My Cultural Life - Death From Above and Below

What's Up? 

Look, this is controversial and I risk alienating certain people among my friends who might feel that I should either shut up or think another way. The thing is, stuff has happened this week that has essentially 'given me high blood pressure.'

It started with Scott Mills - a TV and radio personality who, to be totally honest, I know little or nothing about; he came onto the scene long after I'd given up with Radios One and Two. Initially I was disinterested in his sacking from the BBC and by the time I got around to writing this - Wednesday morning - the only thing he's guilty of, it seems, is an historic 'allegation' about possible coercive abuse. From 2004, which was dismissed by the police as having insufficient evidence to even be more than an informal interview in 2018.

It appears, on the face of it, that Scott Mills has had his career destroyed for something he's never been found guilty of and might be completely innocent of. Yes, I know the BBC wants to be whiter than white and they're not going to take any chances, in case Mills is somehow Jimmy Savile's protégé, but couldn't they have been a little less sledgehammery about it? 

The thing is, this isn't even the issue that's bugged me this week. The thing that has really boiled my piss is related to something I wrote about a month or so ago; about the kid I worked with when I was at the Youth Offending Service, the lad who got done for statutory rape. You see, I'm totally convinced that if that lad's name became known around Kettering and what he did was taken out of context, he would have his life destroyed...

So, what's that got to do with anything this week? Imagine if that lad had never gone to court. Imagine if the police knew his stepsister had a history of allegations about her before they deemed it worthy to follow up on her latest allegations? Then imagine social media existed in 2004 the way it does now and how the young man I worked with would have been treated by keyboard warriors and people who think the law dishes out inadequate sentences. It wouldn't be very nice, would it? It would probably be quite feral.

Now, this is going to seem like a very strange digression, but it isn't. My football club appointed a new manager on Tuesday 31st March; an Italian chap called Roberto De Zerbi, the former manager of Brighton and Marseille. The Tottenham Hotspur Supporters Club and many of the woman's clubs associated with my team have strongly objected to RDZ's appointment, on a long term contract, despite the fact that the team are shit and could be relegated. They have been extremely vocal about the fact that RDZ was once the manager of former Man Utd footballer Mason Greenwood.

Greenwood, one or two of you might remember, was the young footballer, capped by England and being heralded by Man Utd as a world class star of the future. Then shortly after his 21st birthday, he was accused of assault and attempted rape and was suspended by Man U while the case slowly worked its way through the procedures. Shortly after Greenwood's 22nd birthday the case was dropped, the CPS and the police released a statement: the charges of attempted rape against Mason Greenwood [have been] dropped due to the withdrawal of key witnesses and new material that [has] came to light, which meant there was no longer a realistic prospect of conviction. 

Yes, there were carefully leaked pictures of his then girlfriend to the press, which suggest he maybe shouldn't have been let off, but there were also reports that his then girlfriend had 'form' for this kind of thing; so where do you draw the line? Who do you believe? Can there really be any definitive villain?

However, the media - both social and the paid for kind - didn't want to leave this alone and a campaign, started by Countdown's Rachel Riley, saw to it that Man Utd would eventually sell the player, for a reduced fee, to a foreign side, because, despite Greenwood being innocent until proven guilty by a court of law, the press, publicity seeking mathematicians and social media shat and stamped in it and made sure his life in the UK was ruined. But... but... what's this got to do with Tottenham Hotspur?

Well, Man Utd sold Greenwood to Marseille and RDZ was manager when the French Riviera side bought the (by then) 23 year old player and RDZ was seen to give his support to the player and strangely enough didn't want to throw the kid under another bus.

Let's simply look at the facts here: a young man was charged with a crime; the alleged crime was never prosecuted because there was not enough evidence and the police (no-so-subtly) released information that suggested the witness statement by the alleged victim had more holes in it than Swiss cheese. The problem here is a lot of people had made their minds up about Greenwood, maybe because he's a young black footballer, so he must be guilty and as a result these people have ensured he never works in the country of his birth ever again and his only crime was to be on the wrong end of an unproved allegation.

The new manager of my football team is now being smeared with same tar brush. He's apparently not fit enough to manage a team of Spurs standing... This is because he supported one of his members of staff; wasn't going to be drawn on the subject and made that clear to the predominantly British journalists present at the unveiling of the new Marseille player. I wouldn't mind if these Spurs fans were spitting their dummies out of their gobs because RDZ had gone on French TV and said, "Mason admitted everything to me, but I don't care where he puts his things as long as its in the back of an opponents net!" But all he did was offer some support to a lad, who might be a complete shit, but hasn't been proven to be a complete shit just yet...

I might be wrong here. I might have got this totally wrong and the press, the internet and the people who have dedicated their lives to destroying Mason Greenwood's know something our courts, police and crown prosecutors don't. Maybe I'm looking in the wrong places for their justification and verification to continue their hatred of this young black footballer. Maybe Scott Mills is an evil predator? Maybe the kid I worked with in the Noughties was secretly a friend of Jeffrey Epstein and maybe I'm a sympathiser because I worked with him and didn't campaign to have his life destroyed even more? 

Or maybe guilt or innocence means nothing when the mob rules?

The Scales of Justice

A double bill of Daredevil - Born Again this week (I have no idea why) and as everything seems to be turning to shit for Matt, Karen and those opposing Fisk, there's a ray of hope and some good news. The thing is both sides think they're inches away from a breakthrough. The Anti Vigilante Task Force has become a law unto themselves and the Governor of New York gets into the act, much to Fisk's annoyance, because it seems she can't be bought and has no skeletons in her closet. A new player emerges, but in general this felt like a midway point in the story and had this stayed as it originally was planned - one 13 part series - that's pretty much where we'd be. It's still head and shoulders better than anything else MCU TV has done even if it was largely dancing around and going nowhere. 

Shrunken Heads

Jimmy is incapable of addressing his 'daddy issues' but it becomes clear that he thinks of Paul as more of a father than his real one, or at least that's the impression this week's episode of Shrinking gave. Speaking of his real dad, he dumps the fact he's not going to be at Alice's graduation and she takes it surprisingly well, but she isn't carrying the emotional baggage her dad is. Everything else starts to get resolved; the beginning of the end has happened and the places are all moving to their new positions. Derek and Liz have a disagreement over something they should be happy about and Brian decides to do the honourable thing and accompany his husband to Tennessee. Sean gets his own place, makes up with his friend and all that's left is Jimmy and his happiness, except he looks like he's going on a downward spiral. Two to go. 

A Dollop of Shit

Jesus wept. I need to stop subjecting myself to shite. After not really enjoying Kiss the Girls last week, I thought the sequel Along Came A Spider would at least have the added bonus of no Ashley Judd; but even the absence of this below-average actress couldn't save it. This time around Morgan Freeman's Alex Cross had the dubious pleasure of acting opposite Monica Potter (no, me neither) as a Secret Service agent whose main job is protecting a senator's daughter and failing. This truly is a mish-mash of bad ideas, poor execution and some of the most woeful acting I have seen in many moons. Like this film's prequel, it lacked in many departments and even the twists ended up being more yawn than yowser. Freeman wanders around looking and sounding like the only person on set who has ever been in a film before and, frankly, he was probably pleased there wasn't a threequel. Awful rubbish. 2/10

Pigs of War? 

On the recommendation of a friend, we watched War Dogs with Miles Teller, Jonah Hill and Bradley Cooper. I've had it on the Flash Drive of Doom (FDoD) for about four months and simply never got around to watching it, but Sunday night we remedied that and it made a pleasant change to watch a comedy action film that actually delivered - even if delivery problems was one of the main themes of the movie. Teller's David has been struggling with a pregnant wife doing his job as a professional masseuse when Jonah Hill's Ephraim wanders back into his life. The two had been friends at High School and now Ephraim is offering his old buddy the chance of making some money by joining him as an arms dealer... 

They start by supplying stuff to the US government that big arms dealers simply don't touch, but as they become more experienced and meet new people their chances of becoming big players increases until they get a contract to supply the US army a lot of AK47 bullets. The problem is the bullets come from China and the USA doesn't do business with China. This is where Bradley Cooper comes into the thick of things and everything goes from a little dodgy to 'absolutely get the fuck away from this' crazy. It is an excellent film and a true story about how the American Dream can be a quick reality if you're prepared to break the law. It's worth checking out if you can find it anywhere. 8/10

The Letdown

The worst thing? I watched this on Saturday and realised on Monday afternoon I hadn't reviewed it. That's almost a bad review in itself, but the opening episode of season five of For All Mankind was really understated and devoid of the same kind of set-up and jeopardy seen in previous seasons. This was bordering on ... soap opera. Obviously politics is taking a front seat, but everything seems to have stood still over the 10 years since the end of season four and the 'stealing' of the Goldilocks asteroid. It could almost be a kind of prequel to the tensions between Earth and Mars highlighted many years ago in Babylon 5 or The Expanse and not as interesting. In series past there has been a era changing event to kick the season off, this time it's the first murder on Mars and the remaining original cast members, seen this week, going through various stages of age related stress. It felt tired and uninspired, let's hope that isn't the case.

Episode two dropped before I finished this week's blog and while it was an improvement on the opener, with a couple of revelations that err towards big things, it still felt a little like the producers wanted to make the world (and surrounding colonies) a little more like a Trump World Order. There's a lot of Russians in this but little mention of the USSR, the same with North Korea and, of course, in this alternate history China is a bit part player. There's an element of chess pieces being moved, but at the moment they all seem to be going against our motley group of heroes.

Death in Paradise

This nagging feeling that we lost touch with what Paradise is actually about was amplified to the nth degree with the season two finale and I have to admit that I'm weirdly intrigued by it, despite suggesting it's time to call time on the show. Will it be back for season three? I reckon it will, but let's be honest about this - there is no paradise any longer and this is no longer a show about some survivors of a natural and nuclear holocaust, it's about AI and whether or not time is now full of anomalies screwing up with the actual fabric of space and time. Yes, you read that correctly.  This is about an impossibly super AI computer trying to avert the end of the world by creating space time anomalies... It seems the bits I've been losing track of might have been deliberate and it's also possible that none of this happened and everyone in this is living inside a giant simulation created by Alex - the super AI, thus creating time shifts and weird things happening that maybe shouldn't. I really don't know; this show has found a shark, hired a motorcycle and created an entire performance of new ways of jumping over said shark...

Underground Dung

There are loads of trash films from the 80s and 90s that I wouldn't give house room to in 2026, so why I thought watching Tremors again would be a good idea I have no idea. Kevin Bacon looks very, very young in it, even Fred Ward looks the right side of 50 and these two play a couple of hick hillbilly wasters doing shit jobs in a town of 14 people called Perfection. The acting is hammy; the assortment of characters are cliched and the idea of strange prehistoric (possibly) creatures attracted to vibrations and terrorising the 14 people isn't that bad, in fact the special effects for a 1990 movie aren't awful; it's just a load of shit. Stinky - like the creatures - shit and somehow it's spawned god knows how many sequels. I'm not even glad I watched it again; I wanted to switch it off after five minutes. 3/10

Another Offer Refused

Strangely, it was the wife who suggested we watch The Godfather Part 2 and so we did. Unlike the first part, this really felt like a new film for me. I had seen it, but many many years ago and it clearly didn't have that much of an impression on me. This is an even longer movie than the first film, weighing in at almost three and a half hours and having an even more rambling story, taking place over a shorter space of time. This part kicks off in 1957, Michael is living in Nevada and has the local senator in his pocket, even if the local senator isn't aware of this. The extent of how much control the Corleones have is never really explored, even if we get the backstory of how Vito - a young Robert De Nero - became a crime lord. Like the first film, this is a movie devoid of levity (and in this case brevity) and is essentially a tale of someone pissing Michael off and they get whacked, except in a couple of cases the hit goes wrong, but eventually everyone Michael wanted dead died. That's the thing, Michael Corleone might have been Vito's great hope for legitimising the family, but he's nothing more than a paranoid psychopath who is more interested in revenge than anything else.

Honestly? I found this to be a dull movie, over long and without any real sense that I could give a fuck about any of the characters; with the exception of Robert Duval's Tom Hagen, who, it seems, gets dicked around all the time for being totally loyal to the cause. I can't bring myself to award this a 6, but a 7/10 seems charitable.

Trailer Trash

The new (IMAX) trailer for Supergirl dropped on April 1st and it appears to be genuine and not an April Fool's prank. It still has a Guardian of the Galaxy feel about it; we see Lobo properly and it appears to all be about finding a cure for a poison some nutters have shot into Krypto and as Kara has survivor guilt and Krypto is her bestest buddy then you know what's coming and how it will end. The dog will survive and Supergirl will kick ass to a banging soundtrack. The end. It does look cool though, so it'll probably be a load of donkeys balls.

More Afghanistan

There's nothing wrong with Guy Ritchie's The Covenant apart from the fact it's surprisingly dull and boring. Jake Gyllenhaal plays a sergeant in the US army traipsing around Afghanistan looking for IEDs. He has a local man as translator, who because of his associations is regarded as a traitor by many of his own. When Jake's entire platoon is wiped out in a Taliban attack, it's just him and his translator left and the latter goes through hell to get his 'boss' home, Then the US government reneges on a deal to bring the translator and his family back to the USA, so Jake sorts it out himself. 5/10

Rich Pricks

Jon Hamm's back as Coop in Your Friends & Neighbours, the show about a rich man who loses his job so starts robbing his friends and neighbours, because they're all so wealthy it's months before they even realise anything has been stolen. The new series introduces Ash - played by James Marsden - who is obviously going to be a crook, maybe even organised crime, but at the moment he's just another rich guy flaunting his money like there's no tomorrow. Coop has a bad back, which is making cat burglary more difficult than it should be and everything has moved on a year and feels like there's some back story that we're going to need filling in. It is a mildly amusing look at people with more money than sense.

What's Up Next?

Well... The Boys is back for its final series and I suppose I'm mildly anticipating it. Actually, I don't think I am. It was good for the first two seasons and then it got bogged down in story and reasons to exist.

It does appear to be a boom time in TV suddenly; from complaining about there being bugger all three weeks ago to a schedule that's packed with stuff. I mean, I haven't even bothered mentioning in the main body that Landward is back (for people in Scotland, but you can find it on iPlayer) and how that's an enjoyable 30 minutes a week of stuff that puts Countryfile to shame. I also haven't bothered mentioning that our guilty pleasure for the last couple of weeks has been Escape to the Country, but not every one, just places we're familiar with. It's a dreadful show, but somehow manages to makes itself seem so much better than all the ones of a similar ilk, such as A New Life in the Sun on C4, which swaps aesthetics for some kind of strange competition.

To be honest with you, I could have written about loads of stuff this week. I simply didn't think it was appropriate, which is why I'm surprised I'm still leading with the story I am. The thing is I'm such a feminist it surprises a lot of people - usually women. So I usually prefer to avoid issues like sexual assault, gender or things that might suggest I'm some kind of misogynist and this is supposed to be entertaining, but it's also about the culture I subject myself to and the news is very much part of that culture.

I even got to the point midweek where I really just felt like switching off the news, removing the Guardian from my bookmarks and not interact with anything outside of the town I live in. There are 21 Donald Trump stories in Saturday's Guardian. TWENTY ONE! That's almost a fifth of the stories covered on the newspaper's website. I know the man is a dangerous psychopathic narcissist but I'm fed up to the back teeth with seeing his fucking smug face plastered all over the media. It's what he wants. He wants the world to be talking about him ALL THE FUCKING TIME!!!

And here I am, talking about that great orange cunt in my closing remarks. It's like the press at the moment are fixated on that man, his fucking Mini Me in the UK and whose careers they can ruin because someone said something once when they were 8 and if they don't accept full responsibility for it, own it and apologise for it then their careers are going to be over. What a fucking world we live in?