Pop Culture: Full of Meaty Goodness

 Spoilerage follows...

Yellowjackets is back! It's going to be weird watching it this time around because with season one we watched it over four nights, this time around we're watching it weekly and I expect that will prove to be an old fashioned television frustration.

As first episodes of second seasons go this was confusing and rusty with more black comedy than I remembered. Melanie Lynskey is still brilliant; Juliette Lewis is remarkably old looking and Christina Ricci is a bit of a superhero, albeit a psychopathic one who murders people, but we're no closer to knowing what happened in the Canadian wilderness 25 years earlier only that it's going to get crazier before it gets clearer.

It's good to have it back. It feels like proper TV is on the schedules again and now it's established I think we'll see more risks being taken.

***

This third season of Ted Lasso becomes more fantasy and less realistic as the writers completely dispense with the way football happens in favour of some game that an illiterate drunken friend described to you over the phone. In fact, the football is immaterial now even though the show is about the game and I've noticed more and more in the first couple of episodes of season three how little Ted and his coaching team actually contribute - very little and Ted's been at Richmond three years and still knows absolutely nothing about the game the team he coaches plays.

I'm wondering about the direction the show is taking but this is the last season so does it matter what direction it's going?

***

Hello Tomorrow fell foul of one of the worst insults I can give a show that's 28 minutes long. I fell asleep during it and I probably shouldn't have because lots went on this week that is undoubtedly going to have repercussions over the final two episodes. 

Joey now knows that Jack is his father; Jack has secured the deal that means all of the people who were defrauded out of cash will get their money back and there will still be enough for Jack and his team to walk away as rich people. Except there's a wrinkle in the skin and that wrinkle might just be the moon.

I think maybe this series was two episodes too long and needed to be more focussed on the mechanics of the story rather than slowly leak out what the situation is. I can see why they've done this; to maintain this illusion that something might not be crooked about all of this, but all that part eight does is muddy waters that were becoming clearer.

***

The BBC has been in the news a lot recently; if its not outrage at the suggestion the BBC choir might be axed to serious questions about the corporation's impartiality when Gary Lineker was dragged out of class as they attempted to make a fool out of him only to see it backfire in the most spectacular of ways. The thing that made this all the more difficult to watch was the fact that you never see Tory MPs clamouring for the dismissal of all those extremely pro-Tory 'journalists' the BBC employ who have been extremely partial, especially when it comes to leaders of the Labour Party (or SNP).

However, I'm not here today to talk about the BBC in general, I'm here to lament the passing of BBC News - the channel I have 'followed' since it first came into being over 25 years ago. Because of cutbacks - from the offended Tory party - the News Channel has been merged with BBC World creating a new look, streamlined channel and resulting in the termination of contracts of nearly 50% of the existing presenters.

BBC News has struggled for charismatic anchor people since Simon McCoy and Carrie Gracie left and we've been left with the anodyne and oleaginous - like Christian Fraser or Ros Atkins, who both come across as slime balls who were both educated at private schools. Then there's the daytime presenters, a bunch of dull news readers replaced by even duller ones but all from ethnic origins or Antipodean, which just feels a bit weird. There's also a huge increase in world news - to cater for the audience that watched World News; a lot of 'bought in' items that have had a voiceover added and probably weirder than most things, a massive increase in 'programmes' from all over the world. 

BBC News is now a current affairs and documentary station that caters for the entire planet and in a strange way that's what I've been hankering after for 20 years. Now there is more focus on the RotW it's lost its soul and I don't want that to sound racist, but it doesn't sound like a British channel any more; it feels like one of those Al Jazeera styled channels that focuses on style over substance...

That said, Reporting Scotland (our very own BBC regional news programme) has changed its set and it now seems like they've crammed everybody onto a small balcony with a huge TV taking up 50% of the space. It reminds me of that saying, 'if it ain't broke, don't fix it.'

***

Let's be straight about something, the next time someone says, 'cricket is difficult to understand' ask them to explain baseball and if they don't know get them to watch a game or two, I'm fairly sure cricket won't look that complicated.

I say this because we finally got around to watching Moneyball the Brad Pitt/Jonah Hill film about the Oakland Athletic baseball team and how stats rather than scouts helped them break records even if they didn't win anything. It's not a bad film, the problem with it, like many US sports films, is if you're not from the USA (or Canada) then you'll probably have no idea what's going on or why it's going on the way it does. That's American sports for you; nothing is simple and most of it is as boring as fuck.

Moneyball isn't even a compelling film; yes, it's great, packed with accomplished actors in wasted roles but there was nothing about the film that made me feel invested or interested. Maybe it's my lack of interest in baseball or maybe it's because it never once felt like a good feature film.

***

On a whim I secured Carnival Row, the fantasy series with Orlando Bloom and Cara Delavigne which reminds me a little of The Nevers and oddly enough a little bit of the Lord of the Rings TV spin-off. The former because of the setting feeling like a steampunk Victorian 'London' and the latter because there are some awful Irish accents on display as the fairy folk (or Fae) appear to have originated from Ireland in what felt like more inappropriate cultural appropriation.

My main problem with this is Delavigne because she can't actually act and has absolutely zero screen presence, but this is offset by Bloom's police inspector who seems to be a little more complicated than first appears. It's a finite series and I like the monsters, the mythos that's being built and the general weirdness surrounding it.

However, you get the feeling from the first season that this may well have originally been intended for a lot more than just two series; there is proper world building going on here and the number of unfinished subplots however related to the main story they are clearly illustrates multi-season intentions, yet I can see why it took four years to release two series and isn't getting a third and it's nothing to do with the acting, definitely not the special effects or the story, but more to do with feeling it's difficult to love something with so few likeable characters. 

Regardless of that overview the story, about some creature called a Dark Asher, which is a reanimated amalgam of creatures created to do the nefarious bidding of its creator. The Dark Asher's creator is looking for answers in the livers of all the victims, while the answer to her question is tracking her down. However, running parallel to this main story is a subplot about the ancestors of the family who showed one of the murder victims some kindness when she was younger and how the arrival of am extremely rich Puck (a centaur-like creature) tears it apart and the political shenanigans of the city where this all takes place, which is also linked to the grisly murders. 

***

So, the 1984 version of Dune directed by David Lynch... Some thoughts:

Well, the soundtrack was written and performed by Toto - yes, Africa Toto.
Sting is in it acting as badly as most of the other actors.
There is mention in credits to Emmett Chapman and his creation 'The Stick' which Patrick Stewart, sporting a spectacular mullet, plays in one scene.
And it did feel a little like a Terry Jones film or oddly a Terry Gilliam film; there was definitely something Monty Pythonesque about it, without the humour.
The special effects were not at all special and looked like they'd been done as a 6th form art project. However, the worms were fantastic for the period it was made. 

Don't get me wrong, almost from the first minute I was hoping it would end. The acting is pantomime-esque at best and am-dram at worst. Characters are introduced only to be killed off soon after; there is no explanation for a lot of the actions and there's a child in it who is far more disturbing than anything else that happens. It is a fantastically ambitious film given the state of the special effects, amount of source material - which it goes through like a dog with diarrhoea - and some wonderful sets that seem wasted on the actors. Oh and so much of it either doesn't make sense or is just mumbo-jumbo bollocks.

It's way too much material for a two hour film and in the end it feels more like a semi-documentary film than an action-packed sci-fi thriller and isn't a patch on the Villeneuve remake from 2021.

***

The final part of the Bill Cosby series felt like the first three parts. It was simply a catalogue of rapes, sexual assaults and accusations, very much like the first three parts. In fact, it was simply a four-part series ramming home the fact that Cosby might have been "America's Dad" but he was also "America's rapist" or maybe even "America's very own Jimmy Savile." 

Monster is probably too gentle a word to describe Cosby, who seems to prove the adage about money and power succinctly and with added terrifying. 99% of the people wheeled out to speak on the show were anything but charitable; while one of the people speaking needs to forget nostalgia and his own links and see the big picture.

The series doesn't really answer the question set in the first part - can you separate Bill Cosby the comedian from Bill Cosby the sexual predator? 99% of the people talked to struggled to do that, however one person made a valid comparison between Cosby and a 1920s theatre chain owner - many of whose establishments still exist (under different ownership but keeping the name), despite the fact the original owner was a convicted rapist and paedophile, this seems to have been forgotten for the benefit of profit; the same might happen with Cosby's jokes.

***

So... Frankie Boyle's New World Order has been cancelled. Surprise, surprise, the BBC are full of surprises. 

***

I suppose it felt like the latest Picard went nowhere, but in reality it moved the story forward and made me think my Big Bad guess is back on track. I suppose it was the fact we spent another episode on the Titan that gave it the impression it wasn't progressing, but everything changed in the dynamic with this part and Picard and his old crew are on the back foot again.

This week's guest star was Tuvok from Voyager or was it the real Tuvok? Who can say? I suppose (theory based loosely on the half a dozen DS9 episodes I watched) ideally the people who made this series would have liked Rene Auberjonois to have been in this as Odo, but that ain't going to happen. 

***

The third episode of season three of Ted Lasso was actually considerably funnier than recent weeks had been even if the stories get more far-fetched and preposterous. The arrival of Brazilian (?) superstar Zava has caused a stir as Richmond streak up the table on an unbeaten run, setting them on course to play West Ham. 

This week saw a psychic subplot that's a bit of a worry and Jamie in a surreal way is proving to be considerably more intellectual than anyone ever suspected, which is very surreal.

***

Next time: More Yellowjackets, the penultimate episode of Hello Tomorrow, Picard enters the final phase, the second and last season of Carnival Row and whatever we can squeeze in. 

The Fall of the MCU

Yes, I know, I bang on about Marvel films far too much. This is to do with my past and writing about the MCU scratches an itch. However, it seems that my analytical approach to all things Marvel isn't that unique, in fact it's becoming ubiquitous. There are more negative articles out there in media land than there are positive ones. The sport of MCU Bashing is alive and well and not the exclusive property of white virgin men with massive chips on their shoulders and small dicks in their trousers...

The news that Jonathan Majors has been arrested on suspicion of some nasty domestic violence towards a friend will be sending worrying signals all the way to the top of Disney. Majors is the next big villain; he is Kang the Conqueror; there's even an Avengers film with his name on it. Obviously, this might come to nothing; Majors' star is rising almost weekly and this might be a storm in a teacup or even something blown up by the press - it's not like they're not playing to their own agendas; however, talk is he was due to appear in at least three MCU films before 2025's Kang Dynasty, which makes sense if he's the Big Bad of Phase Five. So what if the current allegations turn into facts? What then for the MCU? Especially given that more and more information about 'sociopath' Majors is surfacing almost hourly at the moment.

Putting Kang to one side, the MCU has a problem already without this adding to it. The last four films have been 'flops' in many ways - yes they've made a lot at the box office, but critically all of them have been slagged off by the press and the fans. Thor: Love & Thunder - a comedy about lost loves and cancer - has the lowest ever score, on IMDB (6.3) and Rotten Tomatoes for a Marvel film and Ant-Man & The Wasp: Quantumania is 0.1 above it but has been on release for considerably less time. Wank Ada Forever sits at 6.7 and the Dr Strange sequel has a 6.9 rating but deserves so much less. Critical acclaim might not mean much to Disney, but if it starts impacting on box office takings then expect 'consolidation' and changes to the schedule. Incidentally, Quantumania ranks the same as Black Widow in takings and that was Marvel's first post-pandemic release with cinemas all half empty.

The last four MCU films have largely been pants and surely Kevin Feige and his team must be looking at the reactions and thinking that something needs to change - especially in light of what has now happened with Majors. How the chief of the MCU could stand there and tell people how important Quantumania is to the next phase of Marvel stories only for it to wander around for two hours before going back to normal with no changes at all - even the post credit scenes garnered laughter rather than awe. To be fair, as I haven't seen it I can only report on what I've read, but it was not the only part of the film to get unintentional guffaws from the audience... Can you say Modok? 

Feige is in the firing line here; one of his execs has already been sacrificed. That was Victoria Alonso, who many feel was responsible for Marvel's more [ahem] ... woke ... approach to films and TV. However Alonso has been involved with the company since Iron Man in 2008 and the way corporate USA tends to work, she will have been sacrificed to keep someone else in their job. No one knows for sure why the Argentinean-born executive has parted with the company, or even whose decision it was for her to go, but at an uncertain time this looks a bit fishy.

It's not like the TV shows have helped; despite its renewal, Ms Marvel was watched by less people than any other MCU show - no wonder there are massive concerns about the Marvels film, so much so it's been delayed until November - and there's a lot of hope resting on Secret Invasion, which does look good but that's based on trailers and all MCU trailers fail to really encapsulate how bad the finished product can be. She-Hulk is a subject all on its own and Moon Knight pissed more people off than it pleased.

What about the forthcoming Echo? The Hawkeye spin-off character who is disabled was hardly met with universal positivity; the character was deemed as surplus to requirements in Hawkeye by most reviews, yet Marvel/Disney's push for diversity and inclusivity saw a series fast tracked without wondering if it would appeal to the fans. 

It's not just the fact these films and TV shows have all had shit stories, they're also jam-packed with really substandard special effects and far too much comedy, while the TV series have all largely followed a similar pattern, have been low on quality, poor on story, and most have been dependant on existing ideas; only Moon Knight tried to do something differently and in the process destroyed a premise that the MCU had pretty much lived by - that Asgardians were not really Gods, but long-lived super powerful aliens and actual 'gods' didn't exist. Introducing Egyptian gods as actual supreme beings has muddied the overall story and Thor: Flub & Blunder did nothing but make the situation worse. It's like the MCU is rewriting itself on a daily basis and ignoring the past.

This summer if Guardians of the Galaxy Vol 3 and Secret Invasion are not massive hits then the coming couple of years will need some serious work putting into them to save the MCU. And now they have to deal with one of their major stars being involved in a domestic violence case; could it get any worse?

Actually it could. The moving of Marvels back to November instead of late summer is far more important than you can imagine; films are rarely delayed for positive reasons. There is still absolutely no details about the Fantastic Four film; it's due to start filming in 2024 for a spring 2025 release. It has had at least three different directors linked with it, several script writers and no one has even been cast in any of the major roles and the one thing we had hints at was that Jonathan Majors would be playing a Kang variant in it - because Kang was a constant thorn in both the FF and the Avengers sides back in comic days. 

According to reports, Kit Harrington hasn't been spoken to about the Black Knight, has not been told anything about an Eternals sequel and is not going to feature in Blade despite the character speaking to him in the post credits scene of Eternals. Gemma Chan was asked about reprising her role from the film and said none of her team has heard anything from Marvel since the film finished promotion duties. Some websites are claiming that filming on the new Captain America film has been beset with script problems and also problems with actors - this is due in fourteen months and is nowhere near finished. 

If problems with the films weren't enough; the news that Agatha Harkness: Coven of Chaos is likely to be an 8 part series with a 'musical theme' was greeted with stunned silence and a wee bit of anger and that the next Daredevil series, Born Again, is likely to feature a slightly different Daredevil than the one we saw in the Netflix series. It's still going to be Charlie Cox and Vincent D'Onofrio, but it'll be an MCU DD and Kingpin not the Netflix versions, which is suggesting to some critics that it will be very PG rated and possibly have things like humour and characters with outlandish super powers. The sense of disquiet among the fan base is palpable and Marvel must be aware of this and must be aware that while they continue to flood the market with substandard product they enter the law of diminishing returns. 

There is also the suggestion that Disney wants to curtail Marvel product, not expand on it, which suggests more standalone films (which might not be a bad thing) and less interaction, because there has been a sense that they're wanting to create their own different compartments in the universe to avoid problematic questions like: what were you doing while Thanos was laying waste to the planet? 

Here's another wrinkle, that may or may not have anything to do with the MCU. The new Captain Marvel comic book has been shelved before it comes out; it seems that the Carol Danvers Captain Marvel still has far reaching problems; far more complex than a bunch of sexless fanboy fascists complaining about the actress. 

And then there's the X-Men problem, which seems to have been solved with the news there is going to be a new X-Men cartoon called X-Men 97 which will be a direct follow up to the original animated series that ran between 1992 and 1997. Other than this and the supposed Logan/Wolverine role in Deadpool 3 there has been very little talk about how Marvel is going to use mutants and the smart money is they won't. They might introduce certain mutants into the MCU, but it will be a slow process, because insiders at Marvel suggest 2030 at the earliest for an X film or TV series, although a 'version' of the X-Men may well appear in Avengers: Secret Wars, which, some have suggested, will feature superhero variants from different universes fighting each other, but given the nature of that kind of film, it is unlikely to be very in-depth (more a box ticking exercise for fan boys). 

Oh and let's not forget the not that well publicised problems Marvel/Disney has had with the companies that have produced their CGI. The company has a growing reputation for being someone you don't want to work for, especially if you're a CGI artist. You end up overworked, stressed out and pressurised to get product out and the quality threshold seems to drop and that has been reflected in recent films which have had absolutely shoddy CGI and special effects. Then there's She-Hulk which looked awful, was badly received and that reception wasn't just from a bunch of Incels who wanted another female target to pick on; She-Hulk was a bad call in that format. Yes, it worked in 1991 when John Byrne turned the comic on its head by making it a breaking-the-fourth wall oddity, but everything about this series was wrong from the second episode on (and even the first episode struggles to hold up to any scrutiny, it's just not as cringeworthy). 

Even Mark Ruffalo has 'gone on record' suggesting the entire Marvel franchise is in trouble; this echoed the words of Dave Bautista, who has left Marvel and will not return to his role as Drax the Destroyer (further suggesting that Drax will die in GotGv3), who was extremely scathing about the entire company and the way it treats everyone who isn't an executive. Oh and let's not forget the aforementioned Marvels which has been described by one person involved in it as 'a shit show', Brie Larson is extremely unhappy about the dropping of the Captain Marvel 2 moniker and there has been several major rewrites on the film and it's still in post-production and still beset with issues. Some people inside Marvel have suggested this film might yet end up being cancelled and that it could make up the basis for the next Ms Marvel series (which was green lit recently after speculation it wouldn't happen). The bottom line with this film is the 'main' character is one of the most contentious in the MCU's history and she is joined by a minor supporting character from WandaVision (albeit linked to the first film) and Ms Marvel, the lowest viewed show from the MCU - it has busted flush written all over it...

The most outlandish 'theory' I've seen so far is that the reason there has been no release date announcement for Secret Invasion is because Marvel/Disney are trying to see if it can be edited into two Nick Fury feature films, with some added guest stars/superheroes, to be released in November and then February 2024. Just to throw another wrinkle in, Blade has been so plagued by troubles, reshoots and special effects problems it has already been shuffled around in the schedules; Mahershala Ali is not happy with the product and has hinted this might his only outing as the character - so it begs the question, why bother to resurrect an already failed idea into a universe it clearly doesn't belong to?

In fact, there's little to be optimistic about. Marvel created a jumping off point with Avengers: Endgame and as a result it has been busy throwing shit against a wall to see how much of it will stick while trying to convince us they had a coherent plan all along. None of the Phase 4 films have been truly any good, some of them have been misjudged disasters and it failed magnificently at trying to convey the point it was trying to get across which is the MCU is expanding and it's time to be introduced to the newer components. 

Let's also look back for a second: Robert Downey Jr, Chris Evans and Scarlet Johansson are all gone; the more years that pass the more ridiculous it would be to bring them back in character, but Marvel is missing the corner stones of it's original shared universe. Iron Man, the original Captain America and the Black Widow were the thread that held most of the Phases 1-3 together and were massively important in Phase 4; without them you have nothing. Hawkeye doesn't warrant a film, the Hulk is still mired in contractual problems with Universal and Thor has steadily gone from great character to waste of time. They don't own enough of Spider-Man to make him 'a leader' and none of the rest of the MCU has what the missing heroes had; even recasting these characters with younger actors in a rebooted MCU isn't going to change the fact that people are moving on from this kind of superhero movie this frequently. Maybe a big blockbuster Marvel film every year might work for them, but it's not the profit Disney will want and as we all know we live in a world where profit for the shareholders is more important than anything else. 

Modern Culture: Nostalgia

May contain spoilers...

Cocaine Bear is set in the 1980s. We got 10 minutes into it and realised the faux 80s style was not a joke, the entire film is made like a poor 1980s porn film - without any sex. Therefore after 11 minutes and 17 seconds we switched off and will never go there again.

***

The Boston Strangler is a bit dull and struggles to keep your attention. It stars Keira Knightly and Carrie Coon about two intrepid female reporters, in the mid 1960s - tasked with covering the news, who also end up doing most of the police's job in uncovering probable suspects. 

The film is drab, wordy and lacks in tension or action but it is well made. The script writer has taken a number of liberties with the time line and the context, presumably to make a coherent and linear story. The problem was it failed to hold my attention and I struggled to stay awake. 

***

I want to talk about Top Gear - specifically the older one, the one that probably can't be made now - mainly because the show may well be cancelled due to health and safety concerns.  I've been watching the entire back catalogue in snippets over the last month or so for reasons I can no longer remember, but I started to analyse it. Why had it been so popular? Why was the wife a fan? Is it really as naughty/racist/sexist as we seem to remember it being?

Remember 'lad' culture? It was big in the 1990s. When Top Gear restarted in the early Noughties it quickly developed a reputation for not being typical BBC. It was a bit tasty, it was about cars but it wasn't really about cars and the three forty-somethings ticked all the right forty-somethings boxes - the same people who enjoyed Loaded and GQ. Top Gear is also What If Last of the Summer Wine had a bastard child that was more mockumentary than documentary. 

It is casually ... I can't say racist because I don't think wandering into Dad joke territory with national euphemisms disguised as comedy jingoism is actually that bad a thing let alone racist. James is the swot; the boring one who they turn to when things go wrong. Hammond is the childlike buffoon who is guaranteed to give us a laugh and then there's Jeremy who is the stereotypical gammon-type character; middle aged opinionated man who lets his hair down when he's with his mates even if he's a bit right wing - he's a walking talking midlife crisis personified. I'm happy with left wing comedy characters and oddly enough I feel the same way about right wing characters. Clarkson is a complete cunt, but he's brilliant at what he does and he gives me more LOL moments than some of my favourite comedians.

Why does my wife like it and specifically the three of them as a presenting team? I think it's because there's an element of genuine friendship going on. Part of the reason this era Top Gear is so good is the relationship between the three, it is actually very much like Last of the Summer Wine and that was hugely popular for almost 200 years. Oddly enough I don't really think it's a vindictive programme and I don't think anyone thought the opinions of the three of them represented the BBC or anyone else. Top Gear treats everyone who watches it as an equal - there is no sexism on show and if there was it would probably be dealt with as humiliatingly as possible to whichever of culprits were responsible. I think women see an element of everyman in the trio; they maybe see a bit of their husband or their dad in the men and I've not met a women yet who wouldn't fancy doing some of the adventures they've had. We, the viewer, also see copious amounts of silliness; not slapstick just daft.

Top Gear might be about cars and 70% might be uninteresting but it's the way it's presented that ticks the rights boxes. The BBC doesn't have a show like it anymore* and in many ways The Grand Tour, the Amazon thing they do only works when they dispense with the standard Top Gear format and do the things that work best for the viewer - challenges and races.

*The new Top Gear is a variation of the old one with newer, less offensive, presenters. The bond they're building is a good one and eventually there will be the familiarity and fondness that made Hammond, May and Clarkson so popular, the only problem I can see is there's only a finite number of ideas before you start repeating yourselves and now that Flintoff's accidents have alarmed BBC execs Top Gear, which was originally presented by Noel Edmonds, could well be going the same way as a previous Noel Edmonds show because of the danger posed to people involved. As Clarkson might say, 'It's health and safety gone mad!' 

***

I'd like to know what Ben Wheatley did or what he knows that has allowed him to make so many bloody awful films? I'd also like to know why I insist on watching them despite knowing that by the end of whatever one I watch I'm going to be none the wiser and angry at myself for watching a Ben Wheatley film.

Both of us had been interested in watching High-Rise for about a decade. It had been billed as a bigger budget Wheatley film with proper actors and it definitely had proper actors. It was also definitely a Ben Wheatley film because I didn't have a fucking clue; nicht die wurst; I could have been given diagrams and I still would have been bemused. I think there was an allegory in there about the class system and the imminent breakdown of society, but equally I might be bestowing something on the film that was never intended.

It was shit. Like all Wheatley films. He can chuckle into his Bovril that yet another sucker has watched yet another one of his wankfest celluloid follies...

***

Season two of Ted Lasso isn't as good as the first but it is still unusual heart warming TV. If I had to pick holes in it, it's predominantly a US comedy show with a lot of Mid-Atlantic humour going on, but what makes it different from most US sitcoms is people like Brett Goldstein (Roy Kent) are also script editors, so glaringly obvious mistakes aren't made and British things are inserted to continue with the illusion and this applies almost 50% of the time.

However, donning my football hat for a second and scrutinising Ted Lasso properly, outside of the comedy is a factually inaccurate framework that might work if this was 1980, but in the 2020s it reads like a Hollywood idea - an underdog show. 

For starters, AFC Richmond's entire football set-up would not get them into the lowest Football League division and their management would be bigger and more complex than it is. AFC Richmond's management structure appears to be six people including coaching staff, one of which was the water boy (?!) and the owner/chairperson and the Director of Football Relations handle most of everything else, with a former WAG as the club's PR woman. As a sitcom it works fine, in real life it's a Sunday League team.

Then there's Jamie Tartt, the star player, a shallow facile egotist who feels he's bigger than the club he plays for. This former Man City starlet walked away from a lucrative footballing career to become a reality TV star and failed at that and then couldn't get a single club to re-sign him - despite the utter preposterousness of this idea. If Tartt is as good as is suggested he'd be employed by Real Madrid not a team that is continually 'tying' their matches in the Championship. Clubs would be falling over themselves to sign him.

Some of the language is very American; the aforementioned 'tying matches' is not a phrase anyone in the UK would use. A friend of mine pointed out that everyone was 'mad' and of course there's the way Ted coaches the team, which is a little like how you'd coach a college American football team including phrases you'd associate with that sport. 

Then there's the thorny issue of Ted (or Coach Beard) not having the appropriate UEFA or FIFA coaching badges, which means that when Richmond were in the Premier League they would be fined £45,000 a game for not having a qualified coach in charge - I don't know what the fine is for lower leagues, but he'd be required to do these licences before he could go onto a training ground. Plus the idea of him living next door to a pub in the centre of Richmond, rubbing shoulders with every Tom, Dick and Harry is also a little too far fetched.

Obviously the factual inaccuracies aside it is a very enjoyable comedy; one of the better ones we've watched in recent years, because it isn't really about football. It's about this thoroughly nice bloke from Back Water USA who gets to teach the Brits a thing or two about being human. There's just the right element of surreal about it as well, which suggests to me that much of the factual inaccuracies are planned, because this isn't really 'our' world.

Anyhow, I wasn't expecting Ted Lasso to become a 45 minute per episode, socio-psycho drama, but that's what season two seems to have morphed into. It is unexpected, the directions this show goes off in, despite its stupidity in real life, is probably one of the things that makes it a fun watch even if my inner football nerd wants to hate it.

***

Here's another aside; I watch a fair bit of You Tube at times; it has a lot of interesting documentaries and things I never knew about hidden away. It also has a massive comics fandom 'area' and as I spent 15 years writing a comicbook gossip column, I do like to see how the sub-industry I created has gone backwards.

However, I watched something earlier that bugged me a little because it was well made, precise, well thought out and put together and yet has a small following compared to some of the shit out there. An aside within an aside - avoid the channel called Screen Culture, it's essentially fan fiction with a editing whizz. This channel sticks out 'concept' videos and trailers of what they think will get fanboys priapic but is actually clever editing to make already existing scenes from films seem like they're from a new film. Concept videos are fraud; they are digital plagiarism and should be banned.

Anyhow, this channel I found that I enjoyed does what I try to do in quiet weeks and attempts to tell us what's wrong with the Marvel Cinematic Universe and in 8 minutes they do a hugely impressive job, touch on some things I never saw and proved to me that not all You Tube channels are run by wankers who need instruction for wiping their own arses. The station is called Brick Kildaguy and we're on the same page re the MCU, except he's maybe a wee bit ahead of me because he's seen and hated the latest Ant-Man film and has managed to make a very convincing argument as to why there's actually way too much Marvel content and that the quality threshold has been reached so all we get now is quantity. 

He also makes a good point about Marvel films being largely stand alone features now with a little bit of plot fluff to keep the nerds happy, but the majority of fans don't really care about that, they just want to be entertained. It's a bit of an epiphany really because I need to feel that way about the films and so do a few of my friends. Not only are they not made for us, they're not going to follow the path or direction that we want them to. Yes, quality has now got a low setting and Disney will become alarmed that Marvel is just knocking stuff out like a teenager wanking with a razz mag, but as long as it doesn't lose them any money Marvel can flood the halls with their bland, lukewarm, jizzum.

However, box office returns are dwindling, critics scores are plummeting and cinema may never truly return to pre-pandemic levels even if the second Avatar film is baffling most people possessing a brain. Disney could well rein back the money and in the last couple of months one of the VP's has quit/been fired, the release date of Marvels has been put back until November (with a number of officials inside the company very concerned about box office appeal) and there's a degree of panic over 2024's releases with little or no positive feedback after announcements. Oh and there's the fact that two of the last three releases have been rated as the worst and second worst in Marvel's short cinematic life and the 'Black Panther' film sandwiched between them hasn't been scrutinised as much as it needs to be.

Marvel/Disney has got problems and none of the You Tube shows focusing on the company and this specific issue seem to realise what a huge thing it is and how it's now about staving off execution for as long as possible. 

***

Also on the Tube of You is this https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wNi4w5IsVLY&list=WL&index=5 which is about the five seasons of Fringe, a programme we were huge fans of over a decade ago now. This 'show' is a 90 minute retrospective and is called Fringe: Full Series Retrospective, which, I think you'll agree, isn't the catchiest of titles, but it feels like it has been better produced than half of those shite retrospectives they have on Channel 5.

The first thing I got from it was how little of Fringe I remembered and how reliant on madness and psychedelic drugs it was. Arguably Fringe jumped the shark every series, going off in directions you didn't expect and then going into worlds you'd never have imagined and this was a key point the documentary maker missed because series one and two were so similar, except they weren't as this programme points out. Series one felt very much like the bastard offspring of The X Files, while series two shrugged off the shit storylines and opted for getting closer to what we'd think of as Prime Fringe.

It wasn't a show for sitting still and there was some massive plot shift every single series; not a big bad villain more of a big problematic cast member. Essentially a lot of the villains were the main cast, but because this was a parallel worlds thing it didn't have the impact on the ongoing story that you'd expect. For those of you not familiar with this series it wasn't afraid to end a season in one reality and start the next one in something altogether different - as demonstrated when Peter Bishop disappeared from all of existence and because he'd prevented his own creation none of his team members, including his father and his lover, remembered him. They ended season four like that; I remember at the time thinking 'what the actual fuck?' 

Fringe was television that wasn't frightened to be adventurous and often when it did it backfired, but it didn't stop them from doing weird things with a show that was possibly always intended to be different all the time because of the nature of time travel and interdimensional vagaries. The thing is I expect the series will feel dated and slightly ludicrous if watched in 2023, which probably isn't that different from how it was initially received. This Tube of You documentary does a very good job of allowing you to become immersed in the Fringeverse again without having to sit through all the really naff episodes and it doesn't do a bad job of analysing it either.

***

Picard continues to wheel out the nostalgia with the three missing pieces all back in place and the Next Gen crew all reunited in the wake of Ro's death. It has been a cracking series, far surpassing both the previous two seasons and more importantly expectations.

I don't think we're done with guest stars either although it would be simply speculation to throw names in, however Colm Meaney is probably due an appearance and maybe Nana Visitor and more likely than Avery Brooks who I recall reading somewhere doesn't have a lot to do with his Sisko alter ego. Possibly Alexander Siddig or one of the Ferengi, such as Armin Shimerman and possibly an admiral Janeway or some others from the Voyager series. One thing I will admit to is getting the big bad wrong, at least that's what it appears to be, but I'm still not convinced.

***

Next time: Yellowjackets is back! One of the best and most unexpected shows of 2022 has returned and I expect it to be as fucked up as it was, if not a little more. Then there's more futuristic retro bollocks, futuristic pensioner madness and conceptually wrong football shows - marvellous.

Music Review: M83 - Fantasy

I think the term 'a return to form' is overused nowadays. M83's last two albums Junk and DSVII weren't very good; I didn't buy either and I've never played any of the tracks more than once. One's a 'disco' album, a dance-inspired load of noise, the other simply didn't grab me at all. IMHO, It was also the only real rubbish phase Anthony Gonzalez has ever gone through, because most of his back catalogue has stuff in it that lifts him way above just being the EDM/Banging Tunes musician that people think of because of tracks like Midnight City and Teen Angst. He and the band he plays with are really a post rock, shoegaze, electronic pop band with dance influences.

This album reminds me of Saturdays = Youth and Hurry Up, We're Dreaming, but this is far more indie rock influenced post rock electronica and the banging dance tunes are few and far between. It's uplifting but it's also dark and mysterious. It's like a 21st Century homage to rock, pop, prog and new wave of the 1980s, with its big sounds, sweeping crescendos and snippets that feel like they've been lifted from someone else's albums.

It's still 'modern' but it's an album and not a collection of songs. There are faint whiffs of prog in it; some weird key changes and epic riffs, but there's also that dreamy shoegaze that M83 has always had hiding on B-sides of previous albums and Gonzalez's own version of 'wall of sound' which is why it reminds me of prog at times specifically Radar, Far, Gone and Sunny Boy.

I haven't been 'taken' by an album in quite a few years; very little has been listened to on repeat since 2019 and many of my 'best' albums of recent years have been things I've played maybe as little as twice. Fantasy however has been on rotate for the last few days and every time I listen to it I hear something new; there are stand out tracks, but so far there's only one duff track - oddly enough it's the title track - and that's not that cheesy. 

If I had to give this album a label it would be 'epic' - it's full of big music, with lots going on and so many influences. It's a cracking album. I love it.

9/10

Modern Culture: The Ides of March

This blog is essentially one giant spoiler...

The finale of The Last of Us was a lowkey and drab affair specifically designed to illustrate that even optimism is going to have a nasty aftertaste. Joel was shown doing what he's been hinted at being able to do and one wonders if Ellie had some idea of what happened while she was being prepped for her own expiry.

I can't say I've enjoyed this series; I felt half of it was wasted and there wasn't enough threat. It may well be the most realistic post-apocalyptic series we've ever seen even if Fungus the Bogeyman hardly ever appears and psychopaths and nutters are few and far between.

Ultimately if this was the video game encapsulated in nine parts of television then I'm glad my video gaming career ended around 1994.

***

The second series of Happy Valley was finished in as much time as the first. Usually second and third seasons of programmes have a feeling of familiarity about them; you know the cast, you feel comfortable around them and the story takes on a different feel. This was no different; the problem I had with this second series was it felt too complicated, too contrived and too convenient. Don't get me wrong, it was quality TV just not as quality as the first series. A case of second [album] season syndrome.

Series three of Happy Valley didn't feel as though it had moved on over six years. Some things had changed - police HQ and a few relationships - but other things stayed very much the same. The main thing I took away from it was how little happens; here we are with the conclusion of this story that spans eight years plus on the horizon and there's a lot of nothing going on.

I'm a bit peeved to have to be reporting how disappointing the series ended up for me given the praise heaped on it. Series two and three were both overlong (although obviously not) and uninspiring; whereas the first series was sensational, nothing in the subsequent episodes did anything to recreate the tension and lunacy of that and ultimately it all felt a little bit like it petered out, much like Faisal's story and contribution to the final series. I expected more and I expected something better and I got neither. The hype outweighed the quality in the two sequels and they ended up being unnecessary. 

***

A programme that is looking like it's living up to its hype is Ted Lasso, something I have never been interested in but finally relented. It's about a bog standard average American football college coach who is employed by a struggling Premier League side - as an act of revenge by the new chairman against the previous owner, her ex-husband - despite knowing little about football and having zero respect from any of the players he has inherited.

I have been told by a number of people that you need no knowledge of football to enjoy - not that this is a problem for me - and I would say that it could be about anything, any sport, but the fact that this is a quintessentially English sitcom with a very fishlike person out of his comfort water is a wordy, prosaic sentence that is very much what Ted is about.

It's choc-a-bloc with stereotypical football types, wags, bloodthirsty journalists and wankers, yet I wonder if it's got British writers because there are some things about it that don't make a lot of sense, which is often synonymous with Americans writing British people.

One thing is clear almost from the beginning and that's Ted's homespun, ultra-positive optimism and likeableness - you just know that all the players and supporting cast who think Ted is a twat are going to change that opinion of him over the span of the first series. Yes, AFC Richmond are probably going to get relegated, but you get the impression they will do it as a team who play for each other. I like this series, I wish I'd given it a go three years ago, I'm glad I didn't because I wouldn't be able to binge watch it. I can't recommend this enough.

***

Picard was proper TV this week. By far the best episode of the entire series it featured the return - albeit fleetingly - of one of the worst open ended plots/characters from latter seasons of Star Trek: Next Generation, Ro Laren, played by Michele Forbes, who is now looking her age. I knew there was an unexpected guest star waiting in the wings, but Picard season three seems to have taken it upon itself to conclude the ST:NG/DS9 cycle completely, so if you were never a fan of those two shows then a lot of this is going to go over your head (I never watched DS9 with any great enthusiasm). 

I'm now 100% sure that the AI, Big Bad and driving force behind the events in this current series is going to be Data's brother Lore. How else would they be able to shoehorn all former ST:NG actors into this?

***

The wife's biggest complaint about Hello Tomorrow is she doesn't think much has happened and that it's not going anywhere despite of the ingenious set-up. I get that; I understand that not enough has happened and that some of the characters are more pantomime villain than believable, but this isn't any planet Earth we've ever known and I'm starting to wonder if this is earth at all. 

We're heading towards the home straight and I have to admit that it's lost me a little as well; the attempts at making Jack's sham business a debatable actual thing and the scam within a scam to get themselves out of the mess they're in isn't working for me - it needed a different story to work with that hasn't materialised, either that or this simply didn't have 10 episodes in it. 

A complete side line from that, I'd love to know what is actually happening on the moon (and a close enough shot to confirm it is or isn't our moon) and why there's so much traffic going back and forth; are there actual homes on the moon and is Jack's company sham selling an actual thing?

***

And that's about it; our TV has been curtailed by a number of things and we've also watched stuff that I've not felt compelled to write about. I could recommend Iain Robertson Rambles which you can probably find on iPlayer if you don't live in Scotland. It's a well known - in Scotland - actor who likes to do long walks in Scotland - West Highland Way, the Southern Upland Way etc - and films himself (and has a drone following him at times) - it's essentially ten bob TV and he probably earns more from it than it costs to make but it's an affable bloke walking through some of the best countryside in the world; meeting up with chums who walk with him for a day. It's easy going, doesn't get too serious unless there's some ecological issue and Robertson is known for Grange Hill, Rab C Nesbitt and River City, he has a face you'll vaguely recognise and he's a passionate and honest bloke so you get a warts and all personal journey every time he sets off for the day.

I'd suggest having a look for it and also Roaming in the Wild which is one of my favourite shows on BBC Scotland. I'd also recommend Scotland's Home of the Year which is one of the more intelligent property porn shows because it's largely about how real people live so for every manse there is there's a terraced house in Stirling. The three presenters are... interesting.

***

Next time: I have no idea, possibly nothing interesting and probably as slim as this week's edition. I might try and persuade the wife to watch Cocaine Bear and we'll probably spend the next few days watching Ted Lasso so you get what you get.

 

A Review (of sorts)

Today marks the 3rd anniversary of something unpleasant. No, it's nothing to do with Covid or the first UK lockdown although there were some tense moments as the two things coincided...

Around the middle of March 2020, I started to feel a bit shit. Dodgy guts, lethargic and generally like something was going wrong. None of the symptoms echoed what we knew about Covid then, so therefore I had something else wrong with me. What made it worse was it had taken a number of weeks to come on; this was something wrong that had been debilitating rather than sudden.

Our dear friend Luan had just moved here, the country was in lockdown, there was a pandemic afoot and I was feeling like I was being poisoned. I must be developing an allergy or an intolerance to a substance I've always been fine with. I internetted and Googled the symptoms and the first thing to go from my diet was wheat - for one week I avoided wheat and I still felt as shit as a shit thing. Then it was a week away from dairy and no change. Next on my list was caffeine; just the idea of going a week without coffee especially while dealing with an unknown problem was quite scary.

The thing was by the second day I was feeling as good as new and by day three we came to the horrifying conclusion that I'd developed an intolerance to caffeine or coffee and this was possibly the worst news I'd heard in my then 57 years.

I used to drink instant coffee, as strong as I could about 20 mugs a day between when I got up and 5pm, where I'd call it a day on my consumption to aid with sleeping, given caffeine has a half life of about six hours. This was arguably worse than packing up smoking because coffee was woven into the fabric of my life, in a far more personal and long lasting way - caffeine was my first addiction, nicotine was simply an upstart latecomer. 

So, why is this relevant to whatever review I might be writing?

Last year, I had this genius idea of writing a blog entry that reviews all of the decaffeinated coffees I've tried; list all of varieties I've tried in a bid to fill the void created by my health requirements to drink unleaded coffee and to inform anyone else who might befall my fate. The problem with this idea is it doesn't really matter whether it's Aldi or Waitrose (which I haven't ever tried but I suspect it will be the same as everything else) because they are all literally shite. 

I have tried everything I could lay my hands on, whether it's an instant or a ground variant. I'm not keen on wasting my money on ground decaf because with instant I'll force my way through a jar because I have no other choice, but with ground coffee the pfaffing about alone means I'm throwing money down the sink. I have tried Asda, Aldi, Tesco, Lidl, Sainsbury's, Douwe Egberts, Nescafe, Maxwell House, L'Or, Kenco, Morrisons, if there is a new or unseen decaf on the shelves I'm all over it like a rash, not because I love it so much but because I want it to be more like coffee rather than koffy, which is what decaf should be called. It looks like coffee, acts like coffee but isn't really coffee at all, therefore koffy.

Contrary to popular belief not all decafs are born equal; some of them are even worse than you can imagine. I have had mugs of koffy that have a slightly chemical aftertaste and some that don't really have any flavour at all. I've yet to find one that smells of coffee, whether in the jar or when mixed with hot water and I often think it's a good idea that I still have 1½ sugars in my hot beverages otherwise I might never drink a hot beverage again.

I did have a decaf from a coffee shop about 18 months ago that I thought was fantastic, however I now think after having had another shop bought decaf from a reputable source that the one 18 months ago might have been a mistake and it was real coffee because I now won't have a decaf in a café or shop because I might as well give them money to poo in a glass and then top it up with some hot water.

I always wanted a coffee percolator like what my dad had, but what's the point? Decaf coffee is vile in whatever shape or form it comes in. Alcohol free beer? Decaf coffee? What's the point?

So why do I drink it?

Mainly because I don't drink tea; I dislike herbal teas and I suppose the best analogy I can give is this: I'm a vegetarian, I have been for over 30 years. However, while I don't eat meat (or fish as a fish is meat) I do like sausage shapes or burger shapes. The reason for this is it's convenient and useful for putting inside the available bread products that are purchasable. It might be a throwback to my meat eating days but, honestly, who the fuck gives a shit? If I make veggie burgers I put them in a bread roll. Equally, I feel happy and comfortable having a mug of sweet, brown and hot beverage throughout the day from the moment I get up to about 5pm, because it's a habit.

The problem I have is I think I'm bothered by what coffee snobs might think of me (well, I'm not that bothered, if at all, but it sounds feasible) for even admitting that I'm drinking the lowest form of coffee-like beverage known to man: instant, decaf and mass produced. I just wish age hadn't turned my body against caffeine otherwise we wouldn't be here, discussing something that should be ignored.

I also drink it because it allows me brief comedy moments when I run through my repertoire of 'I have to drink decaf' stories and why decaf is the devil's diarrhoea monologues. People have been known to ask me what the best one I've tried is and I do have some contenders for the less shittiest imitation coffee award. They are as follows:

Aldi Alcafe Decaf - this is the one that has a faint chemical aftertaste, which after a while fools you into thinking its flavour. The problem is after a few jars you don't want it any more for fear of what it might be doing to your insides.

Kenco Decaf - in the green jar with the eco-friendly refills. This is actually my koffy of choice because it is not as shit as some of the others. High praise indeed. 

Nescafe Gold Blend Decaf - I'm including this because whenever I visit my friend Ange she drinks this and I don't know if she makes it using three heaped teaspoons of koffy or it actually has some rudimentary coffee-ness about it. However, I won't buy it because I think I'd feel a bit soiled walking out of a supermarket with a jar of Gold Blend, especially as I have spent best part of the last 40 years telling people Nescafe don't make real coffee.

I'm not going to bother listing the ones to avoid because the ones to avoid are every decaf that's left. I'd recommend licking dusty lino in preference to drinking decaf; or even having a testicle removed (or added somewhere) because decaf is everything your mum warned you about dark alleys and men in trench coats with stamp collections. Decaf is someone's idea of a bad fucking joke. 

Drink water. Or piss. 

Modern Culture: Sleep Perchance to Dream

Oh the spoilers go a-rattlin down the road... 

My favourite Stephen King book is Insomnia which has absolutely nothing to do with Chris Nolan's 2002 murder mystery starring Al Pacino and Robin Williams also called Insomnia. It's never been clear to me if Pacino's character can't sleep or simply can't get to sleep because of 23½ hours of daylight in this remote part of Northern Alaska (that still manages to have a very large squad of police officers despite there being about 10 people who live there).

Al and his buddy are up from LA to help an old pal solve a grizzly murder case but things start to go tits up when the Internal Affairs business back at home catches up with them in Alaska, throws tensions between the two friends and colleagues and ends in a tragic mess. From that point on it's a game of cat and mouse with the cat suffering more and more from sleep deprivation and the mouse getting braver and more reckless.

It's a good thriller, but is spoiled - IMHO - by a couple of obvious things the local police surely would have realised without the help of the big boys from California, and the entire frame within a frame concept worked but I don't quite understand why (which suggests I found a flaw in its internal logic). 

***

The main problem with Paul Whitehouse: Our Troubled Rivers is that it's 2023 and this documentary had to be made. We all know Tories hate regulation because regulation stymies business and as water is big business why allow it to be stymied by regulations, better to let it do what it wants for the sake of the shareholders and fuck the people, wildlife and the environment. We are the only nation in the top 50 nations in the world that has privatised water, that was thanks to the Tories and they promised that privatisation would lead to more choice, competitive rates and more money being spent on the infrastructure needed to bring our water up to the same standard as everyone else; that's up to the same standard not better or different...

This is the problem with anti EU Tories they don't care who or what they screw as long as the bottom line keeps on increasing and red tape is cut and this was a message that was drilled home almost every ten minutes of this first part, except the focus was on the private companies rather than the government who allowed this to happen. We want to be leaders in green energy and cleaning the world up, yet we're still 1950s savages unleashing anything into our rivers because who needs wildlife when there's money to be made?

***

We Need to Talk about Cosby is disturbing because we're talking about a black man in the USA in the early 1960s who spent the next 40 years serially abusing any young woman he could while remaining one of the USA's most popular icons. We're not talking Jimmy Savile protected here either; Cosby didn't have politicians and royals as his friends, he didn't have the charity work to hide behind, he was already a despised minority in a country that still has problems with some successful black men. 

I grew up with Cosby, like many people of my age and older. He was a funny guy and more importantly he was vitally important in his era and this documentary sort of asks whether or not you can still like the comedian's material or if you have to hate it because everyone now hates Cosby?

You need to ask a similar question: What if we discovered Elvis or Bowie or Prince or [insert any iconic musician or actor] was a really bad person, do you stop listening to that person's music or watching their films? Do radio and TV stations no longer show any Spielberg films if it's discovered he spent 40 years kidnapping and dismembering children? If Mozart was a nonce would we stop listening to Mozart? 

I hear the argument about times, attitudes and sensibilities, all of which have changed since the 1960s or 70s and usually that argument is discounted by people arguing that the people making that argument are from the same era and are therefore indoctrinated to a certain degree, but it doesn't stop it from being true. I like the way that, in some marginal cases, celebrities are penalised for indiscretions made in the 1970s, but the facilitators and the other doing it got away scot free. 

I'm not about to suggest that Cosby is innocent because of the culture of the era because it's clear he's a quite loathsome individual who used his influence to gain much sexual pleasure. I just don't buy into the fact he was unique or even in the minority - women, especially in the USA, had a way, in those days, of being devalued when standing around men with power and those men will have had their own mentors or met the men who behaved the same way before they did. Cosby exploited the fact that women for decades literally bent over and took it up the arse because men ruled their world. 

The documentary series isn't likely to dig that deep, but Cosby was a sort of victim of a Hollywood Mogul Mindset, he was dazzled by what the rich and powerful could get away with; how they could abuse with impunity and he wanted the same thing. 

***

We're into the home stretch with Hello Tomorrow and it's quickly unravelling as the 'is it/isn't it' a scam is finally revealed with unexpected consequences. Two things are clear; Billy Crudup is a massively underrated underused actor and Alison Pill is beginning to be typecast as either a sociopath or a vindictive bitch. 

I've enjoyed this series; it's been a novel approach to design it how 1940 and 50s home designers saw the future and I still think most people simply don't get it. That said, I'm not sure I do either.

***

The opening minutes of the penultimate episode of The Last of Us felt very much like it was going to meander around again and fifteen minutes in there was little to make you think I was going to be wrong and then some things happen...

Were they trying to scare us with cannibalism? Were they trying to shock us with the psycho-preacher cult leader? I doubt it because the people making this would have known about the cannibal episodes of TWD where it was a life choice and they would have been familiar with the cultish leader of whatever bunch of desperate psychos were being lined us as villains of the season. No, they wanted to spell something out and quite clearly: Ellie is feral and dangerous and if you give her the slightest opportunity you can kiss your face goodbye.

I still struggle with a lot of things in this series; it's been inconsistent and didn't do as good a job at laying foundations as it should have done, but I'll be interested in what big finale we can expect next week.

***

We Have A Ghost isn't as bad as IMDB would have you believe. Part of me thinks the film has such a poor rating because the white guys are the bad guys and they're picking on a black family with Asian neighbours and a nerdy ghost with a dodgy combover.

This is a 21st century approach to the comedy horror films of the 80s and 90s, like House or 13 Ghosts and I started to like it almost from the opening scene when the hero Kevin reacts in exactly the way the ghost (played by David Harbour) didn't expect and from then on, despite the lack of logic and common sense, it's two hours of good solid fun. It ain't going to win any Oscars, but one gets the impression that David Harbour realised a while back that his niche is fantasy stuff rather than high brow award winning stuff.

One thing I did notice was that Anthony Mackie has bulked up considerably since last year's Falcon TV series and Marvel/Disney is obviously getting him to look more like a musclebound superhero so that when he makes the next Captain America film his biceps alone look like they could hold the film up.

We're starting to scrape the bottom of the barrel in terms of the Flash Drive of Doom with the wife being the dominant force here, deciding what we do or don't watch. I put this on. I didn't give her a choice. She laughed a few times and enjoyed the film. That's a win in the house at the moment.

***

We'd never seen Sexy Beast and I don't really know why, especially as it's a Jonathan Glazer film. Perhaps it was because I expected something else entirely, but at the end I was glad we watched it. What an odd gangster movie it is and what a stunning performance from Ben Kingsley.

In brief: retired safe cracker is tempted out of retirement by threats and recriminations and it all descends into a fraught and paranoid last 30 minutes. 

***

After watching the first part of the three-part Beatles: Get Back documentary compiled by Peter Jackson we decided that one was probably enough. However much we both loved the Beatles, watching four men in their late 20s sit around jamming and, in the case of Paul and George, bickering was quite enough. 

***

Covid has been an unwelcome addition to our lives over the last week and I've suffered badly from it, clogging my chest up and making breathing extremely difficult at times. I'd suggest the virus is a little like the Assyrian Empire in that it's up and down a lot, but when it's been bad I've not felt like joking.

While the wife has been trying to be as normal as possible, I've been confined to the couch. That means days of filling up my time with old films and stuff - or not, as the case has been. I've literally not felt up to it half the time, but I did treat myself to one of my favourite films, Gareth Edwards' Monsters with a soundtrack by Jon Hopkins and I noticed something for the first time in five viewings - the literal end of the film is right at the very beginning. I'd never realised it before.

I'm not going to get involved in an argument over this film. Genre nerds hate it, I think it's wonderful. I don't think people who hate it fully understand it and those who do understand it and don't like it are either being bloody minded or really don't get it.

***

The latest Picard finally saw us break free of the weird nebula they've been stuck in for virtually all of the series so far and deliver a crushing blow to the villain. I get the impression that this final season will be split into three parts and the first one has concluded.

It is by far and away the best series of Picard and yet... I don't know, there's something no longer right about Star Trek in general. It's become too bloated and confusing and when this is over it may well be the last we see of the franchise for a long time.

***

To nick a 'quote' from an old chum; in the Covid Lockdown Lounge we finally got around to watching Happy Valley and after watching the first six literally in one day, all I can say is...

Wow! 

Someone said the first series was the weakest of the three. Wow. 

Halfway through season two and it's strange but I guessed two of the subplots by the end of first part and two of my other theories might be right. Still great TV, but I struggle to see the Scandi-Noir suggestions a few of my friends likened it to. 

I also have a problem with real time continuity in films and TV. It always pisses me off - in an OCD kind of way - when I'm watching something and in one scene the characters are standing in a street and it's clearly autumn, but five minutes later there's another scene and it's clearly the summer and then there's a scene and there's Christmas decorations up everywhere but no one is acting like it's winter. This has been my biggest gripe about this second series, that and the fact that it's trying to be more complicated than it needs to be. The beauty of season one is how simple the story ended up being and how deliciously ironic it turned out for the perps. This time around it feels... like it needs to do more when it simply could have done something no more or less complicated.

***

Part six of Hello Tomorrow was the most important and least comedic episode so far and perhaps the viewing public might have seen this series in a different light had this been the opening episode. We're given a lot of backstory while simultaneously moving the story forward in an episode that explains and delves into the truth far more than any of the previous parts.

I really like this series, I just think most people will find it too anodyne despite its fantastic sets and crazy retro-futuristic ideas.

***

Kathy Burke: Growing Up is a two-part documentary about getting old and about being young and how the two cope. It's another one of those compulsory TV shows that everyone should be forced to watch because not only does it paint an interesting picture about getting old in the 2020s, it juxtaposes this with what it's like for under 25s in a world that is vastly - socio-economically - different.

It'll be available on All4. You should watch it. It isn't political, but it is educational without a right wing bias.

***

I'm struggling with the BBC at the moment. I feel I want to do something like write a letter of complaint or tweet angrily to the void. I think both the Gary Lineker and David Attenborough 'controversies' of the last 24 hours are too big to go away as hard as the BBC and the government will try and divert away from it. Football is hugely supported at the best of times and now there's a bunch of people who don't give a shit about it interested, the BBC could fuck itself big time.

***

Next time: The finale of the mushroom zomboid show; the rest of the Valley of extreme Happiness and whatever else passes in front of my eyes and is absorbed by my brain.

The MCU's X-Men

Ms Marvel and Namor are MCU mutants. Professor Xavier had a cameo in the last Dr Strange film, in a scene that said: all Marvel superhero films belong in the MCU now; there's a place for them, even Man-Thing and the Punishers. The cat is out of the bag. Homo Superior walks among us. In one version of the multiverse or another.

Except, if you care to look at the proposed schedule for the next four years, there is no sign of Marvel's mega-successful mutants anywhere on that list... Unless you include Deadpool 3 which could be anything but we know that Huge Ackman's Wolverine is going to be in it. Presumably so is Colossus and Teenage Negasonic wassname girl. Or it could just be Wolverine and by the nature of the Deadpool films, we'll be no closer to understanding what significance the letter X will have in the MCU. Unless they do a brave move and introduce the X-Men and their universe to the MCU through this film.

The X-Men and all of the spin-offs are conspicuous by their absence on the forthcoming MCU lists. There's not likely to be an X-Men film or TV show until 2027 at the earliest and that might only be a BIG announcement to reignite interest in the entire franchise if Phase 5 continues to be critically panned and starts suffering from less profit. The X-Men could be the magic bullet Marvel needs. At least that's the conclusion I came to because if Disney was planning a major mutant event before 2027 we would have heard about it already.

Once upon a time I was the best person in the world to speculate about the X-Men. I even got interviewed by national magazines about my rather sad fanboy fascination with them. It was purely by accident, but it didn't do me any harm and I made some good friends out of it and got to know some famous people along the way. However, my X-Men knowledge ends in 2001 and even then it was as sketchy as fuck from about 1996 onwards. I might have created a hugely successful X fanzine, presented X-Men panels at comic conventions and been used as the litmus test for future X-Men writers, but at some point in the early 1990s I realised the reasons I was a huge fan were never going to be addressed. The questions I had and the things that dragged me into the franchise's embrace were never going to be answered. I did though know everything you needed to know about anything X from the first issue of X-Men to the issues of Ms Marvel (first incarnation) or Iron Fist or Marvel Team-Up that seemingly had nothing to do with the X legend but were fundamental to specific story lines.

The obsession I had with the X franchise was really more to do with Chris Claremont, the writer and overseer for all things mutant. I followed him rather than the mutants, because he weaved fantastic stories using techniques that would be applauded even now - including placing important 'Easter eggs' in comics that were being cancelled or creating a soap opera feel that was absent from all other comics - the X-Men weren't just a team of disparate heroes, they were people, they were a family. And so were the villains they battled. 

The comics might have been excellent, but that was because of the creator; the X-Men would never have been the best selling comic in the world for so long if it had been written by an illiterate drunken monkey. So when Claremont finally left, the nuclear story became linear and splintered even more and ten years after his departure the X-Men weren't even the most successful comic any longer, despite there being actual feature films with A list actors starring as mutants. The fact that Fox's X-Men was all about style over substance didn't help matters. 

The MCU is - paradoxically - the main problem faced by the MCU in bringing X to its universe. 

How are we - the punter - going to accept the integration of mutants into the MCU and have characters as old as Charles Xavier or Erik Lensherr existing in the world without ever being noticed? What about characters like Kurt Wagner - Nightcrawler, or Scott Summers - Cyclops? How are these people going to have become young adults without them having fallen on the radar of the numerous government and world organisations that the MCU now has?

Perhaps Wank Ada Forever dealt with that issue so it becomes easy from now on. Oh look, we have an entire race of underwater dwelling humanoids that have been there as long as man and we never noticed them before... Now we have the Atlanteans then perhaps we can suddenly have a bunch of super powered humans that no one ever noticed before. That's why mutants or X-Men have an immediate problem in the grand scheme of things. 

I still think the safest thing to do would be have a distinct 'mutant universe' introduced and then through some major battle or crossover unite the it with the MCU - if that's even what they want to do. One of the things that made the X-Men work as a comic was because it clearly took place in the same world as the other MCU characters and that meant that mutants and super powered others sometimes shared the same stories as well as cities, but managed to kind of keep each other at arms length - like church and state. They teamed up when necessary and argued when told.

There's also the big colourful elephant in the room. The X-Men and mutants was a fantastic platform to highlight what's wrong with racism; the cornerstone of the books was always - we're different from you but we're still saving your arses. In many ways the world has become so polarised that the X-Men are going to seem a bit woke, especially if you follow the template that Lee and Kirby put down for subsequent writers and artists to follow. The problem now is if it tried to embrace all of the marginalised groups it might lose itself in a mire of boxes to tick rather than be entertaining. Plus, the entertainment world is actually quite flooded with things about the disenfranchised trying to find their own voices and any attempt at doing the X-Men as they should be done is opening it to criticism even before the first word of a script is written.

Ironically, despite becoming such a phenomenal success during the 1990s, selling unprecedented amounts of comics, the X-Men were always a B list product and was the first Marvel comic of that iconic Silver Age era to be cancelled, only to be resurrected less than a decade later as the hip and trendy, social commentary comic that wasn't afraid to push the envelope. Some of the comics' greatest classic storylines focused on what it was like to want to be treated as an equal despite just saving the planet from another threat that no one else was around to deal with. But the best stories were when they were fighting for their own survival because of their being different. The Sentinels - in the comic - were one of the greatest villains ever created because you couldn't reason with them; they were programmed to do one thing and they did that thing at whatever the cost. They were emotionless automatons learning from their own mistakes and relentless in their pursuit of their goal. 

I've always felt that the X-Men were the first super/fantasy heroes. Mutants technically speaking could be a person with the ability to shit cupcakes or turn their own phlegm into slugs; whatever your genetic weirdness is that's your power. A lot of it wouldn't work visually on the big screen. The telepaths and telekinetic (a group of mutants that were anything but unique) will move things with their minds or read another's mind - that's not terribly exciting, is it? It's also not likely to become exciting visually any time soon. Watching two people straining at each other like some kind of surreal diarrhea stand off...

The problem is Magneto or Professor X would struggle to visually look good in the MCU; one touches his forehead and reads someone's mind, the other touches his forehead and some metal does what he wants it to; while the outcome of their actions might be visually stunning, they themselves are not.

Even if you went back to basics and started at the beginning you'd have Cyclops - possible cinematic impact, Jean Grey - little cinematic impact (a lot of gesticulation and deep concentration), Iceman - possible, Angel - likely to succeed but what a lousy power and Beast, a hairy boy who's quite strong and good at gymnastics: this doesn't really work on film or TV. Plus, in this new world of the MCU the first time the Brotherhood of Evil Mutants put its head above the parapet the latest version of the Avengers would be ramming their back doors with prejudice. 

A 21st Century X-Men by Marvel/Disney would need to be historically accurate but also different. It would need believable characters, great villains, prejudice, tension, fear and loathing - all the things Fox's X-Men films never found and all of these things would really need to be introduced slowly, to give the feeling that this is something mutants have had to suffer since birth. 

I think, honestly, they'd need to be reinvented for the MCU with maybe only some of the classic tales of the last 60 years used - but with a different cast; an All-New All-Different version... Reinvention has worked for it in the past.

We do know that Avengers: Secret Wars is going to happen in 2026 and some people know that the  original comics series introduced us to the Beyonder and the idea of all the heroes and villains battling each other. This might be the place to introduce the X-Men as a finished product, one which you could work backwards on whether it's part of a unified MCU or its own little corner. My guess is if they intend to really do it and introduce us to a mutant universe then this film will be what sets us up for The X-Men. The problem is it's also got to house as many of the other heroes and villains - known or unknown - as possible without needing to be 4 hours long.

The thing is, we're unlikely to see 'proper' mutants films before 2027 unless it happens on TV, so could they do the X-Men as a TV series then spin-off some feature films? 

That would be my best case scenario even if it issues the message about [lack of] faith in the product and even then how would you include it? How would it slot into the MCU? A place that's growing rapidly but without much happening. Imagine it like this; superhero movies biggest fans are comic book readers; comic book readers get their dose of comic once a month, in some cases they'll wait longer but usually they get five or six completed stories in a year from their favourite titles. That equates to four films and eight TV series every year and all will cost money and regardless of what the films make, can they make the same dosh from TV shows via subscription services? 

The only realistic way of introducing mutants and NOT weakening the existing franchise is to divide that franchise up into sections. Hope there's a degree of tribalism out there and that factions develop that they can exploit through social media and the multiverse suddenly becomes the normal thing and there are [plucks a figure from the air] 7 prime universes, one in which superheroes exist, one with magic and monsters, one with cosmic heroes, one with Spider-Man's supporting cast, one with mutants and a couple of others they keep secret until they need a new Big Bad. If one of them fails one of the others steps in and helps the most popular characters into a new wing of the entire franchise.

More importantly, they would need any mutant TV shows to be shit hot telly. It would need to be the Game of Thrones for superheroes and need at least two spin-offs from it to help fill in the gaps. It would need enough realism to keep it relevant and enough humour to keep it real. It would have to have good actors, a serious feel and political enough to satisfy both sides of the argument. It would need to have characters the general public would know even if they were in situations you might not expect them to be in. More importantly it would be groundwork because to be able to get to the position the X-Men were in when Chris Claremont turned them into superstars; you'd need a dozen years of character building and history.

Plus, if the above happens it doesn't avoid the major question - if you were superpowered why weren't you fighting against Thanos? It's pretty much what makes Eternals such a piece of crap (and did any of them disappear with the Snap?). Where were the fucking Atlanteans? Were they exempt from that half of all living things crap? If there was a mutant underground with people like Phoenix or Wolverine or Magneto or Apocalypse in it why did they ignore all that shizzle? If you're going to rewrite history you need plausible creativity and the snap gives you a fixed point in time that you can't really fuck about with too much because wankers like me can influence the success of a film by constantly reminding everyone of the logical errors in rubbish films. You might not think this matters too much, but the excuse given by the Eternals for not helping during the Thanos crisis really sat badly with even the most ambivalent of MCU fans, it would almost have been better had it never been mentioned.

Of course, a novel way of solving the problem would be by using Kang's ability to change time now there is a multiverse again. What if the true timeline had mutants in it all along but someone changed history back in the 1960s preventing the likes of Magneto and Xavier from being key figures and stopping the activisation of the X factor, preventing humans from evolving?

I think a sure fire way of guaranteeing the success of the Fantastic Four film would be to start it like it was the second or third part of a trilogy, then slowly reveal that their world isn't our world and maybe finish it with whatever threat they faced now heading the way of the Avengers. Make it clear the FF belong in a different version of our universe and also have some of the MCU's iconic figures also popping up in the FF film - to paint the picture that there are other, different, Tony Starks, Bruce Banners and Steve Rogers. Maybe the threat that Reed Richards discovers (because it's always going to be him) is a threat to all the multiverse. If during this film we were introduced to an extant X-Men team it could kill two birds with one stone and any subsequent mutant film could have flashbacks to fill in the blanks. 

Without adding to the problems, Marvel also has to shuffle into this their space films and the other areas, such as Blade, the next phase of Captain America/Iron Man and [dark] Avengers films and it's when you look at the big picture and at what Marvel appears to be shooting in the future there doesn't appear to be much scope to introduce another race of humans with magical powers that sound a bit like the Inhumans idea they tried to introduce but failed. I wonder if they simply haven't got anything and are not even going to think about it until at last 2025 when they have to start making shit up for the next few years. The more years that pass the further away we get from Fox's X-films and the more wiggle room the MCU has.

Obviously there's the fly in the soup with my argument; even if the mutants might not be a good idea in general, they have two very good ideas, that make money: Deadpool and Wolverine. The beauty of Chris Claremont's Logan was that no one else was allowed to play with the character without it getting his approval so the baggage was kept to a minimum and allowed Claremont to drop more clues about Logan's past that suggested it wasn't quite as ABC as the film portrayal suggested. If you had a new Wolverine that was as complex and anachronistically peculiar as the one from the comics of 1980s and 1990s then you might not need other regular mutants. 

The same applies to Deadpool who I expect will never be fully integrated onto the MCU. Wade will always be the village idiot's brother; the single written by the drummer, the character that sits just outside sanity - a clever way of showing Deadpool from a MCU perspective would be as a ranting psychopath prone to ultra violent outbursts unless his genitals are being fondled, which, thinking about it, isn't something you're likely to see on Disney+ in my lifetime. 

However, Wolverine and Deadpool could exist in the MCU without the latter ever having to do anything that interferes with the actual story and Logan could simply slide into something with little fanfare. The same could be said for some other mutants, but slowly introduce them across TV and films until you have enough to have your own TV show or film if it's worth it. We have two mutants in the MCU at the moment, if we only had five by this time next year I'd be happy. You need to create and foment anti-mutant hysteria over time, it's not something that'll crop up over night, especially given how superheroes have helped mankind and the Sokovia Accords already toyed with the concept. 

In conclusion, the best thing would be not to bring the X-Men into the MCU in any way shape or form. 

Modern Culture: Pithy

A warning of spoilers ahead

Did you know that I did Modern Culture before? I'd forgotten all about my semi-regular blog called The TV Dump. While waiting around to watch something to put into this column I saw that on February 27, 2012 - over 11 years ago now - I wrote reviews about: Being Human (which I might rewatch soon), Fringe, Skins, the second - boring - season of The Walking Dead and Top Gear, just to round things off there was a comment from Kelvin. Some things don't change, but I certainly ache more now...

***

Goodbye The Nevers and thanks for all the confusion. 

I don't think Joss Whedon told anyone what his plans were so when HBO decided to finish making his series they had to make something up and they did and I haven't got a fucking Scooby. We watched the final two parts and all I can say is, 'nope, not a clue and I don't want to know.' It was a bit like hallucinating you're in a badly imagined X-Men steampunk nightmare.

***

The very first film I ever watched on my PC and one of the first I downloaded on broadband was 1408 based on the Stephen King short story. It stars John Cusack and Samuel L Jackson and 15 years later we watched it again.

It's not a bad ghost story; why they chose to rewrite the end is a puzzle. They actually made the ending less scary than the book. It didn't feel as good second time around.

***

Episode seven of The Last of Us was a return to boredom as we spent 50 minutes looking at Ellie's last day before she was bitten as she and her best friend had fun in an abandoned shopping mall. It did little to move the story on, acted as an allegory for what she needed to do with Joel and his stab wound and expressed a suggestion that Ellie might be gay. 

I count that as two filler episodes now to go with the four dull episodes and the one dull episode that was interesting. 

***

The fourth part of Hello Tomorrow didn't go anywhere and we wandered back into 'are they really selling houses on the moon' territory. The point of this series is to make the viewer think this is all a sham, but is it? Every time you think that Jack and his team are selling something that doesn't exist things happen to suggest they do exist.

There's also this vibe that while this looks like America, sounds like America and even has a national anthem that is American - is it really America as we know it [obviously not] or is it something else entirely. This fourth episode saw Jack 'pretending' to be Joey's father in a weird case of life imitating life and Brightside heading for some serious trouble because of Alison Pill's desire for revenge.

***

The Secret Origin of DC Comics came out 13 years ago and a few of the people I actually know/knew  in it are now sadly no longer with us. It was also nice seeing some faces I haven't seen for years and listening to some raving loons who I haven't seen for what feels like longer. I did some freelance work for DC in the 1990s, some of the best friends I had in comics worked there. It was always #2 on my comics list of favourites and the few times it snuck into 1st place was usually because of the quality of Marvel rather than the outstanding contribution to comic book artistry. 

The weird thing about this doc was I learned something about Batman and Bob Kane that I feel I probably should have known inside the opening ten minutes but from that point on I pretty much knew everything else or wasn't that interested. 

The problem is DC might have been the first but they're really always going to be number two; even when things get interesting in the comics you know that the next thrilling instalment of shite is waiting in the wings and this documentary - celebrating 75 years - felt a bit half-hearted even and despite having Ryan Reynolds relatively calmly narrate it was always a case, with one exception - the first time - most of the eras of greatness followed problems at Marvel where staff jumped from one to the other and this felt a little like Marvel was an elephant in the room and wouldn't even be mentioned when it might have come across as more documentary, less hagiography had they examined DC's over all impact on comics throughout the world; what DC has done globally for language and education. When I worked with the homeless back in the 2000s, my good friend Bob Wayne sent us a box of comics every month to give to the kids and for over two years the YMCA Northampton was flooded with DC Comics to the point where the managers asked me to ask DC to stop. I know it's not exciting, but sometimes by trying to make yourself look fantastic you miss an opportunity to show people just how fantastic you are and not just creatively.

The doc was boring.

***

We finally got around to watching The Banshees of Inisherin and I'd be lying if I didn't say it's a strange film. It appears to be set around the time of the division of the North from the rest and it's about an island community on the far west side of Ireland, specifically two men who it would appear have been best of pals for their entire lives but suddenly one of them doesn't want to talk to the other and that's it. It's about the consequences of stupid decisions, rash behaviour and is a very nice film with a bitter core. I can see why it's been hugely popular.

***

Sex on Screen part of the Storyville thread should be compulsory viewing for young males and it would be ideal as well. Full of fleeting titillation most teenage boys I knew when I was one would have been all over this like a teenager with a wank mag. The clincher would be to make all the young males actually watch the programme and listen to the words and understand that their perspective of the world in which women inhabit is all wrong.

There's a section in the middle of this excellent documentary that says, in a more prosaic way, that women are so objectified by media that young men now believe that women are here solely to entertain them, like a kind of breathing, eating and shitting PlayStation. Sadly, the second half of the doc meandered around slightly as it shifted the emphasis and it ends on a very optimistic note, which I think is overstating it at the moment, I personally believe that women, in general, are still a long way away from where they deserve to be and the aged patriarchy is doing whatever it can to keep women where they want them. However, long may women continue to dominate the entertainment media

***

Fleishman is in Trouble is apparently something completely different from what you think it is. I hope that's the case because at the moment it just seems like an annoying programme about reasonably well off people in the USA. The entire episode is an introduction to all the characters and then Fleishman's wife disappears and you don't know what you're watching. Has she fulfilled some prophecy that everyone was half expecting or has something else happened. The tone would suggest the former that leads me to think this might get a bit sinister.

***

Having Covid somewhat put the mockers on watching anything for a couple of days, so we arrived at episode three of Picard a couple of days late - much to the wife's disdain (she's never been an ST fan and her initial interest in this series waned after about three episodes into the first season). 

The fact we're still in this weird nebula three episodes in suggests that this series is probably going to be quite tight and complete. Worf has developed a sense of humour and Michael Dorn looks in many ways to be as old as Picard, but he was a welcome and funny addition to the cast. When Geordie and Lore (Data's dead) are going to appear is anyone's guess, but my guess is inside the next two parts.

This was a huge improvement on last week's but you just get the feeling that had they managed some consistency throughout the three series we'd be talking about a Star Trek classic series rather than a decision taken far too late in the lives of all the characters. I mean, we might as well get a Kirk cameo...

***

35 years is a long time and it was 35 years ago we watched The Untouchables and we haven't watched it since. It's the mark of a truly great film when you remember so much about it from the Battleship: Potemkin homage to the Al Capone and his baseball bat scene.

The first thing you really notice about it is how for at least 95% of the picture how contemporary it feels. The next thing is how much of the scene sets were probably used in Batman but with darker lighting. Oh and what a cracking film it is considering all that was achieved was 11 years for tax evasion. Obviously there was some artistic licence but in general this was the legendary Brian De Palma at his best and even youthful Kevin Costner and Andy Garcia shine in it; but it's Sean Connery's film and if he didn't win an Oscar he should have.

***

Next time: Post-Covid TV continues and I try to persuade the wife to watch some of the 'shite' left of the Flash Drive of Doom...