R.J. Decker Season 2 Review: Compassion Keeps the Cases Moving
Wish and Catherine join a flash mob to help catch a pickpocket, with Dancing with the Stars personalities supplying some...
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Lana understands Arabic and refuses to speak it. That refusal gives her return to Beirut a particular discomfort: she can follow the conversations around her while withholding the response that would place her inside them. Twenty-five years after leaving, she has come back because her estranged father is dying, yet familiarity offers little reassurance. In Tina Gharavi’s Shadows of Beirut, language survives the separation that Lana has tried to impose on her life. Her silence allows her to keep participating on restricted terms, hearing a world she remains reluctant to acknowledge as her own. The same selective disclosure governs her...

Arthur can send an enemy across the screen, catch it after a rebound, and continue hitting it before it reaches the ground. Blades & Battles makes that sequence surprisingly approachable. Basic attacks feed into launchers and aerial follow-ups, while the tutorial explains how to connect airborne punishment with attacks on the ground. The immediate pleasure comes from understanding a few inputs and discovering how much action they can sustain. You get to experiment with a combo while the unfortunate creature receiving it has very little say in proceedings. Keeping that sequence going becomes a different problem when other enemies close...

Dim light and a drained palette give Frieda’s medieval Dutch village a grim permanence. Its inhabitants seem to have mistaken endurance for righteousness. In Didier Konings’s Heresy, originally titled Witte Wieven, the restricted setting makes a woman’s private suffering impossible to keep private: Frieda cannot conceive, and her husband Hikko treats that difficulty as her failure. The photography gives this judgment an oppressive physical setting. There is little visual relief from the world that judges her, and little social distance between marital accusation and religious authority. Even the shadows seem thoroughly domesticated. The forest disrupts that visual discipline. When the...

Wish and Catherine join a flash mob to help catch a pickpocket, with Dancing with the Stars personalities supplying some recognizable faces. The second season of R.J. Decker makes its invitation to return pleasantly uncomplicated: familiar people, public spectacle, a crime that can accommodate choreography. The crossover also places the series within television’s habit of letting one entertainment property wave cheerfully through another’s window. Here, at least, the guests have something to do. Their appearance participates in the investigation, establishing a world where social connections and ridiculous distractions can both prove useful. That principle carries into the opening cases. Bank...

Derek Banbury smiles when he talks about how much Derek Gow annoys him. You can hear the objection and see the pleasure of having someone worth objecting to. Banbury farms dairy cattle in Devon; his neighbor has given up sheep farming to restore wildlife to his land. Their disagreements have consequences, but that smile makes it difficult to settle into the comfortable business of picking a hero and waiting for the other man to embarrass himself. There is affection here, or at least enough familiarity to leave room for it. The feeling of being caught between two people who might...

Ben chooses Lil’s graduation ceremony to announce that he will move to London with her. She is about to cross the stage; he has finally settled a question that affects both their futures. Soon afterwards, another declaration arrives at an awkwardly decisive moment. Having cheated the night before their move, he confesses once they have signed for their flat. These two decisions establish the imbalance that Jess Bray’s Break Clause spends six episodes examining. Ben acts, hesitates, then speaks when Lil’s options have already narrowed. Their relationship can end on moving day. Their six-month tenancy cannot. The monthly episode structure...
Wish and Catherine join a flash mob to help catch a pickpocket, with Dancing with the Stars personalities supplying some...
Read moreDetailsEpisode three gives Carrie White a happy night while Chris Hargensen’s life begins coming apart. Mike Flanagan’s eight-part Carrie finds...
Read moreDetailsCathy Ames gets to speak the words that once classified her. The description of monsters born to human parents, used...
Read moreDetailsBoiúna becomes most frightening when a human body gives her a scale. A survivor watches the serpent moving nearby, and...
Read moreDetailsVerity Crawford’s publishers have a practical problem. Their bestselling author has survived a car accident but appears unable to speak,...
Read moreDetailsBAFTA has changed how it will run its Scotland Awards next month so that John Davidson, the Tourette's campaigner whose life inspired I Swear, can take part without a repeat of the racial slur he involuntarily shouted at February's film ceremony. The British Academy set out the plans in a...
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Read moreLana understands Arabic and refuses to speak it. That refusal gives her return to Beirut a particular discomfort: she can follow the conversations around her while withholding the response that...
Arthur can send an enemy across the screen, catch it after a rebound, and continue hitting it before it reaches the ground. Blades & Battles makes that sequence surprisingly approachable....
Dim light and a drained palette give Frieda’s medieval Dutch village a grim permanence. Its inhabitants seem to have mistaken endurance for righteousness. In Didier Konings’s Heresy, originally titled Witte...
Wish and Catherine join a flash mob to help catch a pickpocket, with Dancing with the Stars personalities supplying some recognizable faces. The second season of R.J. Decker makes its...
Derek Banbury smiles when he talks about how much Derek Gow annoys him. You can hear the objection and see the pleasure of having someone worth objecting to. Banbury farms...
Ben chooses Lil’s graduation ceremony to announce that he will move to London with her. She is about to cross the stage; he has finally settled a question that affects...
Losing all your health in Kalanoro doesn’t have to mean losing the collectibles you’ve found. Spend some collected currency to continue, and those discoveries stay with you. Falling into a...
Episode three gives Carrie White a happy night while Chris Hargensen’s life begins coming apart. Mike Flanagan’s eight-part Carrie finds its strongest reason to exist in that pairing. The girl...
Cathy Ames gets to speak the words that once classified her. The description of monsters born to human parents, used by John Steinbeck to introduce her, becomes Florence Pugh’s opening...
BAFTA has changed how it will run its Scotland Awards next month so that John Davidson, the Tourette's campaigner whose life inspired I Swear, can take part without a repeat...
Arthur can send an enemy across the screen, catch it after a rebound, and continue hitting it before it reaches...
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