Although, to be fair, for much of its running time, 50/50 couldn’t be much further away from the territory of Terms of Endearment or Beaches if it tried. They may share an inevitable theme of triumphing over adversity in one form of another (50/50 particularly so, it being based on the real-life experiences of writer Will Reiser), and indeed, the former even gets a name-check (along with a run down list of film stars who had cancer, it’s both very funny, and an accurate portrayal of how we use movies to make sense of our everyday lives), but where those classic weepies were about women discovering their feelings and forming close bonds as a result, 50/50 is definitely aimed at the guys, and so most of its emotional bonding has to be covered up with awkwardness, good-natured but foul-mouthed ribbing and a faint whiff of misogyny.

Taking the role of Reiser’s fictionalised counterpart is Joseph Gordon-Levitt, arguably one of the most dependable young actors in Hollywood, and he’s as solid and dependable as ever here, although, surprisingly he doesn’t get much of a chance to shine. Instead, rather oddly considering the character’s real-life basis, he’s almost something of a cipher, and his tendency to go for inactivity and self-pity, don’t make him particularly appealing.

Better company are Anjelica Huston as his mother and Anna Kendrick as his therapist. While neither are that fleshed out – Huston being the usual well-meaning but demanding mother, Kendrick essentially a ‘manic-pixie-dream-girl’ who managed to get a proper job – both get a fair few well observed moments (in particular the scene where Huston finds out about her son’s illness manages to be heartbreaking and amusing at the same time, thanks to both some sharp scripting and an excellent performance).

But, the film’s not really about them, as hinted at by the poster, and the production credits (and the fact that he worked with Reiser as a writer on Da Ali G Show), 50/50 is very much a Seth Rogen film, with all the positives and negatives that entails. His presence isn’t unwelcome, but it is a bit like letting a bull loose in a china shop, or at least an excitable (or to be more accurate, very stoned) puppy. Rogen is, as ever, essentially playing himself and, while he may leaven some of the film’s darker moments, 50/50 asks a lot of its audience to accept such a broad character. Specifically he does some really quite despicable things, and yet is expected to be excused by the audience for him being a ‘guy’, whereas, Bryce Dallas Howard, as Levitt’s girlfriend, is outrightly vilified and given no opportunity to redeem or even explain herself. It’s both a shame, as it essentially cripples what could have been an intelligent, sensitive film, and also makes you wonder what exactly Howard’s done to piss off Hollywood, having only just played an irredeemable cow in The Help.

It probably wouldn’t matter what time of year 50/50 was released as it would still struggle a bit to find an audience – it’s a bit too touchy feely for the guys, and far too misogynistic for the girls (at one point Levitt’s dating history is described as being a bunch of ‘needy bitches’), and, to make matters worse, the pacing’s all over the place; practically racing through the set-up and the early stages of the illness, while lingering on a climactic operation for what seems like an eternity. That’s not to say that it’s not worthy of your time though, as it manages to be heartfelt and fairly unique take on the relatively unadventurous ‘cancer movie’ sub-genre. And, if you can manage to look past some wild misjudgements of tone, it’s also very funny.

As if the labyrinthine plots (by Saturday teatime drama standards at least) weren’t exhausting enough, there’ve also been my valiant, but ultimately doomed, attempts to get these reviews up on time. Unfortunately I couldn’t even manage it for the season finale, but then I’m actually quite glad that I didn’t even try this week.

Predictably, being a Moffat-penned episode things in The Wedding of River Song got complicated; being a season-finale things got even more complicated; and being a single episode story things got so insanely complicated that the reams of exposition ran the risk of tying themselves up in knots (it’s all very well describing any complicated plot machinations as being ‘timey-wimey’ but it doesn’t really provide a satisfying explanation for some of Moffat’s more outlandish plot ideas) and it took a couple of goes to get my head around it After my first viewing I was convinced that they’d dropped the ball and that The Wedding of River Song was a disappointing conclusion, with numerous gaping plot holes at its heart, but, having had the time to give it a second viewing, it all (just about) made sense.

I’m not saying that it was a great episode; there were some fun moments for the fans with several reappearances of minor characters (and a touching one in the acknowledgment of the death of Nicholas Courtney), some great design moments such as the cars attached to hot air balloons (although not so much from a hair design stand-point, Matt Smith does not look good with long hair unfortunately), a fantastic turn from Karen Gillan (I really think that she’s proven herself to be the star of Moffat’s Who, and I’m very glad that, despite earlier reports, she’s still around for at least another season), and a fun Indiana Jones nod, but the rush and sheer amount of exposition required to cover a complicated plot was ridiculous. (To be fair it wasn’t all bad; the Dalek encounter was just the right length for me, providing a reminder of the brilliance of the initial Christopher Ecceleston episode with them, but not dragging on like most, if not all, subsequent Dalek stories have.) Perhaps most galling was that, after being hinted at for four years, River’s wedding to the Doctor added up to very little, in fact, other than Amy’s confrontation with Madame Kavarian, as well as perhaps her relationship with alternate-Rory, and a creepy reveal of The Silence, none of the emotional peaks really worked. Of course, there’s also the problem that this year’s finale was very similar to last year’s, The Big Bang, once again involving a frantic race to stop the end of everything, and get around a seemingly watertight character death (and in both cases with not the most satisfying explanation). It did make sense though – after the first viewing I was convinced that River’s distress signal contradicted the Doctor’s assertion that time was ‘dying’ but then, the Doctor did specify that the time decay was spreading outwards (I suppose River reaching out from it was no more ludicrous than the ‘bubble’ outside of the universe in The Doctor’s Wife, and that didn’t stop that episode from being amazing). I was also a bit annoyed that the Doctor’s robotic double started regenerating when shot, but then, such trickery would be necessary if the Doctor wanted people to think that he was well and truly dead.

I suppose the question does remain; why was the Doctor ok with allowing River to be charged a crime she didn’t actually do? Was it the fact that he’d already seen how she’d turned out in the future that set his mind at rest: yes, she’d go to prison for his ‘murder’ but she wouldn’t have any trouble in getting herself out? Besides, it’s always a bit of an unsatisfying twist when it turns out that characters have been lying for no good reason. Actually, now I come to think about it I’m a bit confused as to why the Doctor felt the need to disappear. Will next year’s season answer that question? Does it need to? (After all, I’m pretty psyched that they’re finally asking the question “Doctor Who?”, even if it will be a year too early for the 50^th anniversary in 2013.) Whatever happens, hopefully Moffat will manage to use the half-season length to tell a simpler story, rather than frantically jamming a thirteen-episode long story into six, but, even though I don’t expect he’ll be able to do that, I’m still looking forward to it.

Yes, probably. But then such bold statements seem necessary to justify adding yet another enthusiastic review to the already sizeable pile that the film’s attracted. And, for that matter, to work out what makes a movie based around fairly unoriginal, unremarkable plotting feel so essential.

If a musical comparison was to be drawn with Drive, odds are it wouldn’t be punk. Given that the film mostly unfolds to the sounds of supercool pulsating electro (a late dip into light opera takes things a bit too far, but it’s the only weak link on the soundtrack), it comes in right on trend with the current eighties revival. And to cement the link further, there’s the clothes, sunglasses, and the lurid pink titles (and even a moment where Gosling’s unnamed protagonist cradles a young child in his manly arms, like the return of the infamous Athena poster). Not to mention the fact that the film, in a way, harks back to the era’s action cinema; its outsider on a bloody mission plot fitting neatly into the grimy wave of revenge flicks that sprung up around First Blood.

But while the music might not be punk, the attitude sure is. Action films over the past decade have, like prog-rock, become ridiculously bloated, over-long, and often boringly waffled on about space, and, like how the luddite simplicity of punk rock acted as a much needed refresher to prog, Drive’s straightforwardness feels like a welcome respite from the excesses of Michael Bay and his imitators. Perhaps the most striking thing about Drive is the sheer amount of spite the film has for Hollywood, and even by extension, in the spirit of Godard’s Le Mepris, the role of Europeans (like director Nicholas Winding Refn) within that system: Albert Brooks’ (oddly eyebrow-less) antagonist Bernie spits out the assessment of the soft-core flicks he used to produce, “Some critics called them European, I thought they were shit”. Bernie’s background in movie production also serves to neatly undermine the dream-like, aspirational nature of the Hollywood-created myth, as in truth, it’s all just product: it’s not a case of William Goldman’s ‘Nobody knows anything’, but rather ‘Nobody gives a shit’. At the risk of getting myself into some rather dodgy territory, perhaps it’s significant that Brooks and the brilliant-as-ever Ron Perlman portray Jewish inductees to the mafia, reflecting the frequent (and racist) observation that the town is run by the Jews.

But where Drive’s attack on Hollywood mores matters most is in its treatment of violence. Wisely, instead of featuring yet another dashing, indestructible hero who commits oddly bloodless mass murder, Drive’s hero is distant, awkward and, with his quickness to violence, possibly mentally ill. To once again run the risk of causing offence, I was convinced that Gosling was playing his character as being somewhere on the autistic spectrum, effortlessly elegant when behind the wheel but otherwise struggling to connect emotionally with the characters, even taking a while to warm to love interest Irene (a perhaps miscast, but still reliably luminous Carey Mulligan) and her young son. In particular his scenes with Christina Hendricks’ Blanche look almost as uncomfortable for him to get through as they are for the audience to watch. While Drive does fall into the usual action movie trap of not knowing what to do with its female characters, they do serve the purpose of making the already sickening violence seem even more uncomfortably real; Blanche’s terrified screams and Irene’s catatonic shock linger in the memory long after the movie ends.

(That’s not to say that Drive always goes for realism over style: at one point Gosling disguises himself with a mask stolen from a film set – which, perhaps intentionally, looks rather like a hairless Tom Cruise – and yet doesn’t think to remove his distinctive, and by now blood-stained, jacket; a particularly violent scene takes place in the dressing room of a strip-club, presumably so the background can be filled with seemingly bored topless women looking on; and Refn does sort of have his cake and eat it by presenting his protagonist as both dangerous oddball and superhero, as highlighted by the relentlessly catchy vocal hook from College’s A Real Hero, but then these touches don’t undermine the film. And they are very cool.)

There’s also the matter of motive. ‘Driver’ might only involve himself because of that classic narrative device ‘love’, but the rest of the characters are fighting for survival. There’s no hint that the sack of cash that acts as the film’s McGuffin will improve anybody’s lives should they manage to get their hands on it: Irene will still remain a downtrodden single mother; Bernie will still continue to operate out of a run-down pizza parlour (complete with greasy-looking photos and blown light bulbs around the menu); Driver wouldn’t really care for it; and his boss Shannon (a grizzled, endearingly pathetic Bryan Cranston) would inevitable blow it.

If all that wasn’t enough in the way of punk attitude, Drive even has it’s own Sex Pistols on the Bill Grundy show moment with Refn’s sweary BBC Breakfast News appearance. Although his confusion seems fair; it was a bit ludicrous having a discussion about such a painfully violent movie at nine in the morning.

So Drive might be a punk action film, a brutal burst of energy that hopefully will prove something of an inspiration for potential filmmakers in the audience. But even if it isn’t, there are many other things that Drive might be: it might be the most thrilling film of 2011; it might even be the most cutting movie about movies since Mulholland Drive (coincidentally both movies won the Best Director award at Cannes, a decade apart). What it definitely is is a film that’s genuinely adult, in the best sense of the word.

The setting did allow for some fun characters and jokes – such as the very ‘chavvy’ shop assistant being subdued by the Doctor’s shushing trick (although I expect that it was described as only working on lower life forms means that somebody will have complained to the BBC about class prejudice) – but, more importantly, the simplicity of the set-up (the very first episode of the new Who, Rose, being fairly similar) meant that there was some room to play around. There were quite a lot of nice little callbacks and meta jokes, such as the Doctor, when working in the toy department, comparing Yappy the robot dog to K9; the callback to the last episode of the first half of this series in which the Doctor made the rather spurious claim that he could ’speak baby’; the cheap, but still amusing, ‘got an app for that’ gag; or the confusion over Craig being a ‘partner’ or a ‘companion’ – yet another Who gay joke, and although I do somewhat sympathise with those who think that it’s getting laid on a bit thick now, it’s nice that the show continues to acknowledge its sizeable gay fanbase as there are an awful lot of them out there after all (incidentally has anybody worked out why this is the case? I have my own theories as to the Doctor providing a safe, supportive substitute father figure in childhood, but I’ve not given much thought to the subject).

Other than James Corden, there were aspects that I had problems with, namely the Cyberman creation process (I didn’t actually have much of a problem with the Cybermen themselves this time, which might be a first for the new Who), as it was a much more clean, painless affair than the horrifyingly bloody version we saw in series 2. Although of course, I seem to recall that they didn’t show it in much detail back then, and besides, if it had been quite so drastic, it would have meant that Craig would have come to a sticky end without finding out that he was a devoted dad after all. Which would have been a bit of downer for Saturday night viewing, even for people like me who hate James Corden. I wasn’t overly sure about the Amy and Rory cameo, although I’m not going to go so far as to claim that the episode would have been better of without it in, as it did, in a way, provide further evidence of Amy being the most interesting companion in the new Who – where Rose would have spent her time away from the Doctor moping around and Martha and Donna would have loudly insisted they didn’t care while going on with their boring mundane lives, at least Amy took some initiative (was the ‘girl who’s tired of waiting’ tagline on the poster just a little in-joke, or was it another case of her trying to get the Doctor’s attention?) I also didn’t care for the moment where the Doctor gave an inspiring speech to the loveable urchins before flying off to his death – I know that it was his way of getting River’s attention, but it just reminded me of the horribly saccharine final moments of David Tennant’s Doctor. Actually, I’m still not sure why the Doctor had to go to his death (or rather, what he believes to be his death as we all know that he’ll be fine) at that moment, but then that’s the problem with a time-travelling drama, it’s very hard to actually keep characters within the traditional cause-and-effect cycle, and so very flimsy rules have to be introduced to try and keep this in check.

But it does lead very neatly into the final episode of the series. How they’re going to fit it all in, I have no idea, but it’s going to be fun finding out.

It’s particularly bad that I’ve been falling behind when it’s been, for the most part, an excellent series this year (admittedly, it has caused the Guardian to run an article asking if the show’s getting too complicated but, as the only bad episodes – the pirate-y one and the one from a couple of weeks ago about the really annoying child in the tower block, and about half of that living plastic one – were the ones that talked down to the audience, of course I’m going to disagree with that).

And The God Complex was no exception. I’m not a huge fan of Being Human, the show that made episode writer Toby Whithouse’s career (like Buffy seasons 5 and six it’s gotten rather bogged down by its own mythology and ‘darkness’ but somehow managed to get there in merely a few episodes), but his first Who episode, School Reunion, was one of the highlights of the Tennant years (I must admit that I don’t remember much about last year’s Vampires of Venice, which probably means that it wasn’t that good) and this had the same brisk pace and wit. It was actually a real joy seeing David Walliams in something where he wasn’t relying on catchphrases, campery or borderline racism for laughs (Rock Profile seems like a very long time ago now), I’d forgotten how good a comedic performer he is. And although only given limited screen time, I think the episode also did an effective job of introducing the character of Rita, making her seem like a potential companion for the Doctor and then giving her a decent send-off.

Not that there was much else to take away from this week’s episode. It was mostly excellent, but not a game changer…. Other than the fact that it took on, as the title suggested, the Doctor’s god-like image (perhaps the Guardian were onto something? Arguably the last show to elevate its characters to messianic status was Lost, and that really didn’t turn out well). But although the emotional climax where the Doctor tried to save Amy from himself was well done, I do wonder how dramatic a shift it actually was, after all Amy’s confronted the Doctor and questioned his authority several times in past episodes. (But then real world character logic isn’t the most useful tool when it comes to unpicking Who, otherwise Amy would have spent this second half of the series crying in the Tardis about her lost child, the death of her other self, and most importantly perhaps, witnessing the death of the Doctor, and nobody wants to watch that.) Yes, the episode did see Amy and Rory leave the Tardis, but I think we’re all aware that this is only going to be for an episode to work around the filming schedule, and that they’ll be back in time for the finale.

I would say that a fair amount of the episode’s tricks were precisely that, being there just for show rather than for plot relevance. Take, for example, the jumbled lettering in the background of the ‘freak out’ shots, or the photos of past victims on the walls with their greatest fears underneath – both good, creepy ideas, but they didn’t have much meaning behind them (I’m hoping that the Daleks popping up as one of the captions is the extent of their rumoured appearance this series, but I doubt it). While I’m picking holes, I’d also like to point out that I’m a bit confused as to how Gibbis managed to be in the same room as his greatest fear, but was unaffected; even if he did hide in the cupboard with his eyes closed surely everybody else would have tried to do the same? It could also be said that the moving ending where the monster turned out to be pitiful rather than fearsome is something of a default ending for a Who story now (you could argue that it’s performing a valuable service in that it’s taking things that children could be frightened by and encouraging them to understand and empathise with them, although it’s debatable if the running theme, that I wrote about in the previous episode’s review, of the good intentions of authority figures inadvertently causing pain and suffering is quite so helpful). But none of these are really genuine complaints; honestly I enjoyed pretty much every minute of The God Complex.

Anyway, I’ll be cutting this review short so I can focus on perhaps getting the next one out on time (or near enough). The big question about that one being will it do for James Corden what this week’s did for David Walliams?

Although, the stripped back nature did also cause some problems, and I don’t mean the effects. Actually, for once on Doctor Who, the effects were really good – the ageing job they did on Gillan was convincing and, while it did look a bit cheap for a state of the art medical facility, I thought the set design was suitably imaginative. The problem was that, with only a few characters involved, none of whom were in the same room for very long, an awful lot of the episode revolved around expository conversations held over the ether (even worse, through a very silly looking giant magnifying glass), which made getting into the first half of the episode rather hard work.

And while I’m picking holes, I can’t not mention the fact that the same thing happened to Rory earlier on in the season, during The Doctor’s Wife (which, coincidentally is probably the only episode this season that trumps this one in the emotional stakes), although I suppose there it was merely a trick rather than something that has the potential to have some interesting/devastating repercussions (I can’t say I was that keen on Amy’s last line, ‘Where is she?’ it would have been a bit neater if it had ended just before that with Rory watching her sleep and leaving the rest in the audience’s imagination, for now at least). Besides, I’ve already gone into Rory’s run of bad luck, so perhaps best to avoid doing so again.

Yes, questions and niggles did arise, such as how the hell did Amy manage to construct her own sonic screwdriver (or ‘probe’), how the dual time-stream would work, whether the two Amy’s meeting was one of those peskily catastrophic paradoxes that generally exist to give time-travel drama some sense of rules, limitations and peril and, if being left alone for 36 years would have meant that Amy would have really been even more crazy than how she turned out. But then it doesn’t really matter. The sonic screwdriver’s a bit of a cop-out at the best of times, so it’s best not to think too hard about it, the same goes for the time-stream device, which like many great sci-fi ideas was most likely impossible but raised some interesting questions. What I was actually left thinking about was, despite The Doctor being painted as a godly, benevolent figure with the human race’s best interests at heart (something Moffat, through Amy, has been keen to undermine – which is one of the many reasons why she’s leapt to the top of my list of favourite companions, and something that MacRae also picked up and ran with here), is there in fact a streak of libertarianism to the show? The untrustworthy nature of organisations, even when they have your best interests at heart, is something that’s featured a lot throughout the series, and here applies perfectly to the ‘handbots’ who, thanks to an inability to comprehend any complications (just like the ‘anti-bodies’ in Let’s Kill Hitler, while I’m on the medical-robot theme), end up killing with kindness. If I had more time I’d delve into these ideas further, although I suppose it might be something to keep me occupied in a few weeks’ time when the season finishes – even if though I bet it’s already been covered in enough depth elsewhere (there’s already at least one book available on the subject of the show’s philosophy).

I’m still a bit perplexed about the Macarena though, but I’m willing to concede that that was just a funny little detail to make what was a very painful episode more palatable to a family audience. After all, I expect there’ll be more than a few traumatised kids and confused parents (or vice versa) after the older Amy’s intensely creepy ‘Don’t let me in’ speech, and (of course) her death scene. But then if upsetting small children is the price to pay for saturday evening TV that genuinely borders on being ‘art’ then I’m all for it.

I was probably right to be wary as I found the episode really quite annoying. Mainly because it revolved mostly around an eight-year old boy hyperventilating. After Let’s Kill Hitler’s manic plot, this week seemed rather lacking, although it does make it mercifully easier to write about . And some of the lines of dialogue really didn’t ring true at all – particularly the exchange between Mays’ Alex and the cartoonishly evil landlord (I had no problem with his dog though).

Other than the obvious Fear Her comparison (and, it must be said, this episode never approached the awfulness of that one), I was reminded of Moffat’s magnificent The Girl in the Fireplace, or at least the opening of it where clockwork robots invaded the future Madame de Pompadour’s bedroom (the bizarre wooden doll monsters were even dressed for roughly the same period). And the old lady being sucked into the bin bags was rather like what happened to Mickey back in the first episode of the Who revival. Was the evil Dollhouse setting where the climax of the episode happened original though? I can’t think of any similar settings in past Who adventures off the top of my head, but it does feel like something that would have been used at some point – perhaps in a Patrick Troughton story.

To be positive about the episode, I liked the setting – Doctor Who may have already done the council estate thing with Rose’s storyline, but this block seemed to be much more imposing and menacing – and although the decor was rather too retro (had they just unearthed the Nelson Mandela House set from Only Fools and Horses?), the subdued lighting rather suited Matt Smith’s mug (yes, weird thing to notice, which might suggest the bulk of the episode wasn’t good enough to hold my attention – I also found myself a bit distracted by some of the editing as it’s not often that you see ‘wipes’ used in Who). There were a few funny lines here and there too, which were much appreciated, in particular the woman’s bending the Doctor’s ear over the state of the bins (that most British of complaints), and Rory’s conviction that he was dead ‘again’. But it was a bit of a poor show really, and, judging by the action heavy trailer for next week’s episode, I don’t have particularly high hopes for that one either.

And Let’s Kill Hitler was a very Moffat episode – whirlwind to the point of exhausting, but so stuffed full of events and one-liners that even when one fell flat, there was another one along in a minute. So much so that I had to watch it twice before even starting on this review, and I still feel like I should have given it another run-through, but there’s not really enough time, so feel free to mention your favourite bits, or the worst bits, that I’ve inevitably forgotten about, in the comments section

The sheer energy of the episode did help though as it could have been controversial if it had taken itself a bit more seriously – mainly the Third Reich setting (I liked River’s ‘I was just on my way to a gay gypsy bar mitzvah for the disabled’ line), and the use of Hitler as a villain (I liked the fact that it turned out he was mainly included to provide a ridiculous title rather than do much – I think we’ve all had our fill of dramas featuring him for a while). I would have thought that the Doctor’s ‘You big ginge’ insult would have drawn a few complaints, but apparently the only one the press dug up was something about one of the German lines apparently sounding like ‘fuck’, which I didn’t notice either time I watched the episode.

Of course it was also a very River Song episode (despite the name, I actually didn’t twig instantly that Mel was in fact Melody/River) which is, in my opinion, a very good thing – I’ve spotted some sniffy comments about the character and Moffat’s fondness for her here and there but I’m still enjoying both her character and Alex Kingston’s obvious enthusiasm for a playing a kick-arse role. In fact I’d gladly watch her own spin-off series if there was one, even though we know the most important parts of her story now – we’ve now covered how it starts and how it ends, so there should only be a few key details to be filled in (in particular does she marry/kill the Doctor?) which I expect will happen by the end of this season (I expect the rather clumsy reminder about her being the little girl in spacesuit in the opening double bill – ‘the last time I did this I was a girl in New York’ – was Moffat attempting to draw us along that line of thinking again, as was the more obvious questioning from Amy at the end of the episode about why the future River was locked up at the end of the episode, it’s not going to be that obvious though, surely?). Either way, it’s been fascinating to see the progression of the character, from a guest role in season four, to this. You do wonder if it’s all been planned by Moffat since introducing her in the Silence in the Library, but while he obviously had a basic idea of who/what she was before taking over as showrunner, I expect he’s only been filling in the details as he’s been going along – otherwise Mel would have featured in an earlier episode. On a related note, there was a lot of speculation as to whether Amy and Rory would leave at the end of this season to take care of their daughter, but will this be ruled out now – as they only became a couple thanks to the influence of the older version of their daughter, wouldn’t it be too much of a paradox to have them then go back and rescue her as a baby/young girl? I’m hoping that Moffat isn’t going to do what Davies never had the courage to and actually kill a companion (or two) off – yes, it should happen sometime, but I’d rather it didn’t have to happen with the still very enjoyable Amy and Rory. I can see it happening in a few weeks though, and am kind of dreading the thought of it.

I’m really not sure where to start on picking apart this final episode (whether this will be the absolute final episode remains to be seen however – the Guardian reported earlier in the week that Morgan is working on scripts for series 2 but, I would still be surprised if it was renewed judging by the reaction this series had), there seemed to be so many things wrong with it. Although, admittedly, there’s also the small matter of the fact that I got bored and nodded off at the halfway point of the episode so things that were already hopelessly muddled and nonsensical were made even more so – I did think that I should probably go back and watch those ten minutes before writing this review, but despite having sat through the previous five episodes, I really couldn’t be bothered, which says it all really.

Perhaps the most pointless thing in the episode, and in fact the series as a whole, was Issac. Not only was there a fair amount of chatter at the start of the episode about his satirical sketch that had somehow ended up in the broadcast, due to there being, as Bel pointed out, a lack of useable footage for any of the week’s top news stories, but there was also his burgeoining romance with the equally pointless, and irritating, secretary Sissy (her complaining to Bel after the demise of the show that she couldn’t bear to go back to the mailroom was both irritating and inappropriate). When a series gives more screen-time to two such weak characters than its greatest asset – Anna Chancellor’s Lix – there’s something very wrong with it.

As for the most perplexing thing about this episode, I’m not sure I could pin it down. Was it the heartfelt speech from Lord Elms at how concerned he was about disappointing the young Freddie when he took him in as an evacuee, or Bel’s continuing career in television production. It’s a shame that after being so incredible in the Crimson Petal and the White, Romola Garai was stuck with such a wet role here – her comeback to Hector’s ‘I love you’ was nicely sharp (even though I could have done without the return of the jazzy sax in their scenes) but the rest, not so much. For a start it’s kind of unbelievable that she would be able to leave a massive gap in the schedule of the live show she was producing for some mysterious last-minute story from Freddie and when she started going on about the job being the thing she had been waiting for her whole life – despite being 28 (I’m still not sure if a 28 year old woman would be able to produce a news show in the BBC of the 1950s), I kind of wanted to slap her in the face. Instead she got the cliched appreciative slow-clap to commend her bravery from her crew at the end of the broadcast (which wasn’t as sickening as Hector describing Freddie as ‘a hero’).

The most obvious candidate for the most credibility-stretching moment though was the reveal as Clarence as a Soviet spy, which was hard to swallow as it necessitated both a serious jump to conclusions from Freddie and a whole ream of expository dialogue (it would’ve made more sense if Lix had been the spy, and I was sort of expecting that to be the case – although I suppose Morgan wanted to keep her on in case there is a second run). It also meant that the series ended on a complete anti-climax – not only was it unclear if Bel’s firing still stood but absolutely nothing happened with Clarence after his ridiculously long speech, which felt like a bit of a slap in the face after sitting through six hours of this stuff.

There were a few moments that struck a chord with issues in the BBC and British society today, particularly Bel’s aspirations to provide balanced journalism – still a stick that the BBC news-output is beaten with today, but it really just wasn’t enough to raise any more than fleeting interest. But never mind, Doctor Who’s back this weekend, and I have a feeling that those recaps will be a lot more enjoyable.

Being the penultimate episode, we were given an answer, or at least a half answer, as to who was at the heart of the conspiracy (pretty much everyone), and who Brightstone was (it being a Russian codeword for young, well-connected Brits who might make good spies, so once again pretty much everyone). It wasn’t the most satisfying of reveals, but with one episode left there’s still time to turn it around, and, to give the show some credit, it was an interesting development having the very Russian Kish on the side of the British, while the very British Professor Darrall was recruiting for the Russians.

Otherwise… Bel and Hector’s affair was uncovered, which was hardly surprising as they weren’t being particularly discrete (the first scene of the episode in fact being Freddie pretty much walking in on them, although Freddie being as self-absorbed as he is, he didn’t really notice) and Ben Whishaw looking alarmingly like my gran when Hector, to avoid the ever-present MI6 agents, disguised him with the aid of a woman’s scarf that had been conveniently left behind in the studio (it did get them past the agents outside though, so it’s fair to say that MI6 didn’t have their best men on the job). And that  was about it – it being a rather slow paced episode of an already glacially slow series. But something should happen next week, it’s the last episode - it has to.