP and NCIS are forced to team up for the optics, and it is time for Michelle Mackey, NCIS Special Agent-in-Charge (Olivia Swann) and Jim “JD” Dempsey, AFP (Todd Lasance), to play nice. We will be looking at the episode as a whole from here, so there will be some [SPOILERS] ahead.    

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Orphan Black: Echoes – Season 1 – TV Review

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TL;DR – This is an interesting spin on the original, that works well within the framework that was set, even if it does not quite get the tone right in places.  

Rating: 3.5 out of 5.

Disclosure – I paid for the Stan service that viewed this series.

Warning – Contains scenes that may cause distress.

A hand appears out of red fluiid.

Orphan Black: Echoes Review –

Back in the day, I was fascinated by this small show out of Canada that took a science fiction concept, in this case, cloning, and took it to the extreme with some of the best acting and weird worlds of subterfuge, rebellion, and secret organisations. During Orphan Black’s five-season run, I was transfixed with each new clone and turn in this world, so you better believe I was excited to find out we were coming back to this universe.

So to set the scene, a woman, Lucy (Krysten Ritter), wakes up with no memory of her past life, with only a therapist (Keeley Hawes) to tell her that she has had a procedure and some of the subtlety of her long-term member might not have worked. After being sedated, the woman is not just going to sit around and breaks out when she finds the house is a fake hidden in a warehouse. But worse still is the room full of body parts, a suspension chamber full of red liquid, and an unfinished artefact of a human. Can they print humans now? And who was the woman they scanned to make this body? Am I the only one who has been printed? We will be looking at the series as a whole from here, so there will be some [SPOILERS] ahead. 

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Loki: Science/Fiction– T.V. Review

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TL;DR – A solid interlude preparing us for the chaos that will be the season/series finale.

Rating: 4 out of 5.

Disclosure – I paid for the Disney+ subscription that viewed this show.

Post-Credit Scene – There is an audio cue at the End of the Credits.

This start to turn to spaghetti.

Loki Review –

Now Loki likes big ‘what the heck moments’ that dramatically shift everything we know. It didn’t hit as well as it could have in Season One, but I am not sure anyone particularly saw last week coming, where death came from every side. The question is: can they build upon that moment and propel everything forward or languish in possibilities?

So to set the scene, after fighting off the threat from Miss Minutes (Tara Strong), it looked like for a moment that they were actually going to stabilise the Temporal Loom and save the Multiverse. That was until Victor Timely (Jonathan Majors) ran out to fix the problem and was immediately spaghetti-fied. Quite gruesomely, I should add. All Loki (Tom Hiddleston), Morbius (Owen Wilson), Sylvie (Sophia di Martino), Casey (Eugene Cordero), and O.B. (Ke Huy Quan) could do is sit and watch as the Time Loom collapsed under all the different timelines and the TVA was destroyed from within. Which makes it all the more peculiar when Loki opens his eyes to find himself still in the now empty TVA and time slipping all over the place. We will be looking at the episode as a whole from here, so there will be some [SPOILERS] ahead. 

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