My Cultural Life - No Middle Ground

What's Up?

How long before the press get the knives out for Andy Burnham? You could argue that it's already started, what with the BBC ignoring his massive Makersfield majority to concentrate on racist and ignorant Reform voters. Could they not find any of the almost 25,000 people who voted for the ex-mayor of Manchester? Or did they simply choose to make you - the viewer - think that this was a bad victory?

The thing that makes left of centre Burnham different from, say, Jeremy Corbyn is Burnham belongs to Labour Friends of Israel - a little club of people who defend the despot country and will continue to 'work' with it even if the rest of the world has started to finally see what a largely psychopathic nation it is. So he might get a free pass for a while, until he starts doing things that affect shareholders dividends and corporate profits.

I also love the fact that you have Tories, Reform and other right wing parties demanding there be a General Election, when, if memory serves, the Tories in particular dismissed this idea when they appointed their weekly PMs a few years back. I say give Burnham the three years Labour has left to see if he can transform stuff and stand a chance of winning again.

Do I think he will improve things? Probably not, because our media would find a way to make even positive change look like it's terrible. I'll give you a hypothetical - he finds £17billion down the back of the Downing Street sofa and promises to have every pot hole in the country fixed and the work starts the following day; you can bet the Mail or the Express will complain that this money isn't being used for the people who need it most, without ever telling us who they think needs it most (unless it's defence, because we need more bombs to sell). You know it will happen because it happens all the time.

Incidentally, I still wouldn't vote Labour again - at the moment - but I think I'd feel happier about having a Northern PM who talks a good talk...

The Weather, Man

I mention further down in this week's blog about how the FDoD is not as blessed with films for us to watch as it has been in recent times. Looking for something new to look at, rather than try and decide which of the myriad of movies we seem to routinely avoid, I got hold of an old film and a brand new one. We opted for the older one - The Other Guys - and 15 minutes into it we both decided it was a load of shite, so we went for the new release instead. This was a film about a weather man, the one responsible for the D-Day forecast. It was superb.

Andrew Scott plays meteorologist James Stagg, the man charged with getting an accurate forecast for the proposed D-Day landings, which the Allies want to be on June 5th. Chris Messina plays his US counterpart who uses the past to decide his forecasts rather than science, much to the chagrin of the straight-laced and serious scientist Stagg. Brendan Fraser plays General Eisenhower, the man in charge of the Allies and the person who has to decide when D-Day happens. For a 100 minute movie that pretty much takes place in two rooms (it is based on a play), this was a tight and tense true story and is without a doubt the film of the week. You should seek it out, it's bloody spiffing, what, what. 8/10

Magic Moments

I'm obviously getting soft in my old age because I really enjoyed The Secret Life of Walter Mitty, a 2013 Ben Stiller remake of the Danny Kaye classic. The wife had her reservations and was still not totally convinced, but I had been avoiding watching this for a long time and now I've seen it, I'm wondering why I didn't earlier. Stiller plays Walter, a mild-mannered man who works for Life magazine and spends a lot of time day dreaming about how his life could be much more exciting than it really is. Kristen Wiig is the love interest and Adam Scott plays the arsehole new boss, who gets on Walter's case because he can't find the final cover photo for the magazine - taken by Sean Penn's character. The interesting thing about this movie is that it starts off feeling like a post-modern remake of the original, but ends up simply being a good story of a man capable of doing more but hindered by his over-vivid imagination. This is an under-rated film. 8/10

Hungover

Time has not been kind to this movie. In fact, my memory of this was that it was a hilarious film and it was only a matter of time before we re-watched it and then indulged in the two sequels. However, The Hangover is something that has dated extremely badly; in fact, I'm amazed this has such a high IMDB rating (7.7) because it's fucking abysmal. I laughed twice, once early on and then once when it had almost finished, at a mildly amusing joke. This spawned two sequels (although I'm told 3 is really bad, so I should watch it just out of interest)? This might have well been a film about four strangers on a stag do for the amount of bonhomie there was on display and whoever said that Galifianakis was funny presumably had a bet on with someone... Four guys go on a Stag Do in Las Vegas and 24 hours later they're trying to remember what happened. Bradley Cooper - yes, that guy - should be ashamed of himself. 3/10

Field of WTF

I was about three quarters of the way through the concluding The Rose Field, the third book of Philip Pullman's Book of Dust trilogy and the concluding part of his sequel to His Dark Materials, when the wife asked me how it was going. "It's a cracking read, absolutely galloping along at a tremendous pace and with loads of nods back to forgotten and much-loved characters." I'm now thinking I shouldn't have opened my mouth, because what was all the things I described suddenly became an impenetrable limited number of words... I have no idea what it ultimately was about, why it existed and how Pullman managed to (or didn't, IMO) tie it all up inside 30 pages. There is a lot of allegory in this book, you can see that Pullman is having a sly dig at modern 'real' life through some of his sermonising, but I simply didn't understand the ending and felt it was a huge anti-climax. I was left feeling that, maybe, there was another trilogy afoot - but the author is 80 and it took him a decade to write this and ultimately I felt utterly let down by it all. If you've never read any of these books then there's little point in me recommending them and if you, like me, are a fan and you have read this, please explain to me what the fuck it was all about.

Daytime Channel Hopping

There's a world cup on and while there is the promise of some nuggets of sweetcorn in all this sporting diarrhoea, I'm getting to the stage where the Flash Drive of Doom (FDoD) is beginning to look like the scrapings of the scrapings of the bottom of the barrel. 

That means this blog is low on content - although I am now toying with the idea of not reviewing every episode of every TV show I like after discovering that some of my readers skip these reviews, despite me trying very hard to avoid spoilers. So, expect some changes once the sports are out of the way. 

This left me with an idea; write a section about all those TV programmes I'd never review or never actually watch more than a few minutes of; so I went channel hopping...

BBC1 - welcome to the social conditioning experiment, where the nation's broadcaster normalises things we should be raging against. Take Morning Live, a show I used to call Scam Daily or even People Are idiots. This is a programme that literally teaches us how not to get ripped off while simultaneously giving us guidance on how to live - if you can see the cistern then you're sitting on the toilet the wrong way. I'm gobsmacked that we're even getting TV like this in 2026; something akin to a huge daily public information film. The thing is while I doubt this show is aimed at Britain's poorest people - it's far too middle class - it does appear to be showing people how to live life for less money, how to save, how to avoid huge fees and how to accept less as the new normal. It's a hideous TV programme and it has bloody Helen Skelton on it, a woman who gives me hives.

BBC2 - during the day this station is all about news and we all now know that the BBC News is either too left wing or too right wing depending on who's watching it. The reality is when you have a news station (occupying a TV station) that is made up almost entirely of members of the Conservative party and a brief that is to scrutinise anything left of centre and breeze over anything that's right of centre then you know you're in for a political kicking. The BBC has a huge archive of programmes, I fail to see why they can't just turn BBC2 into a classic TV station until 6pm at night.

ITV(1) - does anyone watch this? Even when I'm channel hopping I rarely stay on channel 3 for longer than it takes the information screen to disappear. Quiz shows are, I suppose, the only reason this side is ever on in my house. It's not snobbery, I just find 98% of ITV's output off putting.

Channel 4 - Frasier... it used to be Friends. I expect in the future it will be some other 'classic' US sitcom. When it's not repeating something it didn't make it's got travel and property shows. Channel 4, like pretty much all other mainstream channels, is about as middle class as croissants. In the afternoon it's all about living somewhere else, like they're subconsciously telling you that elsewhere is so much better than here - then they show Brits living calamitous lives in countries where they refuse to learn the lingo...

Channel 5 - fucking Jeremy Vine and all the spin-off shows. Let's have a continuous stream of phone-in shows to highlight the fact the UK has so many fucking opinionated right wing arseholes, all being cheered on by that ghastly fucking cyclist. Not only should Vine be castaway on some distant planet, the entire day time output of this sleaze-infested channel of shite should be covered in petrol and burned.

Other Channels - have you ever wondered how some of you can have over 100 TV channels to choose from and they all seem to show programmes from somewhere else? Ignore the shit TV and concentrate on the adverts - everything from cheap cremations to 'Ronco' styled deals for everything from high powered anus washers to 'no strings attached' insurance policies that come with a free pen. If ever we needed a reminder why society is all about money now it's the adverts on the lesser TV channels. Everything has been monetised - this is why there's a clamour for more volunteering, because they only look for volunteers for things cunts can't make money from...

And breathe.

Spoiler Warning

So, the revelation that Jeremy Clarkson has had cancer was slightly ruined by it being plastered all over the news channels before anyone watched Clarkson's Farm. So I make no apologies for dropping that bombshell, if you didn't know then congratulations for not watching, reading or listening to the news. Given that Mr Geniality has made a couple of series of Who Wants to be a Millionaire since concluding this season, it would be safe to assume there will be a sixth series of his farming adventures and given he's had heart surgery and cancer in recent months, perhaps we might see a different Clarkson; one a little more tolerant and less Conservative (with a giant C)...

As for Clarkson's Farm, well it concluded (eight episodes in three weeks feels like Amazon was dumping it out there) with a couple of parts that were... well, frankly, tragic and devastating and none of it was to do with Jezza's cancer diagnosis. This was harrowing TV that was difficult to watch, had the wife in tears and made you feel real sympathy for the people who work at the farm. I've said for a long time that this is a truer reflection of British farming reality than anything Countryfile could offer and this proved it. Brilliant TV, but Jesus... it was heartbreaking.

Finale of Death

Widow's Bay ended in a truly disturbing way. Yes, there's probably going to be a second series and we should all be grateful - but if there isn't it still works as a standalone mini-series. The twist we all knew was coming was exactly as I forecast (not here) four weeks ago and it was joyously horrific. This TV series absolutely hit the right notes with its mixture of horror and absurd comedy, although the humour got drowned out a lot in the end, but was still lurking in the shadows. I can't recommend this enough. 

Trailer Trash

The new Spider-Man trailer has dropped and I've got to be honest, there seems to be an awful lot going on in Spider-Man: Brand New Day. There's the Scorpion, the Hand, Frank Castle, Bruce Banner, some ethereal villain, Spidey mutating, not a peep of 'Jean Grey' (if Sadie Sink is even playing her?) and tons more. Could it be senses overload with this? It's set in the city; no obvious big bad and there's a grittiness to it that reminds me of some of the early Captain America films, yet nothing about it is making me excited. 

Under-rated Gem?

I think I've been conned. I saw several reviews of a 1987 sci-fi action flick that all claim it's a great but overlooked movie. The Hidden isn't great, but it is a film, at least after a fashion it is. Kyle MacLauchlan plays an 'FBI' agent on the trail of a number of related serial killers with a penchant for fast cars, guns and women. Michael Nouri (no, me neither) is the cop he's teamed up with to track the wanted people. This is a film that has a cameo from Claudia Christian - pre Babylon 5 days - showing off her (arguably expensive and impressive) rack and giving them a good rub - yes, it was that tacky. I don't think I've seen a worse movie in the last dozen years. This is an absolute stinker about an alien chasing another alien across the planet, who happens to do so my inhabiting the bodies of people. It has a script that fell out of a donkey's arse; acting that would look bad in an Am-Dram pantomime and direction that stunk out the place. This is not an under-rated gem, it's fucking awful. 1/10

She-Punisher

Where to start? Maybe with the fact that Jennifer Garner can't really act or why was this film called Peppermint? Despite being quite an awful Punisher rip off (literally), there was some quite clever build up, but the acting was so poor that anything marginally good about this movie was lost in the fog of shite that descended on it after about 10 minutes. This is essentially the story of a woman (not called Francine Castle) whose husband and daughter are killed by members of a Latino drug cartel, so she waits five years, trains herself to be a one-woman-army, and then comes back to LA to kill everybody remotely linked to her family's deaths and all the corrupt officials who allowed the killers to walk away. It wasn't awful, but it wasn't very good. it was essentially the story of the Punisher tweaked a little and with a female Punisher rather than a man. 3/10

Tying Up Loose Ends

Next week is the season finale of Welcome to Wrexham. I firmly believe that two things will happen between now and next June. The first will be that Ryan and Rob will sell their controlling shares of the football club, stay on as emeritus directors and will be able to walk away with their heads held high and the fans adoration. The second will be that if Wrexham do not win promotion to the Premier League, there will not be a not be a sixth season - anything they film between now and next May will be shelved if the plucky little Welsh city doesn't reach the footballing nirvana. The reason for me thinking this way is simple - it feels like they're tying up all the loose ends at the moment; putting spotlights on people who haven't had the attention and continuing with the valedictorian theme I spotted last week. If this is the case then it was good while it lasted...

Sweet

I can't think of a better way to finish the next eight weeks than with an episode of the sumptuous Sugar. Colin Farrell is back as the benign alien private detective, now stranded on Earth and continuing to be a private eye, while driving in his classic car and wearing the sharpest of suits. Oh how I've missed this utterly stunning modern noir series. This new series is three pronged, by the looks of things, as John tries to track down the dodgy brother of a Korean boxer; keeps tabs on the senator whose son was the serial killer from last series and exploring whether he's the only alien left on the planet. There's little wrong with this series that I can see, it's also on Apple TV+ so it's another reason for you to watch it. Superb.

What's Up Next?

The final series of The Bear, the third series of House of the Dragon, more Sugar and more shite movies. Woo hoo!

My Cultural Life - Reimagining Stuff

What's Up? 

The World Cup is here. Woo and indeed Hoo. I've already had to field comments from disgusted football fans because I have no interest in this corrupt and stupid tournament, but this year feels different, perhaps it's the febrile and rampant jingoism of the current mood? I have not watched more than a small handful of games at a World Cup since 2008. I am not interested in international football and have been clear about this for 18 years. So if you think I'm a traitor, I've been one for longer than men under 30 have been able to ejaculate...

However, this year it seems to be different (and I'm not talking about my Scottish friends, who are at the competition for the first time since 1998). Several people I know have expressed dismay and, in one case, anger at my refusal to be interested in it. The thing is, it's not just international football that doesn't interest me; I feel nothing but contempt towards FIFA - the world governing body and massively corrupt organisation - and anyone reading this blog regularly will know that while I have many lovely American friends, I love their country, I just loathe the racist, redneck, entitled twats, who live there.

I've never really been that into international football and after Russia and Qatar my tolerance is so low that I don't expect I'll watch a single game this time around. I mean most of the matches are on when I'd be watching something else and that's how it will stay. Television and media seem bemused and confused that more than 50% of the nation are not interested, so the majority have to suffer this Trump riddled rip-off fest whether we like it or not. It seems to me that if you're not a fan of certain sports (football, tennis, bashing left wing politicians about their alleged antisemitism while ignoring The Clacton Fuhrer's Nazi salutes and crypto-crypto-fascist funders), you have no other options. Let's hope summer makes a reappearance, eh?

***Since writing this, we have discovered there are some good TV shows scheduled during the snorefest and the weather is going to stay shite in the UK, so my ambivalence levels are still very ambivalent. 

Modern Horror

Horror films are currently having something of a renaissance in the cinemas; everywhere there's a new horror movie that people are talking about. The thing is horror films are a load of bollocks because we live in a world where the supernatural only exists in our heads - ghosts don't exist and if they did what could they really do? 2026 seems like it's going to be a horrific year in more ways than one, and the first big 'scary' cinematic release was Hokum, a feature by Damian McCarthy and starring Adam Scott.

Scott plays an arsehole writer, who travels to Ireland to dispose of his parents' ashes in a place where they were happy - there's a back story about this, but frankly I fail to see how it impacts on anything other than why Scott's Ohm Baumann might be such an absolute cock. Within five minutes of arriving in Ireland he's insulted two locals and by the time he's settled into his hotel he's upset a bunch more. Then the movie goes off in a direction I didn't see coming and we're plunged into a strange mix of aged hippies, suicide attempts, murder cover-ups and is there really a witch living in the cellar of an old hotel? This is an atmospheric and, at times, creepy film that had a cast of characters you cared little or nothing for (except maybe Fiona, but [spoiler] Fiona doesn't last long). The problem I have with 'scary' movies is very few of them are actually scary and this was no exception. 6/10

The Young and the Old

What a delightful but devastatingly sad film The Curious Case of Benjamin Button is. A truly wonderful movie that leaves you feeling like there's an empty space where your heart once lived. Brad Pitt is the eponymous Button and Cate Blanchett plays Daisy, the woman he keeps coming back to (and vice versa), in a story that goes from the last day of the First World War to the early 2000s. Benjamin is born baby sized but like an old man; he is riddled with arthritis, cataracts, wrinkles and like a very old man on death's door, but as time goes on he gets stronger, and then he gets younger. He is raised by a black woman in New Orleans, after his father, in a mad frenzy, dumps him on her doorstep, where she shows him genuine love. In many ways this film is like a post modern Forest Gump. David Fincher, a director who has made some truly disturbing movies, manages to make this a joy to behold rather than something that might be a bit... strange. I'd forgotten what a brilliant and deeply moving feature this was, with some awesome special effects. 10/10 

Just The Old

I had no idea that Going In Style was actually a remake of a 1979 film starring George Burns. I'm not sure it would have made any difference... Starring Michael Caine, Morgan Freeman and Alan Arkin, this is an updated version of how three old men decide to rob a bank; this time due to banks, corporations and the general shitness of the USA and the way it treats 'normal' hard working people (and how that is an accepted norm by the people suffering it). There are some genuinely funny moments in this movie, but it did feel frivolous, like it was attempting to be a feelgood heist movie. It was all right, but it was nothing I'd be looking at watching again. 5/10

The Madness is Strong

Over a year after acquiring it, we finally watched Bugonia and that means you don't have to and I don't have to watch it again. This is a simple tale of a raving mad conspiracy theorist - Jesse Plemons - and his simpleton cousin who kidnap the CEO of a company because they think she's an alien from the Andromeda galaxy. Most of the film takes place inside Plemons' basement as the now shaven headed CEO - Emma Stone - tries to convince her kidnappers that she really isn't an alien trying to destroy the planet. It's a generally slow paced slightly bonkers movie (oddly enough a remake of a South Korean film from the 1970s) until the last fifteen or so minutes when it becomes just bonkers. I didn't enjoy it, but I was distracted, so there are extenuating circumstances. 5/10

Have You Seen the News?

I said to the wife the other day that I wish I could just cut the news out of my viewing and reading habits. It's simply too depressing and I no longer trust it to reflect what normal people want or feel - it's always slanted with an angle and that angle feels politically motivated.

Take this unfortunate case in Belfast - the Somalian refugee who stabbed an Irishman or the murder of that Nowak lad, by a British-born Sikh, who obviously had issues. At the same time as these things were reported, a Manchester school girl stabbed to classmates and a teacher and it barely made the news; in fact there were several murders, lots of stabbings (also non fatal) and lots of rioting that gets less coverage because there were no brown people involved or there wasn't a Jewish person connected to it.

We don't need the tin pot Führer from Clacton to stir up racial tension when we have the BBC and all the right wing newspapers doing it for him. It's the news media driving the Zack Polanski is anti-Semitic narrative, despite him being a gay Jewish man opposed to the Zionists in Israel. It's the news that fuels the hate in the hearts of the intellectually-challenged and it will be the news media that 'guides' the ignorant to electing a government this country definitely doesn't need.

I remember Martyn Lewis - an ITN newscaster - bemoaning 30 years ago that there was too many negative news on the news and how it would be nice if we had some Good News every so often. Now, we have 'consumer' programmes that just add to the rhetoric; we have entertainment programmes that seem to be made to deliberately enrage the hard of thinking and we'll soon live in a country where third generation black and brown people will be wondering how long it will be before some Reform supporting Musk financed flash mob will turn up on their doorstep demanding they leave the country and go back to where they come from.

If you haven't got a foreign sounding name and look like a WASP you'll be safe - for the time being - because once all the reasons for this country being so shit have been deported, the gammons are going to have to blame someone else for it not getting any better and the news media will be there, pointing at gays, disabled, single mothers, lefties and people who aren't flying a Union Jack on their houses...

The Last Descendent

Apparently, Widow's Bay is a water-cooler TV show. It's one of the most successful shows Apple TV+ has had in recent years and the Guardian loves it... Usually, that would be a big red flag for me, but I was watching it before the newspaper I've grown to dislike latched onto that bandwagon. Widow's Bay is great and the penultimate episode saw the island go into emergency mode as a north-easterly storm is about to hit it with almost hurricane force winds. There is the usual mix of comedy, but the horror is dialled back a touch because there are other heinous decisions that need to be made, especially when the curse of the island can finally be broken. This has been a quite excellent series and is highly recommended. I'll soon be able to make a long list of reasons why people should receive Apple TV+ by whatever option they choose.

Jezza's Farm

This week's double bill of Clarkson's Farm had many LOL moments, also some rather squeamish bits and the usual 'farming is really a nightmare' scenarios. These were the reasons why this show has been so successful, rather than the sermonising and gammony bollocks that Jeremy comes out with from time to time. There are some joyous moments and some really unpleasant things - which I saw coming and I don't know fuck all about farming. The crispy fried squirrel didn't go down too well though...

Old Customs

Legends is a Netflix series about how HM Customs & Excise broke the back of some of the worst heroin dealers in the early 1990s. Tom Burke, Steve Coogan, Hayley Squires, Charlotte Ritchie and a few others are the people on the outside trying to be close to and infiltrate the people on the inside. It's gripping stuff and while some of it has been changed for dramatic purposes it's still well worth a watch. It's a six part series, set in London and Liverpool - with excursions to Turkey, Pakistan and Germany - and while no one expects this to have an unhappy ending that doesn't mean it isn't filled with jeopardy. The makers have also captured the early 90s really well.

The Valedictorian Episode?

I have a suspicion that this might be the last series of Welcome to Wrexham. Given the team didn't achieve promotion and another season in the Championship probably won't have the same appeal to casual fans, I wouldn't be surprised if they just quietly shelved this, at times, truly excellent documentary series. The reason for this belief is how this sixth episode seemed to be focusing on all the great players and names we've got to know who aren't at the club any longer, or are no longer there in the same capacity. Take Humphrey Ker for instance, this director has spent less time at the club over the last 18 months and was eager to talk about his diminishing role (almost like he was being forced out). It just felt like a look back at five glorious seasons (because they don't get promoted at the end of this one) and all the great characters who were part of those years. It was a strange episode to have with very little focus on the side's rise to the play-off positions and that, to me, felt like the tying up of certain loose ends... 

I think Wrexham will be sold in the next 18 months. Ryan Reynolds and Rob Mac will ensure that whoever buys it will keep the onus on the town and the people who have followed the adventure, but neither of these Hollywood stars have the power, the money or the skill to turn Wrexham into the team they dream of. They both might retain honorary positions, but I think the club is now worth a shed load of money...

What's Up Next?

The TV show with lots of mumbling and dragons is back next week and four days after that's back The Bear's final season drops. There will be some TV during the World Cup, we're just going to have to search for it...

And the usual stuff...

My Cultural Life - Rinse and Repeat

What's Up?

You might not have considered this before, but if you hold a placard up criticising the Israeli government for committing genocide, you are more likely to be thrown into prison than if you incite a riot.

There has been little or no outrage at the twat who ponces about as our would be UK Führer inciting people to 'show their rage' at the unfortunate bad policing of an incident in Southampton, while two US academics, who both oppose Zionism, are banned from coming into the country, because they might say something that offends.

Double standards? Nah, double standards is no longer something that even ruffles the feathers of politicians and their groupies. We live in a world (not just a country) where the people are angry and getting angrier, mainly about things that either don't affect them or are unlikely to. Everything is shit, from the roads to the price of food, energy and fuel to the fact that ignorant morons are still happy to blame everyone but the people responsible.

Our would be UK Führer is a lazy, corrupt, racist who is also a very dangerous man. He has somehow elevated himself to a position where whatever he does his supporters believe it's a left wing conspiracy to besmirch his fine name and wondrous words. The thing is, when the right wing media do the same to any politician who isn't a right wing cockwomble, the same morons lap it up. Zack Polanski, he's just a Jew hating Jewish gay man who wants to tax everyone, ban your wood burner and drive all the rich people out of the country. Our would be UK Führer can be as racist as a member of the KKK (or Donald Trump) and he's being misquoted, taken out of context, said these things when he was a boy or, in many cases, has about 15% of the country complaining that he doesn't go far enough in his hate speech.

We're fucking doomed and like in 2016 it's going to be because of the idiotic turkeys who vote for Christmas. What a sad world/country we live in now; where shysters and billionaires dictate the message and cretins believe every word. I just feel sorry for the people who will suffer because of this shift towards an idiocracy...

New Life!

The season finale of For All Mankind did something the previous nine episodes failed to do. It reminded me why it's my favourite TV show of the 2020s. It was seat of the pants television that left us guessing right up to the ending and... boy, what an ending. The sixth and final season, set in 2020 and beyond, looks like it could be very strange indeed. This season concluded with the war on Mars being resolved, but not before some tense stand-offs between all sides and some nasty decisions that have to be made to save peoples lives. However, Mars has always been the secondary story even if it's taken up the most time; the real story has been Kelly Baldwin on Titan and whether her 20 year search for extra-terrestrial life would be resolved. It is and that's no spoiler, because we always knew she would, it's the circumstances around it and the kind of life she discovers that opens a can of worms and sets us up for a final season that could blow our minds. This was one of the best episodes of this truly groundbreaking alternate history show...

The Arms Race

As we race towards the season end of Your Friends & Neighbours there are still a number of unsolved mysteries; such as who kidnapped Coop at the end of the previous episode if it wasn't Owen Ashe? Where has Ali disappeared to? Will Coop and Mel get back together? And how the hell are they all going to get out of the latest situation after an apoplectic Ashe goes on the rampage with a gun, after really saying some stupid things. I actually said to the wife at the end of this episode that we almost didn't bother watching this show, we only did because it was on Apple TV+ and had Jon Hamm in it. We're so glad we did.

Anyhow, what a season finale it turned out to be... An episode I didn't see coming (and I'll bet no one else did). Talk about downbeat and depressing; this wasn't a finale to uplift your mood, this was a slow pot boiler of a continuous cliffhanger. This was setting pieces in place so that the domino effect would come along and wreck the lives of these comfortable rich arseholes. Those unanswered questions I mentioned in the earlier paragraph? Well, they weren't resolved but are left like hanging question marks over Coop's life (apart from Ali's new home, which Coop bolts for when it gets too tough). This was unexpected and extremely good; roll on next season.

Only Reconnect 

We've been watching the reruns of the earliest Only Connect quiz show - from 2008, on BBC4, from when Victoria Coren was a mere slip of a thing (and wasn't as attractive as she has become in later life). This was before Egyptian Hieroglyphs and really clever people. There's a plodding feel to the hardest quiz show on TV and back in 2008 it was absolutely bloody ridiculously hard and obscure. Great fun watching it though.

Spider-Ham

I struggled to find the love for Spider-Noir. It's one of the best looking shows on TV, the reimagining of classic Spidey villains is really good - all linked to mad German scientists - natch - and I just couldn't seem to like it. Maybe it was Nick Cage's casting - hey, just because he voiced the character in an animated Spider-Man film doesn't mean he has to play the character on screen. The wife enjoyed it, but I think she ended up thinking it was a bit of a one trick pony, with dodgy dialogue and even dodgier plots; she like me struggled with Cage playing a superhero 25 years his younger. The other problem I had with it was the fact it was trying to be a smart-mouthed comedy, in the wise-cracking Spidey way and it was just a bit cringe. I expect it will get a second season, I suspect I won't be watching it...

Hide and Yawn

I dunno... Maybe sometimes I'm just hard to please. When we watched the original film - Ready or Not - it was silly, slightly stupid and quite original. I think I gave it a 6 or a 7 out of 10. The sequel - Ready or Not 2: Here I Come is possibly a step too far. Samara Weaving, who survived the first film where she had to survive until dawn or become the prize of some devil worshipping family, is back this time with Kathryn Newton as her sister as they battle four families who all want to become Satan's ruler on earth. This was very silly and despite a relatively short run time and some interesting actors - Sarah Michelle Gellar (looking old), Nestor Carbonell and David Cronenberg - still got a bit boring after a while. It just wasn't necessary. 5/10  

Grey Areas

Guy Ritchie's In the Grey is quite a complicated set up; it's about retrieving dodgy money using legal and illegal means. It stars Eiza González, Henry Cavill and Jake Gyllenhaal and plays out like a post-modern rendition of the A Team. It's 100 minutes of lots of scenes, some of them done in a show and tell way, others as a straightforward narrative. It's entertaining and while it's not lightweight, in terms of subject matter, there's a triviality about it. It was better than chopping my own genitals off with a rusty blunt spoon. 6/10

Back On the Farm

Jeremy Clarkson is back with his usually extremely educational Clarkson's Farm. The one good thing about this series was its focus on the plight of British farmers; yes it has lots of staged stuff to entertain the stragglers, but generally it does more for farming than say Countryfile does. So season five kicks off with two episodes that highlight what an arsehole Clarkson is - in case you'd forgotten - and the show has now veered dangerously close to jingoism. It has all the usual buffoonery but maybe it's because of Clarkson's health issues or just that he's a miserable old git, but there was an element of 'Do you know, I no longer care about this guy's woes' for me. That's a shame, this has been a good programme and to be fair, the second pair of episodes (3 & 4) were much better - one was extremely educational, about the future of farming, while the last of the first four to drop focused on Clarkson's biggest emotional fuck up so far - buying rare breed pigs and having to have them slaughtered because they simply are fit for very little in the food chain. 

However, the wife made a very good point about this - if you follow the chronology of the TV series, the pigs were obtained in year two, we're now on year five - how come he's only finding out now that the meat is fit for sausages only? Is it possible that some things happen earlier than they are depicted  in the show because of the way it is made, edited, put together, etc?

Friday the 13th, Part?

Thinking that having killed off the 300 year old man, the island and town of Widow's Bay seems a much less threatening place, everything seems fine again until someone notices that a murderer's mask has gone missing from the museum. As the Mayor, played by Matthew Rhys, arranges to take his son off island and to a Red Sox game, Patricia, the assistant mayor, is being stalked through the streets by a masked slasher, who looks straight out of a 1980s horror flick. The mayor's son finds stuff about his mother that comes as a surprise and Wick (Stephen Root) can't be everywhere at once. This was back to being quirky and sinister. Great stuff.

What's Up Next?

I did watch other stuff this week. Welcome to Wrexham among them; the thing is however I reword my reviews, something like this tends to be... much the same format so much the same to say; so what's the point? If you watch it my reviews are moot; if you don't it's just something to skip over. I'll revisit the show at the end of the season.

Anyhow, the coming week is likely to be a bit thin on the ground. In fact the coming six weeks is going to be dominated by the fucking World Cup and I don't watch international football.

Whatever... 

My Cultural Life - Disappointed

What's Up?

Nothing. I have nothing to talk about.

Why I Hate America Part 214

If there's one thing Americans are great at it's making films to highlight why Americans are a fucking awful bunch of people, especially white male people. The truly excellent The Banker tells the story of Bernard Garrett, a black man from Texas who just happens to be very good with numbers and wants to become a self-made man. Played by Anthony Mackie, Bernard has one thing barring him from being successful - he's black; but this doesn't stop him and eventually he breaks into the real estate business, thanks to Colm Meaney, before teaming up with Samuel L Jackson's Joe Morris to become two of the wealthiest black men in the USA. The thing is this is the 1950s and 1960s and if there's one thing that the white male ruling class despises it's black men making good...

So Joe and Bernard recruit Nicholas Hoult to be their white front man and the three men buy properties and eventually the building that houses lots of banks, allowing them to get credit where they wouldn't otherwise have gotten it. However, Bernard wants to make an impression in his home town in Texas - a place where segregation is still prevalent. Eventually the white male people decided that there was no place at their table for black men doing white men's business. This is a great film, but it just compounds what is so wrong about the USA and why 60 years after the events depicted, black (or any other colour than white) men still struggle to make it good, despite the likes of Barrack Obama. 8/10

Born To Die

We finished the rest of The Boroughs in one go - a binge watch of five episodes and almost three and a half hours of largely meh television. In the end it was a little maudlin and soppy, with the geriatric heroes each doing what they needed to do to ensure the end of the show happened and to leave you wondering whether there's enough life left in these actors for possibly a sequel (let's hope not). Naturally, everything we thought was upended and the monsters turned out to be less monstrous than the people running The Boroughs - which you'll understand if you ever decide to throw six hours of your life away on watching this. There was something slightly tonally wrong with this show; possibly it was the fact that almost every episode (of the eight) was written by someone different; yes, there was a showrunner(s) who held it all together, but I got the impression whoever it was wasn't paying that much attention. It was all right, but it's the kind of thing that if I'd read a review like this before watching it I might not have bothered. 

Road to Bollocks

Six months after we watched Sisu we watched the sequel Sisu: Road to Revenge. Whereas the first film was a relentless ballet of ludicrous violence, this was a load of shite interspersed with some general uninventive methods of killing Soviet soldiers. Stephen Lang might have starred in a few of the best selling movies of all time, but he also makes some shite. This was nothing like the first film; anything original was lost and it went on for far too long (and was only 89 minutes minus the credits). 3/10

Widow's Peaked?

So, we had a guest this week and knowing this person was interested in different TV I thought it would be an interesting idea to simply introduce him to Widow's Bay without giving anything away. Obviously, this week's unexpected double bill was always going to be far more 'normal' than the preview five parts. The first was a short explanation of the dark history of the island, while the second part was all about how to kill a 350 year old man. Neither episode was a classic and despite guest turns from Betty Gilpin and Hamish Linklater everything fell a bit flat...

Corn-Fed Spider

I'm kind of torn. The Wednesday night superhero slot - recently held by The Boys - now has a new superhero in the form of Nicholas Cage's Spider-Noir, essentially 'What If Spider-Man was an aging detective in 1930s New York?' Let's get the bad things out of the way to start with. Nicholas Cage is 62, he looks older. He was channelling Richard Nixon in this and everything was just a little too corny for its own good. The good parts include the fabulous look of it - 1930s NYC has probably not looked as 1930s for almost 100 years. At the moment there's not much more to recommend this. I felt it did a great job reimagining Spidey as Ben Reilly (comics fans will get this name), a 1930s hero with superpowers; I just didn't feel any love for it. It's too melodramatic, too clever for its own sake and Cage is, now, just a bad actor.

Pain No Gain

Jack Quaid's Novocaine has been sitting on the FDoD for almost a year now. It's a film I just never get around to watching, but the wife picked it so it finally got an airing. The movie is essentially about a guy who is the assistant manager of a bank who falls in love with one of the new girls. The thing is Nate has a rare genetic disease which means he is incapable of feeling any pain and when he thinks his new girlfriend - Amber Midthunder - has been kidnapped, he turns this unique ability into a weapon. It was all right; Quaid plays a similar character to his Hughie in The Boys and there's a twist you don't see coming. 6/10

Hanks' War

World War Two with Tom Hanks sounds like some kind of variety show, but it's just a history programme. It's about the start of WWII and how it unfolded. To be honest there's not much more to it than that.

What's Up Next?

Whatever happens, that's what. 

My Cultural Life - The Bik Bik Boo

What's Up?

Apologies in advance, but I'm going to talk about football. I'll be as vague as possible, but it's been on my mind. This time last year, after a shit season, my team, Tottenham Hotspur, won a European trophy and all was right in the world again. Except it wasn't; we had a shit team and no one was prepared to admit it. So it's no surprise that this weekend Spurs are playing the final game of the season needing at least a point to ensure they're still in the Premier League next season - to fail would be catastrophic for Spurs fans and hilarious to everyone else.

Two people I'm close to have asked independently of each other whether my current anxiety problems might be down to how shit my football team is. I'm sure it isn't helping. 

The thing is, over the years, as well as supporting Spurs, I've picked up other football teams. There have been times in my life where I've been a voracious follower of other teams; I'm not a supporter, as such - there is one exception we'll get to - but teams that have a significant interest in because of all manner of reasons. I'll explain, as best I can...

Northampton Town - having spent a large portion of my life in Shoesville, I couldn't help but class the Cobblers as my second English team. The thing is they're dreadful a lot of the time, none more so than this season when they finished last and got relegated into League 2.

Brackley Town - Huh? Why? I have no connection to the place. I've been there three times in my life. The thing is Northants isn't exactly awash with footballing teams and after the downfall of Rushden & Diamonds (who I often went to see) and Kettering, following another County team became hard work. Brackley were in the Conference League North, two rungs below the football league. They always finished in the top 6 and always lost in the play-off. Last season they won promotion to the National League and had a really good start to the season and in January they were 11th and looking safe. They got relegated back to the Conference League.

Wigtown & Bladnoch FC - my current home town club and a puzzle, because none of my Scottish friends are into football or know much about the recent history of the toon's fitba club. The thing is in the years before we moved here, they had recently won the league twice, but despite following the team since the 2017/18 season, a W&BFC win was rarer than rocking horse shit. Sometimes they lost by double figures and every season they finished bottom of the league, usually with fewer than 4pts. This season they finished second from bottom - it's an improvement.

I also look out for Wrexham results as a result of following the TV show that conveniently is reviewed below. They had a great season in the Championship, but fell, short by goal difference, of making the (now very controversial) play-offs. So, I got very little joy from any of the teams that I keep an eye on. It's been a shite season all round for all of my teams. Except...

I know I've told this story before, but who's going to stop me? When the Hall family returned from Canada in 1969, we spent a few weeks at my Nan's and my uncle Robert asked me what team I supported, I told him and he made a remark about my dad not supporting anyone. Dad was ambivalent about football and came from a largely Arsenal supporting family, my mum's family were all Spurs fans - shades of Romeo and Juliet. Anyhow, my dad chimes in with "Your grandad, my dad, came from a Scottish background and my family have always had a favourite Scottish team, maybe you should have one to."

So, I got the sport pages out and looked at the then two Scottish leagues and was promptly told that I had to support either Rangers or Celtic, because everyone did. I was having none of that, I was going to pick my own team. How true my memory is obviously probably not important, I was simply lured the the team at the bottom of the second division table. Stenhousemuir. The Warriors, who play at Ochilview Park. I had to be part of this fabulously named team somewhere in Scotland.

Following Stenny has been about as arduous a task as you can imagine. A bit like a footballing equivalent to Sisyphus. They always finished in the bottom four. The odd time they didn't, I'm not sure if I just imagined it. They won an incredibly Mickey Mouse cup in the 1990s, but I think they were playing pub teams and amputees. Then about six years ago something happened, they almost got relegated out of the main Scottish Football league. That would probably have been the end of the club, but they had new owners, with a progressive idea and the following season they made the play-offs. They failed, but hey, these were heady heights for my other team.

Then the unthinkable happened; they won Scottish League Two and by a canter. The thing is to try and give you an analogy to compare it; it's like a Tipping Point contestant going on Mastermind. They were going to get eaten alive. Last season instead of struggling, they snatched a play-off place, but lost again in the semis. Stenny, it seems, had become a stable League One side. Who would have thunk it? 

Then, this season, they missed out on the title by two points and faced another play-off. Local rivals Alloa Athletic stood in their way, but the difference in class won through and Stenhousemuir will be playing in the Scottish Championship next season (and needing a new manager as the old one has gone to Ayr, who will be playing Stenny next season). 

They will obviously get annihilated next season and be lucky if they can avoid relegation straight back down, but they're a good team, for their level, and the ground only holds about 800 people, so they can't go further up the ladder without a proper ground. But these are unprecedented times in my 57 year relationship with this club from the Central Lowlands of Scotland and I might even get to see them play next season.

The Ending

So... after a number of years, most of them wandering around in circles with lots of swearing and extreme violence, The Boys is over. That's about it, really. It's over. Not everyone lived happily ever after, but most of them do. I do have one question though and hopefully it won't spoil it for you if you haven't seen it; if they had the ability to create a supe who can replicate Soldier Boy's power and also rob supes of their abilities, why didn't they do this five years ago? Why twat about with all this immortality bollocks? I know at least one of my friends is a big fan of this show, but, you know, he's pretty much wrong about this lame duck load of rotting mammal intestines.

Step Away From the Creepy House

This week in Widow's Bay, Mayor Loftis investigates his friend, the reverend's suicide and ends up taking some extremely potent magic mushrooms in an attempt to see if he can go on a spiritual journey of discovery to find out what the man of God found out on his own mushroom trips. Matthew Rhys is fantastic in an episode that is basically two minute snippets of the bits he's relatively compos mentis in. Like last week's extraordinary 'possession' story, this is a great bit of storytelling that is both funny and, yet again, disturbing. Loftis's son continues to slide off the rails and we get the first clues about why the boy is so angry and why he can't leave the island. This is a fantastic show and, of course, it's from Apple TV+.

A Welcome Back?

Now in its fifth season, Welcome to Wrexham has always been entertaining considering it's about a football team owned by famous actors. The show has always managed to walk the line between sport and human interest with aplomb and the people who make it know exactly how to divide the football from the rest of life. The new series arrives after Wrexham's first disappointing end to a season for four years, having narrowly missed the chance of promotion and play-offs by one point. The thing is most people know this, the show is for those people who follow Wrexham but are not necessarily fans of football. It does what it says on the tin and it always does it well.

Dead Horses?

I don't really care how politically incorrect it is to like Jeremy Clarkson, Richard Hammond and James May, I've always thoroughly enjoyed either Top Gear (when they did it) or The Grand Tour (or Grand-ish Tour as this 'best of' show is called). The first of three 90 minute specials probably has more LOL moments in it than most of the comedies I've watched in the last 12 months, unfortunately there were lots of bits I'm not that bothered about in the later two parts, but I still think it's good fun and it's missed (by me).

Bad Shite

I'd heard it was bad, but I didn't expect it to be as bad as it turned out. The finale of Good Omens was dreadful and even more like an absurd pantomime than either of the first two (full) series. Michael Sheen and David Tenant returned as Crowley and Fell and this time they were saving the universe, or were they creating it? I don't really care because it was a load of shite. I'm not sure I ever enjoyed any episode of this show, there was so much time between each segment I couldn't really remember, but this was just sentimental twaddle and thankfully I'll never have to suffer it again. Good Omens? Good riddance, more like.

Not Normal

I had really high hopes for Bob Odenkirk's 'new' film* Normal, all the trailers I saw made it look like a movie that I'd really like; but, oddly enough, every trailer I saw made me think it was going to be a completely different film. The story is difficult to tell without spoiling the entire thing, but Odenkirk plays a temporary sheriff in the small Minnesota town of Normal, which seems just like every small town in any American state, except it isn't. He first starts to notice something strange on the first day he starts and things get weirder the longer he's there. There's a few 'cameos' from famous actors, I've put quote marks around the word because they're not really in it for very long despite getting big credits and there are some genuinely bad edits in it. It's a Ben Wheatley movie and I've never been a huge fan of his work, but this is enjoyable enough, yet I felt there could have been so much more. 6/10
* I say 'new' but this film was made in early 2025, got a limited film festival release in the following summer and literally disappeared for a year.

Strange Neighbourhood

We're almost half way through the new Netflix series The Boroughs - a kind of Stranger Things for geriatrics. Alfred Molina plays Sam, a recent widower, who had agreed to move to a retirement village with his wife, before she died and now he doesn't really want to do that, but can't get out of his contract. Unhappy with being dumped on The Boroughs by his daughter and her husband, Sam has some strange encounters in his opening days at the private town, but nothing prepares him for walking in on his neighbour being 'assaulted' by a strange, almost alien creature. It's clear that some people working at The Boroughs are well aware of what is going on but there's a conspiracy of silence, so Sam and some of his new found friends decide to investigate. It's not a bad start and suitably strange enough to keep me interested (I got the impression the wife wasn't terribly enamoured by it, though). 

A Rock & A Hard Place

Jon Hamm's Andrew Cooper is slowly being forced into a corner. His ex-wife is causing him grave concern; his daughter is in trouble with the law; his son is mixed up with the daughter of Owen Ashe (James Marsters) and that's really bad because Coop also has the talons of Ashe fixed firmly into him. This week, Your Friends & Neighbours returned to its original premise of Coop robbing his neighbours to finance his lifestyle, except, yet again, that goes horribly wrong and he comes to a terrible, debilitating realisation - he needs to get out of his life. Sadly, with his daughter in court, his wife facing escalating problems - legal and health wise - and his sister having just quit her job and moved out of his house, Coop doesn't know which way to turn. Cue yet another unexpected ending, with just two more episodes to go in this season. I think I know how Coop will get out of this...

Mankind be Damned

We've reached the penultimate episode of this season of For All Mankind and it's heating up nicely for an explosive finale. Mars is under attack from a special forces team put together by the M6 nations; these troopers are not playing and the death toll is going to be horrendous - they don't care who they kill to regain control of the Happy Valley base. Alex takes centre stage, but hanging around him like a bad smell is a link to his grandfather's past in the shape of Gordo Stevens' granddaughter, who is fighting for the M6. Meanwhile on Titan, the search crew has found what they were looking for but it seems the search for extra-terrestrial life is alluding them, again. It's being set up for something big... actually two somethings: the battle for Mars and the discovery of something that will change the way mankind thinks, forever. 

What's Up Next?

I can tell you what else has been stressing me out and giving me anxiety - my pub quiz. Thanks to the amateurs running our local pub, the changes they wanted to implement - moving the starting time back an hour, despite them moving it to 7.30 initially because punters wanted it to be earlier - have caused me nothing but hassle and next Friday's May pub quiz looks very much like it will be my last...

I love doing pub quizzes. It's a vocation I discovered late in life and wish I'd been able to do it much earlier in my life. Over the last year, we have created an immensely popular quiz, with a waiting list EVERY. SINGLE. MONTH. This month we have five tables available, a total of eight teams have pulled out, five of them for the summer because of the later start time. The decision to try and hope that the pub makes more money from staying open for food for an extra hour or so has bitten them on the arse and has left me in a position where I'm not going to give myself all the stress and anxiety any longer.

It's never been broken, but some people on the pub's 'management committee' have been committed to fixing it and as a result, the pub is probably going to have to find someone else to do a pub quiz for them. The last two 'guest' quiz hosts saw their charity quizzes over run by more than an hour and people walked out before the conclusion; so maybe the pub can persuade one of these people to take up the reins? 

Therefore next week's blog will be lighter than usual, because for possibly the last time, I will be hosting a pub quiz...