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