Tag Archives: Tony Briggs

Population 11: Season 1 – TV Review

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TL;DR – While it gets messy in the middle, it starts and ends strong, and has a fundamentally entertaining cast.

Rating: 3.5 out of 5.

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

The outback full of termite mounds.

Population 11 Review –

If there is one thing that Australia can do very well, it is the mystery set in the Outback. Indeed, some of my earliest TV memories are of the wild and wonderful Jeopardy, which, if you are Australian or British of my age, you will know well. But in the world of Scrublands and Deadloch, we get a new entry today with Population 11. Where we will get into the red dust and possibly tangle with some aliens or people in alien suits … probably the last one.  

So to set the scene, on a quiet night in the Outback surrounded by stars and termite mounds, a man stands alone, looking at a giant tree. That is, until a light appears from the heavens shining down on him, and while he runs, he is not quick enough. Sometime later, a strange American man from Cincinnati, Ohio, arrives in the town of Bidgeegud, which is so tiny that the pub and the church are in the same building. The man Andy (Ben Feldman) is here for the UFO tour led by Hugo (Darren Gilshenan), but maybe that is not the only reason he is there. Nor may it be the only thing going down in this small town. Now from here, we will be looking at the season as a whole, so there will be some [SPOILERS] ahead.

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Population 11: Outback UFO Tours – TV Review

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TL;DR – This weird and wonderful first episode hooked me in to see what wild ride we are about to go on.

Rating: 4 out of 5.

Disclosure – I paid for the STAN service that viewed this series

A tree in the outback at light.

Population 11 Review –

If there is one thing that Australia does very well, it is the mystery set in the Outback. Indeed, some of my earliest TV memories are of the wild and wonderful Jeopardy, which, if you are Australian or British of my age, you will know well. But in the world of Scrublands and Deadloch, we get a new entry today with Population 11.

So to set the scene, on a quiet night in the Outback surrounded by stars and termite mounds, a man stands alone, looking at a giant tree. That is, until a light appears from the heavens shining down on him, and while he runs, he is not quick enough. Sometime later, a strange American man from Cincinnati, Ohio, arrives in the town of Bidgeegud, which is so tiny that the pub and the church are in the same building. The man Andy (Ben Feldman) is here for the UFO tour led by Hugo (Darren Gilshenan), but maybe that is not the only reason he is there. Now from here, we will be looking at the episode as a whole, so there will be some [SPOILERS] ahead.

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Force of Nature: The Dry 2 – Movie Review

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TL;DR – There is a solid film in here; you just need to find it through all the messiness.

Rating: 3.5 out of 5.

Post-Credit Scene – There is no post-credit scene.

Disclosure – I paid to watch this film.

The Victorian bush.

Force of Nature: The Dry 2 Review –

Back in 2020, there was a great moment when, thanks to the current circumstances, The Dry, Penguin Bloom, and High Ground were the top films in Australia, the first time in an age that three Australian films had managed that. Of those, there was one that was primed for a sequel, and that is what we are looking at today.

So to set the scene, it is a wet and cold morning as four women crash through the bush of the Giralang Ranges to the sound of a coming car. Jill Bailey (Deborra-Lee Furness), Beth (Sisi Stringer), Bree (Lucy Ansell) & Lauren (Robin McLeavy) are cold, wet, and hurt, but all the more importantly, they are missing one of their group, Alice (Anna Torv). It is a dense forest, and searching it will be difficult, but as we discover, Alice is an informant, and her last phone call to Aaron Falk (Eric Bana) was profoundly concerning, making people wonder just what happened up on that mountain.    

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TV Review – Cleverman: Season 2

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TL;DR – A brilliant follow up from Season One

Score – 4 out of 5 stars

Season Two

Review –

So Season Two of Cleverman has come, hit us hard, and it’s now over. So we have had some time to think back and contemplate on the overarching themes for the season and how it worked, which is what we are going to do today. So today with our review we will look at how Season Two improved on Season One, look at the central themes and characters, and finally conclude on the importance of Cleverman.  Before we start, just a warning that we will be talking about the season as a whole, so there will be [SPOILERS]. Also, this will be looking more broadly at the season, if you what to look at individual episodes, then you can look at our reviews here: Revival, Bindawu, Dark Clouds, Muya, Skin & Borrowed Time.

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TV Review – Cleverman: Borrowed Time

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TL;DR – Indeed everyone is on Borrowed Time, as choices come to a head in the season finale

Score – 4 out of 5 stars

Borrowed Time

Review –

So we’ve reached the end of Season Two with the final episode Borrowed Time, and after five weeks of everyone making mistakes, tonight it all comes to a head. At the end of last week’s Skin (review) we had that shocking moment when Charlotte (Frances O’Connor) defending herself and her baby put a scalpel right into Slade’s (Iain Glen) neck, though we didn’t see him die. Now there is one thing you need to know about TV, and that is they are not dead until we see the body, and even then everything is up for grabs. Well, first up tonight not only do we find out, yep he’s dead, but we also find out that he ended up going nowhere in the end, because (and I had forgotten this) he got caught up in the blue wave at the end of Season One. That was a really powerful opener but Borrowed Time doesn’t stop there, and a reminder as we will be talking about the episode as a whole, there are [SPOILERS] ahead.
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TV Review – Cleverman: Skin

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TL;DR – Today we find out that there are consequences for actions and what happens when you push things too far.

Score – 3.5 out of 5 stars

Cleverman

Review –

So we have reached the penultimate episode of Cleverman’s sophomore season and we are starting to get a glimpse of the end game and how it presumes things are about to get significantly worse. So at the end of last week’s Muya (review), things reached a head and finally Koen (Hunter Page-Lochard) stood up to take the mantle of cleverman and you can tell he’s serious because he unlocked his superhero costume, and you only earn the superhero costume when things are about to get real. However, at the end of last week we find many of our characters are in precarious places, Nerida (Jada Alberts) has lost the two girls under her protection, Charlotte (Frances O’Connor) has been kidnapped by Jarli (Clarence Ryan) and her future is still far from being safe, and Alinta (Tamala Shelton) is now trapped in her father Waruu’s (Rob Collins) house, which should be the safest place in the world for her, yet somehow we can’t feel like it is. Now we will be discussing the episode in depth so there may be some [SPOILERS] moving forward.
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TV Review – Cleverman: Muya

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TL;DR – Relationships and repaired and torn, and for some blackmail is the least of their worries

Score – 4 out of 5 stars

Cleverman Muya

Review –

So at the end of last week’s episode Dark Clouds (review) we find that Aunty Linda (Deborah Mailman) didn’t just cause Koen’s (Hunter Page-Lochard) parents deaths through negligence, but she was actively trying to kill them, and then Waruu (Rob Collins) just slit Koen’s throat and slapped on some red kryptonite sap from a Melaleuca to stop him from regenerating. Oh boy, was that a lot to take in, and we have had a week to learn what everyone’s fate will be, and tonight’s episode Muya packs all the same punches and more, as we continue our drive to the end of the season. Just a warning, there will be some [SPOILERS] going forward so be careful.
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TV Review – Cleverman: Bindawu & Dark Clouds

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TL;DR – As Season Two continues we start to see where the lines in the sand will be drawn, and characters are starting to take a stand against the coming storm

Score – 4 out of 5 stars

Cleverman Bindawu & Dark Clouds Banner

Review –

So we continue our look at Cleverman’s second season, and after the carnage of Revival (review), we get a couple of episodes to hold our breath … nope, we continue steam rolling through the season with carnage in our wake. So today we will be discussing both Bindawu & Dark Clouds so there may be some spoilers going forward, however, if you want to be careful and have not watched these episodes, then I would suggest avoiding the paragraph on openings and cliff-hangers towards the bottom.

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TV Review – Cleverman: Revival

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TL;DR – Season 2 opens with a bang, leaves you wanting more, and fearing the worst.

Score – 4.5 out of 5 stars

Cleverman

Review –

Wow what an opener, I mean we loved Season One of Cleverman, but I don’t think anything prepared us for how this first episode of Season Two was going to play out. So to remind everyone of where we left off last season, Koen (Hunter Page-Lochard) had rallied all the remaining residents of The Zone to fight the coming Containment Authority. His brother Waruu (Rob Collins) rejected his family and his people to stand with Jarrod Slade (Iain Glen) who is trying to unlock Hairy DNA and the power it possesses and that creep probably did something to his wife Charlotte’s (Frances O’Connor) pregnancy. Finally, Araluen (Tasma Walton) was able to escape the brothel she had been imprisoned in after killing the minister in charge. All through the season we were building up to the conflict, Koen was understanding and accepting his role as the Cleverman, and then bang season two opens and Koen is dead in a body bag, and you know nothing is safe anymore. So in our review today we are going to be covering all the aspects of the first episode of Season Two, so there will be [SPOILERS] for those who have not seen it yet. If you have not seen Revival yet, you can watch it easily on ABC IView, or SundanceTV, and you should go do that right now.
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TV Review – Cleverman Season 1

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TL;DR –  Cleverman is revolutionary TV show in many ways, its freshman season was a powerful work of cinema, though not a perfect one.

Score – 4 out of 5 Stars

Review –

For those who have not seen the show yet, and you should go fix that, Cleverman is the story of Australia in the not too distant future. Where we lock people up just because they are different or because it is politically convenient for the government to shift the blame on to them, where people have to shed aspects of their cultural identity to try and protect themselves from harm just because they are perceived as being different, and where the government can use the catch-all excuse of ‘national security’ to hide things from the population and to deflect condemnation of the international system. So you know it’s clear that this is fiction because that would never happen in modern Australia…  To do my overview of the first season of the series I am probably going to spoil a couple of things, so you have been warned now to only proceed if you have watched the show.

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