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A New Viewing Experience
What can I say about my new TV that isn't me wondering why the fuck we didn't get one sooner? We now not only have lots of the free streaming services as well as Freeview Play, which adds a few more channels; our TV channels updated themselves and we got 77 channels and over 50 radio stations for about 12 hours and then it all went back to normal! It has to be a mixture of human error and the fact we have such a dodgy signal here, even if it's plugged into the internet.
I'd ask someone locally if they can have a look at it, maybe someone who understands the jargon or how a modern 4K Ultra HD TV works. Unfortunately, most people up this way think BBC4 is witchcraft, so I'm going to struggle until one of my TV literate friends visits next year.
Oh and I've opted for a new look to the column as well...
The Eloivision Pong Contest
Saturday, May 13 2023 is Eurovision Song Contest Day and for us it's an opportunity for a caustic soda enema or possibly a razor-wire colonoscopy. I often wonder why it's called Eurovision and what that actually means (especially as Australia are in the competition). It is camp nonsense and none of you who enjoy it have any idea about the true meaning of Eurovision.
Prize Money
Don't you wish that just once the person who wins a lot of money on one of these TV gameshows when asked what they're going to spend it on says, "Cocaine and prostitutes, Bradley." or "It's going to pay for my 86-year-old mother's breast enlargement, Ben." Or maybe even, "Mind your own fucking business you worthless cunt, Xander!" Although, to be fair, that's a wee bit antisocial.
When asked what they're going to do with the winnings, people never say, "Paying the bills, buying some luxury food, like butter or jam and upgrading my disabled child's wheelchair." That would probably make really harsh TV instead of a fun teatime gameshow.
Knocked One Out?
It's funny because I've been saying to the wife for over 15 years that she should watch Knocked Up, the Judd Apatow film from 2007 with Seth Rogan and Katherine Heigl as a completely mismatched couple having a baby. The thing is it wasn't as LOL funny as I remember and therefore all the hype kind of washed over her.
It's a veritable who's who of famous people before they were more famous and the cast includes Paul Rudd, Alan Tudyk, Kristen Wiig, Jay Baruchel, Jonah Hill, Jason Segel, Bill Hader and veteran Harold Ramis in a film that is okay, but it's not this hilarious anti-baby film I recall it to be. It also seems a little bit too much like wishful thinking rather than the kind of thing that might actually happen.
If nothing else it's giving us a chance to plough through all these old films on the Flash Drive of Doom now that we've decided that we'll watch them all... eventually.
Skip to the Lou
So we've checked everything out on the TV and we're 95% satisfied with it when the wife pressed the button marked Netflix and I said, "That won't work, we need a pin or to buy a subscription."
Except we didn't. I think we're possibly piggybacking off my brother's membership (who I got the TV from) but we decided as we had it we should check it out so we watched Lou with Allison Janney and some other people. It's your typical 'no one suspects the meek old woman to be something akin to Rambo until she's pulling your eyes out through your arse' kind of film and it's got a neat little twist in it that doesn't really surprise but is quite subversive.
I expect when I put the TV on tomorrow we won't be able to get Netflix either.
We did.
Evil Bread Rises?
As has been often mentioned in these columns in the past, I'm not a fan of Sam Raimi and while the Evil Dead films have a devoted following, the truth is all three films were a load of old shite. The first one was full of inventiveness and energy but felt like it had been made by a frustrated 18-year-old Incel and subsequent remakes/extensions were just hammy and a bit cod.
The thing about Evil Dead films is they don't really have a logical narrative; it's essentially a barrage to the senses from as many angles as possible as whatever the evil dead is jumps from host to blood-splattered host. One Evil Dead film was enough and that was only as a curiosity (like David Lynch's Eraserhead) anything more than that is over-egging the pudding.
Making a Populist Point
There's something that has gotten my goat a little and the problem is talking about it is going to make me sound prejudiced. Have you noticed that there are a number of TV shows that focus on the LGBTQ+ community - who represent about 3.5% of the population. Or the number of TV shows, adverts and current affairs shows that feature - for diversity reasons - a black person, despite them only representing 4% of the entire population. Asians - Indian, Chinese and Eastern origins - represent almost 10% of our population but we see fewer of them than we do those of African or West Indian origins. Why is that?
How about vegetarians? We outnumber vegans ten to one, but you switch Saturday Kitchen Live or James Martin on and if the guest isn't some fish eating 'vegetarian', they're a vegan; no one on either show has ever said they don't eat meat but do eat diary (the press like to call us lacto-vegetarians, because, you know, labels...). It's like whoever is in charge of television diversity doesn't understand the figures. "Der... Vegans are trendy, let's have vegans on! Vegetarians? They're old hippies that eat cheese and lentils, fuck'em." I wouldn't mind, but we're more fucking ethical than 70% of all vegans, FFS.
Don't get me started on snooker. I have nothing against the game, I used to play it, but this year's final was watched by less than a million people; snooker simply isn't the spectator sport it was in the 80s and 90s; people watching has dwindled over the years, probably through overexposure. This year, BBC2's schedule was once again dominated by snooker and all the matches that overran the designated time subsequently either cancelled or postponed what was to follow.
I just want some proportionality in my scheduling and filmmaking. I do not agree that everything has to have a member of the cast who ticks the minority box or is somehow shoehorned into a production regardless of how certain minorities have been treated throughout the last 100 years and how unlikely it would have been for them to be there. The way we're going by 2070 we'll have rewritten history so that the three people on Apollo 11 will have been a woman, a black man and a gay single parent of undetermined gender ...
Equally, it might be quite possible that I'm growing so pissed off with the visual entertainment industry that I'd complain about an orgasm if the TV gave me one...
My Ted Talk
I have this latest theory about Ted Lasso and it's not a happy one. This most bizarre of TV comedies has produced so much of worth since it first appeared; everything from the resurgence of Juno Temple to the discovery of Hannah Waddingham and the rise of Brett Goldstein; it's gone from a 30 minute sitcom to a 50 minute dramedy and I fully understand why it's essential viewing and so many people recommended it to me.
Uh-oh...
Phil's theory of Ted: They're going to kill him off. Richmond are going to pip West Ham to the title and Ted is going to have a heart attack and die. Nathan will become the new manager with Roy Kent as his assistant and Beard will take Ted's ashes back to the Mid-West. It will all be very sad and tragic but tinged with hilarity. It will be why there can be no Ted Lasso follow up...
Anyhow, that's still two weeks away, we have the penultimate two episodes to get through before we find out; so what happened this week?
With three episodes to go there is always this feeling that series' that are concluding will tread a lot of water, maybe clear up loose ends or unimportant subplots, but generally the episodes that lead up to the finale are often anticlimactic. This episode of Ted Lasso can only really be described as possibly the best episode of the entire series. It was a wonderful bit of television that started off exactly as I've described above, like it was just going to sort a few things out and then WOW - it went to places I didn't expect (I don't think anyone did) and in the end it was simply beautiful TV.
It's possibly the best thing on TV at the moment and credit to Apple TV - everything I've seen from them has been A+ so far, obviously started by the dazzlingly brilliant For All Mankind and continuing apace.
Multi-Killer, No Filler
On a whim, I opted for a film called To Catch a Killer with Ben Mendelsohn and Shailene Woodley about a mass killing in Baltimore that is hastily followed by another mass killing. Mendelsohn plays an FBI investigator who recruits a young police officer - Woodley - because he likes the way she thinks, especially in the aftermath of the first massacre. This young officer, like her wizened new boss, thinks there will be more killings.
It's a tough film with a lot of actual detective work rather than action and drama, but it's what makes it such a good film. There are some things that let it down, such as Woodley's character clearly being on the spectrum with many issues and one wonders if she'd really get a job as a cop with that kind of mental health history; plus there's the internal politics of the FBI which is probably very realistic but gives you the impression that solving crime in the USA is just a big pissing contest.
The final act is also a strange one; just as you're thinking the trio of investigators would make a good TV series or sequel one of them falls victim to the sharp shooter and much of what follows is an exploration into possibly why someone would want to kill so many people so indiscriminately and therefore the denouement is almost an anti-climax.
It is a thoroughly captivating movie though and one I'd recommend for a weekend when the weather is grim and you fancy something equally depressing. Oddly enough there's a few references in this to Jaws which I found amusing given how I used that film as an allegory for something else recently.
Old Encounters of the Umpteenth Time
Over on the Tube of You - which I now have on my bloody television - I stumbled across a 22 year-old documentary about The Making of Close Encounters of the Third Time and it was exactly what it said on the tin.
This fascinating doc told me things I never knew and if nothing else actually cements my love for the movie even more when you consider how they made this awesome film without a computer in sight. The doc's over 100 minutes long and I'm thinking it was probably made for the 25th anniversary DVD edition. Carey Guffey who plays Barry Guiler, the 4 year old kid, in the film was pushing 30 when this doc was made and is now 51... Time, eh?
Anyhow, in many ways the Barry Guiler - or 'One Shot Carey' - story is the best part of this 100 minute documentary because the ways they coaxed that performance out of him was brilliant. Then there was how they created all of those incredible - for 1977 - special effects in an age before green screens, CGI and big budgets - Columbia Pictures had pretty much bet the family jewels on this film, if it had been a failure the company would have gone under. Even if you're not a fan of the film you seek it out, because it's captivating TV!
MarvelVision
Just a quick bit of news about the MCU on Disney+: The Echo six-part series - the spin-off from last year's Hawkeye - will be released on November 29 and all six episodes will be available from that date. It is also believed that the Ironheart series will debut on January 17, 2024 and all six episodes will also drop on Disney+ but also other streaming platforms aimed at younger audiences.
However, for Agatha Harkness the news was not so good; if this appears at all - despite being five months into shooting - it's not likely to appear until the autumn of next year, if at all. Apparently there are a number of rewrites needed and that's not happening at the moment.
One other bit of 'gossip' - at this juncture in time Avengers: Secret Wars is going to actually be Avengers: Multiverse Wars as EVERY Marvel superhero from all the different threads, producers, everything from Punisher to Man-Thing to the X-Men will appear in the film, which will be directed by Shang-Chi director Destin Daniel Cretton. Sounds like a cacophony of bollocks that's likely to be four hours plus.
A Pointless Observation
Do many of the people who want to go on Pointless understand what the quiz show is about or is it simply they want to be on TV at any cost? It's probably because Pointless is their favourite quiz show, especially as The Chase is like University Challenge to some people, and everyone gets a pointless once in a while, very much in the same fashion as that multitude of chimpanzees theory.
The reason I ask this is why do contestants say things like: "I'll play safe." That is either a fundamental misunderstanding of the object of the game or they're so fucking stupid they only know the obvious answer (and quite often we see that's just the case with stupid people who aren't ashamed of their stupidity - but, you know, Alexander Armstrong, he's almost royalty).
The one that really gets my goat is when someone says, "Oh geography is not my subject." When a show bases itself around a core number of subjects - in Pointless's case that will be the ten subjects filed under General Knowledge - and the most commonly used one is geography, what the fuck are you even doing on this show? No wonder Richard Osman wanted out; it must have been a bit like the bloke at the log-in terminal in an abattoir counting the carcasses.
Animal Dystopia
We finally got around to starting to watch Sweet Tooth. I think the thing that's put us off has always been the animal children and how it looks like a Disney film put through a drug addict's brain, the thing is the first two episodes are actually building an interesting world and it's looking as good as the hype.
I'll review season one when we've finished it, probably by this point next week. It is unique in that it's the oddest pitched post-apocalyptic series I've ever seen - a modern fantasy that is surreal and slightly off-kilter - what's not to like?
Yellowjackets in Red
There are some clues to things or at least why some things happened, but the weirdness and Lost-appeal of the Wilderness is beginning to grate and next week's finale might have just come at a good time. The writers need to get a direction or the third season is going to meander around like this one and what started as a promising series might descend into cod bollocks.
Fear the Wanking Dread
What I find most annoying about FTWD is if I start to fall asleep during an episode, the wife prods me, as if to say, 'I might have wanted to watch this but by God you're going to watch it with me!'
Anyhow, stuff might have happened, some people walked about, others shuffled. No one cares.
Actually, relenting grimness seems to be the overriding thing now as the cast, who have resisted every single dodgy bunch of psychopaths have now fallen in with arguably the worst bunch of all and they do the bidding of Padre with barely a quibble. I fucking hate this non-sensical shit-storm of a show.
In the Next Thrilling instalment:
Having free streaming services is making the Flash Drive of Doom obsolete, but there's still stuff out there that needs finding. Anyhow, the finale of Yellowjackets will hopefully give me something to write about and Ted penultimate episode will give nothing away. There might be a full review of Sweet Tooth and we have some more Memory Lane movies to indulge ourselves with - including the remakes of Dawn of the Dead and The Crazies - yes it's a Romero-Remake-Fest. I'm also going to con the wife into watching 65 this weekend, under the auspices that it might be a good film ... heh... heh heh... heh heh heh.
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