It’s been almost half a year since we dealt with a serial killer. For this blog, that’s extraordinary. But today we accompany Robert De Niro…
CIPC #374: Innocent S1 E1
All you people are such sinners you probably don’t even know what Innocent is1, so here’s the rundown: it’s a quite recent British television show…
CIPC #373: Orange is the new black S2 E7, Comic sans
Some ten years ago, the whole internet — and presumably the remaining shreds of culture outside of it — was agog with talk about Orange…
CIPC #372: Håkan Nesser, Het vierde offer
I’ve written three different posts about chess in literature by now, in which several very brief unsuspecting chess scenes from a variety of books are…
CIPC #371: Sinbad and the eye of the tiger
In the summer of 1977, when the first Star Wars was released, it went up against a large sword-and-sorcery franchise that had been established for…
CIPC #370: Cheers S5 E15, Spellbound [again]
I have taken a page out of the complete idiot’s guide to Hollywood productions: if you have the material for a strong movie that’s going…
CIPC #369: Cheers S5 E15, Spellbound
Yet another sitcom on the blog. I’ll drink to that! Like so many sitcoms, it ran for well over a decade and had about a…
CIPC #368: Rothmans ad
Hah! I didn’t quit at all! After the utter despair at the end of my last blog post you could have been forgiven for thinking…
CIPC #367: Scorpion S3 E16, Keep it in check mate
Let me start with a quick warning: this is one of the most irredeemably bullshit things we’re seen yet.1 So, Scorpion. It is a show…
CIPC #366: The inspector Alleyn mysteries S1 E3, The nursing home murder
If you want suspense in your murder mystery, you have essentially two options: either you make the victim widely hated, so that you have many…