Television

Television Review – My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic

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We were a little surprised when Olivia Cottrell first asked to write a review of the new My Little Pony series. After all, she’s not exactly the girly-girl type. But then, from the sound of it, neither is the series… 

When you hear ‘My Little Pony’, what springs to mind? Chances are you’ll think of the pastel, plastic doe-eyed monstrosities that were advertised with an equally vapid cartoon- strictly the territory of little girls, and not particularly discerning ones at that. However, if you’ve spent a little time on the Internet recently, you might have noticed the growing popularity of a modern version of the cartoon. Entitled My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic, this new series has enchanted a new demographic of 18-35 year old males (among others) and consequently taken the Internet by storm. Fan art, fan fiction and pony-dedicated websites abound in every corner of the web. So what has made this show so popular? Has the Internet finally gone mad? And what on earth is a Sonic Rainboom?

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Game of Thrones Review – Ep 9: ‘Baelor’

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War. Huh! What is it good for? Reviewer Kieran Mathers finds out, and wonders whether the show will deliver on all its promises. Be warned that there are mild spoilers ahead. And, for those of you not yet up to speed, check out our Game Of Thrones primer.

How to talk about this episode without ruining it? Not mention the end, I suppose. Fans of the book, you know what’s coming and they don’t change it one bit. Those of you who have not read ahead … well, you’ve got such a treat coming. It’s the one moment in this show that I wish I hadn’t known about in advance. It’s brilliant, and one of the bravest things I’ve ever seen from a major TV show. I don’t know if the popularity of this show will continue, but if it fails after the properly commissioned second series; well, at least they have their integrity. Bravo, everyone involved, bravo.

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Game of Thrones Review – 1.08: ‘The Pointy End’

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If you want a job done properly, do it yourself. But, as Game of Thrones plunges ever closer to its bloody climax, Kieran Mathers wonders if authors are the best people to adapt their own works. Our usual mild spoiler warning applies.

This week’s episode was written by the man himself, G.R.R Martin, author of the entire A Song of Ice and Fire series. Normally, I’d wonder why they called on the author to adapt his own material, as it calls for different skills – you don’t see Joanne Rowling writing the scripts for the Harry Potter movies, for example. But in this case it works. Martin has a huge amount of experience in writing screenplays for shows such as The Twilight Zone and I think it’s clear that, like Douglas Adams, he also understands the difference in format.

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Game of Thrones Review – 1.07 ‘You Win or You Die’

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Things are hotting up in Westeros but Kieran Mathers wonders just how far a show should go to keep its audience interested. Perhaps the Starks just need a brisk walk…

An awful lot of Game of Thrones is exposition. It’s not a police procedural, after all, and the world has to be defined through dialogue as there is little else to relate it to an unfamiliar audience. Disguising this exposition is one of the hardest tricks for a writer to pull off. One solution is to have a distraction or a gimmick to make such scenes more visually interesting. TV is a visual medium and has been taking advantage of this for a long time.

A great example of this is The West Wing. To keep expository scenes interesting, writer Aaron Sorkin made the characters walk. It didn’t matter where they were walking, just that the dialogue had some action to it. He later admitted the only reason he had done this is to stop characters talking to each other statically, and in the process created a new verb: ‘To sorkin’ – the act of walking fiercely in one direction while holding a rapid-fire conversation. Intelligence and a good sense of direction is required.

However, Game of Thrones has discovered something different in the form of visual gimmicks: noble butchery and … sigh … lesbian tryouts. I wish I were kidding.

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Game of Thrones Review – 1.06: ‘A Golden Crown’

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HBO’s headline fantasy series is gathering pace and our reviewer, Kieran Mathers, is enjoying the ride… As always, some mild spoilers lie ahead. If you’re new to the world of Westeros, be sure to check out our primer.

Gosh. When you don’t think it can get any better, this show manages to up the bar once more. There is so much good to talk about in this episode that I’m going to get the bad out of the way first so we can enjoy what was yet another spectacular episode.

I probably should have mentioned this last week, but I hate what they’ve done with the Eyrie. It is the first major visual misstep (barring plaster) that the show has made. In the books, the Eyrie sits atop a mountain spur, higher almost than the clouds, an impregnable fortress with an incredibly treacherous path leading up to it. It could have looked absolutely amazing, with stunning views from the top – a smaller Minas Tirith of the mountains.

What we get instead is something that looks more like the Dome of the Rock – a temple rather than a castle. For some reason it also appeared to have taken over a small hilltop instead of a high mountain crag.

I think I can understand why the show’s designers decided to do it that way, thinking perhaps that each area has to be visually distinct. But to fall into the trap of thinking that the Eyrie should not have stone walls and battlements because the other castles we have seen also possess those is akin to saying a dog is a cat as both have fur.

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Game of Thrones Review – 1.05: ‘The Wolf and the Lion’

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Swords are finally clashing in Game of Thrones and our reviewer Kieran Mathers is on hand to pick over the aftermath. As always, this review comes with a mild spoiler warning. If you’re new to Game of Thrones, don’t forget to check out our primer!

At last we get some meaty and considerable violence! Headless horses, charging knights, sweeping swords, battering shields and brother-on-brother duelling – this is combat at its most graphic, and all the stronger for it. The violence of G.R.R. Martin’s prose is not lessened, and is all the more horrifying to see. In fact, this episode is all about violence and its consequences. You also get noisy blowjobs, but hey, it’s HBO.

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