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Hunted 02 Melissa George, Adam Rayner, Stephen Dillane, Stephen Campbell Moore, Adewale Akinnuoye-Agbaje, Morven Christie, Lex Shrapnel, Dhaffer L'Abidine, Dermot Crowley, Indira Varma

Hunted (Season 1): 1 year after a botched murder attempt secret agent Alex Kent must find out who betrayed her, whilst carrying out a new mission for her private contract company. The production values on this are through the roof – it always looks more like a film than TV series (Going for the Luther / HBO vibe). A few characters stand out as good, including the botoxed lead Melissa George, but the rest are all definitely TV standard. The writing’s solid, with the current mission dramatically unfolding, as well as several well-connected revenge storylines weave through the central drama. As the season progresses and the plot thickens the show really grabs you – but – like with almost every modern TV show the greedy prospect of a second season made the writers go for a disappointingly limp finale that fails to conclude the bigger mysteries in the story, and (more annoyingly) raises even more last-minute questions. It’s a sour ending to what’s otherwise a top spy/thriller/espionage thriller show.

Score: 7.5/10

Hunted 02 Melissa George, Adam Rayner, Stephen Dillane, Stephen Campbell Moore, Adewale Akinnuoye-Agbaje, Morven Christie, Lex Shrapnel, Dhaffer L'Abidine, Dermot Crowley, Indira Varma,

213070-afterpornends

After Porn Ends: doc that catches up with some porn superstars of yesteryear and sees what they’re doing having left the industry. This doesn’t feel much like a conventional documentary – there’s no narration, or much of a narrative for that matter, just feels like you’re listening in on people storytelling; which has some merits. The biggest surprise is how smart and pragmatic some pornstars are (one actress is in mensa!), but this feels short-lived as it’s quickly balanced out by the ridiculously vapid bimbo stereotypes that also show up. You have to be a unique person to enter this kind of work, and in a way that’s what keeps this watchable – these people have led quite fascinating, peculiar lives during their porn careers, then as an ex-porn star societal pariah. The most interesting – and telling – part of the film however is seeing what happened after the interviews in the pre-credit titles. In the same way that ‘Side by Side’ was about the transition in cinema, this feels a bit like old-timers reminiscing about the glory days / ‘golden age’ of porn. All in all, After Porn Ends is surprisingly watchable, yet it’s a little unforgivable that someone could stitch together a film this flat and ordinary when it features so many people with remarkable stories (like a world-record breakin’ gangbang featuring 500 men!), working in the world’s most taboo and sensational industry.

Score: 4/10