I've never shared the hate-on-the-Creature thing - although I can understand it - but Rory Kinnear just sold the hell out of his scenes tonight. The emotions crossing his face when he was foregrounded with Maude prattling on in the background were wonderful. And I loved the scene with him and Victor; when Caliban said…

Just throwing this out there, but could Ethan possibly be more of a Jekyll/Hyde than werewolf? It was hard to tell from the make-up and FX, which did give off a kind of sub-American Werewolf vibe, and the shot of the full moon after would seem to indicate werewolf (it's been a long time since I read Jekyll, but I…

Having an actor of Henry Goodman's calibre play the priest makes me think he'll be a character in series 2. He seemed a little too - knowing, especially when he talked of what it was like to be touched by a demon.

Here to give some love to Last Tango in Halifax; I'd call it charming, if that didn't give off a vibe of lightweight twee-ness that sounds off-putting. Yes, it is charming - due in no small part to the excellence of Derek Jacobi and Anne Reid, who seem an unlikely pair (he the theatre pro, she the TV veteran), but…

Yeah, just what Canucks fans wanted to hear (not). I really can't blame Kesler for wanting (and getting) out. 2011 seems like a very, very long time ago. I think a lot of people thought then that the team had a window of a couple of years in which to make another legitimate Cup run, but that ship has sailed. The team…

The title of the episode - 'Grand Guignol' - makes me think that much of the action will take place in the theatre, which seems a logical place to bring many of the storylines together. And I'm always happy to see Alun Armstrong, who is perfectly in his element as the OTT theatre manager/director/actor. I really hope…

A friend who works for CBS said that he knows of people approaching the station with some obsolete form of media they've got hold of from somewhere, and asking if there's any machine that can play it so they can see what it is. Sadly, my friend said, they often don't have the equipment to do it. This seems odd, until…

You've just reminded me how much I love Fraser's Flashman novels (as if I'd forget). The opening of Flashman - where Fraser takes a minor character from Tom Brown's Schooldays, dispenses with the backstory in a couple of sentences, and then launches Flash Harry on his own trajectory - is simply brilliant. A shame the…

Binge-watched all of Spartacus earlier this year, after first hearing it was softcore meets Gladiator and not bothering when it originally aired. This is brilliant TV, people: actors on the top of their game, and writer who know their stuff and - more importantly - know how to do things like build character and…

Once again, the lighting in the show is brilliant; the shifting pattern of light on the wall of the entrance hallway, for example, indicating the movement of the sun, and then the descent into darkness with the lamps lit. Beautifully done.

Yes, the jackal-headed god associated with mummification, and the original god of the dead.

Since Ethan was the one who kept saying they should send for a priest, I figure he has religious leanings/inclinations that he's kept quiet about. Possibly a lapsed Catholic, or someone who embraced the Catholic church at a particularly fraught moment in his life (I'm thinking of Virginia Reed, one of the survivors of…

I wish more people knew of Dracula from the novel, and not one (or more) of the countless (no pun intended) movie/TV versions. Like SG Standard says, Dracula in the novel doesn't appear much except in the set-pieces the movies always show - Jonathan's time in Transylvania and then when he 'turns' Mina. These two…

I'm guessing so; nowhere in the article (before me as I write) is Sohl mentioned - 'Living Doll' is credited to Charles Beaumont only. I can't recall offhand if 'Living Doll' gets an in-depth article in an issue of TZ magazine (which over the course of its run gave a synopsis of each episode of the show, and featured…

I can't overstate how important this magazine was to me. As I said, I didn't know anyone else who loved ghost stories/weird tales; here was a magazine that was full of them, new and old (Mike Ashley's series looking at classic ghost story writers - Algernon Blackwood, M.R. James, H.R. Wakefield, the Benson brothers -…

The first issue of Twilight Zone - the magazine - I ever saw was the June 1982 issue, and I was thrilled to discover a magazine that aligned so perfectly with my fiction interests. The cover story was about "Richard Matheson's 'The Doll' - The Twilight Zone Episode You Never Saw", and inside Marc Scott Zicree…

My guide to Polari is, and always shall be, Julian and Sandy (Jules and Sand) in Round the Horne. 'So glad to vada your dolly old eek!'

I don't know; how many people these days are familiar with Dorian Gray and/or his portrait? In our house we - me, my husband, our teenage son - say 'He must have a portrait in the attic' when someone looks terribly young for their age; but I can't think this is terribly common. John Logan seems not to be pandering -…

Er, no episodes of Masters of Sex or Game of Thrones made it through? Wow, I must be missing some really outstanding television, then.

I just keep loving this series more and more. When Van Helsing produced that installment of Varney the Vampire the geek girl in me, who's loved and absorbed and known more than was probably healthy about this stuff for years, was ecstatic. I mean really, Varney the Vampire getting name-checked in a TV show in the 21st…