TV Review: The Fall (BBC) – Season One-Three

Created and written by Allan Cubitt, The Fall originally aired from 2013-2016 on BBC and follows Detective Superintendent Stella Gibson (Gillian Anderson), who is brought in to assess the progress of a murder investigation that has remained active for longer than 28 days. When it becomes apparent that a serial killer is on the loose, local detectives must work with Stella to find and capture Paul Spector (Jamie Dornan), who is attacking young professional women in the city of Belfast.

TV Review: Sex Education (Netflix) – Season Two

Created by Laurie Nunn and with the new series having premiered on Netflix in January 2020, season two of Sex Education sees the return of Otis Milburn (Asa Butterfield) who, now in a relationship with Ola (Patricia Allison), must master his newly discovered sexual urges. Meanwhile, Moordale Secondary is in the throes of a Chlamydia outbreak, highlighting the need for better sex education at the school. With Otis’ sex therapist mother, Dr Jean F. Milburn (Gillian Anderson), enlisted to help, he must now try to avoid her finding out about his own makeshift sex clinic with Maeve (Emma Mackey), as his best friend Eric (Ncuti Gatwa) has his own issues to deal with.

TV Review: Sex Education (Netflix) – Season One

Created by Laurie Nunn and premiered on Netflix in January 2019, Sex Education follows a socially awkward high school virgin, Otis Milburn (Asa Butterfield), who lives with his sex therapist mother, Dr Jean F. Milburn (Gillian Anderson). Otis and his best friend Eric (Ncuti Gatwa) aren’t the kind of people who get invited to the best parties. But when Otis’ home life is revealed at school, Otis realizes that he can use his specialist knowledge to gain status. So, he teams up with social outcast Maeve (Emma Mackey) to set up a clinic to deal with their fellow students’ weird and wonderful problems. Through his analysis of teenage sexuality, Otis realises he may need some therapy of his own.

Film Review: Johnny English Reborn

(Published in BritScene on The National Student and in In Retrospect – Issue 3)

Johnny English Reborn, directed by Oliver Parker, is a sequel to the first Johnny English film released in 2003. Set a few years later, English (Rowan Atkinson) is learning martial arts in Tibet after a disastrous mission which concluded in the assassination of a President. Head Agent at the MI7, Pegasus (Gillian Anderson), requests English back in the UK for a new mission. Along with ‘side-kick’ Agent Tucker (Daniel Kaluuya), and the backing of Agent Simon Ambrose (Dominic West) and colleague Kate (Rosamund Pike), English is given the mission of stopping a group of international assassins before they kill the Chinese premier. When the two missions begin to form a link, English is given information about Vortex, a group of assassinations that seem to be behind it all. With two out of three members of the group dead, English is told that the third member is a mole in the MI7, but how will he complete his mission when he is being framed as the mole himself?

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