ScreenScribe

Tom Clancy’s Jack Ryan | Amazon Prime, from Friday ➢➢ “The origin story of spy guy Jack Ryan, the hero of many a Tom Clancy novel and their numerous screen adaptations, has been told before. But this is a superior version. Instead of playing Ryan as a bland Boy Scout, the likable John Krasinski imbues […]

Homeland (SoHo, 8.30 Mondays) “Entering season 6, Homeland faces the challenge of age. More than ever, it needs annual, rejuvenating shots of ripped-from-the-headlines zeitgeist. It’s ironic, then, that the new season’s first two episodes demonstrate the risky business of writing to the future. ‘A new paradigm’ is a thematic buzz phrase, with characters and their society chasing or […]

It will be fascinating to see how the BBC thriller Doctor Foster rates for TV1 over the course of next week. Primetime stripping or multi-night runs of serials, and cooking and renovation shows is well established but running five episodes of a drama series on consecutive nights is unprecedented here and harks back to the miniseries craze of […]

TV3 is pulling its under-siege spy drama State of Affairs mid-season but it’s not clear if the show’s lousy ratings will dent the network’s enthusiasm for the like-minded American Odyssey. State of Affairs’ last original episode screens 9.30 tonight. Even though there’s six more to go, TV3 couldn’t justify keeping it on when viewership was […]

Spark’s Lightbox sets sail today with crossbones drama Black Sails among its HD attractions. The streaming service went live at midnight, with such exclusives as Outlander, Vikings, 24: Live Another Day, Alpha House, Suits, Franklin and Bash and Lost Girl. It’s also picked up the country music drama Nashville that TV One pulled before the end of […]

New Zealand’s newest video on demand service will stream virtually all of its content in HD. Lightbox, which goes live later this month, initially will offer 5000 hours of TV shows at launch and almost everything except children’s programmes will be accessible in 720p or 1080p. That will be in stark contrast to TVNZ, MediaWorks […]

Racing-the-clock thriller 24 returned to US, UK and Aussie screens this week in the mini-series sequel Live Another Day but there’s no sign of hero Jack Bauer living another day here. And even if he did, fans wouldn’t see him in HD. MediaWorks, which used to own the rights, consigned the ex-TV3 property to SD channel Four […]

It’s an action-packed week for TV-on-Blu-ray releases, with the final season of 24 and the first of Spartacus: Blood and Sand going head-to-head within 24 hours of each other. 24’s eighth season is the first to bow here on Blu-ray, although season seven was released in HD internationally. It comes out on Wednesday, a week […]

Jack’s back — but as you’ve never seen him before … in HD! For the first time, the conspiracy thriller serial, 24, will be released here on Blu-ray. The eighth and final season will go on sale on December 1, two weeks earlier than in the US and the same day as a complete series collection on […]

The X-Files: I Want to Believe: TV3, 8.30pm Saturday. Mulder and Scully’s first investigation in 10 years is inexplicably conventional given the show’s spooky legacy. Yet that doesn’t stop the filmmakers from expecting us to swallow the implausible — what fans might accept as expedient drama on TV doesn’t cut it on the big screen. […]