A Review: William Orbit - The Painter

Bill's back. And a big part of me wants to say HE'S BACK, YEAH! And The Painter is a cracking album, arguably his best of the 21st century. It's still nowhere near the first four Strange Cargo albums, of which the fourth - Hinterland - is undeniably the best, but on the evidence of the last 20 years, he's back on track. 

I'm convinced the mighty Ray of Light by Madonna is what ... I'm loathe to say, ruined him, but his solo output after the success of that, for him, was patchy at best and he seemed to be heading in a direction I didn't really understand. There was still some great production work to come from him, but his solo stuff just didn't have that strange [pun intended] and slightly sinister feel his Strange Cargo albums had. It felt generic, derivative and unimaginative, very little had any impact and listening to them again in anticipation of this album they still fell... empty.

The two new 'singles', Colours Colliding with Polly Scattergood and the sublime Bank of Wildflowers with Georgia suggested this might be something a little more Orbit than usual and when it landed it did feel as though, like many other performers past their prime, he'd managed to find that thing that made his as good as he was again.

The problem was I realised that after two listens, I kind of drifted away after track four and didn't really find my way back until about track nine; when I sat down to make my initial review notes I found I couldn't even remember them, so I did what any good and patient reviewer would do, I gave it a couple of days off and went back into it with fresher ears.

As I worked my through it again, I noticed that tracks I'd dismissed were actually quite good - Heshima Kwa Hukwe - and that while very pretty, Colours Colliding is the weakest track on the album and gets a little repetitive and boring after a few listens. I also noticed a distinct feel to it, almost like it was an autobiographical 'painting' of his musical career, because there's elements of Madonna, All Saints, Torch Song and Bassomatic, plus the occasional nod to the Strange Cargo era. It's largely a pop album with that slightly off-kilter feel Orbit is so good at bringing out in his production work with others. There is also Beth Orton, Katie Melua, Natalie Walker, Ali Love, Georgia and the aforementioned Scattergood all bringing their distinct vocals to the party and I get a nostalgic feeling about it.

However, there are tracks on the album that are, like on many of his good albums, a bit meh, almost like filler, but the good tracks are very good and there's a feeling of finality about this album; like 'this is it, there ain't going to be any more' and given he's 65 and been in ill-health a lot in the last 10 years or so, perhaps he wants to go out on a high and if that's the case then he can be pretty pleased with this.

Stand out tracks (so far): Bank of Wildflowers, Planet Sunrise, Second Moon and Gold Coast.

7/10

https://youtu.be/3SQUp9_F3z0

Modern Culture - Not So Modern

There's a bit of a loose theme running through this latest instalment and that theme is sequels/prequels, I'll explain more as we go along...

The Sandman was a rare thing - an extraordinary TV series of sheer brilliance. There's not really much else I can say. We binge watched it over three nights and bathed in the sumptuousness and atmosphere it crafted. It was the DC TV series we've all been waiting for - something that pisses on anything the MCU has done for a long time.

Based on the DC/Vertigo comic series The Sandman written by Neil Gaiman and drawn by a host of big name serious comic artists, it was a cult success that eventually became one of DC's best selling comics and mainly to non-comic fans. It was without doubt one of the most ambitious and unique comics of all time. It was also, thanks to the powers of retro-writing is both a sequel to the Sandman comics of a previous generation and a prequel to them. The reason why all the other Sandman comics and appearances happened at all. It also managed to do this in such a slight, almost underhanded way, made it all the more popular with people who didn't read comics.

The series takes the first two story-arcs from the comic and adapts them almost faultlessly, to the point where the three issues where actual DC superheroes appeared weren't missed from the TV series. Oddly enough the episode that stands head and shoulders above the others (and they're all 9/10) is episode 6 (or #8 in the comic) where we are introduced to both Death and Hob Gadling. It is simply one of the most fabulous 45 minutes you will ever spend in front of a TV and for me is probably the best single episode of any show I've seen in the last five years and in my world it takes something special to beat For All Mankind which has at least two, maybe three, 10/10 episodes a season.

I can't recommend this series enough.

***

Predator films are hit and miss. Mainly miss to be honest, because it's basically the same idea played over and over again in a different stylee. However, Prey is something different in that it's set 300 years in the past and the aliens are as primitive as we've ever seen them with less tech and a more wild appearance.

It's the story of a feisty teenage Commanche Native American girl who wants to be a hunter but is faces a future of foraging and being the second class citizen of the tribe, that is until she takes it on herself to hunt down whatever's killing buffalo. The thing is the people killing the buffalo are not the people doing the hunting and through her ingenuity and self-taught skills she bests the French hunters and then the big fuck off alien and barely cuts herself in the process.

There's a couple of neon-lit plot devices, that could have been used even better than they were and it romps in at just over 90 minutes and has about as much dialogue in the entire film as Arnie had in the original. That said, it's without doubt the second best Predator film ever made.

***

Obviously Better Call Saul is a prequel to Breaking Bad and now we're into the final stretch and things are moving at an incredible pace, almost so fast it feels like an anti-climax. The storyline that has essentially been playing out in the background of Jimmy McGill/Saul Goodman's origin has concluded and, to be honest, in a quick and efficient way that seemed almost too quickly, given there are another six episodes to come. The epilogue to the Salamancha story is also more like a scalpel cut than anything else with Kim's story coming to an odd, but somehow understandable conclusion.

Kim leaves with five minutes of the second episode left, which they manage to fast forward an indeterminate number of months and give us a quick reminder of the Saul Goodman we first met in Breaking Bad. Except the third episode goes off-piste, as we return to Jimmy's future (black & white) life in Omaha, Nebraska; this time in a full episode focusing on the man who recognised him in the shopping mall from the previous series finale. And what an oddly unfulfilling 50 minutes it turned out to be and probably raises more questions than answers at a point when, to be fair, we know there are four more episodes, two of which will feature the original BB stars yet all the series' stories have concluded, we are in a new chapter of an old life in a short space of time.

The first of those features the famous BB reunion - actually a three minute scene that feels oddly empty and redundant apart from the analogy it throws up with Jimmy's newly re-adopted Omaha hustling life; it also works as a platform for Jimmy's eventual 'sham' defence.

The Better Call Saul story effectively ended with episode 9, the one exception being how he first met up with Jesse Pinkman and Walter White. Ep10 was where Jimmy McGill is now; quickly filling in the blanks from all the teasers at the start of each season. He's the manager of a cinnamon bun shop in Omaha and life is dull and boring and everything Jimmy isn't. With the aid of someone who cropped up in an earlier series who recognises him, he goes into hustling and fraud, making enough money to be reasonably comfortable because he no longer has anything left of his fortune he built during BB. The problem is the tone, feel and pacing; it might be me, but it doesn't feel right although it might be deliberate. The suggestion that Jimmy is just a crook at heart harks back to the earliest episodes, but I'm simply not convinced. 

There's also a puzzling scene in a phone booth, of which there are a few, but this is quickly explained in the penultimate episode which turns the focus of the conclusion towards Kim Wexler and the dull, boring and insignificant life she's living in Florida. Her dull, boring and insignificant life is suddenly thrown into turmoil as (we discover six years has passed since she walked out on) Saul gets in touch with her and sets things into motion that you kind of know are going to end badly for all concerned. Kim does the right thing, maybe for all the wrong reasons, and then discovers it might have been a sacrifice made entirely fruitlessly as no one is alive that can corroborate her story of the last six seasons. There is also another glimpse of Jesse, this time meeting Kim for the first and only time and asking her what Saul Goodman is like as a lawyer.

The episode ends with Jimmy's Omaha cover blown wide open and sets up the final ever episode which, unsurprisingly, is called ... Saul Gone.

That final episode, which completes a sprawling story, was by no means a classic but it did finally prove me right about one thing, Jimmy is not a bad man. Basically, in typical Saul Goodman fashion, complete with gold lame suit (in black & white), Jimmy, who had painstakingly wasted the time of the huge legal team prosecuting him by plea bargaining only to backtrack in court and level with the judge. At one point he'd managed to whittle two life sentences and 190 years down to 7 years in a minimum security prison - for being involved in everything from drug trafficking, the murders of FBI agents and a host of other crimes - but when it became clear that the love of his life might now be implicated and ruined because of it, he essentially gave her his Kevlar vest and took the full force of the law on the chin and pretty much got the sentence he'd originally been promised.

However, Jimmy gets something of an unexpected happier ending than you'd expect because Saul Goodman is a hero among the criminal underworld and he's treated like a god while serving his sentence; he has the protection of the entire prison population and he also gets a visit from Kim and the series end almost the same way it began with the two of them sharing a cigarette. 

For anyone who only watched BCS - the final episode, in many ways, makes little sense because most of the references are from another television series - Breaking Bad - and anyone who watched that series and hasn't watched this one might want to check this out - maybe the last half dozen episodes - because these are as much Breaking Bad epilogues and the conclusion of Saul Goodman's story.

It was an undeniably brilliant TV series probably only spoiled by niggly little things probably caused by the passage of time and Bob Odenkirk's health (ironically when the series started it was Jonathan Banks who was causing the concern mainly because of his age).

However, it leaves yet another gap vacated by a classic TV show.

***

I Am Groot is a series of very short CGI animated films featuring everyone's favourite tree - when he was a sapling - it is aimed at pre-school children but has one or two LOL moments - especially in the second episode. Other than a cameo by a CGI Rocket there ain't much to comment on.

Obviously Groot is a sequel to Groot who tried to enslave the world back in 1961 in an old issue of Tales to Astonish...

***

Resident Alien is back for the second half of its season and ... er... um... There could be people reading this who remember past lamented SyFy series such as Warehouse 13 and Eureka, series which started with so much promise and seemed to end up being written by people who didn't really understand what the viewers wanted or even how to write a script. Great stories were ruined by poor plotting, dodgy characters and a lot of shark jumping and guess what? Resident Alien has reached that point after less than two seasons, at least the others fell apart after three or four.

The main problem with Resident Alien is once you look past alien Harry's quirkiness and the surreal mind of the sheriff, there isn't much else in it that makes you want to give a shit. Alan Tudyk is still quite brilliant - at times - but there's far too much fucking about with his assumed character's past and his own changes, which have seen him go from a shapeshifting alien to someone who can do all manner of things without the aid of any of his magic balls. It really does feel as though it's being made up on an episode by episode basis. 

Almost as problematic are the myriad of subplots that have been woven - obviously to pad out the series because of its new elongated length - that are either as dull as ditch water or not really interesting. They've attempted to turn this into an ensemble dramedy and it's failing all over the shop. Let's see if I can list the subplots: the Mayor and his wife, their kid and his Muslim friend, the government agency tracking Harry and the other government agency that appears to be working outside of the law, an invasion by another alien race, the imminent destruction of Earth by Harry's race, the battle to give Darcy a story line, how they can incorporate Asta into the series when she offers as much to the series as a beaver staring at a photograph of trees and why is there even an estranged daughter/adoptee story line? Especially when no one gives a shit anyhow. Oh yeah, the human Harry's wife, daughter, criminal activity, murder of the town's doctor, deputy Liv's constant and numerous struggles with her boss to her fascination with alien hunters, and then there are others that aren't part of the storyline, but are all written like it's part of a rich tapestry of weirdness going on, but what it is is a collection of actors with variable abilities wading through the mire in search of a direction.

Don't get me wrong, I like it, like I like inexplicable things wot I like, but it's really just a load of shit. 

***

Speaking of shit - the best worst acted program in TV land came to a possible/probable conclusion. Motherland: Fort Salem and its story of an alternative US history, which is protected by witches in a world where magic exists.

It's primarily about three new witches and their journey from new recruits to seasoned veterans leading the fightback against a right wing anti-witch US militia force and some of the acting in it is beyond appalling, but the actual story and the weird and wonderful directions it has gone is fantastic, proving that acting and special effects are not the only thing you need to make some things work.

That said, the penultimate episode was arguably one of the worst ever because clearly it's intended to be the lull before the storm, but it bordered on schmaltz overload with extra thick creamy icing, so in lieu of that I went into the final episode expecting deaths and tragedies and an almost happy ending for some of our main protagonists, what I got was... none of the above, almost...

It was choc-a-bloc full of lovey-dovey endings and honestly, the series story was wrapped up so quickly and so anti-climatically and was padded out with conclusions that spending the last two minutes setting up a fourth season with a non-sensical cliffhanger seemed both counter-productive and a bit silly. Literally from the first episode of the third season, the soldiers and heroes of Fort Salem have been fighting the Vice-President who is part of the Camarilla - an ancient right wing anti-witch group - it has been fraught and complex yet it was concluded in exactly the most logical way inside 10 minutes, leaving a further 30 minutes of [see the start of this paragraph].

I'm really quite disappointed because from a story point of view Motherland has been very well crafted, but with the final last few episodes it didn't so much jump the shark as turn it over, stroke its belly and then give it a damned good rogering. It really felt like they had five good episodes and needed to extend it to nine, so they wandered down some alleys and hurtled down others and I don't think the writers really knew what they were doing, because everything felt a bit meh in the end, a bit too contrived and amateurish - a bit like the acting.

***

Wow! The For All Mankind finale was everything I expected it to be and a whole lot more. In three short years this series has become by far and away the best ongoing drama on telly; it is everything realistic sci-fi can offer. 

The final part of the Mars Odyssey delivered in a number of ways and ended with an ironic twist and another tragedy on which the next series will be based around, for sure. It was also the culmination of three of the main women's storylines, one is left hanging in the balance and the last one, through a series of judgement calls will probably end up as the head of NASA in a way that tied up an ongoing plot device extremely well. But that's what this series does, it tells fantastic stories of fictional heroism that goes above and beyond in an almost soap opera-like framework and does it in such a way you feel every bit of jeopardy, because you have a vested interest in the main characters and people will die.

The finale saw the culmination of the gay President story - with no apparent resolution - and Margot's past finally catching up with her. It saw the triumphant return of Molly Cobb, who seemed almost abandoned after the second episode when she was fired (by Margot) and it highlighted Karen's journey from frustrated wife of astronaut to head of an independent space agency only for it all to end in this reality's 9/11 moment. Aleida's obsession with the truth backfires in many ways, but ends up being the thing that will take her from the young Mexican savant taken under Margot's wing in series one to probably being head of NASA in the next series. It was the end for four of the main reasons for watching the show, or is it?

The final scene leaps 7 years into the future - to 2005 and a new back drop for the show's primary female character - but is it a happy ending for her? I think not, but whether we've seen the last of her we will have to wait and see.

However, the thought did cross my mind that For All Mankind might even end up us as a prequel to Battlestar Galactica. I mean, they were written by the same person and mankind is conquering the stars in this series and were trying to find their way home from them in the other. Could AI be the next big space race leap for season 4?

***

A word of warning. Do not, under any circumstances, watch the Jamie Foxx vehicle Day Shift. It makes a pile of shit look appetising, good company and worth a cuddle...

***

That brings us nicely to the latest in the meat-product-production-line that is Marvel/Disney. She-Hulk: Attorney at Law ... except that isn't on until tomorrow, I won't see it until Friday and it can kick off the next Pop Culture blog...

The MCU: Ranked: By Me

I've wracked up over 100 hours watching, re-watching and writing about the Marvel Cinematic Universe. You could probably double that number if you included reading articles, watching videos and however else you absorb this kind of guff, so I feel in a good position to dazzle you with an extremely pointless list of how I rank the MCU films. Obviously no one is going to agree with me because my least favourite is one of my mate's favourites and there's few surprises in this, apart from how lowly I rate Spider-Man.

So let's get cracking... Lowest to highest ranked:

Eternals: had this not been an MCU film I still probably wouldn't have rated it as a good film, it was too long, too sprawling with too many ideas underplayed. None of the main protagonists were interesting enough for me to give a shit about and it felt like a vehicle to introduce things rather than move any story forward. Maybe I'll change my mind in the coming years, but at the moment this is one MCU film I'm in no real hurry to watch again.

Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings: I simply didn't like this film. I didn't like the characters, the story, the world building or the special effects. I don't really like martial arts films and this film was far too dependant on elements unrelated to the actual story. I'm not in much of a hurry to watch this again either as it was too dependent on Kajus having a fight than it was with furthering the MCU story.

Guardians of the Galaxy Vol 2: or half a dozen characters in search of a story. Another film that seems to thrive on poor special effects, bad plotting and lots of good faith. It's a mish-mash of a film, has too much going on for its own good and seemed to keep none of charm from the first film. Volume 3 needs to be good.

Ant-Man and The Wasp: or half a dozen characters in search of a coherent film. I know these films have a place in the big picture, but this felt tacked on, especially as it came out after Infinity War, but this franchise feels like it would have been better done as a Disney+ series. I'm not overly familiar with the rebooted Ant-Man from the comics, but casting too over-aged actors in the role of the superheroes seemed like a poor choice, especially Evangeline Lily who would have been too old when she was in Lost.

Ant-Man: beats its sequel on the grounds that it was a bit of fun but felt more like a surreal big budget reboot of Land of the Giants. I like Paul Rudd but he's nearly as old as me.

The Incredible Hulk: I have a soft spot for this film and I expect it will take on more importance now that the Abomination is being reintegrated back into the MCU, but it was a cheaper, less frills remake/reboot of the failed Ang Lee project which actually was tacked onto the MCU by a quirk of release dates and luck. In many ways the post credits scene is the best reason to watch this film.

Spider-Man: Far From Home: I didn't like this, but I don't really like Spider-Man films (see blogs passim) and there was far too much wrong with the entire premise that fails to work with me, plus being the first post-snap film it did, IMHO, a poor job at explaining the physical/mental juxtaposition the returnees were exposed to or how the world's population doubling overnight affected things. I know they touched on this in the Falcon TV series, but this sets a bit of a precedent of breezing over a massively devastating and important event rather than simply resetting it back to point zero. But that wasn't the point of this or any subsequent Marvel film and I'm nit-picking. The problem with this film is there's much to like about it until you start to analyse it and then it starts to unravel. 

Iron Man 3: Oddly enough, over the last few years this film has risen in the ranks of the countless websites that do this kind of list, while the second film has plummeted like a stone. There's much to dislike about IM2 but not as much as there is with this. I'm not a fan of Shane Black and his style nor do I like films that take liberties with Marvel continuity for the sake of it. Outside of the action and the main plot it's not a bad Iron Man film and RDJ is brilliant as usual.

Doctor Strange and the Multiverse of Madness: realistically, this film should be way lower on my list than it actually is, mainly because it's an awful film. However, time often changes ones mind about things and there were moments in this film that were good fun, even if it should have been called Doctor Strange versus The Scarlet Witch. Barely a multiverse was touched while Earth's actual (alternate) mightiest heroes were offed with barely a thought by a Wanda who obviously wasn't this powerful when she faced Thanos otherwise we wouldn't be in the mess we are now. So it's all her fault.

Thor: The Dark World: I like this film. I think it does a good job at fleshing out some characters and it rocks along at a decent pace. Much of the great work Kenneth Branagh did on the first film was lost and the sense of awe and wonder seemed to disappear, but it isn't the worst film or one of the worst films - I think this is just nerd talk and frankly since when did nerds have any real taste?

Black Widow: So redundant, so badly cast, such an anti-climax. Why wasn't this film done three years earlier when it was relevant and people gave a shit? Don't get me wrong, with the exception of Ray Winston this is a good action picture with some nice touches, it just felt so pointless ... it could have been the superhero equivalent to Citizen Kane and people would still have avoided it or criticised it - it should have happened when Natasha was popular, not dead.

Spider-Man: No Way Home: The underlying theme, for me, since hating Avengers: Endgame, is not whether I will enjoy the next new Marvel film, but how much I will hate it and this did a fine job at helping me to hate. I really don't like this film. I almost find it offensive. Why is it so high on my list then? Because... I suppose it isn't a bad film, it's well made but it just did nothing for me; it left me annoyed and like I've now seen eight Spider-Man films and with the exception of one scene at the end of Raimi's SM2 I've been considerably less than ambivalent about all of them...

Captain Marvel: My mate Mark has this theory that the MCU doesn't work unless Nick Fury is in it; however he excludes this film from his theory. This is another Marvel film that packs a punch but doesn't really deliver. It's another film that has fight scenes on subway trains or heroes crashing through roofs, or in other words lacks in originality. My personal belief with the MCU's 'cosmic' side is one of 'they won't do it right' and this does nothing to change that feeling. The film felt like an afterthought because you could have a Deus Ex Machina moment in Endgame without at least introducing the god in a machine before she arrives. This film lacks the warmth of other Marvel films, feels contrived and slightly undercooked - a bit of an anti-climax all told.

Iron Man 2: Here's a film that has actually dropped down my list and I suppose the reason is there's not really a knockout villain and the use of Mickey Rourke felt like a copout. Critics rate this very low, suggesting it has too much going on and fiddles too much with the original ideas at the end of IM1. I think it does what it needs to for the most and had there been a foe with a real threat then it might have got a better reception. I still rate it, but I now see some of its faults.

Avengers: Endgame: Huh? Really? Oh yes... For all the tear jerking scenes, the deaths of Natasha and Tony, the reunions, the third snap moment, this is just a remake of the Lord of the Rings films with superheroes and Helm's Deep could have been where the final battle took place. There is so much wrong with this film that I could write several blogs about it and never feel I've got the bug from out of my arse. It's a great film and I hate it with a thousand passions.

Spider-Man: Homecoming: I suppose my biggest problem is the sense of expectation only to be crushingly let down by the weight of those expectations. This film kind of felt like that, because this new MCU reboot of Spider-Man was going to drag out another old foe of Spidey's rather than resurrecting one of the iconic villains that have been hamfistedly fucked about with by countless directors and screenwriters. Don't get me wrong, the Vulture is actually quite good and the set up is totally understandable and justifiable; there's just lots about it (thanks to the film directly above this entry) that fails to work so is breezed over in the hope that 99.9% of people won't care. However, this is probably the best Spider-Man film of all eight of them.

Doctor Strange: We're entering a trio of films that I enjoyed but struggled with. The good Doctor's first outing is an enjoyable film even if much of what was set up in it played out completely differently given the way the actual Phases stories have changed with the success or failure of certain films. Take, for instance, the end of this film that suggests that Mordo will be playing a prominent part in subsequent Dr Strange adventures, possibly as his main antagonist. However, in terms of enjoyment and entertainment this puts the woeful sequel in its rightful place.

Black Panther: Here's another film that's higher up the list than I probably feel it deserves. Admittedly on the second viewing of this film I enjoyed it more than the first, but, dare I say this, it feels like this gets lots of praise heaped on it because it was a big studio doing a predominantly black film. I still don't think there's anything 'special' about it and if anything Chad Boseman didn't work for me. It also highlights too much how 'privilege' is expressed in MCU films. This is a film about power, wealth and privilege, it could easily have been set in an all-white boardroom. I also have a serious moral problem with the film and with Wakandan logic and left me asking the questions - is anyone poor in Wakanda and how can they live with themselves in the knowledge that most other African countries have struggled for centuries through white oppression and exploitation? I'm reminded of an old saying - never mind the quality, feel the width...

Avengers: Age of Ultron: Another film I like but it feels rushed and in need of being longer to really emphasise how badly they [read: Tony Stark] fucked up. I see what Whedon was hoping to do with this film, it was going to be the Avengers trilogy's Empire Strikes Back, the problem is I think Kevin Feige's vision for his films was causing problems for auteurs with visions, none more so than this. In the end it fails because no one really cares about the fate of Sokovia; we haven't invested enough time in Vision and the Maximov twins were a means to an end. It's a film that could have been so much more, but it still makes my top 10.

Thor: I still feel not enough time or effort was spent on the Destroyer, other than that this is a cracking film that has gotten better with age and probably because Hemsworth is slightly restrained and his bombastic nature is explored without the aid of big set ups. This is a film that restores/creates your sense of awe and wonder for the MCU... However, I will point out that we're talking 'gods' here and even gods have to take a shit; does Asgard have toilet cleaners, cooks, bottle washers, lackeys and servants? What are their lives like when the cameras are turned off? I could say the same things about Black Panther but this is a better film than that.

Guardians of the Galaxy: Hmm... It's a fun film, slightly flippant and rather ruined by Endgame (no surprises there then), especially as Gamora should have been with the Guardians of the Galaxy when she was scheming behind Thanos's back with the future version of her sister. The entire time paradox bollocks has for me fucked up Marvel well and proper. If things that have already happened have already happened so going into the past creates a new now rather than an old then, what happens to the old then? Think about it, Gamora was probably on a prison ship with her new friends at the same time she was confronting Nebula in Endgame - I don't even want you to try and explain this to me because I've read and watched and understood more about theoretical time travel than anyone I know and it can't happen. When it's suggested in Endgame that you could go into the past and kill Thanos as a child, this is dismissed as stupid or won't work - why the fuck won't it? If Thanos no longer exists in a timeline then how the fuck can he exist in the timeline if he's been removed? And yes, I know this is my true frustration and has nothing to do with this film apart from the fact, in my mind, this film no longer can exist. I really didn't like the dance off scene.

Captain America: Civil War: A brilliant film spoiled by the tokenism of having Avengers fight Avengers on a deserted airport runway. I also don't like Spider-Man much (have I mentioned this?) and there was a cracking 100 minute film here that ruined by the same old shite that ruins so many MCU films. Everything still felt like it was spiralling out of control in the MCU when this film came out; this could have really made a big issue out of the Sokovia Accords and the Superhero Registration Act; it could have been as brilliant and tense as the film it follows, but commercialism won out big time.

Thor: Ragnarok: The thing about this film is simple - it's great fun, has some genuinely funny moments and feels like the story has been moved along and back on track; it's also quite a brilliant prologue to the next entry on this list. I've heard some poor things about Thor: Love & Thunder (the sequel to this) and how it seems to make flippant the deaths of characters, preferring humour over pathos; this got the balance right. There were genuine shocks - the deaths of the Warriors Three seemed almost like a pointless gesture - and any film that has the Hulk in it is usually elevated.

Avengers: Infinity War: I love this film. This really is the true Empire Strikes Back moment in the MCU and was the last time Marvel produced a really top notch superhero film. This is a film that literally offers futility from the opening scenes (death of Loki etc) right through until the snap at the end. It's a jaw dropping moment when half the universe's life disappears; it lays bare the real truth that the bureaucrats still fail to see - when you have villains who can wipe out half the galaxy with the snap of a finger, then you need the guns to stand up to them, this film offers you the futility of the fight and is loaded with menace from the word go. It's also funny, poignant and sad and part of me wonders what the MCU would have been like had they simply accepted defeat and got on with life without half of it being there?

The Avengers: Obviously Infinity War only exists because this does and the two films are remarkably well tied together, despite there being more of this in Endgame. It's a great little film about how they band together; it has nods to the original comic, it has enough in jokes and set ups to make you invested in the story and it has shocks you don't see coming. It also does a very poor job of extrapolating how and why Loki went from the character he was in Thor to this desperate, almost dug-addled looking lackey of Thanos (unseen as yet). It's still a cracking film with some splendid scenes.

Captain America: The First Avenger: The top three! I've never been a fan of Captain America; I probably disliked him more than Spider-Man and Batman together. Captain Amateur is what I called him when I had my comic shop. This could be my favourite MCU film of them all; there is so much to like about it, it's a cracking yarn in the mold of both Indiana Jones and the Dirty Dozen. The special effects are top drawer and everything about this film shines. I have some issues with it, but in general it's pretty much a 10/10 film.

Iron Man: The first and arguably one of the best. This never rates as highly on other lists as I rank it, but if you want to launch a new expanding cinematic universe this is exactly how you do it. This updated version of the comicbook origin from 1962 hits every spot, doesn't try to be too much or cram too much in and leaves you at a point where some films would have started. RDJ is the MCU - he owned it the moment he agreed to play Tony Stark. He owned it the first time he opened his mouth. It is a less rich and enjoyable universe now he isn't in it, but this film more than makes up for it. 

Captain America: The Winter Soldier: is this really my favourite MCU film? Probably not, but it is the best by a country mile. It's another film that's impact has been fucked about by Endgame's massaging of the timeline of when events actually happened, but the reason these films are so good is because you can forget everything that happened after 2019 if you want and just treat these as good films. This probably owes more to films like Bond, Bourne or even Mission Impossible than it does to superheroes and while the sense of jeopardy runs through the film like writing in a stick of rock, it never loses itself, even when everything appears to be turning to shit around Cap. It also has some classic scenes of destruction - a lot of shit gets blown up in Cap films...

I haven't seen Thor: Love and Thunder yet, but I expect that will rank very low on my list given what I've seen and read about it. I'll watch it in just over a week when it streams and I expect it will be a fun adventure that leaves me feeling hollow and unfulfilled at the end.

I could also rank the TV series, but I haven't got the inclination to spend more time telling you how awful Moon Knight was or why ensuring What If? is part of MCU continuity is a shitty low blow from a capitalist entertainment company, but I won't...

What I did notice was that the lowest ranked films in my list - on the whole - get off slightly lighter than some of the middling films. In retrospect, I suppose I'm saying that Avengers: Endgame and all the films that followed should be avoided unless you're young, fit and wealthy. 

 

NOT Popular Culture: A Top 10

I'll tell you something I've not talked about in yonks. Comics. Considering 40 years of my life - two-thirds of it - have been immersed in it, it isn't really something I talk about outside of specific people on Facebook and anyone who might unknowingly and dangerously wander into that territory when talking to me...

I always hoped that people would see the irony and humour in calling my comic memoirs My Monthly Curse, because the comics I was into were usually published monthly and for many years of my life I was tied to this cycle - with the fourth week always the worst. I've toyed with the idea of rewriting it - ten years on and with a lot less anger and much more compassion inside me, I kind of think it might be a slightly different beast, except for certain parts of it, which can't ever change, however much I mellow with old age.

For a quarter of my working life I worked in comics, made a living from them and was awarded an honour for doing it. I know bugger all about them now, because by 2004 and despite bringing out an award-winning magazine, I hated them with several passions and a few borrowed ones. Comics were my anathema and regardless of the many friends I still have associated with them, I've had far too many bad experiences for me to view comics as anything but an abusive relationship and one I'm unbelievably happy to be away from.

The thing is it's like an addiction, like many hobbies, once you get into it you go one of two ways - back out of it again or into it for life; whether you hide away from it or not there will always be something that grabs your attention. When comics get mentioned on TV or the radio my ears prick up and I listen; sometimes I turn off very quickly, but other times I can feel the desire to comment rising in me like some appropriate metaphor for something. 

It's sometimes a happy place. Comics have given me a shitload of enjoyment and obsession for 50 years of my life, give or take a couple of barren years. Whether it's comics or TV or the last 20 years of superhero cinema, essentially I'm still a bit of a nerd. So when I saw this article in The Guardian recently ranking the ten funniest comics - the opinion of the writer, obviously - and I didn't recognise one of them I felt compelled to do something. I gathered that most of the comics listed were of the last 20 years or so and extremely indie - the kind of thing that sells more in a book shop than it does in a comic shop. Reading the synopses and reviews, I was hard-pressed to see where the word 'comedy' featured in some and while every one of them might be comedic genius there was this lack of realisation from the author that funny comics is how the entire comics thing pretty much started and there have been some very funny comics over the last 60 years, a few published by major publishers. I felt the writer of the piece probably thought comics started in 2000 and that most comics are for kids.

It got me thinking about something. I couldn't put together my top 10 funny comics because while I enjoyed them I wasn't a fan of them by any stretch of the imagination - I like comical comics, but as a break from the more overwrought kind. Oddly enough, some of the remaining comics in my collection are humorous/funny, but that's more to do with them being good rather than funny. I then realised that my tiny collection of comics was in fact, pretty much, my top ten favourite comics. There are a couple of things on my list which I kind of wish I'd kept but, who knows, maybe one day I'll hunt down collected trade paperbacks of them or maybe even treat myself to the comics (but that's unlikely if they're more than 10p).

This is a list of things which might be my favourites, but are also books which I would recommend to others as one of the reasons all comics should be valued as highly as other genres of the arts. In no specific order until the end three.

* If there was a set of comics I'd wished I'd kept hold of when I sold most of everything I had about 20 years ago, it would probably be Daredevil #250 thru #282 (excluding #264). It was the Ann Nocenti and John Romita Jr run on the comic and not, as some would expect, any of the Frank Miller spells. This covered a period between 1988 and 1990, when Marvel hit a rich vein of quality comics and this emerged as the cult book to throw your weight behind. The best was the opening 16-part story starting with issue #250 - Boom! - and culminating in one of the single greatest superhero comics of all time, #266 - A Beer With the Devil. The latter was one of a handful of comics I gave to superhero sceptics and it never failed to impress them. Without giving too much away, DD spends most of the first 15 issues getting his arse handed to him on a plate and then it culminates in a bar. It was unorthodox superhero storytelling at its finest and so much more... more believable than anything Miller got lauded for.

* One of the excellent things about the Marvel Cinematic Universe is how they've 'borrowed' heavily from the mind of Jim Starlin, one of the greatest talents to emerge from the 1970s. Most of the Thanos/Infinity Saga story comes from his original comics and the two major problems I have with these modern adaptations was the MCU's failure to somehow include Adam Warlock in the story, given how important he was to the entire cosmic storyline originally and the fact they didn't introduce us to the original Captain Marvel and subsequently this... The Death of Captain Marvel - an astounding work of brilliance for its time.
Spoiler warning: he dies of cancer and while there is an ensemble of heroes, villains and everything in-between, it is the fact this [original] Captain Marvel or Mar-Vell is fighting something that none of the greatest minds in the universe can defeat. It even has a brilliant cameo appearance by Thanos, who was Mar-Vell's main antagonist. Superheroes had never died forever until this happened and he still hadn't been resurrected when I stopped regularly reading comics in the early 2000s. 

[To be fair, I've re-read this since writing this and while it isn't as good as I remember it still conveys an incredibly powerful message - it doesn't matter who you are there are some things you can't defeat.]

* If I had to stick my neck out and name the creator who probably had the biggest effect on me in my formative years of comics reading, I could give you a shortlist, but the truth is it probably would be the aforementioned Jim Starlin. I loved his quirky art style which was dynamic but also cartoonish; his ideas were straight out of a LSD trip and he wasn't frightened to push the envelope in mainstream comics. Sometimes teenage me would just marvel at comics like Warlock, which I struggled to fully understand but I knew I was looking at comics that would regarded as future classics. [However, since writing this I have re-read all of the Warlock series by Starlin and have concluded that it's all a load of pretentious wank and probably why Starlin's run on the book would never make my top 100 let alone my top 10.]

I could probably pull out a dozen examples of Starlin's '70s brilliance, but very few surpass The Hulk & The Thing in The Big Change drawn by the legendary Bernie Wrightson. This would have made an excellent film as it stands. This is from a time when Ben Grimm and the dumb, slightly savage Hulk were often able to get along without trying to bash each other's brains in and Starlin takes them on a totally cosmic journey that seems to revolve around the Hulk's hunger. It has adorable laugh out loud moments, including the scene where they're fighting baddies for so long they all stop and sleep before carrying on. There is a lot of genuine Pythonesque humour in places and some very weird aliens. It's a 'graphic novel', one of Marvel's first (the very first was the entry above - The Death of Captain Marvel) and it probably costs a lot of money now.  [Checks Google: only about $25 for the first edition, so it doesn't cost a lot of money even now and reprints are as cheap as $5.95]

* Amazing Adventures #34. If ever there was a curiosity among my eclectic mix it's probably this. It's a Killraven: Warrior of the Worlds story - it works as a standalone, but actually it's part of an ongoing storyline - and it was called A Death in the Family. 

The reason this has always been a weird inclusion into my comics list was because I didn't really like the comic, despite it having a Class A creative team, this was always one of the last in my stack of monthlies that I got around to reading and sometimes I didn't even bother. Like the aforementioned Daredevil story 'A Beer With the Devil' it had a profound effect on me. I only read it because we were at a family wedding and I was bored, went to a local shop, bought a handful of Marvel comics and read it while adults partied.

Released in late 1975 (with a Jan 76 cover date) and with the creative team of Don McGregor and P. Craig Russell, this story was set in 2019 and was the first time I'd seen an actual death in a comic. Like The Death of Captain Marvel there was a finality about this issue as two members of the supporting cast bite the big one and despite destroying their killer it is the most hollow and bitter of victories as Killraven realises the futility of the task ahead of him. It has the added value of you not really needing to know much about the story or the characters as there's an adequate recap at the beginning. It's just an extremely powerful, poignant and unforgiving story.

* Also in 1975 and from Marvel's un-coded black and white magazine line was one of best single stories I ever read. Written by my friend Tony Isabella and drawn by the late great George Perez with inks by Rico Rival, War Toy was the ultimate anti-war story. 

Given that Terminator came out less than a decade later, I always thought this would have made the perfect film, except it would probably flop dismally because it has the most tragic unhappy ending I can remember in any form of literature - the despair and hopelessness conveyed was enormous for my 13 year old self. The magazine is Unknown Worlds of Science Fiction #2 - an anthology title and none of the other stories are that good, but War Toy will always stick with me.

* Steve Moncuse's The Fish Police - or more specifically Fish Police: Hairballs - the recoloured introductory trade paperback/graphic novel collection of the first four issues of the self-published eponymous title has dated worse than I would have hoped, but is still a sharp, satirical load of surreal nonsense as it was when it first appeared.

Essentially a comedy about a real-life detective who wakes up in a world that has changed into the underwater domain of talking fish and despite the garish colours it's about as noir as you could imagine. It's reverential, has sublime in-jokes, makes reference to the impossibility and improbability of the situation and helped usher in a new era of funny comic books that weren't just disposable once you'd read them.

The comics eventually became far to overblown and wrapped up in its own in-joke, mainly because Moncuse appeared to change the intent of the story to try and improve sales. Then I had to watch Marvel initially buy the reprint rights and then turn it into a homogenised children's animated series that lost all the wit and verve that brought the comic to these people's attentions in the first place. A tragic end after a truly dazzling start. 

A special mention for the Fish Police Special which followed the reissued graphic novel and featured two of the funniest jokes the series ever had; the first involves stairs and why fish would need them and the second involves beer and how one drinks it when underwater...

* The Tale of One Bad Rat by Bryan Talbot is something quite extraordinary. I remember when it came out; very few people expected it to be as successful as it was, despite the fact that most people saw the sheer brilliance in this allegorical tale on child abuse and dealing with the consequences.

I'm surprised it has never been adapted for film or TV, but, then again, I can totally understand why, it isn't a subject that is often dealt with by the arts. It is one of the earliest forms of magic realism graphic novel (although it was actually four comics collected together) and probably single-handedly furthered the cause of comics as a serious medium than anything prior to it. Bryan is an old friend of mine and this book allowed him to become one of the UK's greatest comics creators.

***

An aside - what didn't make this list? Crisis on Infinite Earths, The Rocketeer by Dave Stevens, Peter David's run on The Incredible Hulk, The Griffin, Len Wein and Bernie Wrightson's 10 issues of Swamp Thing, and Coventry - the ill-fated three-issue series from Bill Willingham. Also 566 Frames which I published in the UK and a few others...

***

Now, what I regard as my three favourite comics - one of the original 'graphic novels', a single-issue special and a weekly ongoing series which broke more ground than probably anything else...

* A Contract With God by Will Eisner or to give it its proper title - A Contract With God and Other Tenement Stories - was one of the first non-superhero [comic] books I ever bought and I've never been completely sure why I did it - maybe to feel as though I fitted in with my more high-profile comics friends? Who can say?
First published in 1978 - of which my copy is the same one I bought all those years ago - it represented many things and highlighted one major factor in the grand scheme of comics: I was into the likes of Stan Lee, Jack Kirby, Steve Ditko and other Silver Age A list comicbook legends and they were like gods to me and many of my peer group, but Will Eisner was AAA List; he was up there with a select few creators who seemed to understand comics long before it was fashionable to do so.

Lest we forget, Eisner also invented The Spirit a kind of pulp action hero who changed the way 'detective comics' were done and inspired a new generation of artists who felt the panels per page edict was worth breaking and Eisner did so in a way that other, trendier artists of the 1970s would initially get the credit for.

A Contract With God is a bleak, realistic and risqué collection of stories from New York's tenement side, depicting a desperate USA caught in the thrall of a depression and war. It is groundbreaking because it was such a risky thing to put out at a time when independent comics and books had little way of being seen outside of a few specialist retailers and traders.

I remember buying it and thinking it was one of the most poignant and distressing bunch of stories I'd ever read and I often went back to it because it had such a profound effect. There were two follow ups, but I never bought them, mainly because the first collection was nigh on perfect. 

* Gumby's Winter Fun Special is probably the funniest thing I've ever read and I've read plenty of things that have made me Laugh Out Loud. I initially bought it because of the artist, a guy called Art Adams, who had spent a few years drawing the X-Men and all kinds of monsters; he was making a name for himself as one of the rising stars of the comics. I bought it because it looked pretty, it ended up making me chuckle like no other comic ever.

Not only does it look exquisite, it reads like the surreal drug-induced nightmare of a young child given far too much cheese before bed time and that really floats my boat. Apparently, I was a big fan of Gumby (Art Clokey's version) back in the 1960s, but I can't really remember that, apart from the fact that I was familiar with the lead characters - Gumby and Pokey. Perhaps this was why I embraced this so heartily, because it reignited that sense of wonder I had when I first discovered any form of comic book. 

This is a simple tale of Santa Claus versus the Devil with the little gum boy and his horse friend getting in the way and is literally packed to the rafters with in-jokes, innuendo, double entendres and all the things that made The Simpsons such a funny TV show for many years - lots of different levels...

There was also a Gumby's Summer Fun but it was never quite as mad, funny or stunning to look at; it's good and in some worlds it might have made my list, but it pales into insignificance with this classic gem from a now defunct comicbook publisher.

And at the top of my list...

* I find it quite ironic that someone who grew out of British comics very quickly would end up thinking the best comic of all time was serialised in an array of British Marvel comics, but Captain Britain: The Jasper's Warp is the probably the greatest superhero story ever told..

When the UK's answer to Captain America first appeared it was difficult to imagine that nearly 10 years down the line from Chris Claremont and Herb Trimpe's original strips that it would go down the darkest, scariest and altogether weirdest paths any comic has ever taken. Brian Braddock - the man behind the mask and sceptre - wasn't exactly a brilliant addition to Marvel's pantheon of heroes, in fact by the time his original run ended, he'd moved across a number of Marvel weekly titles in the UK and was being written and drawn by two Americans, Gary Friedrich and John Buscema who probably knew very little about the UK when they came on board and people suggested it simply became Captain America with a Dick Van Dyke accent and they weren't far wrong. Ending the comic was a blessed release.

Then in the early 1980s Marvel UK decided to bring the character back, this time as a supporting character in a Black Knight story and out of costume for much of it. By 1984, he spun out of that into his new adventures, initially written by Dave Thorpe (from Leicester) and drawn by upcoming British artist Alan Davis (from Corby). However, it was clear after a couple of weeks that the revamp looked okay but didn't really have any coherent story to back it up, so editor Paul Neary approached another burgeoning Brit, Alan Moore, and asked him to take over from Thorpe and do something radical with the character. 

That's exactly what happened... Over the next couple of years, Moore and Davis introduced new characters and rebuilt Braddock's origin tying it back into Arthurian legend more so than ever before and making him a pawn of Merlin - who was actually a cosmic being of immense power. Moore took Thorpe's original ideas and ran with them, chucking some ideas out as quickly as he could and introducing a mythos that would soon be the basis of what is now Marvel's [MCU] Multiverse.

Merlin sends Captain Britain and his sidekick Jackdaw to an alternative earth, to witness the start of The Jasper's Warp - something so deadly it would eventually cross the entire multiverse. The story really kicked in towards the end of the first part when we are treated to almost an entire week's instalment introducing a new bunch of alternative Earth's heroes  who then all die at the hand of possibly the greatest antagonist ever created in comics - the Fury. This new villain, a kind of alternate Earth Sentinel but biomechanical rather than robotic is eventually turned on Brian and ultimately kills him.

Merlin resurrects Braddock again - which was becoming something of a habit for the hero, this being his third - and he returns to Braddock Manor and it, in turn, becomes the de facto HQ for survivors of the Jasper's Warp - which had now infiltrated the Marvel universe.

The strip did a good job (in the limited space it had) of furthering the idea that the earth of Captain Britain was one of many earths and contained many incarnations of the Captain - who were all Merlin's self-appointed protectors of the multiverse - and how everything was similar but also very different. However, it didn't matter how many protectors there were the Jasper's Warp was now spreading and there is a suggestion - but only in the UK comic - that all of Earth's heroes may have fallen.

Mad Jim Jaspers who in another reality creates the Fury ends up being defeated by his own creation and Brian fails to beat this unstoppable foe and looks like he is about to die again; that's when alternative Earth's Captain UK steps up to the plate and... wow does she step up - it's a couple of pages of vicious destruction from a woman haunted and crushed by the events in her reality. It ends in a way that even though 'we' won, the damage inflicted on reality was clear to see and the main characters playing this out finished the story considerably more broken than they started it.

I could wax lyrically about this story for pages and pages; it ticks every single box you can conceive and you have to remember, this was delivered in 7 page chunks, weekly and at least a page of it was taken up with recaps, yet we met new heroes and villains, dubious characters with their own agendas, omnipotent organisations, double-crossing, death and taxes. An incredible cosmic landscape was created and mapped out and given 'life' and all in much less time than comics usually allowed for, even then. 

However, reading it again to write this, it suffers from plot devices - probably a necessity to try and tie the old with the new and there's a haphazard approach to the timeline, which might be explained but doesn't really reflect how we go from a disparate band of heroes in Braddock Manor to Armageddon. I also hypothesised a while back about how this story would have been a far better 'film'  to have made to kick off the entire multiverse saga, I've since changed my mind, not because of the story - which IMHO is incomparable - but more because of Disney and their reluctance to be extreme. For a start, the entire story is so very dark, at times extremely violent, and it's crammed full of characters who really won't ever be regulars in the grand scheme of all things MCU (except maybe Betsy Braddock) and they aren't following the same path in terms of direction. It would make a brilliant film all the same.

There have been a couple of reprints collecting all the comics together, either of those will give you the entire story from start to end and considering when it was written, how fabulous it looks and how it hasn't really dated as much as you'd expect, you might start to understand why I think this is the greatest [superhero] comic [series] ever produced. I don't think anything has rivalled it and I don't it will ever be bettered. It's a shame because I actually think Alan Moore is a bit of a prick.

***

A personal aside - I've re-read and re-written large parts of this because like so many of my other comic book blogs and scribblings it was full of awful grammar and English. Now, I'm not suggesting my other blogs are Shakespearean but I do seem to lose the ability to write coherently when I write about comics. I'd like to think it's a psychological throwback to when I worked for that old worthless cunt who now lives in Brighton, who spent so much time bullying me over the smallest most insignificant mistakes that whenever I write about comics now I revert to this nervous sack of shit frightened to allow my ability to shine because I know he'd find fault in it. I really hope I outlive him, because going to Brighton to piss on his grave would be one reason I'd gladly go back to England. 

Modern Culture - Shock

I could spend the preamble waxing malevolently about how the post-Endgame MCU is fucking up, but as I do that most times now, I thought I'd kick off by saying how much superficial fun Ms Marvel was. I was not the audience it was aimed at but I found it fresh and culturally odd and definitely not the kind of thing I'd expect the majority of WASPish 'Mericans would be watching, even if there's a geek in the fold.

The show's biggest problem was its superficiality. It still feels like it needed to be longer - it needed more character development from the top down, it needed a proper villain, it... just needed more and not because it was sparkling TV but because Kamala Khan is going to be sharing top billing with Brie Larson and the girl from WandaVision in Marvels and I kind of feel I know more about everyone in the MCU, including Korg's sidekick (Mick?). It crammed so much into six 40-odd minute episodes and yet I was left feeling as though they'd forgotten to put an actual story in there. But hey, it was a gamble from the word go and any more might have been problematic for Disney stocks and shares.

The weird thing about it was I went in with low expectations and they never rose throughout the six episodes, but they didn't decline either. It was a bit of fun - more Ant-Man than Infinity War. I had issues with it, but most of those are either existential or to do with the MCU and its need to over bloat itself rather than concentrate on winning formulas in the way they/that worked before. Ms Marvel introduces us to Djinns and reintroduces us to parallel worlds - not necessarily part of the multiverse. It seems to plough through supporting characters with little or no reason - whether it's to highlight the large groups of friends American Muslims have or if the producers wanted to get as many friends and family into the show as possible and on top of all that it was set in an environment unfamiliar to many, had subtitles at times and failed to explain little things that Pakistanis might understand but might go over the heads of anyone else and we know what happens when the bulk of the TV audience have to work when watching a program.

And then there was the post credit scene that miraculously links Ms Marvel to her hero Captain Marvel as the two change positions - Danvers in Khan's bedroom and who knows where in the universe Kamala has gone. This 30 second scene is the prologue to Marvels and it won't have been watched by a lot of people and because of that I could easily spend another 1000 words telling you why I think it's going wrong, but there's an awful lot of people out there who love the MCU and that's what counts.

***

After the massive anti-climax of Stranger Things, we needed something new to fill the popcorn watch slot, so we opted for Resident Evil and what a bizarre 8-part series it is. I went in having read a review that essentially said 'leave you brain at the door, get some crisps and sit back' so I expected something cheesy to be honest. The thing is I think the reviewer only watched the first four episodes, wrote the review and then probably hoped people would forget about it very quickly.

The first four episodes are utterly bonkers, especially the parts set in 2036, which is part Mad Max, part The Walking Dead and part Ray Harryhausen. The flashbacks to 2022 and New Racoon City (in South Africa) start off intriguing enough but soon descend into slightly farcical given the ease at which things fuck up so quickly in a place that has its own private army as security. The series two main characters are Jade and Billie (one black, one Asian) 'twin' sisters and their father Albert, who is a real bigwig at the Umbrella Corporation. He's up to something with the girls' blood, while fighting a losing battle against his CEO about having an untested drug put on the market. By this point you're thinking presumably it's the company that's the 'evil' in the title, because they are as shady as fuck and twice as dodgy.

And then it goes off at a 90 degree angle in both timelines and the story kind of grinds to halt midway through episode five and any further revelations are just more markers for what to expect in season two. The story in 2022 really slowed down and had a couple of pointless red herrings thrown in probably to pad the thing out - which it really didn't need - and then the Godzilla-sized mutant crocodile entered to fray, followed closely by clones and zombies and psychopaths and by the end I was begging it to finish.

Everything this gained from the opening 4 episodes - however slightly bonkers they were - is completely lost by the following 4 episodes which are just shit.

***

However, the real alternative to Stranger Things came from Paper Girls - a much lower budget affair but no less interesting and intriguing story about time travel and a war that is raging between two relatively ambiguous protagonists with four paper girls caught in the middle - a Jewish lesbian, a confrontational all-American tomboy, a Chinese-American kid and a black girl, who is also the brains of the outfit. They find themselves flung together during a fight between the STF (a rogue agency of time travellers and The Church, who control time).

It's wordy and focuses on the strange world of pre-teen American girls in 1988 and then goes forward to 2019 and then back to 1999 before leaving you literally at a cliffhanger moment that screams series 2! It would have been nice to see some 'ending' or tying up of one subplot, but it was clear from the penultimate episode this was just a set-up for series 2.

Most enjoyable though, if a bit awkward at times, but as it's about awkward teenage girls...

***

Heading towards the season 3 finale of For All Mankind and I have to say that the story, as ever, has been top notch, however it has felt a little too soapy this time around, not always, just at times. The dodgy drama with Gordo's son on the Helios mission to Mars feels unnecessary and there's been just a little too much 'comedy' in it; obviously there's been a fair share of tragedy but the balance seems off - the fight to be the first on Mars is a perfect example. However, everything came to a head in the worst possible ways setting up a season finale  and the news it had been definitely renewed for a fourth season.

It's now 1996, there are two colonies on Mars each helping each other with different things, but the US-Soviet politics still resounds despite having been forced into helping each other out and the politics back on Earth - now with a woman president - is a mixture of good for most people and not so good for others and followers of the show will understand how this issue resounds inside the president - a former NASA astronaut.

The show's creator Ronald Moore - he of the Battlestar Galactica reboot - has said, apparently, that he sees five series, which technically would bring us up to date. The 1996 of here has many things we're only getting used to now; the world of technology in FAM is about 30 years ahead and I find it intriguing to see how the people who write the show expect this alternate Earth to be like by the mid 2010s.

***

Would you be surprised to know that I'm not really enamoured by the prospect of either a new Lord of the Rings thing nor a bloody Game of Thrones spin-off. These big fuck off television 'events' don't do it for me and I suspect might not do it for a lot less people than watched the original film series or the HBO adaptation. 

***

The Umbrella Academy 'ended' reasonably well and could easily be the last one ever. Whether it will be depends on the success of this one and whether they can get the cast together for another. Oddly enough it was quite a well-focused, slightly mind-bending story that still felt just a teensy bit over long.

It felt good because by the end of it there was a sense of balance, like everything had been restored how it should have been. The ripple in this is Hargreaves who now seems to be king of the world while his adopted children no longer have their superpowers - time has been reset. Or maybe just a good jumping off point?

***

Everything is building up to us watching the last episodes of Better Call Saul, a series I absolutely love but sometimes wonder if I'm just watching it for the episode that reunites the Breaking Bad cast? It's simply brilliant TV that often leaves you wondering why it's brilliant TV.