If you want suspense in your murder mystery, you have essentially two options: either you make the victim widely hated, so that you have many…
CIPC #363: Van der Valk S3 E12, Diane
Time and time again, when I encounter yet another British detective series with a chess scene, I have to write a paragraph expressing my astonishment…
CIPC #356: Randall and Hopkirk (deceased) E8, Whoever heard of a ghost dying?
A new year, a new British detective series. Well, new isn’t exactly the right word, seeing that it aired in 1969. It features, as title…
CIPC #351: Faerie tale theatre S3 E4, Thumbelina
Have we had a fairytale yet? I don’t think we have. Let’s have a fairytale. Our subject comes from an American anthology series of fairytales…
CIPC #350: Becker S4 E1, Tell me lies
I’ve never been able to get on with sitcoms. I suspect the reason is that, if you have characters in a normal environment and you…
CIPC #348: Banacek S1 E1, Let’s hear it for a living legend
During the relatively short history of television, an unfathomable number of detective series have been produced in every language under the sun, in all sorts…
CIPC #345: Doctor Who S15 E13, The sun makers part 1
Let’s revisit our recent jelly-baby-loving, bescarfed friend Tom Baker, the fourth doctor. We meet him at the beginning of a new story about a company…
CIPC #340: Doctor Who S14 E17, The robots of death: part one
Doctor Who is perhaps the biggest thing we haven’t covered yet on this blog.1 It started all the way back in the sixties and ran…
CIPC #339: Beauty and the beast S1 E1, Once upon a time in the city of New York
“Huh?” I hear you think “S1E1? Surely there’s no seasons or episodes in Beauty and the beast; it’s a film!” But no. First of all,…
CIPC #337: Lexx S4 E18, The game
I may just have witnessed the most bizarre thing to appear on this blog. It was an episode of a mostly forgotten science fiction series…