My Cultural Life - Scary Monsters?

What's Up?

Does anyone else find it ironic that the BBC is coming in for criticism for all manner of dodgy things? The reason for this was the stupid editing of a Donald Trump speech from 2021 and subsequent accusations that the corporation is institutionally corrupt (I wouldn't argue with that regarding its news department) and having a left wing agenda (which is as comedic as the funniest comedian to ever have lived).

The BBC News departments is anything but 'left wing' and the fact people are accusing it of being left wing suggests it isn't right wing enough for certain people. I mean, let's just look at a recent news story - the mistaken releases of some criminals. BBC News and especially that boyish-faced twonk Chris Mason, who has seamlessly replaced Laura Kuenssberg as the far right mouthpiece of the company, managed to keep this story in the news for over a week, yet during the last year of the last Tory government over 800 prisoners were wrongly released. Can you remember any of these being given the scrutiny and the political spin that the BBC has chucked at it recently? No, of course you haven't. That's because the BBC's political staff are largely Tory supporters, ex-Tory party SPADs and former Young Conservatives. 

This isn't me just making shit up, their political allegiances are available for all to see if people just bothered to look. The thing is no one wants to look or even scrutinise the scrutinisers. 

What Panorama did was absolutely wrong, but mainly because Trump says enough bullshit for them to never have to fake one of his speeches. Why did it do what it did? Who knows, apart from the fact that the level of journalism at the BBC is nowhere near the level it was when they employed real journalists instead of pandering gobshites who are suddenly realising that their own political choices are no longer particularly relevant. Oh and Robbie Gibb, one of the board members is a Boris Johnson sized cunt with an agenda designed to destroy this jewel in British broadcasting's crown. Remember, the more right wing you are the less free things there should be...

Thoroughly Modern Monster

There is a scene in Guillermo del Toro's Frankenstein where Victor Frankenstein's brother asks which part of the monster was its soul located and I felt that was a poignant moment, because however brilliant, evocative and stunning the cinematography is in this movie it is simply the same story that has been done before and Mary Shelley's novel is pretty boring, especially when it's been done to death, this seemed without a soul. The difference here is that Victor - played by Oscar Isaac - is a complete bastard who deserves no sympathy at all, whereas in earlier films he was always, somehow, been depicted as some kind of tragic figure.

This is a bit dull despite looking sumptuous; it focuses on the humanity of the 'monster' and the monstrousness of its creator. There is a sort of subplot involving Victor's brother's fiancée, played by Mia Goth (keeping her clothes on for once), who is about as fucked up in the head as you can imagine and a lot of the film takes place on the Scandinavian ship that bookends the story. Jacob Elordi plays the creature and his accent wavers all over the place, but there's a hint of the Lincolnshire Wolds in there and he looks like a composite of Doc Manhattan (from Watchmen) and the race of aliens who created the alien xenomorphs. It's a spectacle - as you'd expect from the director - but it's also a little bit boring and overlong. I feel like it deserves a higher score, but I'm struggling to think that it deserves a 6.5/10.

As an aside; it has always perplexed me that Frankenstein simply didn't bring a dead body back to life; why the fascination with assembling a person from body parts sourced from multiple corpses? There's some kind of perversity going on there which no adaptation has ever explored...

Unum

Of course it's set in New Mexico; everything Vince Gilligan does is set in Albuquerque or thereabouts. Pluribus is about as far removed from Breaking Bad and Better Call Saul as you can imagine. This is an 'alien invasion' show that doesn't have any aliens and there isn't an invasion. Something sends Earth a chemical concoction that is basically a virus that turns everyone on the face of the planet into a member of a hive mind, apart from 12 people, of which Rhea Seehorn is one of them. Quite a few people die (almost 1 billion) as a result of this 'virus' and Seehorn's wife is one of them.

Gilligan cut his teeth on The X Files and this feels like an extended episode of that mixed with a nightmare and after the second episode, I just have to emphasise how strange and unsettling this TV show is and how unique it might be, despite skirting round the edges of classic sci-fi. Most of the second part was taken up with disposal and explanation; but it's the latter we'll focus on, because Carol has had a lot explained to her and it hasn't made any difference at all, in fact, it's probably made things worse. For starters, we find out exactly how many people died from the 'virus' and secondly we also discover the 12 people left on the planet unaffected have a power over the rest of the world that is both deadly and tragic. I can't tell you enough that this is supposed to be a comedy but it feels anything but at the moment; yes, there are funny moments and the premise lends itself to comedy extremely well, but this is frightening, psychologically disturbing and weirdly compelling. One thing is certain, I have no idea where this is going, but Gilligan will, because he's renowned for planning entire stories out before the first episodes are even made. 

However... There is a chance that some people might not have worked out what this series is about. I read a review of the third episode about two hours before I watched it and the person reviewing it couldn't understand why Carol (Rhea Seehorn) was so miserable and this made me wonder if people actually take any notice of things. I mean, I could bang on about how The Guardian's reviewer clearly didn't watch the opening two episodes when they wrote their initial review of the series, because they got key points completely wrong, but what the reviewer did get right was the fact that Seehorn's character is the most miserable person on the face of the planet, even before all but 12 people became essentially one giant hive mind. This was perfectly illustrated in an opening flashback scene when her late partner took her to an ice hotel in Norway, where instead of enjoying a fantastic holiday with the woman she loved, she moaned incessantly about the cold and ice. She's just incapable of being positive, therefore in this new world where everyone is cheerful and helpful, she's miserable (and dealing with grief and alienation issues).

The third episode perfectly illustrates this as Carol simultaneously realises that the rest of the population is there to give her absolutely anything she wants and that she now lives in what is essentially a very scary place that she seems to have complete control over, until the hive mind comes up with a way of infecting her with the same virus and turning the remaining 12 humans into... well... what the rest of the population is. This third part is still very creepy; the entire premise is disturbing, especially the fact that Carol's free will is living on borrowed time and it doesn't matter what she does she can't escape Helen's memories, because they exist in every single other living human being (bar 11).

Anyhow, I've written far too much about a series that probably very few of you will watch unless you subscribe to Apple TV+, which I really think you should if you like a higher quality of television (or you could simply download the station's shows illegally). I will say one thing in the not-so positive - I'm struggling to see where this series is going to go; what ultimately is the goal of it? It needs a subplot to sit and grow and there hasn't been any sign of one yet.

Kidnapping

So far this week the least scary thing I've watched is the monster movie. This week's box-set binge was All Her Fault, based on the terrific reviews I'd read, which don't always prove to be accurate - as I've often mentioned in the past. It stars Sarah Snook as a mother who arrives to pick her 5-year-old son up from a play date and not only isn't he there but the house belongs to someone else. How this happens is explained quite clearly as there is a frantic search for the missing child and eventually the police are involved and it appears that the nanny of acquaintances might be responsible for the abduction. Except, in the final scene of the opener, we fast forward 27 days and there's something far more sinister and strange afoot. 

This was a seriously fraught and at times scary series that has soap opera levels of WTF, especially episode five, which is one of the most intense hours of TV you will see in a very long time. It is full of both likeable and dislikeable characters, all with their own secrets and living lies who do themselves no favours with their attempts at obfuscating their own truths which bring them under more suspicion. It gets a little 'out there' towards the end and you could argue it has an extremely contrived premise, but on the whole this is a superb series that begs to be watched and it has extra added WTF value, because... well, it just does. Oh and it has one of the best villains I think that has been created in many years, mainly because you know the person is a shit but you never realised just how much of a shit they are until the very end.

The Future in the Past

It: Welcome to Derry settled into a groove with the third episode. With a total of eight in this opening series it was always going to happen, however, this played a two hander, with Dick Halloran and Levi Hanlon meeting properly, having a moment at 10,000 feet and then one inviting the other over for dinner. The Major thinks there's something strange about the corporal but the word 'shining' is never mentioned. Meanwhile, the kids go in search of capturing photographic evidence to try and help Ronnie's father from certain death as he remains in prison charged with murders he didn't commit. There are also flashbacks to 1908 and references to 1935, both parts of the 27 year cycle and so far there hasn't been any sign of Pennywise, apart from his name.

This was not as scary, nor as disturbing as the opening two parts; it almost had a Stranger Things vibe going on at times, while the tying up of the past with the present was quite clever, but whether we'll see the 1908 characters again - in the third and final series - remains to be seen. This felt a little like taking two steps forward and then two steps back, but was still entertaining.

To Belarus Without Love

Bradley (Reese Witherspoon) is being detained in Belarus on trumped up espionage charges leaving Alex (Jennifer Aniston) to try and come up with a deal, somehow, to sort out the problem. She turns to ex-boyfriend and billionaire Paul (John Hamm) to try and broker a deal with a Russian oligarch 'friend'. Meanwhile, the grieving Cory (Billy Crudup) turns to Selene (Marion Cottilard) for support, unaware that she is the villain here, on several levels. As the deal to free Bradley falls apart, it sets everything up for a finale that is guaranteed to be as explosive and heart wrenching as this show always manages. The Morning Show is superior TV at its best.

You've Got to be Joe King

Stephen King's less prolific son has a new book out, reviewed in the Guardian. It might get read or I might not bother; it depends (probably on Christmas). The thing is, like all Guardian reviews I felt compelled to have a rant about it... The book Joe Hill's King Sorrow is about an evil dragon and my 'favourite' newspaper, and the reviewer Alison Flood, made the cardinal sin of comparing it to Joe Hill's father (which is a cheap jibe at the worst of times), Flood said, quite categorically that it was a little like an homage to King's 'best' book, which she claims is It, a book that clearly isn't even in the horror writer's top 20.

It is a rambling, sprawling mess of a book, with an extremely questionable denouement, which has had to be changed in the two adaptations because having a conclusion that involves five teenage boys deflowering a teenage girl so that they 'become adults' and can deal with the monster (portrayed as a clown) better, is arguably a bit fucking [ahem] close to the mark. I know it's all subjective but I expect if you held a poll with King fans very few would have the overlong late 1980s horror novel (written when King was at the height of his addiction problems) at the top of their lists.

One other point. King and his wife Tabitha, both intelligent people, writers with good careers, called their son Joseph King? Really? Joe King? No wonder he's opted to abbreviate his middle name Hillstrom as a surname, because all joking [chortle chortle] aside, calling your son Joe King is probably the result of both parties being off their tits on something. Just ask Frank Zappa. 

Thursday Flops

We had a double bill of flop films on Thursday. I forgot to check IMDB again when we set Play Date up and we lasted less than ten minutes before turning it off. When it was downloaded it was 6.9 and that was on Wednesday evening, 24 hours later that had dropped to 5.5 and I expect it will get even lower. Fucking insult to an idiot's intelligence.

Then, we decided to watch The Smashing Machine and while this wasn't shite, it was extremely dull and that was after less than 20 minutes. With the knowledge that it was, in fact, over two hours long and the wife asking if it got interesting (like I would have known, I was also watching it for the first time), it was switched off and we went in search of something more interesting instead...

Preposterous Bollocks But Fun

The real puzzle is how anyone managed to find a way to make a sequel to The Black Phone. I mean, the killer got killed and that was pretty much it. However, Scott Derrickson, who isn't a bad director, somehow managed to resurrect The Grabber as a post modern Freddy Krueger - from A Nightmare on Elm Street - and The Black Phone 2 became a reality.

Set four years after the original, Finn - the hero of the first film - is still hearing phones ring, has taken to beating other kids up and smokes a lot of cheap weed. His psychic sister Gwen is having freaky dreams involving their dead mother and Ethan Hawke's Grabber, something is afoot. The two with their friend decide to go and work at Alpine Lake Camp - in the middle of winter, despite both being at school still - as trainee counsellors at this Christian kids camp because that's where their mother once worked and Gwen thinks there's something they need to do there.

This is essentially Gwen's film as the Grabber is actually after her to pay Finn back for killing him. It is also the place where he committed his first three murders and the premise is they have to find these kids' bodies to prevent the Grabber from using this to power himself back into reality. It is utterly bonkers/idiotic, but it's also quite atmospheric, looks really creepy and was considerably better (ie: more enjoyable) than the two films we had earlier switched off. It's not a patch on the original, but it has its moments and doesn't really leave anything open for The Black Phone 3, so expect that at some point in 2029. 6/10

A Long and Winding Road

Down Cemetery Road is the compelling argument why you maybe shouldn't get an Apple TV+ subscription. I'm finding it extremely tedious and unbelievably far-fetched, in a 'this wouldn't happen in the real world' kind of way. I know Emma Thompson and Ruth Wilson are quality actors, but this really feels a little beneath them. The mix of bad British humour with psychopaths and contract killers just doesn't really work for me. It's quaint in a punch in the face kind of way and at least we're half way through it now because I'm not enjoying it at all and I don't want to keep asking the wife what she thinks because if she is enjoying it I expect she'd give up on it if I told her I think it's worse than maybe catching rabies from a puppy...

What's Up Next?

Roofman is on the agenda, as is One Battle After Another. I'm sure there will be some other films but it really depends on what's floating my boat on a certain day.

In TV, next week is the week before Stranger Things comes back for its final season, which, I have to say, the trailers for it aren't grabbing me by the balls at all. I think I got pissed off with season four and its ability to go nowhere badly.

As usual blah blah blah...

My Cultural Life - This Is All You Have Left...

What's Up?

Have I mentioned that I've not been well? I have? Oh, well, I'm still not well. This is becoming slightly concerning, but apparently nothing to worry about, really. The wife has had the same virus for two weeks and she usually kicks colds and flu in the nuts while laughing like a maniac...

I had my Covid and Flu jabs on Wednesday and the very nice nurse who administered them - she was called Susan - told me that she hasn't known an autumn like it for persistent viruses and because of my COPD it was probably just taking a wee bit longer than normal to get over it. I hope she's right because it has been relentless and really doesn't feel like it's getting better. The thing is, unlike other viruses where I've literally just wrapped up in a duvet and waited for it to end, because I'm not the only one suffering I've been a trooper and carried on doing things I probably should have taken a rest from. That said if it carries on for much longer I feel like writing a strongly worded letter of complaint... The problem is, who do I send it to? Probably Nigel Farage, mainly because he's a massive cunt. 

Unsettling and Unpleasant

I'm torn as far as It: Welcome to Derry is concerned. Without wishing to sound odd, I find the prejudice to be both unsettling and almost pornographic. I'm well aware that being black in the past, especially the 50s and 60s was a dangerous and horrible time, but there's almost a pleasure being taken about showing white people being as prejudiced as possible and because there are a number of black people in this series there is a propensity for vile and hateful racism, which part of me feels doesn't work even if it's truthful and obviously amplified by my knowledge of Stephen King's Derry. There's something counterproductive about it, especially in these racist-fuelled times.

However, this isn't Stephen King's Derry, this is Andy Muschietti's Derry from his adaptation of It. In his films, the story is set in 1988 and then 30 years later; in King's book it is the late 1950s and the late 1980s; it has been updated, so to speak, to make it more relevant. Therefore this TV series is set in 1962 and some of the familiar names are the parents of characters from the films. One of the quirks of King's book was the fact that whatever was under Derry, masquerading as Pennywise the clown, could 'help' people who got older to forget the horrors they might have seen as children, so I get the potential explanation of why so much is happening in 1962 that is never mentioned in Muschietti's films or the source material. It just sits wrongly with me. I find it contrived and also a little strange.

What is unsettling is the horror, because it is fucking out there. There is a genuinely disturbing feel about the scenes of ghoulishness and they are, I imagine, quite scary and the kids involved in them have to be given credit for coping with the sick mind that devised them.  However (again), I'm finding the idea of Jovan Adepo as an air force major with no sense of fear - therefore he's going to see what is happening rather than whatever the alien under Derry wants him to see - a little convenient, especially as this is a series that will be told in three parts, each series set 25 years further in the past. Don't get me wrong, this is expertly made, the sets are phenomenal, but it feels constructed; there's a sense that it doesn't matter, that we're just playing out something that will ultimately just be there for the scares and any solution or explanation will be exchanged for really chilling and nasty special effects. I'm enjoying this, but I'm not sure why...

Ripper, Mate

Despite having watched From Hell shortly after it was released on video in 2002, we remembered almost nothing about it, therefore it was like watching it for the first time. Johnny Depp (again) does a surprisingly good East End accent, but his Inspector Abberline, the psychic detective is a bit too fantasy even if the story is most probably as close as we'll ever find out about the true story of Jack the Ripper. Based on the comic by Alan Moore and Eddie Campbell, there's a little known controversy about the original comic as a south London comic shop owner always claimed that Moore stole the story he had relentlessly researched, but in truth most of the information that has been dressed up in the Hughes Brothers film is probably out there in the public domain and with a little supposition and extrapolation you can come up with variations of what probably did happen. As a film, it was quite good, even if it felt a little like style over substance. Victorian London looked fabulous and the squalor of Whitechapel depicted extremely well. The ending? Well, I got the impression they wanted to have something positive come out of it, even if it didn't end positively for Abberline. 6/10

Sunday Night

We did something 'normal' on Sunday. We watched the telly (or iPlayer to be precise). First we watched Whitehouse & Mortimer Gone Fishing, which felt a little ... weak and short. After that we watched this week's Landward, which, for the benefit of those of you outside of Scotland, is Scotland's version of Countryfile, but considerably better and more relevant.

After this we watched QI:XL which was one of the better episodes, but that was probably down to Aisling Bea being on it and she always brings a touch of surrealism to the show and brings the best out of Alan Davies. Then we watched another episode of the repeated Simon Reeve: Tropic of Cancer, which we had seen before but is always worth rewatching, even if it was getting on for 15 years old. After that we finished the evening off by watching one of the new episodes of Pointless, which I believe is now the longest running 5.15pm quiz show the BBC has ever had.

This is what your average person does, apparently...

Body Swaps

It's not often I stumble on a film that I didn't know about that I also overlooked on IMDB, but the Ryan Reynolds vehicle Self/Less was very much something I missed. This movie poses the question - if you could transfer your brain into a brand new body would you do it even if there was some morally dubious shit entangled in it? Ben Kingsley plays a dying billionaire in New York who discovers there is a way to have his mind transferred into the body of a younger man, just so long as he gives up his old life and accepts his new self and enjoys his new life. The body he ends up in is Ryan Reynolds, who he thinks is a lab grown clone, but is in fact an ex-army veteran in a lot of medical debt. What follows is an interesting and action-packed romp that was stymied by some glaring plotting errors. It was a relatively fun way to spend a Monday night. 7/10

Chip and Pinned

Watching Upgrade again, we'd forgotten quite what an unusual but enjoyable movie it was. Starring Logan Marshal-Green as a car mechanic involved in a carjacking that leaves him a paraplegic and his wife dead. He is offered the chance of having a chip installed that will restore his motor functions and this helps him go on a revenge mission to catch the killers. It's a bleak futuristic story with shady Elon Musk type characters and psychopaths galore. It's a darkly comic tale with a couple of very nasty twists at the end that is only really spoiled by the cop whose job was to track down Marshal-Green's attackers but spends most of it trying to prove that the person she's supposed to be helping is really a bad guy. 7/10

Down Shit Street

So... the third episode of the Emma Thompson detective series Down Cemetery Road has been watched and it really would be so much better if it dispensed with the poor attempts at British humour and had just concentrated on the story of why the MoD appears to want to kill off eight servicemen who they've already faked the deaths of. This is pretty much the premise of the story from what you can make out in the latest instalment. The big black guy who saved Ruth Wilson from the psycho black guy is a veteran who is trying to save the people that the MoD want killed and that includes - possibly - the little girl who didn't go boom in the Oxford house. This is contrived and really a bit trite but at least the third episode has made it feel like it's worth sticking with for at least another week.

An Offer You Can't Refuse

Last year, a biopic came out and yet it's taken over a year for it to end up being streamed. The film called Waltzing with Brando is the story of Marlon Brando's ill-fated attempts to build an eco-friendly house on a remote Tahitian island with the help of a pioneering LA architect called Bernard Judge - played by John Heder. Brando is played by Billy Zane who absolutely nails the actor and really deserves accolades for his portrayal. This is an absolutely charming movie; it's funny, sexy and very very involving and pretty much as true as it happened. There's not much else to say about it apart from the fact that everybody seems to have a great time making the film and I had a great time watching it. 8/10

Idiot Box

"Good morning and welcome to Morning Live. On today's show we have loads of information to make your life easier. Such as features on how to wipe your arse properly, what the right type of clothes are for the weather outside and this week's top 100 scams and how to fall for them. But first over to Gethin with an important feature. Gethin?"

"Yes, thanks Michelle. Have you ever gone outside and noticed wet stuff falling from the sky? This is called rain and in olden times when this happened people used one of these [holds umbrella up]. This is an umbrella; don't be put off by the strangeness of the word, it is specifically designed to keep rain off of you and it's very good at it. Former Olympic athlete Greg Rutherford has been out on the streets of Salford showing people how it works..."

FML.

Family Tragedies

The biggest let down in last week's The Morning Show was the lack of Cory Ellison. Billy Crudup is consistently the best thing about this brilliant series and when he's missing it never feels quite as good. This week he takes centre stage, as does Jennifer Aniston's Alex Levy, but the two never appear together, because this is about their parents. In Cory's case his mother who is beginning to suffer from dementia and Alex's father, who she probably wishes was suffering from it. This is the tale of two parents and how they can differ so diametrically. It is an episode that is both unbearably sad and fabulously nasty and all the while the story continues. Said story is going to bite someone on the arse big time, but it all depends on whether Bradley can get her story, which just happens to be in Belarus. One of the best episodes in its four seasons.

Island of Lost Dreams

This seems to be the week where we watch charming films, because for the second night in a row we sat down and watched a movie that was simply lovely. The Ballad of Wallis Island is the tale of a two-time lottery winner who devises a scheme to reunite his favourite band and get them to play a private gig for him on his island. The lottery winner is Charles, who is essentially really annoying; the kind of bloke you want to avoid at parties; one who never seems to stop talking and most of what he says is cringeworthy. Written and starring Tim Key and Tom Basden, the former pays the latter half a million quid to perform on his beach and also pays his former partner nearly the same amount to come and get the old band back together. She's played by Carey Mulligan and the former duo have a lot of baggage, much of which Basden is still holding onto.

This is a truly charming story of lost loves, finding new ones and rekindling flames that should have stayed dead. The music is lovely, the scenery is spectacular and it's also very funny in a really touching way. This is a truly nice film and I recommend it to anyone who likes a good British film. 8/10

A Not So Wonderful Life

We settled down to watch the new Guillermo Del Toro Frankenstein movie for our Friday night entertainment, when it soon became apparent the copy I had obtained was in Indian, this meant we had something of a dilemma. I could have tried to obtain another copy of the film (with subtitles because of the bits that aren't in English - a common problem I have now with downloaded movies) or we could watch something else and save the monster film for tomorrow. The alternative was Good Fortune, which is essentially a post modern contemporary version of It's A Wonderful Life.

This is a film by and starring Aziz Ansari, with Seth Rogan and Keanu Reeves and it has to be said it is everything I despise about the USA in a film about what is absolutely fucking horrible about living in modern day USA. Ansari plays a gig economy worker who literally can't earn enough money to survive, who gets a job with a self made wanker - Seth Rogan - but makes a mistake and is dumped on his arse by said wanker. Keanu plays Gabriel, a low level angel, responsible for protecting people who text and drive at the same time, who decides he wants to help a lost soul and what follows is a life swap film where Aziz becomes Seth and vice versa. It is an enjoyable and slightly infuriating movie with undertones of Scrooge and is also a touching romance about how, sometimes, having everything you could wish for doesn't give you everything that you want. It was a good compromise to the monster we had lined up and yet again we have watched a good film this week. 7.5/10

What's Up Next?

There will be Frankenstein. There will also be Pluribus, the new Vince Gilligan series with Rhea Seehorn. The latest episodes of the things we're watching at the moment and there's also a couple of films that haven't been watched yet, including Black Phone 2 and The Smashing Machine, which, to be fair, sounds like a Northerner's way of describing a really excellent bit of machinery.

Lovely. Smashing. Great.

But that's next week...

My Cultural Life - King of Halloween

What's Up?

There's another reason why I hate the autumn so much. I've talked about Facebook Memories a lot in these blogs and one thing I have noticed throughout the month of October has been the number of times over the last 17 years I have been ill during this month. I mean, I dislike November more, but October has the right to be called my worst month by virtue of how much of it I have spent unwell. 

It has been no exception in 2025, even if my memories won't reflect that next year (because I've not mentioned on Facebook that I've been ill (yet). It started over two weeks ago with a raging sore throat, which then turned into a cold and by this time last week I thought I was over the worst of it. However, by the end of last weekend it had returned with a vengeance - but I told you most of this in the last blog. This isn't me going senile (although I absolutely struggled to remember Carol Kirkwood's surname a few days ago, despite watching her on my TV for nearly 30 years), it's me just saying that last week when I wrote my blog preamble I was kind of referring to the virus in the past tense. Little did I know that by the time the last blog had been live for 12 hours I would feel like a heap of shit again.

Anyhow, I write this on Wednesday. I have a doctor's appointment later today because I need antibiotics and steroids otherwise I won't be fit to do my Halloween quiz on Friday. To quote my old man, "I'm getting fed up with this."

Horror Film

I read The Long Walk - a novella by Stephen King writing under his Richard Bachman pseudonym - in the early 1980s and thought it was one of the grimmest and hopeless (as in without hope) stories I'd ever read. I've reread most of King's novels in the intervening 40 odd years, but I've never gone back to that one. The film The Long Walk is as faithful an adaptation as you will ever see, even if the ending was different, it was still a bleak and relentlessly horrible thing. As a movie it's a quite brilliant adaptation, one that encapsulates all that was harrowing and difficult to read. As films go, nothing I've ever seen was as desperate and heartbreaking as The Road, but this comes a close second...

Set in, presumably, an alternate universe USA, given the strange and anachronistic feel of this country, with it's aging automobiles but high tech equipment. A place where some war has destroyed the country's infrastructure and reduced it to being no longer the great country, but one full of despair, poverty and an authoritarian regime that executes 'enemies of the state' in the street, in front of their families. The actual Long Walk is a marathon of sorts; 50 representatives of each state have to walk until there is only one person left standing, and he will get his heart's desire, while the other 49 are systematically executed if they stop for more than a few seconds or drop below 3mph. It is a really good film and one I will never watch again. 7.5/10

Another Horror Film

One film I'm not watching this week will be The Road (briefly mentioned in the previous review), but it seems this week has started with us watching the grimmest of grim movies and so far both are based on Stephen King stories. Sunday night's fare was the excellent Frank Darabont adaptation of The Mist, a feature that really ramps up the 'people are hell and in hell' quota while shovelling some really nasty creatures intent on killing and eating us. It has possibly the least satisfactory ending of any film ever made, but don't let that put you off...

The Mist is based on a novella (as was The Long Walk) and while the book is a grim and frightening look at what people will do when faced with the unknown, the movie tweaks the book slightly to portray some people as just as monstrous as the unknown. Thomas Jane plays a local artist who goes to the supermarket with his son after a storm damages his lakeside house when, suddenly, everything is shrouded in a thick mist (or fog as we call it). In the mist are creatures beyond our imagination and it becomes a fight for survival against inter-dimensional beings who view us a tasty morsels. It is a relentlessly grim movie, with Marcia Gay Hardin as a religious nutter who manages to get the people trapped in the supermarket believing the Book of Revelations is coming true in front of them. It is a great film, let down a little by some dated special effects, but it's still absorbing and horrific. A truly great modern horror movie. 8/10

Gone Fishing

Time to settle down and watch Bob and Paul go fishing. The joy of Mortimer and Whitehouse Gone Fishing is the simplicity of it. Two aging comedians go fishing to idyllic parts of the UK in search of certain types of fish. They chat, tell jokes, talk in funny voices and get chaperoned by Ted the terrier, who is now looking as old as his human companions. The new series was filmed this year, which means it's up to date in terms of the duos ages and health (the series from last year was filmed in 2023 back to back with the 2023 series due to the work commitments of Whitehouse). All episodes are available on iPlayer, but we choose to watch it weekly because we're old and like our light hearted TV in weekly chunks. It's good to have it back. And away... 

The Future is Grim

There's a theme developing and it was initially unintentional. We decided to rewatch an old film, one, which when released felt like a superb adaptation of one of Stephen King's earliest novels, but now feels relevant but extremely dated. The Dead Zone is the story of Johnny Smith, who after a terrible car accident develops precognitive abilities and can see into the future. After a series of events which make him notorious, he tries to live a quiet life as a teacher, but is pulled back into the real world when he shakes hands with a man running to be senator who Johnny sees as being president one day and sets in motion the end of the world. It portrays an America a lot different from today with a very dodgy man running for office who is basically a psychopath - so not at all far fetched and silly then... 7/10

Welcome to Kingville

I suppose we are fast approaching Halloween, so all these King things are probably more than just a coincidence. That said, It: Welcome to Derry was always coming out this week, so it was always going to be on my watch list. I'm usually slightly worried about adaptations and extensions of Stephen King novels and this I was especially concerned about because I never rated It and the two adaptations of the book have struggled to be really great because the source material was so poor (IMHO). This prequel to It really starts off strange has a very long lull in the middle before going batshit bonkers at the end, leaving whoever watched it wondering how the fuck they're going to carry on. Stylistically it's superb, for creepy and weird it knocks it out of the park, but... there's something about it that bothers me, I just don't know what it is yet. It's a promising start though.

Bad Dog?

One of the best things about Good Boy is its 72 minute running time. Don't get me wrong, I love dogs, especially my own, and this was a truly unique horror movie with an equally unique perspective, but apart from the dog - who I feel was underused - it was an absolute load of rancid dog arse. Essentially it's a haunted house fable in which the dog - Indy - isn't even the hero; it's just how he sees it, or rather how it looks from his angle. Was it scary? There was a jump moment, but other than that the creepiness was low key and there was no internal logic to the film at all apart from perhaps one little bit which I can't tell you because it would spoil a film that wasn't that good. However, there was a clever bit of photography being used, which was you never saw a human's face unless that human was dead... 4/10 (7/10 for the dog) 

No Longer A Comedy

The truth will out, as they say, and when it does nothing will be the same again. There was something totally predictable about this week's Chad Powers, but there was also something slightly sinister as well, neither of which I can really go into in any detail else it will spoil it for those of you who watch this or intend to. Suffice it to say, Russ ends up doing something so totally Russ that you hate him for it, but, you understand why he does it. This was a downer compared to last week's riot of laughs, but in no way was this a bad episode, in many ways it's the best one so far. It's just not a comedy any more...

Final Phases

QI:XL is back with the letter W, meaning X, Y and Z are left. Sandi Toksvig, who was seriously ill last year, looks like she hasn't fully recovered and while this is an old favourite, it does feel like it needs to end in the next three years and be put to bed. Alan Davies as usual is Alan Davies and the Whales, Wales, Wails themed opener felt like it could have been a classic but ended up just going through the motions - which, if you watched this, you can have double the points bonus if you catch the reference.

FBI C U

This week's The Morning Show concluded one of the subplots and created a new one because of it. Also Alex does something she's wanted to do for a while and immediately regrets it, while the staff on the show are unimpressed by the new CEO's attempts at a bonding exercise. Chip tells Alex where to get off and Bradley does something really fucking nasty. Meanwhile Yanko faces a huge dilemma and then faces off against Bradley. It was a low key episode but still very, very good.

No Oxford I Know

You know when you look forward to something it often lets you down? Well, considering all the good press I've been seeing about Down Cemetery Road I really wanted to like it, but I pretty much didn't from almost the opening scenes. That said, we watched the first two parts and the wife likes it, so I'm saddled with watching it for a bit longer. She actually said to me that she could tell I wasn't impressed and I wasn't. I thought the plot was hokey, the characters all a bit too overwrought or melodramatic, the story behind the story all seems a little bit too sarcastic and belittling and I don't believe for a second that hospital staff, police officers or even blokes who live down the road who you've claimed to have known for ages can be contract killers. I thought it was a load of tonally awkward bollocks, but we'll see how it goes and if nothing else it'll give me an excuse to let off steam and have a good whinge. Oh and The Guardian gave this a 5 star review, so if anything should say 'avoid' it's that.

American Tragedy

Can you believe that I have never seen Edward Scissorhands? It's true; for some strange reason it has never crossed my path and I've never gone out of my way to watch it. I suppose it has a lot to do with my 'take him or leave him' attitude about Tim Burton. I can admire his work but I don't necessarily like it. That said, this modern day reworking of Frankenstein (versus Suburbia) is quite extraordinary, especially as it was made in a time before CGI and it simply looks fabulous. Johnny Depp plays Edward, a creation of the old man who lives in the spooky mansion at the top of the hill next to an All-American housing estate (that looks like it was designed by the guy who painted Tobermory). 

Dianne West, Alan Arkin, Wynona Ryder, Vincent Price and Michael Anthony Hall are the supporting cast in this tale about acceptance and then rejection by those fickle people we like to call 'Americans' - you know, the people who can find prejudice in orange juice. It is a simply lovely story until we see the true face of America and then it becomes a deeply sad tragedy. Stylistically it is superb, the colours are all very basic, but fresh and vibrant; the people all look like they've walked out of the 1960s but there's talk of VCRs and CDs and it is simply a joy to immerse yourself in. 8/10

Thank Fuck For That

Jesus fucking wept. Or maybe some other exclamation. The finale of Brassic was simply a giant dog turd. I cannot believe that a show that was so good when it started ended up being lodged in the U bend of shittiest TV shows ever. It was stupid and the ending made little or no sense. Please, if there is a god she'll make sure this is consigned to fucking hell...

I'm Smoking A Fag

We decided to watch the portmanteau movie Dead of Night on a wet and blustery Thursday afternoon. The most incredible thing about this film was the amount of smoking that took place; everyone, including the doctor, was sparking up at any available opportunity, it felt more like an advertisement for the tobacco industry than the 'supernatural horror' IMDB claims it is. It's a series of 'spooky' tales with a wraparound story that is without doubt the creepiest of all the stories. But this was made in 1945 and everyone shouted their lines at each other and it was all very 'what what, I say and golly gosh.' I wanted to watch The Colditz Story but the wife 'won' out... 4/10

Secret Bollocks

Our second Johnny Depp film of Thursday was the only Stephen King adaptation we haven't seen with an IMDB rating over 6. There are many we will never watch and I couldn't quite understand why we'd never seen this. Also starring the excellent John Turturro, Timothy Hutton and Maria Bello it's the story of a writer who is confronted by someone who claims to have written a story that Depp has taken credit for. From that point on suspicious and dangerous shit starts to happen and I can't remember reading the short story it's based on but I sussed out what was going on within ten minutes, it was then just a case of waiting for the next hour and 20 minutes to catch up with my correct hypothesis. 3/10 

Return to the Age of Heroes

While I recuperate from the lurgy and try to get myself fit enough to do Friday night's quiz, I decided to watch an old favourite on Friday afternoon. So I watched The Avengers, for what might be the fourth time in 13 years. This is a film I've reviewed probably three times already, so I'm not going to review it as such, I'm going to critique it... Technically, this is a 10/10 movie, but the story only really gets a 6. Why? Let me explain...

As a spectacle it is beyond brilliant. The special effects are phenomenal, but the story, or more specifically the basis of it are wrong. It's like Joss Whedon didn't pay much attention to the previous films, apart from Iron Man. Loki is totally and tonally wrong; this is not the character from the first Thor movie, nor is it the one from subsequent films. The Avengers Initiative was never shut down in the previous movies; this was something that was sprung on us which was pretty unnecessary and simply muddied the waters. There are a number of contrived plot elements, which could easily have been resolved by some simple script consultancy and the script felt forced, with the exception of Tony Stark (one wonders if Robert Downey Jr wrote his own lines). Don't get me wrong, it's one of the best MCU films ever, but it could have been a 10/10 across the board. 8/10

What's Up Next?

Hopefully a few days rest to recover from this fucking virus that has fucked me up for two weeks now. Friday night was another fantastic quiz night at my local, The Wigtown Ploughman, and despite me sweating like a pig (do pigs really sweat?) and having a corking headache, I managed to get through the evening and welcome a new winner. It was a Halloween-themed evening and I went dressed as an unwell serial killer...

Next week, more films, TV and stuff. Woo and indeed hoo. 

My Cultural Life - Diminishing Returns

What's Up?

I expect the next General Election will be a straight referendum with one question being asked: Are you a racist? I know some Reform supporters would argue that and say they are not racist at all; just look at the number of brown people they have as candidates and members. I've developed man boobs as I've got older, I don't think of myself as a woman.

It might be time for Plaid, the SNP, Green and even the Libdems to stand up and offer something different. It might be time for people to throw Labour and Conservative away and look to something new for the future of the country. Reform has a strong number of former right wing Tories in their ranks; if people are so stupid and ignorant to remember what these 'people' did to the country between 2010 and 2024 then they deserve to lose their NHS, their benefits, their human rights, because when fascist authoritarianism comes to this country it won't discriminate.

Worst Day of the Year

This blog goes live on Saturday 25th. The worst day of the year. It is the day before the clocks go back to GMT from BST. There are lots of arguments for and against the changing of the clocks and I, personally, would like to see us adopt BST as a year round thing, even if it means people in the far north end up being in the dark until about 10am in December.

To be fair, I suffer from SADS and have done for most of my life and as a result the week leading up to the clocks going back I'm usually as miserable as sin (which is a strange expression given how some sins give so much pleasure...). This week has been no exception. It started right at the start with an arsehole on the roads who seemed to want to play a game of if you overtake me I'll overtake you back and then slow right down until you try to overtake me again. I mean, I drive a speed restricted small white van, I'm not going to be challenging boy racers any time soon, but the wanker I overtook was going about 30mph on the road to the beach. When he re-overtook me he was doing about 70mph and then he slowed down to about 25mph. Once upon a time I would have been incensed by such a twat, but this time I simply slowed down to 20mph and made it clear to him I was not going to play his game.

That seemed to set the tone for the week. As I slowly recovered from a virus I caught last week - it is October and I pretty much catch something every October - I just wandered around the house feeling miserable, especially with 6 months of often cold, wet and windy weather stretching ahead of us. Yes, there will be nice days; it will be mild and it will be sunny, but it's going to be March before we see the trees spring into life again - that's nearly SIX months - and while the winter does offer some colour, in the form of snow drops, scarlet elf cups and early spring flowers, the next couple of months, for me, are fucking awful... 

The Deeper the Hole 

Last week I was wondering if Chad Powers had staying power. The fourth episode felt a little like they'd run out of relevant ideas and there was almost the feeling of meandering around the edges of the story because the main story - in the show - is ripe for blowing up in the faces of those perpetrating it. Russ Holliday (Glen Powell) is a totem for bad luck; he literally only has to walk in a room and you know something is going to happen that he's going to regret; but his alter-ego Chad is now becoming a college football star and people want to talk to him; interview him on TV and find out all about this hick and naïve young redneck. This is where the problems obviously start and Russ and Danny (Frankie Rodriguez) don't seem to be addressing this massive elephant in the room - the need for a Chad back story that isn't going to be debunked in five minutes.

This week as Russ tries to think of a way where he can make Chad the dominant of his two personalities (not in a mental way), his ability to fuck up astronomically delivers his best fuck up yet. After a conversation with the coach's daughter Ricky, Russ decides he needs to dump Russ Holliday and become Chad Powers, but first he goes to a bar to have a beer and relax... Once he does what he does, he returns to Danny to tell him that Chad needs to be the person he has to be otherwise he can't succeed; so he goes off to do a television interview. Meanwhile, the coach (Steve Zahn) is still wrestling with his wife situation, who has been conspicuously absent since the start of the series and people are beginning to ask questions. She agrees to be part of the big TV interview thing and arrives at the family home just as the TV crew are about to start filming. Here is where she meets Chad Powers for the first time; unfortunately for Russ, he's meeting her for the second time and what had already been a really funny episode gets funnier. This really is a better show than perhaps you'd think and apart from the second episode, the emphasis on American football has been small.

A HUGE Film

"Are you sure we've seen this before?" Asked the wife as we were reaching the denouement of Solomon Kane (or: The We-Wanted-Huge-Ackman-But-He-Was-Too-Expensive Movie). The answer was yes, but we probably remembered little because it was an absolute load of shite. James Purefoy isn't Huge Ackman, but that is who the English actor must have been asked to channel because there were times you had to remind yourself that this wasn't the Wolverine actor putting on a bad West Country accent while wearing a prosthetic nose designed to make him look more like Huge Ackman. James Purefoy is okay at pretending to be Huge Ackman with a Cornish accent, but probably not okay as an actor. Sadly the film, its script and most of the acting was fucking abysmal and felt like chunks had been cut out to make it short enough to be a mild success - I mean Jason Flemyng was the villain and he was on screen for about five minutes. What few special effects were actually quite good, but this is the equivalent of a sticky tissue in the bottom of a bin in Huge Ackman's bedroom. 2/10

The Craic

Any movie that manages to have the general feel of Local Hero is okay in my book; therefore The Guard - a film with Brendan Gleeson and Don Cheadle - is worth a watch, especially as it's been on Film4 a couple of times recently. From almost the opening scene to the end, where you have an ambiguous outcome, it's a riot of hilarious nonsense, strange characters and a Father Ted-like humour that never leaves you wanting. Gleeson is a rogue Garda sergeant - rogue as in he does what the fuck he wants, including acid, prostitutes and robbing dead bodies - who ends up being part of a joint Garda/FBI operation to take down a drug smuggling deal worth £½billion. Cheadle plays the FBI agent assigned to be the liaison between the two institutions, who discovers that Ireland is a very strange place if you're not familiar with it. A thoroughly entertaining 100 minutes of blarney. 7/10

Trailer Trash

I spent some of Monday morning looking through the Tube of You at trailers for new movies and TV coming out in the next six months and had to stifle an enormous yawn. Predator: Badlands looks full of lunacy but the three minute trail probably gave most of the plot away and possibly spoiled some action scenes. There's some film with Chris Pratt and Rebecca Ferguson called Mercy, which the premise alone doesn't lend itself to the trailer business let alone have a three minute clip that basically tells you everything that is going to happen until the last five minutes. I stopped watching it because I might end up watching it, but it didn't exactly make me priapic with anticipation.

The first look at Marvel's Wonder Man filled me with some dread, to be honest. It's being called a 'meta-comedy' and remember the last 'meta-comedy'? The awful She Hulk series? This feels unnecessary and pointless and whatever happens at the end of it I don't expect this is something that will set the television world on fire. Most of the trailer is probably from the first episode, whereas there have been a number of promo pictures released of Yahya Abdul-Mateen II in the costume (which isn't the costume my Wonder Man ever wore) and the suggestion he's going to be very powerful. 

For those of you that care, he was relatively powerful in the comics and was very often a sort of pointless addition to the Avengers during their periods when the team was made up largely of heroes who didn't have their own comics. Wonder Man had a rather dreary meta-comedy-styled comic in the 1990s, which had failure written all over it because his backstory had always been relatively dull and got retconned a number of times. The addition of Ben Kingsley's Trevor Slattery is more jarring than anything else; for all of the character's naïve charm and humour, he still aided an abetted a terrorist organisation that killed loads of people [Iron Man 3]. If this is the kind of lowest common denominator supporting character we can expect then I don't see this being well received.

Nudes

This might be the third time I've written some kind of review about this film, which is probably a first for anything that isn't a superhero or science fiction movie - although there is a loose sci-fi theme going on in this. I first watched Cashback in about 2008, a couple of years after it came out and was blown away by it. I watched it again about ten years ago and still held the film in high regard, so as the wife had never seen it and I wanted to watch something I knew I'd enjoy (and prompted by hearing a song from the soundtrack), we put it on.

The thing about Cashback is there is a lot of necessary nudity in it. Now, I've become something of a prude in my old age and I'm not a huge fan of nudity for the sake of it; it's belittling to women. However, this is a film that makes female nudity the centre of attention. Sean Biggerstaff plays Ben, who has just broken up with his rather stunning girlfriend and is finding it hard to get over her. He develops insomnia and ends up working in his local Sainsbury's, where he meets Emilia Fox's Sharon. While working there Sean discovers he can stop time and this leads to him spending a lot of time drawing naked women - women who are shopping. It sounds a bit pervy; it's most definitely a film which would have some serious questions asked about its content in 2025, but it all fits in with Ben's fascination with the female form and his desire to capture it at its most beautiful. 

This is really just a snapshot of a period in the life of an art student; the people he works with, his friends, the women in his life and everything that comes with it. It is a truly delightful love story; a movie that screams out to have a happy ending. Biggerstaff is really good as Ben; you wonder why his career never took off. Fox is sublime as Sharon and the supporting cast are all fucking hilarious. It is a lovely, funny and sexy movie. 9/10

The Final Task

You would have thought that with most of the story concluding last week that the finale of Task would have been more like an epilogue than anything else. Yet, there was the subject of the dodgy cop and the biker gang to conclude, but the fear that there was going to be the sense of an anti-climax, thankfully, never materialised. This turned out to be an excellent series with some nuanced performances - especially by Mark Ruffalo - and a quite action-packed ending that seemed fitting. It's a series I wouldn't have recommended five weeks ago, when we were thinking of dropping it, but if you get the chance it's worth your time.

Doesn't End Well

There was a degree of being very happy at the conclusion of Gen V, this was generated by the fact I don't have to watch it again. There was also a degree of trepidation as the main cast members appear to have been recruited by the Resistance led by Starlight who obviously has had some work done (badly). The conclusion of this really rather tawdry series pretty much happened the way anyone would have guessed and hopefully it will fade into history forgotten and not missed.

Exit Via AI

A rather lowkey episode of The Morning Show after last week's fireworks, but that said even this managed to have a moment in it where I had to rewind to make sure I heard what I thought I'd heard. The people who run UBN are all having a crisis in one way or another and with the Olympics on the doorstep and Chris seemingly no longer part of those plans, it's up to Alex, Stella and their French overlord to come up with an alternative, the problem is events overtake all their planning and we're left with a real mess. Cory discovers something that could mend his relationship with Bradley, but will he use it?

Long Music

It's not often I actually spend money on music by complete unknowns. I like to get an idea of what I'm buying first and to a degree that's what I did with the Minneapolis-based ambient musician known as The Intangible. As is often the case, I stumbled on his music by accident - I literally saw a link for a piece of music, clicked on it and then fell down a Tube of You rabbit hole. I've always had a real soft spot for ambient, space music, type stuff. It's been 10 years since I discovered the brilliant Stellardrone (Edgaras Žakevičius) and while I've often had recommendations from people about music similar to his, no one has really hooked me. However, while The Intangible (there is no other info about him anywhere on the Internet) isn't the same type of music, its laid back, chill out vibes and gentle passages of music are absolutely right up my street.

So, I bought the album called Cosmic: Part 1: The Long Music Mix, which is almost 12 hours of music (for just £15) - it's essentially a best of compilation from the first ten or so albums (there's about 25!) - and it has been on since Wednesday. I can't say it's been on heavy rotation because I'm only about half way through it, but I expect it will be played an awful lot, mainly because it pushes all my buttons. If you like ambient music and something that you can just sit and allow to wash over you, then this is an extremely Good Value For Money purchase. I'll be recommending this to anyone I know who likes this kind of thing!

Oh FFS

The penultimate to last ever Brassic was a tasteless load of shite.

Not Fargo

That was a strange experience. Emma Thompson's latest movie channels Fargo, but badly. That's not to suggest Dead of Winter is a bad film, it's just a bit weird and was filmed entirely in Finland masquerading as Minnesota (where Fargo was set). Thompson does a passable Minnesotan accent as she plays a recently widowed women who runs a fishing tackle shop in the middle of nowhere. She is going on one last fishing trip to the lake where she first dated her deceased husband - to scatter his ashes - and she stumbles across a kidnapped girl running away from some guy she met earlier when looking for the road to the lake. What follows is a frankly bonkers story which I'll not go into because it would spoil the movie. I will say that it is quite violent in a strange way and is as bleak as fuck. It's not bad, but it is weird and not in a 'weird' way and the reason for the kidnapping is quite typical of what we like to think of as fucking stupid 'Mericans. 5/10

The Final Frontier

To finish our week off, we decided to watch a new show from Apple TV+. Good TV has been thin on the ground recently and I had hopes this would fill a gap. The Last Frontier is a kind of Con Air meets Jason Bourne meets the CIA thriller set in Alaska. A plane full of dangerous criminals stops over at a secret airbase in Alaska to pick up an even more secret and dangerous prisoner - Dominic Cooper - and within a few minutes of taking off an explosion takes out half the plane and it crashes in the middle of nowhere, amazingly only killing a few people and not our villain. Enter Frank Remnick, a US Marshal stationed in Fairbanks charged with trying to track down the criminals who escaped...

However, Cooper's Havelock character is a super spy, capable of all manner of jiggery-pokery and is also a stereotypical super agent who can do all manner of super-duper stuff. He has secrets which could blow the CIA out of the water and destroy/kill many lives. So enter Haley Bennet as agent Sydney Schofield - an alcoholic, washed up agent who is given one last chance to get her guy or face prosecution and treason charges for being a suspect in his escape from justice. The opening episode was great, although there were a few slightly contrived elements. We ended up watching the first three parts and by the end of the third part we'd unanimously decided not to watch any more. So many stupid things happened to enable a quite flimsy plot to move forward. People did things you would not expect; things happened that were telegraphed long before they happened and you've got about 100 US Marshals and FBI agents being given the run around by an injured ex-university lecturer who is now more indestructible than James Bond. It ended up being very silly and I wouldn't recommend it. However, it does have one unique thing: it features both actors who have portrayed Howard Stark (Iron Man's dad) - John Slattery (old Howard) and Cooper (young Howard). This factoid isn't enough to make you watch it. 

What's Up Next?

I've been largely disappointed with TV in 2025, there is still a way to go but we all know December is a graveyard of non-events. To try and counterbalance this we're watching Slow Horses over the next week...

There's also The Long Walk (tonight) and the new Buffalo Custardbath film The Roses. I expect a modicum of ambivalence about at least one of them.

You'll get what you get, but not before I rant and rave about the fucking clocks going back, plunging us into darkness for 4½ months...