TV Review – Smiley

8 Feb 2023

Today over on RoM/Mantic Reads magazine I've posted a review of Spanish lgbt rom-com Smiley, which I've been watching - and thoroughly enjoying - on Netflix. You can read the…

Carnival Row – or should that be Carnival Wow

14 Jul 2022

This series did the rounds on Sky a good few years ago now. I saw Orlando Bloom was in it (as main character Rycroft Philostrate, Philo for short) and jumped…

Stonehenge – new revelations review

23 Mar 202223 Mar 2022

Hands up how many of you have been to Stonehenge? Sadly, I've never quite made it. It's on The List (TM), although there's so much controversy about nearby roads that…

Adriatic Gardens

13 Jan 202213 Jan 2022

I'm watching - and loving - Monty Don's latest gardening/history/travelogue programmes about gardens around the Adriatic. His series are always a delight; many garden programmes focus, not unexpectedly, on the…

Damien – ‘good in parts’

11 Sep 202119 Nov 2021

It's taken me a long time to watch the whole of the Damien TV series - so much so that all the adverts related to Christmas, and the channel that…

Memories of Excalibur

20 Aug 202120 Aug 2021

Nigel Terry as King Arthur, courtesy of thespool.net Does anyone remember the movie Excalibur? It was one of the first Arthurian films I watched, many years ago, and it awoke…

The strange case of the superfluous sword…

14 Jun 2021

What on earth, you might ask, do archaeology show Time Team (above) and a superfluous sword have to do with my latest romance Trench Warfare? Well, quite a bit as…

Great British Dig: lost priories

9 Apr 20219 Apr 2021

I've just finished watching the third episode of the recent series of The Great British Dig, which was filmed on location last autumn during the pandemic. Hats off to the…

In Search of Dracula

11 Dec 2020

Fans of the vampire genre in general, or Dracula in particular, should definitely try to track this BBC4 documentary down. Hosted by writer and horror buff Mark Gatiss, it's a…

Those Old Masters knew a thing or two

17 Nov 2020

BBC4 had a welcome repeat on last night in the shape of Britain's Lost Masterpieces. A kind of spin-off from the more glitzy Fake or Fortune, this is in many…