Vicious

This is a review of the recent sit-com Vicious that I wrote for the Radio Times Reader's Review section that didn't get picked for publication.

Another case were I thought it good enough to share.

Reading the TV listing for the new sitcom Vicious was like reading the Chef’s Special on an expensive restaurant’s menu; the ingredients look excellent (a base of McKellen and Jacobi seasoned with de la Tour and a hint of biting lemon wit) so anticipation was high for the finished dish. Sadly, when tasted, like a Ramsay outburst and the title of the show, the offering was harsh and dejecting.
While I was comfortable with the staged setting, the main characters felt pantomime-ish and the dialogue forced. The jokes seemed to have been added as an afterthought and without effort, like limp side salad, and the charming Iawn Rheon looked as out of place as a cherry on a fish supper.
Vicious is a dish that quickly went cold and I won't be ordering again.

Cornerhouse Film Quiz

I wrote this review for Creative Tourist but due to Chris deciding to retire from hosing and scheduling delays at the website it was never published.

Because I liked the quiz so much, films are one of the few things I can answer quiz questions on, and because I think the piece turned out nicely I've posted it here. Enjoy.

Lights. Camera. Answers.
There's an old tenet in writing to stick to what you know and the same can be said when choosing which quiz to go to. So for a film buff like me, where better to look than Manchester's centre of film and art; the Cornerhouse? When I first suggested it to my friends tough, there were concerns that all the questions would be about obscure art-house films with subtitles and French names. Fear not though, of the two quizzes I've been to so far, one had a Christmas themed and the other was Oscar related with the guarantee of Paul Hogan as one of the answers. I mean, if Crocodile Dundee is on the curriculum this is surely a quiz for the masses.
Run in the Scottish brogue of Cornerhouse alumni Chris Payne (@xtofallabout), the quiz features four rounds of 10 standard, audio and/or picture based questions and a final Genius round. It is this last round that will make or break your team's score; a timed round, usually the length of a song, were you have to list as many answers to the single question as possible. In the Christmas quiz it was as many Jim Carey films as you could remember and Oscar hosts in the second one. 
For the Christmas quiz it was just the four of us, which is the maximum team limit, we finished 7th of 10 and won three DVDs, a CD, a film poster and some postcards. On the second visit a couple more friends joined in the fun so, with a total of six, we split into two teams of three. It was a busier night, and to be fair I know more about Christmas than the Orcars, so we only managed 13th out of 15 but there was silver lining; the other half of our group came last. A small, and a little mean, victory but as the saying goes, you don't have to out run the tiger...