March’s Failures

Posted on April 2, 2026 by badblokebob

Welcome to my monthly “Failures” column, where I look back at some of the films I could, would, maybe even should have watched last month… but failed to.

Project Hail Mary merits a mention right off the bat, as the Ryan Gosling-starring sci-fi adaptation is apparently the highest-grossing film of the year so far. I’m sure there’ll be a kids’ animation along at some point to overtake that, but it remains noteworthy for the time being. I heard somewhere that there’s a twist and/or twists that are better unspoiled, so I’ve not read a whole lot about it… not that I read much about any new releases nowadays, to be honest. A lot of my understanding of “significance” nowadays is wholly vibes based on what I pick up or overhear here and there.

And in that spirit, other films of note on the big screen — at least as far as I’m aware — include a new Pixar, Hoppers. Obviously they’re a studio rather than a franchise, so I don’t know that I really need to “catch up” on their output, but nonetheless, that now makes eight Pixar films I need to catch up on. Sticking to family movies, Enid Blyton adaptation The Magic Faraway Tree seems to be one of those films that has crossed over to ‘regular people’ (certainly, work colleagues have talked about it, and they almost never talk about films). The other perennial big screen success story is horror, which this month has a somewhat comedic bent (as far as I can tell) between Maggie Gyllenhaal’s take on Frankenstein, The Bride!, and sequel Ready or Not 2: Here I Come. While I have other releases noted down, I know even less about them than the ones I’ve already mentioned, so can do little more than reel off their titles: Mother’s Pride, Reminders of Him, Dead Man’s Wire, Midwinter Break, Arco, Splitsville, They Will Kill You…

Plus, straddling the cinema / streaming original divide, the return of a certain Birmingham-based crime saga in Peaky Blinders: The Immortal Man, the popularity of which meant it managed to attract some press for its limited theatrical release (more than most cinema-bound Netflix titles seem to manage) before debuting on Netflix later in the month. Rather than watch that, I finally got round to the sixth series of the show itself. Strong chance the film crops up in my April viewing, then.

The only other direct-to-streaming premiere I have noted down for last month is another Netflix original, War Machine, although they did debut I Swear shortly after it provoked all that controversy at the BAFTAs, so that’s probably more noteworthy. I don’t even have any such streaming premieres noted down for Amazon Prime Video, so either they had a barren March or their offering entirely passed me by. NOW led the way in that regard, as usual, with the likes of Nobody 2 and Materialists, before ending the month with Best Picture victor One Battle After Another. And, as if to bring us full circle back to the high grossers, Disney+ rustled up last year’s big box office winner, Zootropolis 2.

Prime did continue to do what they do best, however, which is cycle through a tonne of back catalogue stuff. Ones that caught my eye this past month included Luc Besson’s The Big Blue, demonic Keanu Reeves / Al Pacino legal drama The Devil’s Advocate, Yorgos Lanthimos’s Dogtooth, and a couple of silents in the form of the 1925 adaptation of Arthur Conan Doyle’s The Lost World and the Douglas Fairbanks iteration of The Three Musketeers. Similarly, iPlayer proffered Aftersun (I suppose it must leave iPlayer sometimes so that it can come back), Jodie Comer-starring eco-thriller The End We Start From, Paul Thomas Anderson’s Licorice Pizza… plus a whole bunch of other stuff, across both of them, but (as always) if I were to list everything we’d be here forever.

But, for my traditional segue into all the new Blu-rays I bought this month, here’s some stuff I already own on disc that popped up — both things I’ve never seen and stuff that’s overdue a rewatch. On Netflix, Bad Boys: Ride or Die and Sleepy Hollow. On Prime, The Chronicles of Riddick, Crimson Peak, The Dreamers, The Last Samurai, The Silence of the Lambs, and Unforgiven. On iPlayer, Christopher Nolan’s Insomnia, The Martian, Master and Commander, The Third Man, Training Day, and, perhaps most egregiously of all, How the West Was Won, which I remember buying as one of my first-ever Blu-rays to show off the format. I wonder how that disc holds up today? Maybe someday I’ll actually watch it and find out…

My bank balance would like it if such a backlog compelled me to stop buying new releases. Alas, I am weak-willed, and so this month I splashed out on another veritable pile of discs. The headliner for me was John Woo’s action classic Hard Boiled. At one point it looked like this was a film we’d never see on disc again, and now we have it in what is reportedly a beautiful 4K restoration. Between titles like that (and its label brethren, such as The Killer, coming in April) and the Doctor Who TV movie also restored in 4K, 2026 is shaping up to be a year of ‘impossible’ releases. Heck, you can throw Stranger Things getting a complete series physical release in that category, too.

Otherwise, there was a surprising horror bent to this month’s acquisitions, between Hammer’s Fear in the Night from StudioCanal, the original adaptation of Salem’s Lot from Arrow, French classic The Devil’s Hand from Masters of Cinema, and a new UK 4K of the original Suspiria; plus I also picked up the Warners Archive editions of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde, both 1931 and 1941 versions, replacing an old DVD double-bill. Even the non-horror titles sound kind of horror-y, like Stolen Face (another from famously horror-centric studio Hammer, but billed as a “macabre melodrama”), or Radiance’s yakuza drama Blood of Revenge (putting “blood” in the title immediately evokes horror flicks, no?), or Masters of Cinema’s Cruel Tale of Bushido (what films are “cruel” if not horror?) Well, maybe I’m stretching a point, I don’t know.

There was one more Hammer title, in another genre again: ’50s sci-fi Spaceways. I don’t know if their current release schedule is deliberately designed to remind / inform us that Hammer did more than just the horror pictures for which they’re primarily remembered, but it feels like that might be the goal. Sticking with sci-fi, I belatedly picked up the 4K of Minority Report (it only came out in February, but I feel like I’m late to the party if I haven’t preordered something, or at least bought it during release week), plus Edgar Wright’s re-adaptation of The Running Man, the only brand-new film in this month’s selection. Rounding things out, a bevy of martial arts films, from Eureka’s The Invincible Eight to Arrow’s box set of Eiichi Kudo’s Samurai Revolution Trilogy.

These kinds of releases — all the things I’ve bought, really — get me excited when I read about them and place my order. Someday I need to translate that excitement into actually watching more of them.

The 20th Monthly Review of March 2026

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Posted on April 1, 2026 by badblokebob

I ended last month’s review with a note of hope that the progress of 2026’s Challenge was at a tipping point; that things would imminently improve.

Reader, they did not.

Well, technically they did a bit — March has the most Challenge films of any month this year so far — but it wasn’t enough to consider me ‘back on track’. Why is this year going so poorly? What have I been doing instead of watching films? Well, it’s certainly true that I continue to spend leisure time on other things as well (books, games, TV), but I was also doing that last year. Am I choosing those more often than films now? I guess I must be. Still, it never feels like there’s enough time for any of it. Somehow, days just evaporate.

Anyway, let’s get into the detail of how things are going on the film front.

This month’s viewing towards my yearly challenge

#8 Different from the Others (1919) — Blindspot #1
#9 PK (2014) — WDYMYHS #1
#10 Kung Fu Panda 4 3D (2024) — Failure #3
#11 This is Spinal Tap (1984) — Rewatch #2
#12 The Ballad of Wallis Island (2025) — 50 Unseen #1

I watched four feature films I’d never seen before in March.
All of them counted towards my 100 Films in a Year Challenge, along with one rewatch.
I should have reached #24 by the end of March to be on target, so I’ve only watched 50% of the Challenge films that I should have by this point.
Kung Fu Panda 4 is my first 3D film this year, but doesn’t count towards my 3D Challenge category because it’s not classic 3D — by which I mean old rather than, y’know, A Classic. Not that it’s the latter either. But it is older than I thought: it came out two years ago! Where does time go?!
Talking of time disappearing, I first and last watched Spinal Tap in 2007 (as #15 that year, to be precise) and the receipt in my Blu-ray copy tells me I bought it in 2011, so I’ve been meaning to rewatch it for at least 15 years. These are the kind of ridiculous timescales I operate on. While I liked it back then, I loved it now, so maybe the wait wasn’t such a bad thing.
This month’s Blindspot film was the oldest on the list: Different from the Others. And not just old but historically important, being one of the earliest films to openly engage with themes of homosexuality.
This month’s WDYMYHS film was comedic sci-fi / religious satire PK.
From last month’s “failures” I only watched Kung Fu Panda 4.

The 130th Monthly Arbitrary Awards

Favourite Film of the Month
These categories feel a little meaningless this year, when the pool of ‘nominees’ is so slim every month. Nonetheless, The Ballad of Wallis Island is a good film — much funnier than I was expecting, while still hitting home with it’s more dramatic parts.

Least Favourite Film of the Month
Nothing outright bad this month, although several sit in the middle of the road. However, perhaps the least enjoyable viewing experience was Different from the Others. It’s an historically significant film and undoubtedly worthwhile for that reason, but huge chunks of it are missing, and even with photos and title cards to plug the plot gaps, it’s quite a disjointed watch.

Join me for the next instalment of the 48 Films in a Year Challenge!

…doesn’t have the same ring, does it? But it’s the current trajectory. That said, 88 films in 9 months works out at under 10 films per month on average, and 10 new films + 1 rewatch has been my monthly goal for a long time — and I’ve achieved it more months than not (before this year, anyway). In other words: hope remains that 2026 will turn out alright.

The Past Month on TV #50

Posted on August 25, 2019 by badblokebob

Last month, I said this month would hopefully feature Stranger Things 3, Veronica Mars season 4, and The Boys season 1. It doesn’t. Not any of them. But I’m not short of other things to write about…

Years and Years
The writer most popularly known for reviving Doctor Who, Russell T Davies, returns to science fiction for the first time in almost a decade with this acclaimed miniseries. This is a very different kind of sci-fi, though — no space invaders or malicious AI or mad scientists here. No, this story begins in 2019 as we know it and then moves across the next 15 years to explore just where we’re headed, in a realistic and grounded way. It focuses on a normal family from Manchester — four siblings, their grandmother, and assorted spouses and children — and how the changes in society and technology affect them. It’s a story of the ordinary people; the folks who don’t shape history, history happens around and to them.

Cannily, it dodges the Brexit bullet — there are implications it went ahead, but it doesn’t have any bearing on the story: these big changes are happening everywhere anyway, whether Britain leaves the EU or not. What it is aware of is how much society and technology are now intertwined. In the first episode, a teenager comes out to her parents as trans — not trans gender, but transhuman. She wants to ditch the limitations of flesh and live forever as data. Some people will scoff at that, but the way it’s presented and plays out over the next five episodes is highly plausible. RTD tackles a whole host of societal issues in a similar way — immigration, the gig economy, nationalism, etc — all mixed together in a way that reflects real life. After all, we’re never just dealing with or worried about one thing at a time, especially nowadays.

As someone who grew up in the ’90s and ’00s, learning about the Cold War as an historical event, I sometimes wondered how people lived their day-to-day lives with the constant threat of nuclear annihilation. Except that’s not what it was actually like, was it? It may’ve been there, in the background, ebbing and spiking depending on the political factors of the day, but people just got on with their everyday lives while that played out on the news. It’s the same nowadays, isn’t it? There’s so much crap going on in the world, and most of it we just see on the news — unless it happens to butt into our own lives for whatever reason. And Years and Years is that same thing, but projected into future events; and not fantastical things, like a mission to Mars or an AI breakthrough, but a very plausible extrapolation of where we’re headed.

Personally, I thought it was a work of borderline genius. RTD has always had a way with characters — of quickly shading in believable individuals, their families and lives; of writing scenes that sing with dialogue and interactions that seem plucked straight from real life — and here that’s married with an imaginative vision of the near future, the two working in harmony to create a drama that’s also a warning about what we’re getting ourselves into… although it’s also an admonishment, showing us what we’ve got ourselves into and wondering if it’s too late to stop it. But there’s a dash of hope in there, too; just a sliver of “maybe it’ll be mostly OK in the end.” Fingers crossed.

Peaky Blinders Series 4
Birmingham’s premier gangsters return with a storyline that forces them to reckon with their past actions. So it’s unfortunate that this is a show that can’t be doing with recaps at the start of episodes. I spent most of the first instalment trying to remember the events of previous series and how they’d led to where things were, which is an unwelcome distraction that could be easily solved with a simple “previously on” at the opening. I don’t know why Netflix hate them so much (well, I do — it’s the assumption you’ll just binge-watch everything, and if you don’t then they want you to feel you have to; and we’re all just buying into what we’re told to do, which is half the problem (funnily enough, that’s a lot of what Years & Years was all about…)

Anyway, once things get up and running, and you can get your head around what’s going on enough to be going on with, this is another thrilling story of ’20s criminality. Adrien Brody pops in as a series-long guest star, a Mafia enforcer from New York who has a vendetta against the Blinders because they killed his dad, and now he’s brought his American muscle to wipe them out. With bigger forces out to gobble them up, the Blinders must rely once again on a mix of their wits and straightforward firepower. The show itself is the same, blending together tricksy plotting (Tommy Shelby may always have a plan, but we’re not always privy to it until after the fact) and impressively staged action scenes (there’s an extended shoot-out at the start of episode five that must’ve eaten up a lot of the budget; and if it didn’t, they’ve done a good job making it look like it did). In fact, the series as a whole looks stunning — style drips off the screen, whether it be the slow-mo hero walks or the pulsating rock soundtrack.

For my money, the plot was a little smaller-scale than previous seasons, despite involving ever-bigger outside forces, which made it feel almost like an extended movie rather than a dense season of television. But don’t take that criticism too much to heart — previous seasons may’ve been even better in my personal estimation, but this is still top-drawer drama.

Unforgotten Series 3
Where the other shows reviewed this month are big, brassy productions told on a mythic scale, Unforgotten is almost the opposite, and yet it tackles themes no less grand. But it’s a quiet, understated drama, as London detectives Nicola Walker and Sanjeev Bhaskar (along with their team) investigate a cold-case murder, in the process having to tackle the fallout that time has wrought on the victims left behind.

This time, the skeleton of a teenage girl is found under a motorway, and it turns out to be a girl who disappeared on December 31st, 1999, and was a huge story at the time, which naturally leaves our little team under intense media scrutiny. (It’s somewhat amusing seeing this ITV-produced show get to use real ITV News presenters and graphics while the hero characters are slagging off the attitudes and methods of the media.) Unforgotten has the usual murder mystery array of suspects for us to theorise about, but what it also does well is portray the terrible sadness of such crimes. Reveals in the final episode push the storyline in a slightly different direction which allow it to pull focus in a different direction, too, although I’m not sure it really has the time or space to dig into that aspect.

Like Peaky Blinders, I don’t think this was the very best series of the programme (series two was harder hitting and even more emotionally complex), but it’s still more or less on form. It wears its heart on its sleeve, trying to treat these victims and suspects not just as pawns in an elaborate guessing game, but as real people whose lives have been torn apart. That makes it one of the better cop shows on TV, I think.

Also watched…

Agatha Raisin Series 2 Episodes 1-3 — Sky 1’s murder mystery series (which they cancelled but an American outfit revived and now they just buy in) is the very definition of cosy crime, though with enough humour that it plays more like a rom-com than a crime drama. Also, looks surprisingly gorgeous in UHD. Happily, there’s a third lot in production.

Beecham House Series 1 Episodes 4-6 — Oh yes, I stuck with this to the end. (Please let this be the end.)

Grantchester Series 4 Episodes 5-6 — Been catching up with this in bits and pieces, but just realised I’ve not mentioned it until now. James Norton’s gone off to bigger things (Joss Whedon’s new show, to be precise), so they’ve got a new co-lead, who’s fine. This season attempted an arc subplot with contemporary social relevance (a woman being harassed by a coworker), which went for the happy modern-ish ending rather than what I expect was the full misery of actually suffering that kind of thing in the 1950s.

Lucifer Season 3 Episodes 1-3 — Since I last watched it Lucifer has been cancelled, revived, recommissioned, and extended (Netflix ordered a ten-episode final season but, after fan outcry, added a further six), so I thought it was about time I got on with it. It’s a fun show, that I’ll probably be watching in dribs and drabs for a while. (See my reviews of seasons one and two, which broadly apply to season three as well.)

Susan Calman’s Fringe Benefits Series 1 — A mix of chat and standup from the Edinburgh Festival Fringe. Calman’s an infectiously jolly host, and the chance to get an overview of different acts, including ones you don’t see on TV as often, is nice. If anything, it’s a shame it’s only three 45-minute episodes — there’s so much going on at the Fringe, I expect they could do a half-hour every night and still not touch the sides.

Things to Catch Up On
This month, I have mostly been missing Wu Assassins on Netflix, starring Iko “The Raid” Uwais. The trailers look perhaps a bit cheesy, but also promise regular doses of Uwais’ incredible combat skills, so that’ll do me. Elsewhere, Preacher has embarked on its fourth and final season. Considering I’ve not seen most of season two and none of season three, that’s a bigger catchup project. And talking of stuff I’ve not seen, I never got round to Mindhunter season one, even though David Fincher directed some of it, and now there’s a second season, which he’s also partly directed. Considering it’s been five years since his last movie, I do kinda need that Fincher fix…

Next month… take your pick for what I’ll’ve watched and what I’ll’ve missed out of Peaky Blinders season 5 (starts tonight), Dad’s Army: The Lost Episodes (starts tonight), Sanditon (starts tonight), The Great British Bake Off (starts on Tuesday), Carnival Row (out on Friday), and The Dark Crystal: Age of Resistance (out on Friday). Bear in mind: I’ve only just finished one season of Peaky Blinders, and I didn’t much like The Dark Crystal. (Why do I feel like that means it’ll be the only one of these I end up actually watching…)

The Past Month on TV #26

Posted on November 16, 2017 by badblokebob

The strangest thing is the Duffer brothers’ apparent obsession with giving starring roles to only-available-in-North-America sweet things.

FYI, rest of the world: I have discovered a 3 Musketeers is in fact a Milky Way.

Stranger Things 2
Netflix’s most talked about show (well, unless you count House of Cards for all the wrong reasons) returns wth a second season that isn’t just a continuation, it’s a sequel — note how it’s officially called Stranger Things 2 (which briefly sent IMDb skwiffy), and how the episode titles aren’t Chapters Nine to Seventeen of Stranger Things but Chapters One to Nine of Stranger Things 2. Set almost a whole year after the first season, and telling a self contained story (though one that obviously builds out of the first season) which takes place over just a couple of days (in fact, more or less half the season takes place on a single day and night), it feels more like watching a follow-up movie than the next set of instalments in a series that is reported to run another two years yet.

The idea is emphasised further by the fact its form seems largely inspired by The Empire Strikes Back — well, it’s Stranger Things: of course it borrows heavily from an ’80s movie. (If you want to see a whole array of its visual homages/rip-offs in a succinct two-minute video, check out this.) It doesn’t map one-for-one onto Empire’s structure, but it takes the same broad shape: splitting our heroes up into different smaller groups off having their own adventures; throwing new characters into the mix; expanding the universe and the mythos. If anything, Eleven is Luke — by herself, learning about her past, developing her telekinetic abilities. And Dustin and Lucas are kind of Han and Leia — supporting characters now given their own important arc, including both romance and the introduction of a major new character. And so Mike is… I dunno, Obi-Wan? A former main character who’s now barely present. As for Joyce, and Hopper, and Nancy and Jonathan, and Steve, and Will… yeah, Star Wars doesn’t have this many lead characters. Well, I did say it wasn’t exactly like-for-like.

Perhaps another side effect of the movie-esque style is that it feels… short. Like, just as things seem to be getting going, it’s the finale. It’s a problem many binge-focussed series have these days, but this struck me as a particularly pronounced example. It could just be my own fault for watching it all in double-bills, but then I do that quite routinely with Netflix shows and I’ve not felt it so keenly before. Nonetheless, it has enough moving parts that the two-part finale (it’s not officially billed as that, but it is that) remains highly satisfying. As with season one, it’s when everyone finally comes together to fight the threat that the season is at its most satisfying, those two episodes feeling like an adrenaline-fuelled mini-movie (well, movie-length movie) of their own.

Now, you can’t discuss Stranger Things 2 without mentioning the infamous Chapter Seven. If you’ve missed the internet’s collective exclamation of disappointment and/or annoyance, IMDb has it in a nutshell: on there, the user ratings of all the other episodes (from both seasons) range from 8.5 to 9.5, a spread of 1.0 (obviously), but Chapter Seven has 6.2, a full 2.3 marks below the next lowest score. Ouch. It’s not great, but I didn’t think it was that bad. It’s a total aside from the main action, and placed where it is seems designed just to delay the pay-off to Chapter Six’s cliffhanger for another 45 minutes (in a regular programme it’d be two weeks, but this is Netflix). I don’t really hold with that being an actual problem, though — that’s just taste. No, the real problem is that it rushes through a character arc for Eleven that would’ve been better presented over multiple episodes. Considering before that she’s spent several episodes just sat around watching TV, there were surely better ways to structure her role this season.

That’s no slight on Millie Bobby Brown’s performance, mind — she’s great again, displaying so much character and emotion even through Eleven’s limited understanding of being a normal person. Also worthy of note is Noah Schnapp as Will. Considering he had so little to do in season one, they either lucked out with his casting or knew where they were going enough to cast it well — a lot is asked of him here, and he’s up to it. I could keep going, but if we begin to single people out we’ll be here all day: almost every lead cast member gets either a stand-out scene or a decent arc. They even made Steve likeable. Finn Wolfhard draws the short straw — Mike spends most of the season just being grumpy about Eleven — but as he was the centre of attention last time it’s okay to let the others shine.

Even though it has all the big action stuff you’d expect, Chapter Nine still devotes a serious chunk of time to a character-focussed epilogue; reminding you that, as with most loved shows, the heart of it is the characters and their relationships. Indeed, although the season as a whole didn’t have the same effectiveness as the first, I thought the finale was a better climax. In fact, it would be a perfectly valid place to leave the entire series… but there are (at least) two more seasons to go. It might be nice if season three opened up the timeline a bit, because so far Hawkins seems to be a place where Crazy Terrible Shit happens over a couple of days and then everything’s fine for a whole year.

Red Dwarf XII Episodes 4-6
I had nice things to say about the first half of Red Dwarf XII in my last TV column, which kindly glossed over the fact that episode three, Timewave, was a bit of a disaster. I think it’s safe to say the second half of the series is stronger — it represents everything I said last time, but better. The final two episodes, M-Corp and Skipper, even throw in some fan-pleasing callbacks — real deep-dives too, aimed squarely at the long-term fanbase. (No spoilers here — the last episode has been available on demand for a week but doesn’t officially air until tonight.) The episodes don’t need such devotee delights just to curry favour — their concept-driven comedy is satisfying enough to stand on its own — but there’s no denying the added pleasure to be found in the references and cameos. You can certainly hear the glee of the live studio audience as they recognise what’s going on each time (it even messes up the pacing of one bit for us regular viewers, but I guess that’s the trade-off). So, even more than last time, this set of episodes demonstrate there’s definitely life in the old Dwarf yet. Bring on series XIII.

Peaky Blinders Series 3
Beginning with a significant time-jump and monumental change in circumstance worthy of a Mad Men season premiere, the third series of Peaky Blinders soon sees everyone’s favourite Brummie gangsters embroiled in espionage and counter-espionage as they’re enlisted to help exiled Russian aristocracy launch a bid to reclaim their country. There’s so much more going on than that, but I won’t get into it here because we’ll be here all day — Peaky Blinders is a complexly plotted series; right up the final episode, which contains revelations that turn the previous six hours on their head. Even with all that narrative to get through, it still finds plenty of time to give most of its large-ish ensemble cast some strong character arcs. There are a few streaming series that could learn a thing or two from that…

Rick and Morty Season 1 Episode 2
I confess: I started watching Rick and Morty fully expecting to hate it. I’d always thought it looked and sounded annoying, so I paid it no heed… but then it seemed to keep coming up — people referring to it in excited tones, and it ranking 7th on IMDb’s top TV list. So I decided to see what all the fuss was about, still expecting my initial impressions to be proved correct but endeavouring to have an open mind. The pilot (which I covered back in August) did little to sway my mind: it wasn’t terrible, but it had many of the irritations I’d perceived and only a few redeeming qualities. But I read that it was an unrepresentative and below par episode, so I pressed on. Things immediately pick up: the second episode, Lawnmower Dog, mixes together Inception, Nightmare on Elm Street, and super-intelligent canines into an entertaining and clever half-hour. It’s bought my attention for a couple more episodes, at any rate.

Also watched…

Arrow Season 6 Episodes 1-2 / The Flash Season 4 Episodes 1-2 — Here we go again… At least The Flash seems to have perked up again this year, which I used to find a little irritating but is actually quite welcome after the dour last two seasons.

Bounty Hunters Series 1 Episodes 1-2 — Belatedly started this Jack Whitehall comedy-thriller, which tonally is a bit like The Wrong Mans, which I loved. More thoughts when I’ve finished the series.

Castle Season 8 Episodes 4-9 — The arc plot this season is really rather irritating. This is when I’m thankful for binge-watching: it makes that crap go by faster.

Detectorists Series 3 Episode 1 — Promptly started the new series of this Mackenzie Crook comedy, which I previously named one of my ten favourite series of the last decade. More thoughts next month.

The Good Place Season 1 Episodes 1-2 — Belatedly started this Kristen Bell comedy-fantasy (which only arrived in the UK with the start of season two anyway, so not that belatedly). It’s kind of brilliant so far. More thoughts when I’ve finished the season.

Upstart Crow Series 2 Episodes 5-6 — See last month.

Things to Catch Up On
This month, I have mostly been missing Mindhunter, David Fincher’s new Netflix series about the early days of criminal psychology and criminal profiling at the FBI. It was actually released before my last TV post, but I didn’t have Netflix at the time so I didn’t bother to mention it. I would watch it next, but The Punisher is out tomorrow. Maybe after that…

Next month… Netflix gets punishered.

The Past Month on TV #25

Posted on October 27, 2017 by badblokebob

Doctors, spin doctors, Dwarfers, and Shakespeare in this month’s comedy-filled TV review. Though we start with an oh-so-serious drama…

Doctor Foster Series 2
Everyone was a bit surprised when they announced a second series of Doctor Foster. The first was such a finite unit, why risk ruining it? Promises of a type of story that hadn’t been told before also amped up expectations. In the end I find it hard to say if the series disappointed or not because it was kind of out there. Not “out there” like Twin Peaks is “out there”, but the machinations of the various characters went beyond what I imagine most normal people would do in real life. There were some good building blocks though, especially related to how the bitter divorcees handled — or failed to handle — their teenage son, Tom, and the emotional problems he was clearly beginning to develop. His storyline was played off as a subplot, but it was largely more interesting than the sex-obsessed revenge games the adults were playing. So it kind of amused me when the final episode shoved in a montage to emphasise what had been going wrong with Tom, as if to say “look, the kid’s mental health has been deteriorating all along and you missed it!” Well, his parents certainly missed it, but I think us viewers found it pretty bloody obvious. Ironically, this series ended on more of a cliffhanger than the first did, but a third run is only a possibility rather than a definite. At least it serves as its own kind of ending, albeit much bleaker than the first series’. But maybe that’s what these characters, and this show, deserves.

Red Dwarf XII Episodes 1-3
I still think of Red Dwarf as a programme that’s popped back for a bit of a revival, but I guess at this point it counts as just an ongoing show: since Dave brought it back in 2009 they’ve produced four series, half as many as the entire original run on the BBC. Give it another five or six years and they may equal, or perhaps even surpass, that number. It’s been a long time since I actually watched any of those old episodes that made the show’s name, so I can’t offer an opinion on whether the new runs are of the same quality — some say they are, some say they aren’t. Personally, I still think it’s funny overall, and (as I often say) that’s really all you need from a comedy. That said, one thing Dwarf has always done, and continues to do, is draw from actual science and science-fiction concepts to drive its plots and many of its gags. That makes it a proper sci-fi-comedy, rather than just a regular sitcom that happens to be set on a spaceship. Hurrah for that.

Upstart Crow Series 2 Episodes 1-4
Talking of funny sitcoms, this series of Upstart Crow has been hilarious. Okay, I could do without Harry Enfield turning up as Shakespeare’s dad — almost every scene featuring him sees the humour take a turn towards the puerility of the toilet — but the rest of it is often pretty clever, riffing on Shakespearean plots and trivia. There was even a screenwriting joke in one episode that I guess would pass most people by. It also has a nice line in almost anachronistic humour, where characters comment on a fact of the day that is actually a commentary on modern life. It’s not subtle, and perhaps writer Ben Elton returns to that comedy well too often, but it’s always funny. And as I often say…

The Thick of It The Specials
It’s funny coming to The Thick of It for the first time now. It was so cutting-edge when it aired, and yet politics has got so much barmier since — these specials debuted a whole decade ago now, when the idea that Trump might be President was the kind of thing no one but sitcom gag writers thought about. That’s not to say the show’s lost any of its bite, just that it’s not as timely as it once was. These two hour-long specials, The Rise of the Nutters and Spinners and Losers (plus 15-minute bonus episode Opposition Extra, which follows some characters from Rise of the Nutters during the events of Spinners and Losers), set their satirical sights on the transition of power from Tony Blair to Gordon Brown. Don’t worry if you don’t remember that — there’s no reading up required, because The Thick of It is a fiction loosely inspired by real political events, rather than a straight riff on reality. It’s every inch the 21st century’s answer to Yes Minister in that respect. Although there’s an ensemble cast, all of whom are very amusing, the unmistakable star is Peter Capaldi’s Malcolm Tucker. With a regime change in the offing, Tucker risks being thrown out as part of the old guard, and so is on the back foot trying to manipulate things to his advantage. After three seasons of Capaldi as the Doctor, witnessing him here use his brain to run rings around other people to get the result he desires now feels like watching a somewhat evil — and much swearier — version of everyone’s favourite Time Lord.

Also watched…

Castle Season 8 Episodes 1-3 — Still not as good as it used to be, but I’ve reached the final season now so may as well finish it off.

The Great British Bake Off Series 8 Episodes 4-8 — One minute the Radio Times is all “it’s obvious who’s going to be in the final”; the next, Liam’s out in the quarters.

Peaky Blinders Series 3 Episodes 1-3 — Looks like I may catch up on this in time for the forthcoming fourth series. That wasn’t necessarily my plan when I started series one back in March, but here we are. More comments next month when I’ve finished the series.

Vixen Seasons 1-2 — er, kinda. Review here.

Things to Catch Up On
This month, I have mostly been missing The Gifted, the new TV show set definitively in the X-Men universe — unlike the last one, Legion, which apparently wasn’t. As you might infer from that use of “apparently”, I still haven’t got round to Legion either. I also haven’t seen the other new Marvel Comics-related show, Inhumans, which is part of the MCU. After the terrible reviews it’s received, I’m not sure I’ll bother.

Next month… strangerer things.

The Past Month on TV #21

Posted on August 17, 2017 by badblokebob

Another busy, busy month — I should’ve split it into fortnights again.

Anyway, read on for reviews of Top of the Lake: China Girl, the latest instalments of Game of Thrones and Twin Peaks, ‘old’ shows like Line of Duty series 3 (from all the way back in 2016) and Peaky Blinders series 2 (from even longer ago: 2014), and even more bits & bobs too.

Game of Thrones Season 7 Episodes 2-5
The first of this month’s quartet of trips to Westeros, Stormborn, demonstrated better than the premiere the whip-crack pace the show is now moving at. To pick one example: Arya re-encountered Hot Pie and learnt that Winterfell was back in the hands of the Starks, changed her plans to journey there instead of King’s Landing, and encountered Nymeria (her wolf last seen way back in the second ever episode), who now leads a pack of wolves and, basically, rejected Arya. All those developments previously would’ve taken Thrones a good four or five episodes to get through, but no more. There are benefits to this, of course — no more longueurs — but the worry is Dan & Dave are rushing for the sake of rushing; because they told themselves this story would be done in 73 episodes and they’ve kind of had enough after the best part of a decade working on it. Still, it’s not as if it’s bad, it’s just faster. And where the episode promises exciting reunions and first meetings left, right, and centre, we can be assured they’re just around the corner.

Almost literally, as Jon Snow, hot off deciding to go visit Dany at the end of the previous episode, rocks up to Dragonstone in The Queen’s Justice for the long-awaited meet-up between aunt and nephew — not that either of them know that. The show doesn’t even make us wait all episode for it, kicking right into it. And, again, things move ever onward, as cunning plans are executed, thwarted, and bettered. It’s been reported that this season has the same budget as normal, despite having three fewer episodes, and that clearly shows on screen with epic battles almost every week.

The most epic so far came in The Spoils of War. Apparently it’s been dubbed the Field of Fire — if there’s one thing Game of Thrones is consistently good at, it’s giving its big events cool monikers. (The “Field of Fire” is also an event from the series’ backstory, I believe, so maybe some of the reviews I read just got confused.) But it’s not just cool shots of fiery destruction that make this episode so satisfying: it’s the way that changes the game. Not to mention characters coming together after so long apart, both on the battlefield and not. That two girls talking in a crypt can be as thrilling as a dragon blowing shit up is… well, how character investment works, I guess. Some reckon this is the series’ best-ever episode. I wouldn’t go that far, but it is right near the top.

By comparison, Eastwatch was almost a calm affair. Okay, that might be an exaggeration; but there were no epic battles this week (just a cliffhanger teasing one next time). It continued to contribute to this perhaps being Thrones’ most satisfying season ever though, with yet more long-awaited reunions, a couple of pretty major revelations, and some great skullduggery and counter-skullduggery. It also held fan-pleasing moments aplenty, my personal favourite being Davos’ meta one-liner. If it doesn’t stand out as an all-round all-time classic like the episodes surrounding it, that says more about them than it does this quality instalment.

Top of the Lake: China Girl
Elisabeth Moss, star of both Mad Men, a series partly about the sexual politics of the ’60s workplace, and The Handmaid’s Tale, a series about the sexual politics of a world where women are baby-making slaves, returns as Det. Robin Griffin for a second run of Top of the Lake, which is now a series about the sexual politics of present-day Australia.

Set four years after the first season, China Girl sees New Zealander Robin back at work as a police detective in Australia. The inciting incident happens on Bondi Beach, but this is not the world of sunny tourist hotspots or chirpy vets: it’s the body of an Asian prostitute, brutally murdered and shoved in a suitcase, then dumped to rot in the ocean. And it gets grimmer from there. Meanwhile, Robin seeks a connection with the daughter she gave up for adoption at two days old, who is now a headstrong and over-assured seventeen-year-old blindly falling into something way out of her depth.

After a first episode that seems somehow tentative, as if it’s considering on the fly whether it should be a second season or a standalone narrative with the same protagonist, China Girl quickly resolves into its own beast: with vital groundwork laid in that sometimes stilted first hour, it hits the ground running as soon as episode two (making me wonder if, with further hindsight or a rewatch, the first episode wasn’t so awkward after all). Over its remaining five hours, China Girl increasingly impresses as dark, difficult, uncomfortable, challenging, and powerful drama. It’s also laced with surprising humour, and it’s a bit pretentious too. I can see why it was a hit at Cannes.

There are some great performances in there too, mainly from the female characters — no surprise, really, considering creator and co-writer/co-director Jane Campion is clearly interested in exploring women’s place in the world. Moss carries things, with Robin competent but combative at work (she needs to be, as the Australian police force seems stuck in the ’70s with its gender politics) even as her personal life is a tumultuous mess. Nicole Kidman gets to play it kooky as the adoptive mother of Robin’s child, who’s gone all spiritual and lesbian recently. The most entertaining is Gwendoline Christie as an enthusiastic constable who latches on to Robin, eager to be her protégé. She brings the bulk of the humour, with great lines and moments aplenty, but also brings emotional depth when needed.

The whole thing ends with a degree of ambiguity rather than a killer blow, answering all the plot mechanics but seemingly less clear on how it wants to conclude its important themes. Nonetheless, for me it was an order of magnitude more interesting than the good-but-kind-of-woolly first season, and therefore a lot better than it too.

Twin Peaks Season 3 Episodes 11-14
I must be honest with you, dear readers: the longer this Twin Peaks revival goes on, the less I feel I’m enjoying it. It works best when Lynch is trying to out-Lynch himself. Those episodes are crazy and borderline nonsensical and insanely challenging to what constitutes filmed entertainment, but at least they’re interesting; and if you don’t get it you can dismiss it as “it’s Lynch, innit”. It’s actually the ‘normal’ stuff — the investigations and machinations in South Dakota, Las Vegas, and Twin Peaks itself — that are beginning to get on my wick. Again, at times there are moments of clarity or inspired weirdness, but in between sits a morass of sludgy plotting and wilfully obscure characterisation. It’s starting to nudge the series from “revelatory experiment” into “noble failure” territory, for me.

That said, there was a definite uptick at the end of this month’s viewing, with Part 14 providing a lot of long-awaited developments and forward momentum for the plot (plus one of my favourite of the end-of-episode performances at the Roadhouse, Lissie’s Wild West). Perhaps everything will finally come together in the remaining few episodes after all? Or perhaps everything will slow down again and we’ll be none the wiser come the end of Part 18. Only time will tell…

Line of Duty Series 3 Episodes 4-6
As I noted last month, the third series of Line of Duty seems to be the one that attracted the most adulation. I was reserving judgement until I’d finished, because at the halfway point I wasn’t finding it superior to the brilliant second series.

For those still unaware of the show, it’s about a police anti-corruption unit, and in this six-parter they were looking into an officer who shot a suspect and covered up the circumstances. That wasn’t all that was going on, however. Line of Duty pretends it’s about a new case each series but, really, it told one big story across its first three runs. I wonder if that’s why some have hailed this one as its best: it finally brings all those long-brewing arcs to a head. Unsurprisingly, the bulk of the resolutions come in the feature-length finale, which is certainly a striking episode. Nonetheless, I’d argue series two was better overall — I felt it had a greater sense of mystery, palpable tension throughout, and the plot was more unpredictable. Still, I don’t wish to do the third series down — being second-best to that is no mean feat.

Peaky Blinders Series 2
The second series of BBC Two’s period crime drama jumps forward two years to find everyone’s favourite Brummie criminals running such a successful business that they intend to expand their operations to London, by sticking their oar into a turf war between the Jews (led by Tom Hardy) and the Italians (led by Noah Taylor). Meanwhile, Sam Neill’s copper is back with a vengeance, teaming up with the Irish to blackmail Blinders kingpin Cillian Murphy into performing an off-the-books assassination for the crown.

Peaky Blinders’ second series ups the ante from the already excellent first, pitching its leads into a more dangerous world where they’re not the major force to be reckoned with. As its stories unfurl over six hours (without needing to resort to wheel-spinning), you begin to wonder how they can possibly escape the various binds they find themselves in. It all builds to a payoff-filled finale, even though things don’t go quite to plan… Where that will take things in the third series will be interesting to see. (For more up-to-date fans than me, the fourth series is due later this year.)

Also watched…

The Bletchley Circle Series 1-2 — ITV’s short-lived drama (just seven episodes across two series), about former Bletchley Park codebreakers using their skills to solve crimes in ’50s London, is chiefly notable for its intelligent and capable female heroes. The first series is good, but I felt like the second was beginning to struggle to sustain the conceit — just how many criminal conspiracies were these ladies going to stumble upon?

The Musketeers Series 3 Episodes 1-3 — the last season! Sob! If you like swashbuckling excitement and have let this show pass you by, do find a way to catch up on it.

Sherlock Pilot — finally got round to watching this unaired pilot (it’s included as a special feature on the series one Blu-ray). I was under the impression it was something of a disaster, but it really isn’t. The direction isn’t as flashy as the final show (but is otherwise fine), and obviously it’s half-an-hour shorter, but other than that it’s all very similar.

Wallander Series 4 Episodes 2-3 — an adaptation of the final novel, in which the Swedish detective investigates a case relating to a shameful incident in his country’s past while battling early-onset dementia. It’s a superb idea for a story — the once-great detective battling his deteriorating mental faculties. This being Wallander, it tackles the concept from a more personal, emotional perspective, rather than a Memento-esque plot-driven one, but is no worse for it. It’s a sad end for the character, but an affecting one for his series.

Things to Catch Up On
This month, I have mostly been missing Torchwood: Aliens Among Us. Although ‘just’ an audio drama from Big Finish, it’s being marketed as the series’ official fifth season, picking up after the events of 2011’s (disappointing) Miracle Day. A full 12-episode run, it’s coming out in three box sets — although part two isn’t out until October and part three until February, part one came out last week. Obviously, I’ve not listened to it yet. Hopefully next time…

Next fortnight… another earlier-than-normal edition, as Netflix gets defendered and Game of Thrones reaches a feature-length finale. Yes, already.

The Past Month on TV #15

Posted on March 16, 2017 by badblokebob

It’s been a busy old month in front of the TV here at 100 Films HQ, and I’m not even going to cover all of it (I find myself with nothing to say about the five episodes of Arrow and The Flash I watched this month). For some kind of semblance of order to what follows, it’s split into “new stuff” and “old stuff” (plus the usual “other stuff” and “missed stuff” at the end).

24: Legacy (Season 1 Episodes 1-4)
Previously on Twenny-Four… There may be no Jack Bauer, the new font for the clock may be bizarrely wrong, and the on-screen text may have abandoned the familiar golden yellow for a soft blue, but everything else about Legacy is same old, same old. If you remember it from 24, it’s here: the suspicious bosses, the scheming associates, the moles, the people accused of doing something bad who are obviously going to be innocent, the heroes going rogue and having to sneak around under the noses of people who are probably good but can’t be trusted right now, the implausible use and abuse of real-time, the unrelated subplots that are obviously going to be related eventually… even CTU’s ringtone is the same. So too is how it’s directed: split screen is kind of baked into the format, but everything’s hand-held and shot as if people are being spied on. Once upon a time 24’s look was innovative, but that was over 15 years ago. It’s not quite dated looking yet, but it’s no longer slick and modern either. Much like the entire show, to be honest. It’s nothing new, and nor is it a return to form — it’s just more of the same, but without the old leading man. Personally I don’t miss Bauer all that much (for me the format was always the star), but I do lament the complete lack of any attempt at innovation.

Broadchurch (Series 3 Episodes 1-3)
DI David Tennant and DS Olivia Colman (or whatever their characters are called) return after the much-criticised second series for a third run that represents a blazing return to form. Nearly every police drama on TV is always about murder, but here our committed coppers are faced with something that seems harder to prove, and all the more distressing and divisive for those involved: a sexual assault. The series was apparently put together with extensive advice from expert organisations, which means on occasion it almost tips a little too far into factual territory, like a “this is how it’s done in real life” dramatisation. Fortunately screenwriter Chris Chibnall is better than that, quickly focusing on how it affects the characters, and on building the mysteries that will fuel eight whole episodes. Suspicion abounds, but if Broadchurch’s first series proved anything it was that everyone can guess the culprit before the end without it undermining the effectiveness of the drama. I think we’re a ways from that point yet, though…

The 89th Academy Awards
Best. Oscars. Ever! Oh, I bet it was horrendous actually being there having to deal with that ending, but my goodness, as a viewer it was fantastic. It couldn’t’ve been more dramatic if you’d scripted it. Imagine how terrible it could have been, though — if Moonlight had been forced to cede the win to La La Land, for instance (that would’ve sent #OscarSoWhite into overdrive), or if it had been in a category with a sole winner, who in the middle of their no-doubt-tearful acceptance speech was informed they hadn’t won after all and had to embarrassedly hand the statuette over to someone else… But no, it turned out OK. Well, not so for the La La Land guys, but for everyone else, yeah. And the rest of the ceremony wasn’t half bad either. Jimmy Kimmel was the most confident and capable host for bloody ages (and I say that as someone who enjoyed the likes of Neil Patrick Harris and Hugh Jackman) — if the show’s producers know what’s good for them, he’ll be the new regular host.

Luther (Series 4)
The recent news that Fox have scrapped plans for a US remake of Luther (because they couldn’t find a lead actor good enough to replace Idris Elba) reminded me that I never got round to watching the original version’s last series, this two-parter that aired back in December 2015. I can see why feeling unable to cast anyone as engaging as Elba would lead them to abandon their remake, because there’s not all that much special about Luther outside of its lead. Some people talk about it as if it’s among the forefront of the Quality TV era that we’re currently blessed with, but that’s just a bit daft — much like the programme itself. It doesn’t know it’s daft — it’s all very serious — but it is daft, really. Sure it’s dark, and sometimes kinda scary, and certainly grim, but its realism quotient is way low. It has much more in common with the overblown heightened world of, say, Sherlock than it does with, say, Elba’s previous great TV drama, The Wire. Anyway, the fourth series (if you can call two episodes a series) continues in much the same vein, as Luther’s dragged away from a leave of absence to help track a cannibal serial killer, while also trying to ascertain who committed the supposed murder of his super-villain girlfriend. Yeah, what a grounded and gritty show this is. Still, if you can stomach its gory pessimism, it’s largely entertaining.

Peaky Blinders (Series 1)
I’ve been meaning to get round to this since it first aired back in 2013, and for whatever reason now was the time (partly it was brought to mind by writer Steven Knight’s new dark period drama, Taboo). For thems that don’t know, it’s the saga of the eponymous gang, who ruled the streets of Birmingham in 1919, and their plans for expansion into other forms of business, both legitimate and otherwise. There’s a compelling lead performance from Cillian Murphy as the gang’s feared war veteran leader, but he’s surrounded by a strong ensemble, including the likes of Helen McCrory as his formidable aunt, who ran the business while all the lads were off in the trenches, and Sam Neill as the Northern Irish copper sent to Brum to retrieve some stolen munitions. It functions by turns as both a gripping underworld thriller and character study of violent men, on both sides of the law. I hear future series are of even higher quality, which is something to look forward to indeed.

Twin Peaks (Season 1)
“She’s dead… wrapped in plastic!” With those immortal words (not the first lines, but never mind) a TV phenomenon was born, and a whole new era of television slowly began. Buffy the Vampire Slayer turned 20 this month and the Guardian ran a piece on how it (not, say, The Sopranos or The Wire) was the birth of TV-as-art. I love Buffy, but c’mon — even if we limit ourselves to ongoing US network drama series, Twin Peaks definitely got there first. Leaving aside its place in TV history, it’s a mighty fine drama, with co-creator David Lynch operating at his most accessible, yet still undoubtedly odd, in a story of an ordinary-looking small town with innumerable dark secrets lurking just out of sight. It’s at times hilariously funny, nightmarishly scary, unashamedly trashy, and absolutely gripping. At least so far — season two is notoriously less-good. Well, I’ve never watched it before, so I’ll find out for myself next month.

Also watched…

Death in Paradise Series 6 Episodes 7-8 — the first episodes with new lead Ardal O’Hanlon seemed divisive, but I like him. Hopefully next year they can come up with some fresh new plotting to match their fresh new star.

Elementary Season 5 Episodes 10-13 — by the end of this season there’ll be exactly twice as many episodes of Elementary as there are canonical Holmes stories.

Let’s Sing and Dance for Comic Relief Series 1 Episodes 1-2 — oh, no. Despite everyone’s best efforts, the format just isn’t as good as plain ol’ Let’s Dance for Comic Relief.

Things to Catch Up On
This month, I have mostly been missing the penultimate season of The Americans, which is two episodes in Stateside (no idea if there’s still a UK broadcaster; at this point I’m not sure it matters). Long-time readers may recall I like to save up The Americans and watch it binge-ish-ly once the season ends, which is a very rewarding way to watch such an intricately-constructed programme. The downside is that means I’m still a couple of months away from getting to find out what happens this year in “the best drama on television”. I bet it’ll be good, though.

66 days until new Twin Peaks…

Next month… the final Defender: Iron Fist is released tomorrow. I’ll review it next month (obviously — I mean, this is the “next month” section.) Also! The first episode of the new series of Doctor Who.

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