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...

My Cultural Life - Pottering About

What's Up?

I'm surprised that atmospheric pressure can still have effects on television signals despite the switchover to digital. That was a problem analogue TV had, but never quite as bad as this (who here isn't surprised at all?).

On Friday, we started losing TV channels, they'd disappear, come back and when we retuned the set top box we'd suddenly have an extra 50 channels, many of which weren't really there, while others were only to disappear five minutes after starting to watch them. Freeview announced on Saturday that it was down to the large area of high pressure sitting over the British Isles and warned people that it would be around for a week. On Freeview's Facebook page, most of the comments were about missing something called Strictly - despite it apparently being readily available on iPlayer. Many of the other comments were simply asking how and why this is happening in 2025 - a valid question, but in a country where more things go wrong on an almost daily basis nothing surprises me any more...

Except, the problem was solved by Tuesday, despite the same area of high pressure sitting over the UK. In fact, the anticyclonic gloom most of us have been suffering for almost a week now has been notable by the similarity it has on a day by day basis. So, how come TV reception is back to normal despite the original reason for its appearance having not changed at all? Call me cynical, but I like my excuses to be consistent and believable.

Living Hell

Yeah, sorry. I know, this is supposed to be a TV and film column predominantly, but... If you've been watching TV news in the recent week or so and not been slightly disturbed by some of the crazy things, outlandish claims and worrying trends that have been said - largely by Donald Trump and his army of fascist wankers - then you're either not paying attention or you're part of the problem. But the thing is, why aren't we shouting about actual things that have actual effects on our lives?

We're force fed all kinds of doom and gloom on telly now, but this is simply social conditioning - preparing us for a time when we won't be able to have a say about the real things blighting our lives. Take the largely ignored 'cost of living crisis' - yeah, we get the token 'news' feature, presented by Coletta Smith, the BBC's 'cost of living' editor, but these tend to be superficial, always seem to be focused on or for specific minorities in communities. When we're not being told how bad it's going to get, we're being told what we can do to offset price rises - always things we have to do ourselves rather than things that are mandatory. However, as food banks are a bit yesterday's news and the price of food isn't something news media wants to focus on for too long, we never hear much about anything to do with the way prices are again going through the roof.

I just want to give you a couple of examples of the creeping evil that is supermarket (and manufacturer) profiteering. Last week, as part of my weekly shop, I bought a bar of Galaxy Milk Chocolate and a small jar of Sainsburys decaff coffee. The chocolate cost £2.10 (for a bar that five years ago was about 75p) and the small jar of coffee was £1.25. One week later and the chocolate has risen to £2.45 - about a 17% rise - and the coffee is now £1.50 - about a 25% rise. IN ONE WEEK! It would be nice if whatever government is in charge could even look as though this is an issue that should be looked into. This isn't a global problem; yes, the price of chocolate and coffee has gone up, but before writing this I contacted two friends in different parts of the world and UK prices are almost twice what they are in the USA and in Europe. Capitalism is out of control in the UK and left unchecked we're headed for serious problems down the line...

Shit Meets Fan

Holy shit. What an episode. Sometimes I wonder if the quality of The Morning Show will ever dip; I rarely think it can get better than it is, because, you know, it's pretty good anyhow. There are the occasional episodes that knock it out of the park and this was one of them. After five episodes, we finally see some of Nicola Beharie, the TMS anchor who is off covering the Olympics and has barely been seen in the show since it returned. She made up for that absence in cataclysmic style. My fear that Cory (Billy Crudup) might actually have a proper skeleton in his closet is answered in an almost heartbreaking way [he is the best character in this show by a country mile and if you're a fan, he gets further ahead of the field with this episode] and Alex is in everything, sometimes for good and sometimes not so good. This week it's ex-TMS producer Mia (Karen Pittman) and Alex's bravado and strange way of showing her respect backfires on her big time. This was the best thing I watched all week. 

Impractical Magic

The most obvious problem with Mike Newel's Harry Potter offering is how flabby it is in the middle and what a badly plotted and uneven film it is. I shouldn't have been surprised that Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire is nothing more than a place setter. Unlike the first three movies, which all had actual stories, this was really just a series of events that lead up to the resurrection of Voldemort and a conclusion that felt as though it was brought down to earth by some deity in a flying machine. It's overlong, overwrought and almost the weakest of the four films we have watched so far and given how awful the first one is that is damning it.

This is a film that forgets about the many supporting characters we've been slowly getting to know so far in favour of ciphers, new faces, poor henchmen and while there are some creepy moments, it really suffers from bad comedy moments and having no real direction. The three wizard friends are all now 14, hormones and teenage moodiness dictates many of their actions while being the middle film of the seven film 'stories' it feels very much like the middle film of a trilogy, like it's just there to make money. It isn't very good but tries to disguise this with unnecessary deaths and pointless new characters - although Brendon Gleeson's Mad Eye Moody is pretty good. 5/10

FUBAR

Finally, after six weeks of grim, slow and gritty, Task finally sprang into action. An opening 15 minutes with more action than the rest of the show has had since it started. The FBI has Robbie in their sights - literally - but so does the biker gang. What follows is a chain of events that lead us to the finale next week; characters die, some get injured and others are left wondering WTF is actually happening. It's finally turned into a half decent series, which might sound mean because it hasn't been that bad, but this week made up for all the waiting for something to happen.

Harry's Gushing Wand

The first of David Yates' four Potter films, Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix is better than the previous movie, but does still have the feeling of treading water. Like The Goblet of Fire, the title is more a description of something related to the story rather than anything to actually have any bearing on it. This is about how the magical community is overcome with their version of fascism as wizard and witch turn on each other because of the rumoured return of Voldemort. While this is an instalment that very much takes place in Hogwarts, it's also one that again puts regular characters on the wings and focuses on Imelda Staunton's Dolores Umbridge, a particularly loathsome individual who wouldn't have looked out of place with swastikas adorning her garments.

It's the part where the kids start to fight back and begin to learn how to do that. Harry teaches them, while the actual Order of the Phoenix don't do much at all, apart from not prove to be very efficient. This is the episode where Gary Oldman channels Jason King (Peter Wyngarde) and Ron and Hermione simply become supporting characters. It's better than the one before, but there's gaping holes in much of the plot. 6/10

Catfishing

The latest episode of Chad Powers (which has broken up our marathon week of Harry Potter films) was more of a slapstick affair without the actual slapstick. This week was Russ's turn to take centre stage as he and his mascot buddy go in search of some prosthetic glue because of a problem with the stuff Russ stole from his dad. It leads to a chase around Oklahoma trying to find an alternative and get back to the team hotel before bed checks. It had a couple of funny moments, but this was probably the weakest episode so far and that's because Russ is still an arsehole but Chad is quite sweet. How does that even work?

Hermione's Hormone Rush

As the latter part of the week will have a shedload of TV packed into it, we've spent the first half of the week watching the Harry Potter films and with the conclusion of Harry Potter and the Half Blood Prince we've just got the two-part finale to go. This is probably the second best of the movies, but it really doesn't do the story much justice. Lots of convenient plotting, some genuinely creepy moments, but largely it's just another scene-setter; films four, five and six have all felt like prick teases and now the kids hormones have exploded this is as much about the rise of Voldemort and the death of a beloved character as it is about Ron and Hermione and Harry and Ginny. Obviously these are children's films so no perverted funny business takes place, just a lot of snogging. This time around it's the mystery of who is the Half Blood Prince and once you find out you have to wonder why we had the previous two and a half hours; there was something rather anti-climatic about it all. 6/10 

V is for Something

The penultimate episode of Gen V is full of arrogance, misplaced belief and a few extra contradictions, because we haven't had enough of them so far. The secret of Cipher is revealed as our heroes return to Godolkin to free the actual Godolkin from Cipher's grip only to find out they've been played like a bunch of kids. I cannot wait for this series to finish next week and just hope that there won't be a third season and that any loose ends are quickly resolved in the final season of The Boys. Trashy, childlike television with absolutely horrible characters.

Death Follows Him Everywhere

The wife pointed out that everyone - almost - who gets close to Harry Potter dies, so it wasn't a surprise when at least three characters died in Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part One. Possibly the dullest and grimmest instalment in the series with half of it taking place in or around a tent in the bleak midwinter. Whenever Harry, Ron and Hermione ventured away from the tent something bad happened and they almost got caught and all they were trying to do was find the objects that Voldemort had hidden bits of his soul in. Der.

As penultimate episodes of franchises go this was particularly dull with all those supporting characters we've been meticulously introduced to throughout the previous six films almost entirely absent, reduced to brief cameos. It's just a movie that allows the plot to go into a circular routine - like an airplane waiting to land - where what tiny morsels of humour are bright beacons in an otherwise tired film that dragged on for an hour too long. 5/10

E is for Enough Now

Good episodes of Brassic are as rare as rocking horse shit, so last week's was a thing of wonder compared to this largely meandering episode where Dean Lennox Kelly makes one of his seasonal appearances, one where he's coerced into holding a rave for two people who met and fell in love at one of his raves in the 1990s. There's a bit about Jim and his daughter and the Davy McDonagh 'subplot' moves along slowly, but apart from a needed - but poor - appearance from Dr Chris (Dominic West), this was back to the shite standard most of this season has been reaching. Only a few more to go.

The Flaccid Spell

And so our week of Harry Potter came to a slithering halt. The final part of the series - and also the shortest instalment - was not exactly a tour de force, in fact, at times, it felt forced and unnecessarily elongated. I'm still not 100% sure I got all of it; some of the things that held the story together I still feel were underexplained or left to the viewer's knowledge of the books. It's always felt a little deus ex machina, with its overreliance on allowing magic to fill in all the vague bits. By the time the films got to the end Radcliffe never felt like he was a leading man, while Grint and Watson were both more than adequate as Harry's foils. There was some clever plotting in this at times and anyone unfamiliar with any of it will have been impressed by the overall contribution of Alan Rickman's character, Severus Snape, who ultimately was one of the most important people in the tale and yet was severely underused at times. Voldemort was a suitably psychotic villain, because in the end none of his Hench people were really as ruthless or as mad as him, and his lust for power - never explained - made him dangerous for everyone, not just his foes. 6/10

The series as a whole has been interesting to watch and have been a mild distraction from the fact there's very little on apart from one day a week - at least in this house it is.

What's Up Next?

There will be some new stuff and some conclusions of existing stuff. There will not be any more Harry Potter. Although there is that new Amazon (?) series due next year, but I don't really see the point of putting myself through even more quidditch than I already have.

That prequel to It is out next week, but it might not drop in time for the next blog. It's called Welcome to Derry and while it is a prequel to the two-part It films, I've heard that some other Derry based characters will turn up. I was never a fan of the book. I've read it a couple of times, but never had the love that some give it. 

There's a couple of old favourites coming in the next few weeks, but I'm struggling to find much out there at the moment that's dragging me in.

My Uncultured Life - Something Beginning With U

What's Up? 

Fucking search engines, that's what. Both Google and Bing have been 'improved' so that if you search for something now you get FIVE results and hundreds, maybe thousands of extra pages. I used to have my search results in batches of 100, but not anymore. Oh no. This can't be done any more. Which begs the question - why?

Apparently (and I'm badly paraphrasing here), it's to stop AI from 'scraping' results; has been done because the major search engine providers believe that limiting results means a better quality of answer; or something I didn't really understand because it was all bollocks... Search engines have increasingly gotten worse over the last 10 years and all I can surmise from this is we're witnessing a greater degree of enshittification...

Oddly enough, this doesn't affect picture searches. Presumably showing idiots pictures is better than showing them words? So, because I'm not going to let these tech companies dictate to me what I can search for and what results I get, I'm giving DuckDuckGo a trial - already I'm getting more results per page whenever I search.

Also Google. What an absolute cunt of a company. They are more intrusive than a predatory paedophile. It's difficult to avoid them. Take this blog, there's this little icon that has appeared just to the top right of the area where I write this blog. It's a little pencil with a star above it. This automatically inserts links to Google searches for whatever it bloody wants. If you accidentally hit this button - like I did - I had to spend ten minutes removing fucking Google search links to the 40 odd links it inserted. I didn't ask for it but I've fucking got it. Just another example of the enshittification of the internet.

Uncomfortable

The first thing that crosses your mind when you watch Léon (or Léon the Professional) 30 years after it was made is how they got away with it. This is a deeply uncomfortable and disturbing film about a 13 year old girl who develops an unhealthy crush on the hitman living next door. Natalie Portman plays Mathilda, the abused daughter of a drug dealer who seeks Léon's help when her family is massacred in their apartment. She wants to become a contract killer to gain revenge against the crooked cops who have done her wrong and Léon seems a little simple and very confused. The thing is it's still a good film even if it could never be made in 2025. 7/10

Unconvincing

There is currently one film on Channel Four's books that you can expect will get an airing on at least one of the channel's umpteen sub-channels every week and that is Roland Emmerich's The Day After Tomorrow, the 2004 climate change disaster feature starring Denis Quaid, Jake Gyllenhaal and some other people. It is a disaster movie (I should really just leave that sentence on it's own with nothing around it), but it isn't a total disaster. In fact, for the first hour it's a taut and zippy action thriller, it all goes a bit wrong when the pseudo-science employed by the director (who also wrote, produced, did the screenplay and probably wrote the theme tune) makes today's pseudo-scientists look quite bright in comparison. I'm not saying it was bollocks, but I think it was bollocks. Anyhow, the second half of the film has some very iffy things in it, from wolves attacking a group of people (they don't do that) to the catastrophic sudden drops in temperature that some of the people manage to outrun or hold at bay when others simply froze in their tracks. This was the first time I'd watched it all the way through in about 20 years; I did it so you don't have to. 5/10

Uncompromising

I haven't changed my mind about Task from last week or previous weeks. It's overlong and would have made a reasonable two hour film. However, it is what it is and this week we discover the secret of the mole; Mark Ruffalo finally meets Tom Pelphrey (the two main characters) and the net closes in around everyone. Maeve does something sensible but stupid and how they're going to stretch this out for two more episodes is a mystery given where we are on the cliffhanger ending.

Unctuous

I gave into... what I'm not sure, because temptation isn't it, but I gave in and watched the second episode of the new series of Brassic. This week it was all about Tommo going to Dusseldorf to hook up with his son, meet his ex and her parents and try to 'persuade' them to invest in his latest project. It was fucking horrendous; it clearly wasn't filmed in Dusseldorf, apart from some stock footage; all the Germans spoke English, including to each other and it made little or no sense at all. Even the brilliant Ryan Sampson seemed jaded and like he was waiting to die... Meanwhile back in Britain, Vinnie is trying to work out what is going on with Davey, while the new kids introduced last week are doing stuff. It really is crap, but at least there isn't the usual badly shot seasonal continuity that really pissed me off over the last few years. 

As I'm a week behind with these reviews, episode three came out and as we had nothing else to watch on Thursday night, we opted to catch up. What a pleasant surprise it was - apart from the seasonal continuity gaffs, which have returned. It's not a patch on earlier seasons' episodes but by far and away the best one of this, so far. It was about a school reunion that goes a bit wrong and there were a number of LOL moments - far more in this than there were in the opening two episodes. It's still old and worn out, but this was at least worth watching.

Underdog

The third episode of Chad Powers was all about a game of American football, which I don't really understand except it's like rugby but overcomplicated. We've also got into that US sitcom groove of this being just about 25 minutes long and as it was all set (bar the opening 'prologue') during the Catfish's first game of the season, it might have put some people off. The thing is it was again quite funny and you get the impression this could turn out to be a redemption arc type thing for Russ Holliday; but the longer he plays Chad Powers the more shit he gets himself into. Still worth sticking with.

Ubiquitous

Another film that has been on the Flash Drive of doom for a long time is Freaky Tales - a portmanteau movie of four different tales set in Oakland, LA during 1987. I've been reticent about watching it for a number of reasons, primarily Pedro Pascal, because, you know, the ubiquity of him. The other reasons include the 6.3 rating; the fact that modern portmanteau films often never amount to much or are flimsy at best with their connections. This was better than all the reasons I feared but was considerably worse than I imagined. As a snapshot of 1987, it was, as most American films are, very authentic (except for Pascal because he looks the same in everything he does), but the, dare I say it, freaky nature of the narrative made it a tough watch and it was difficult to take seriously. It had things happen in it which seemed to deliberately detract from the story and other things, involving actual real people, that didn't happen in real life and makes you wonder why they happened in this movie. In a nutshell, it involved punks, skinhead Nazis, hired thugs, cops, rappers and a transcendental Ninja basketball player. 4/10

Unpleasant

As Gen V begins to make some sense, the biggest problem I have is that most of the characters are just really unlikeable and it really feels as though this will have some bearing on the final season of The Boys - but so did the last series of Gen V and with the exception of a couple of characters from it appearing in one of the opening episodes, that was it. There continues to be something just a little bit half-arsed about this, like sending a strongman to deal with the escapees, despite Cipher knowing that Marie is as powerful as Homelander. The thing is Hamish Linklater's character is an improvement as the bad guy of the season, but for someone who always seems like he's one step ahead of the game, he don't half seem like he's a bit of a dick who suffers from a misplaced overconfidence. 

Unexpected

This was yet another example of The Morning Show being at its best and providing us with quality TV, even if by the end fans of Cory are wondering how he's going to untangle himself from two situations - one he seemed to regret the moment he did it and the other being something from his past that he isn't aware is about to come back and bite him on the arse. I really hope some of you who read this blog who might never have watched this before have found it and are enjoying this as much as we do. Yes, it's got Jennifer Aniston in it, but she's electric and nothing like how you remember her. This season has been as good as previous seasons so far, even if some of the characters have felt like they've had their pasts erased to allow the main plot lines to move forward. It's still the best thing we're watching at the moment (but we've not started watching Slow Horses yet).

Unrelenting

There's an all-star cast in Antoine Fuqua's Brooklyn's Finest, a 2009 crime drama that follows a week in the life of three cops. Richard Gere is in his final week, he's about to retire and is so depressed he thinks about killing himself every morning; he's also a lazy, uninspiring cop. Ethan Hawke is a crooked cop but a devout Catholic, with a pregnant wife (Lili Taylor), who lives in a shitty house and is desperate to move her and his five, soon to be seven, kids out. While Don Cheadle is deep undercover working with some of the worst criminals in the city and desperate to get out of his dangerous life and do a boring desk job.

It is a grim, gritty and very sleazy look at Brooklyn in the Noughties, full of unpleasant characters, dangerous liaisons and death waits round almost every corner. It's a really good film, but it hasn't got any levity, no one is happy, no one laughs, it's just bleak and probably very realistic. 7/10

Unusually Creepy

Our journey through the Harry Potter universe so far has been underwhelming; I'd forgotten how ... not very good the first two films were, but I did remember that with the arrival of Alfonso Cuarón as director the films did at least feel a little more different, less childish. Wow, it seems I'd really forgotten just what the Mexican film maker brought to this. I remembered that Hogwarts and where it was set, became darker and more 'real' but I'd completely forgotten how Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban was more like a horror film than a movie about a magic kid at a wizard's boarding school. This was dark, menacing and for the first time Potter seemed to have grown a pair of balls (but he is 13 now, so maybe they'd dropped?).

This was really enjoyable, even if, yet again, the film was let down by some rather cartoonish special effects. It's the tale of misplaced blame, werewolves, magical creatures, bullying and mischief and it worked so much better than the first couple of efforts. This had moments where the narrative served the purpose of the greater story - which, of course, the movie watcher might not have been aware of - but in general it is the best one so far, possibly even the best one of all. 8/10

Un-fucking-believable

You are having a fucking laugh, surely? Did I really just sit through 55 fucking minutes of bullshit just to find out it was all a badly paced and executed set up for a third series? The longer it went past the 35 minute point without looking like there was going to be a finale - a big fight to finish the series and, hopefully, the entire show - the more I was realising that I was just being set up for more eagle shit.

This [hah] final episode had lots of bad rock music, lots of characters talking to each other, lots of setting things up that ultimately was a waste of my fucking time and effort. Am I supposed to be happy that I ended up watching some shite that is going to conclude somewhere else... According to what I've managed to find, there is  going to be no third season of Peacemaker, because this storyline will be concluded in either one of the upcoming films or a spin-off series... For fuck's sake, isn't James Gunn an absolute cunt? This takes the piss more than Marvel; I hope he gets the sack and DC dies a horrible death.

What's Up Next?

Frankly, I don't care. I was told I was uncultured this week, so maybe I'll just review the field opposite my house, for seven days...