Catering for a New Audience

Of all the places you’d expect to find quality food being served, a museum would probably be bottom of the list. But as recent visitors to Bradford’s National Media Museum have discovered, the staff at the museum’s Intermission Cafe is working hard to provide even the most discerning of food critics with a meal worth talking about.

Wake Up and Smell the Coffee: The Influence of Twin Peaks

It’s a cold, rainy morning in Twin Peaks, Washington. Fog is lifting off the lake; the morning coffee is still warming up at the Double R Diner; and Pete Martell (Jack Nance) is preparing to go fishing. Leaving his quaint log cabin, Pete spots something out of place on the riverbank – it’s a body. “She’s dead - wrapped in plastic,” he tells Sheriff Harry Truman (Michael Ontkean) in a shaky voice over the telephone. It’s 1990 and the world is about to ponder the question, ‘who killed Laura Palmer?’ It’s also a landmark moment in television. David Lynch’s Twin Peaks would go on to become a cult classic, adored by critics and loved by fans across the world. Some of those fans made their own television shows. Indeed, without Twin Peaks, the television landscape we know today would look remarkably different. 

Leonard Cohen – "Old Ideas" Album Review

Published in ReelRecord Magazine

Old Ideas is Leonard Cohen’s first studio album in almost ten years. It finds the 77-year old crooner taking things back to basics and the result is an album that will thoroughly satisfy his loyal fanbase. It might even win him some new supporters, after all, who could dislike an album that begins, “I’d love to speak with Leonard, he’s a sportsman and a shepherd; he’s a lazy bastard living in a suit”?

Christmas TV Review

If you were glued to the TV like I was over Christmas, you’ll have noticed that the festive period offered up some rather brilliant televised drama. Amongst the best was Boardwalk Empire’s shocking Christmas Eve finale, the return of the critically acclaimed, BAFTA-winning BBC drama Sherlock on New Year’s Day and Sky One’s adaptation of Robert Louis Stevenson’s much-loved Treasure Island. Oh, and Pat Butcher met her maker on Eastenders.