Latest reviews

From 1963 to 1966 The Five O'Clock Club met every Tuesday and Friday.

This fondly remembered epic children’s drama created by Sid Waddell, set over four series, each featuring a different generation of the Flaxton boys, was inspired by a lunch-time meeting in a pub and an offer that an upcoming writer couldn't refuse.

Fresh from a third-rate career in the music halls, forty-year-old Arnie Cole (Bob Hoskins) has turned movie pioneer, showing single-reel films in makeshift cinemas during the first quarter of the twentieth century.

Long-running 1950s afternoon programme designed to help women improve their domestic skills with tips on everything they could wish to know about from cookery to soft furnishings and needlework to bringing up baby and doing their own DIY.

The first ever British made filmed series, shot by Trinity Productions for the BBC and consisting of 39 black and white episodes, Fabian of Scotland Yard has been described as Britain's first generation of the TV detective.

Jimmy Edwards series of one-off sitcoms that introduced a minor supporting character actor who would go on to become 'the guv'nor' of British comedy...Ronnie Barker.

Naylor and Freeman is the name of a firm of solicitors. There are five partners and each handles a variety of cases.

Phyllis Cradock and her third husband Major John Cradock were quickly poached from the BBC's Kitchen Magic in 1955 to present ITV's first cookery programme.

Astronaut John Crichton is on a test flight of his module, Farscape 1, when a spatial wormhole opens directly in his path.

TV's first sleuth in clerical clothing was adapted in 1974 from the novels of G.K. Chesterton.

1960s comedy that was heavily influenced by the classic Will Hay comedy Where's That Fire? that had been shot twenty-five years earlier at the same Elstree studio.

Sitcom about a man falling headlong into the calamity of mid-life-crisis who fakes his own suicide.

Hard hitting and somewhat bleak drama series about a cold but passionate policewoman who goes head to head with a cold serial killer in Belfast.

Studio-bound Children's drama series set in the Aztec period starring former Doctor Who Patrick Troughton; formerly the hero of millions - but here the villain of the piece.

A female official takes her seat on a local council. But the no-nonsense councillor has to face up to the bureaucracy of both local and central government.

Following the exploits of Colonel Steve Zodiac as he piloted the 300ft rocket propelled spaceship Fireball XL5, this puppet series captured the imagination of the public at a time when the space race between the USA and Russia was at its height.

Lavish 17th century costume drama full of political intrigue, manipulating women and sexual promiscuity.

Generation gap comedy starring middle-aged divorcee Patrick Glover, the author of a series of pulp fiction novels, who is left to bring up his two teenage daughters (Anna and Karen) in trendy Hampstead when his wife, Barbara, runs off to marry his best friend.

"...Glenda Jackson totally submersed herself in the role by reading everything she could find about Elizabeth in order to get a deep understanding of the Queen. And this shines out from her performance as she delivers each line with an authority of a true monarch."

US sitcom starring Ellen DeGeneres

Britain's first medical soap, which was also the first of the country's twice-weekly serials, went on to become one of the nation’s best loved programmes, reaching an average audience of 16 million people a week and 24 million at its peak.

ER first hit the television screens with all the speed and force of an express train in 1994, and immediately earned the label of 'rock 'em - sock 'em' television, hardly giving the viewer a chance to catch breath as each story-line unfolded.

British-produced anthology series along similar lines to Douglas Fairbanks Presents; both were made to cash in on the growing US and British television markets.

Two of British comedy's most popular stars came together for this highly original and cleverly written series.

Emotional drama about living with the effects and heartbreak of Alzheimer's

After retiring from a life of espionage Robert McCall goes into business as a private investigator - a modern-day Robin Hood acting as a righter of wrongs.

Allegedly based on the case-files of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, The F.B.I. was endorsed by none other than the Bureau's real-life chief of operations, J. Edgar Hoover.

"He was a pioneer", wrote Nicholas Parsons, "the first person to do 'topical satire' on television, but as the phrase had not yet been coined, and as the sketches were part of conventional variety shows, he never received the credit he deserved for originality."

Although very popular in its day this BBC sitcom now seems to be curiously overlooked.

Set at the fictional Fort Courage after the American Civil War — “somewhere west of the Missouri River” — the series delivered a hearty mix of physical gags, visual silliness and irreverent humour