After the detour with the parody version of Casino Royale, Bondathon returns to the main series with the iconic if excessive Japanese-set adventure You Only Live Twice. The USA and USSR are on the brink of war after an American spacecraft disappears. The Americans blame the Soviets but MI6 believes the real culprit is in Japan and […]
Pop Culture Maniacs Episode #19: Derry Girls
Kieran Freemantle and Jean Henegan shared their love for Derry Girls.
Make Me Famous Review
Make Me Famous was a TV film made for BBC Three that looks at the perils of reality TV fame and social media. Billy (Tom Brittney) was a contestant on the reality TV show Love or Lust where he developed a reputation for being a cocky love rat. A year after appearing on the show he’s struggling financially […]
The Falcon and The Winter Soldier – Truth Review
Here’s a lesson for all future MCU TV series: If a two-minute appearance by a well-known guest star can change the face of your show, elevating the energy level and making your audience perk up and take notice, more so than any action scene or character beat before or after, there’s a foundational issue with […]
Missing Great British Bake Off? Then Check Out The Great Pottery Thrown Down
I’m a massive fan of The Great British Bake Off (or The Great British Baking Show, due to copyright issues in the US), the UK’s greatest television export of the last decade. And, if social media and my conversations with friends and family have taught me anything, pretty much everyone else is, too. But, as the […]
Bondathon: Casino Royale (1967)
The 1967 version of Casino Royale was the second adaptation of Ian Fleming’s novel and the second unofficial Bond film. It is also the worst film to have anything to do with the legendary spy. The major intelligence services are in crisis. Their best agents have been captured or killed. In desperation, MI6, the CIA, Deuxième Bureau, and […]
Missing The Expanse? Check Out Its Sci-Fi Precursors
As someone who grew up watching sci-fi TV shows (and was very careful about never revealing that I watched such shows because that was a sure-fire way to be made fun of in the 90s), I’ve loved seeing so many people on my social media timelines expressing their love for Amazon’s excellent series The Expanse. […]
Pop Culture Maniacs Podcast Episode #18: Movie Franchises and Cinematic Universes
Kieran Freemantle and Jean Henegan discuss Hollywood’s increased dependence on movie franchises and the art of making a cinematic universe.
The Falcon and The Winter Soldier – The Whole World is Watching
The biggest benefit to television is that it allows writers to spend time developing characters over the course of hours across a season, rather than being confined to the mere two-hour window provided by most films. As I’ve written about before in these pieces, that was the greatest boon I could see from Marvel branching […]
Vikings Season 6 Part 2 Review
After 89 episodes, spanning six seasons, the historical epic Vikings has come to an end. The final ten episodes show the fates of the sons of Ragnar Lothbrok. The second part of season six picks up where part one left off: the Rus have invaded Norway and Bjorn Ironside (Alexander Ludwig) has been stabbed by his […]










