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...

My Cultural Life - Nothing Really Matters

What's Up?

The problem with fascism isn't obvious to most people who look at it as being the solution to their woes. Nationalism and fascism walk arm in arm because they play on weaponizing pride, therefore many of the supporters of Reform, especially, are not interested in what they're going to get from them as a government, only that they've promised to rid the country of the things (and people) that are making lives so much worse than it need be.

Of course, what happens (and quickly) is five years on from a Reform government they will have solved [some of] the problems the people believed they would, but everyone is far worse off than they were before, in so many ways. Despite restrictions on internet access (for our own safety) the anger and despair of the people is loud and unmissable. As we approach the 2034 General Election, as well as their standards of living, the people start will losing their freedoms and the country will lurch to a far more blatantly authoritarian look and your leftie neighbour, who is a thoroughly decent chap but votes Green and is tolerant towards migrants, will suddenly disappear for sending a humorous meme of President-elect Farage on their phone. The government will use the military to enforce law; begin recruiting huge numbers of police - all without appropriate checks, because this is a National Emergency... Oh and they can't hold a General Election just yet because it isn't safe. Left wing extremists are making people's lives a misery. This will be what happens in less than a decade.

All those people who backed Reform, who truly didn't believe that the new laws, lack of Human Rights and isolationist position would affect them, will become either an employee of the state or an enemy of it. "I didn't vote for this," is a facile comment at the best of times, but I will take some comfort from the schadenfreude I shall feel when that happens. 

Because this is happening. We can kiss goodbye to the NHS (Farage supporters don't believe this). We can kiss goodbye to employee rights (Farage supporters don't believe this). We can kiss goodbye to equality (Farage supporters don't believe this) All Reform will bring is richer rich people and less for everyone else (but that's just Labour and Conservative bullshit to scare people away from real change). The incredible thing is Farage is just a Pound Shop Trump. People seem to be drawn by this obnoxious frog-like Lesley-Phillips-on-acid white supremacist and I think it's because he lets them wear their prejudices on their sleeves. Populism is a great short term pressure valve, it would save Reform a lot of money if we let mobs rule the streets, dispensing their own kind of justice, before clamping down on everything and everyone. 

What I'm trying to say is Reform voters aren't interested in politics, they're not interested in hearing what's being said. They want to hear about solutions and fixing problems (that were created to anger them). Many of those things, these beliefs, are abhorrent but I'm sure it's how they feel because that's how they've been conditioned to feel. They need someone to blame. 

You cannot condense in few enough words a way to make them think about it, let alone convince them they are making bad choices. Not because they're stupid [necessarily] but because they're tired of long winded explanations and political platitudes that don't mean anything to them. They want to see the changes yesterday! I said a few weeks ago about TL:DR, but we've gone beyond that now. Convincing them isn't going to happen because they don't want to be convinced of anything but what they believe in; we have to brace ourselves for the new hell that is coming or learn how to goose step. 

Proportions

A quite small 0.45% of the British population is Jewish. The Muslim community in the UK is 6.1%. Why is it more important for Jewish people, most of which could walk down the street and never be identified as Jewish, to have extra protection and different privileges than it is for any other race or culture who have been subjected to violence? If there are examples of antisemitism being reported, why are there not examples of Islamophobia - of which there is considerably more - being reported about? Where is the balance in our media reporting? Why is there no balance in the media's coverage? It's like one culture is considered 'more important' than the other...

Or maybe British Jews should be directing their ire at Israel because that is the reason they are targeted by loony Muslims. It doesn't matter how many Jews died in this 50 year conflict, many more Muslims, Christians and other religions have also died as well; one death should be no more tragic than another, unless we're talking about babies. Obviously Israel is simultaneously responsible and a victim here - a kind of Schrödinger's Arsehole?

The Golf Days Are Over

Last weekend, we had my brother-in-law up for a visit and to take in some of the Book Festival. He, like me, is a big fan of golf (don't hold it against us) and this weekend was the bi-annual golf fest known as the Ryder Cup; a competition between Europe and the USA. Once it was simply the UK and Ireland, but since the 1980s it has incorporated Europe and since 1985 it has always been a close run competition with both sides of the Atlantic taking victories. After looking like Europe would romp to a record breaking win on US soil, the match ended much closer than you would have guessed, with a Europe victory deserved. Right, that's the sport out of the way...

The American supporters have always been partisan, belligerent and offensive - it's part and parcel of being American, I believe - but over the last decade or so the behaviour of fans of Team USA, especially in a gentle game full of etiquette and rules, has been appalling and the levels of abuse are just wrong. It came to a head last Saturday afternoon when Rory McIlroy (the guy in the picture) was verbally abused by the crowd with the MC - the woman responsible for introducing the players - leading a chant of 'Fuck you McIlroy.' All through the weekend there was abuse aimed at European players; shouts and cat calls as players were about to make a shot and their wives - McIlroy's wife had a beer thrown over her. It was a disgusting spectacle even if the golf ended up being one of the most exciting tournaments seen for many years.

This is the problem with that shit stain of a country. Americans, generally, are just rude, offensive, without manners and have an entitled air about them that suggests because they are American they are already better than everyone else. To put this into an ironic context, recently a US university sent a questionnaire out to thousands of High School graduates asking a series of questions, many of which would be considered stupid or pointless if they were in a pub quiz. One of the questions was "Where does cheese come from?" Amazingly, 18% - almost ONE in FIVE of the respondents - said that cheese was a plant. For some context 7% thought that Washington DC was in the state of Washington (which is on the opposite side of the country to the capital).

Just what have Americans got - apart from lots of weapons - that they should be proud of? I mean, they really can't make cheese, which might explain a few things and they couldn't pronounce aubergine so they renamed it eggplant. They think guns are more important than children - but, hey, the world seems to have slightly turned against children - are they expendable now? Haven't you noticed how the death of a child is utterly tragic but almost a normal event now in that country? I found the behaviour of the crowd at Bethpage Black to perfectly show the world where the USA as a civilisation is now...

The Net Closes

I think the most pertinent thing to say about Task is how inconsequential and unriveting it is. It has a good cast, the story doesn't seem that bad, but it's grim, gritty and devoid of any levity. What's worse is the secondary story, with Mark Ruffalo's family, is as dull as beige. There's a good two hour movie in here somewhere, but as a seven-part (therefore almost 7 hour) TV show, it's like a pair of socks that are almost threadbare.

Drugs

Has there been another film where everything happens and by the end nothing has changed at all? I'm sure there has, but with Steven Soderbergh's Traffic (an adaptation of a C4 series, apparently) what we get is a visceral and quite scary at times look at the drug trafficking business from all sides - the cartels, the local police, the DEA, the users, a politician who is the USA's new drug tsar and the family of a big time drug dealer. It's a clever film, especially as you notice that all these disparate sides of the story have links, both in the story and visually - many of the characters cross each others' paths without them realising it. Obviously I've given the plot away, but this was made in 2000, so... We start at a certain point in the story and loads of things happen before we end the story at a position where everything had changed, but nothing was any different - the perfect analogy to 'The War on Drugs'. 7/10

For the Love of God, Stop!

But why? Why is this here? It had the perfect ending to a series that had been on a catastrophic decline since the end of season two. At the end of the last series, the Brassic gang were left in an Italian Job scenario, dangling over a cliff. It was the perfect place to call it a day, but no, they only went and saved the coach, so that 8 weeks later everything is back to normal, except most of Vinnie's crew no longer want to be criminals. Fortune dumps some new 'kids' on him and basically who gives a fuck? This is a foul mouthed, ineptly plotted, childish bunch of bollocks now. I laughed once in 50 minutes, the rest I sat stony faced wondering how Joe Gilgun managed to con money from Sky to make this? This is a show that should have been put out of its misery; I get the impression that a lot of the people who were in this just wanted to go away and be forgotten about... I have the second episode to watch but I might just forget about it.

A Shit Night...

We gave Ethan Hawke's new series The Lowdown twenty minutes before switching it off. It didn't grab us and felt a bit too kooky and with a character who doesn't really belong in 2025.

We didn't even watch a minute of Wayward because before I put it on I checked IMDB and saw that it had dropped to 5.9, which for a current TV series is pretty disastrous. The Guardian recommended this, so it was almost a fait accompli.

I'd had Marvel Zombies for a week and not really felt like watching it, but as we'd had two blow outs, we gave it a try. The animation was better than I expected. We lasted eight minutes. Not my cup of tea, especially as the last Marvel product I actually spent money on were the Marvel Zombies trade paperbacks and immediately realised I'd wasted money I could have just thrown away.

So, desperate for watching something that would salvage the evening, we put on Mitchell and Webb Are Not Helping and got through to sketch number three before checking on IMDB and seeing it has been royally panned and scores, currently, 5.7. We switched that off and still had an hour and a half to kill...

... And the Winner Is?

Sports comedies are big business thanks to Ted Lasso, but very few have been any good. I mean, even Ted Lasso wasn't as good as everyone reckons, it was just good enough. However, there might be a new hit in the form of Chad Powers, starring current heartthrob du jour Glen Powell. He plays Russ Holliday a brilliant American footballer, but also an absolute arsehole who dumped a potentially brilliant career after a bad mistake followed by some bad judgment calls saw his future get totally trashed. Eight years later and he's still an arsehole but he still wants to play ball, the problem is he's bad news and probably cursed, so he steals the plot from Mrs Doubtfire and with the use of prosthetics turns himself into Hicksville, good old boy Chad Powers and tries out for the team that last tasted glory when they beat the team Russ was playing for when his career died.

This is funny. It's satirical and it works on two levels - the intelligent and the Redneck. Powell is brilliant as Russ the wanker, but equally quite the person to root for as Chad - quite a dilemma. The opening two episodes are worth looking at. Steve Zahn might finally have found the role to define him and I like the balance this show is already showing - huge potential.

Good Morning, Good Morning

The Morning Show is one of my favourite shows, but sometimes it does things that I can't quite fathom. The first two seasons' main subplot was about an unrequited love, which by season three was seemingly never going to happen. We're three episodes into season four and the thing any die hard fan of this show wanted, happened. It could end up being like Moonlighting, once Cybil and Bruce made the beast with two backs all of the chemistry fizzled away. Fortunately, there are some other rather juicy subplots going on this season, one which Bradley and Chip are tracking and the one where Alex ends up having a very heartfelt conversation with someone she didn't realise was so important to her. There is also a really unexpected resignation, the return of a familiar face and the subterfuge of adultery begins to really fuck with Cory's protege's head... 

Generation Contrived

I suppose the biggest problem I have with Gen V is that events in this show must have links to The Boys, so presumably you have to watch this to fully understand what has happened during the season break of the other, or something like that. Some of the stupidly contrived plot elements have started to look not so stupid or contrived, but that positive point doesn't necessarily mean I've changed my mind about this show. I have to admire the great lengths the special effects team put into this and there is a part of me that is mildly interested to see what is happening, but I also think I know what's going to happen over the next three episodes. The wife, it appears, has even less patience for this than me, but we will see it through to the end.

A One-Off

Whitehouse and Mortimer have a lot to answer for, but in this case specifically the idea of male bonding programmes. In Perfect Pub Walks with Alexander Armstrong you have the perfect format for an hour of bimbling and lightweight frivolity. The ubiquitous Armstrong, who appears to be on telly more than its on has somehow found the time between being a DJ, a singer, a host of a daily quiz show, actor and a few other things (although he's called a 'comedian' by the narrator of this and one needs to question whether he really is one of those any more), to wander around lovely bits of the UK with a guest of his choice. The reason we watched this opening episode was because his guest was the always erudite and often amusing James May, who was maybe a little more... open... than he likes to be. They built a den in Yorkshire, had several pints, talked a lot, did man things. 'Appen. 

We won't be watching that again.

Facebookishness

Obviously part of my culture is the internet and social media. The fact I don't write about it that often is testament to my ability to simultaneously be part of it and yet detached enough to remain relevant, to and for me and therefore not want to bore you with it. I have mentioned Tube of You things I've watched; Trailer Trash is actually what I've seen on the PC. The 'net is a little like breathing, it's there in the background, happening, while you get on with something else, but are aware of it. Anyhow...

Facebook Memories, I've talked about them before, can be extremely illuminating in regards to one's memory, but also quite revealing. I think most people I know are being far more guarded with their lives than they were, say, 15 years ago. Facebook is over 17 years old now for many of us and Status Updates from then are far more personal, chatty, conversational and informal; we were all quite open, it was 2008 and the world, in general was far better than it is now and the internet wasn't anywhere near as dangerous as it is now; but that was another blog. There is stuff in my Memories section that I am absolutely and thoroughly embarrassed by, horrified I posted and none of it was the slightest bit offensive. There's a sweet naivety in them, for sure, but Jesus in a dodgem car...

If you don't, you should start revisiting your past. It isn't always how you remember it.

Harry Potter's Massive Snake

The special effects were better and the general feel of Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets was one of taking it a bit more seriously. Of course, this was the last film with Richard Harris's Dumbledore and the last film by Chris Columbus; the next movie changes things quite a bit cinematically, if I remember correctly. This is the one where Voldemort almost comes back via a memory of himself he put in a book. It's also the one with the bad CGI snake thing and the creepy spiders. Compared to the first film this is way better, but the bar is set pretty low. 6/10

The Unforgettable Fire

Paul Greengrass makes a lot of docudramas, probably his most famous was the story of United 93 on 9/11. He's made Bourne films and other action thrillers, but he seems happiest doing true stories and The Lost Bus is his latest. Starring Matthew McConaughey and America Ferrara, it tells the true story of how a school bus driver, who was struggling to hold his job down becomes a hero for saving the lives of 22 school children and their teacher. Set against the backdrop of the 2018 fires (were they that long ago?) which resulted in the town of Paradise, California, being razed to the ground and took almost 100 lives. This is a slightly overlong but dignified biopic which, if you are like me, did nothing to make you feel that the USA is a country with any kind of stable infrastructure and that it is waiting for the next disaster to come along. We know that California is the most liberal of US states, but even here the biggest problem it has are the Americans living there. I actually said to the wife that I need to stop watching American films because the people often leave a bad taste in my mouth. If you watch The Lost Bus you will hope many of the assholes in it could have been victims...

Pissmaker

We're finally coming to the end of the most disappointing second season of a show I can remember in a long time. Peacemaker has struggled and I have struggled to give a shit about it. This has been James Gunn at his most self-indulgent and believing a series about the characters was going to be more interesting than a series about characters acting in an actual story. It backfired, for me. Maybe it won't for you, but I gave up caring about any of the people in this after the season opener. John Cena has been great, but he only has so much he can work with and when he has to work with a knock off Gunn script and a bunch of actors who seem hoisted by their own success (from the first series), he's always going to look second best. This series ends next week and I kind of hope it isn't renewed for a third season because that really would be overkill. Unfortunately, I think it's already having the groundwork laid for exactly that. Hugely disappointing series that now has a finale to try to right all of its wrongs... 

What's Up Next?

This week I no longer care. Apart from the obvious, who knows what we'll watch between now and next Friday night. One thing is for sure, it probably would be different to what I would list here anyhow.

My Cultural Life - Take Two

What's Up?

It's never nice to speak ill of the dead, but there was this guy in my past who really did me a disservice. It was around 1992, either my shop had closed down or it was in its last throes of life. I had started writing again, after a what seemed like years since I last sat in front of a typewriter (or old PC). Because I had started writing stuff for Comics International it had ignited my desire to write a novel again (having written a couple of first drafts previously) and I was about six months into something I called Succubus. It was a story of a happily married man whose wife disappears without a trace and instead of the police and friends doing everything they could, everyone began to forget his wife completely - telling him events that he'd lived through either didn't happen or didn't happen the way the man thought they had. Gradually, his wife disappeared from video tape, from photographs, from everywhere... Until one day he meets someone who had the same thing happen to them.

I was using an old PC with 60meg of hard drive - yes, you read that correctly - 60megabytes; not big enough to take a single video off of my phone. It was Windows 3.1 OS and I knew my way around my PC and I was having a problem with it that I couldn't solve. I can't even remember what it was, only that it was getting worse and needed looking at. A friend of a friend who I had become familiar with through making relationships in the shop was, apparently, a wizard with PCs and I took it round to his place and he said, 'Yeah, no problem' and said it would be ready the next day...

What this 'wizard' did, but neglected to tell me he was going to do, was wipe my hard drive and reinstall none of my programmes! It solved the problem, but lost me six months of work. He didn't tell me he was going to do this drastic measure and therefore I hadn't backed up any of my writing on floppy disks. When I expressed a mixture of heartbreak and apoplectic rage at him he said, 'Well you should have backed it up.' I know, I should have, but, I didn't know he was going to wipe my drive...

I'd written a little over 27,000 words and it was probably riddled with bad grammar and shit sentences. It probably wasn't the best thing I've ever 'written' but it was much better than anything I'd ever written before and structure isn't a problem; the me of 33 years later is a better writer and editor and things can be fixed in the editing room. Now, anyone who has ever had writing ambitions will look at this story and say, 'But, you just had to write it again, you would have rewritten it several times on the way to a finished novel, surely?' The thing was, I sat down determined to catch up on lost time, but nothing came out the way it had and it all felt like a school homework project about writing something from memory alone. Suffice it to say, it never really happened and I've harboured a deep resentment to the guy who fucked me up my hard drive even though he's been dead for nearly 20 years.

On Wednesday night, after a binge-a-thon of current TV, I came up to my office, a little after 10pm, and proceeded to search Bing for images relating to what I'd seen - you know how the blog looks. Because I had three things to write about, I wrote the sub headline and dropped the picture where it goes. However, the second picture didn't drop in the right place - but I didn't realise this - so I did it twice again before discovering something was up. This has happened before, so the way of solving it was to simply delete the pictures, shut down Chrome and start again from the last saved point. I hadn't lost anything so it was the logical thing to do, except I tried to cut and paste the second image into its proper place and it worked, but it wouldn't align. I should have stopped there, but instead I ctrl-z to undo the previous action and I ctrl-z again to go back to where I was before trying to cut and paste my way out of trouble. 

Something bad happened...

There was nothing in the blog. Nothing at all. Six, maybe seven, reviews I'd done since last Saturday were gone! My immediate reaction was to redo my last two actions, I did and still nothing was there. I might have been able to save myself at that point by simply opening Blogger into another window, going to my active blogs page and reopening it, but instead I panicked and shut Chrome down, hoping [HAH!] that all would be fine when I reopened it. There was nothing. Nothing at all. I'd lost all the work I'd done and it wasn't coming back...

It's Thursday morning as I type this and I have to start again. I'm not suggesting the lost blog was the best one I've written, because it probably isn't, but it was cleverly linked because of the way it's written. Because this is essentially a weekly diary of my cultural life, I have a general continuity running through it and I write my best reviews when I've just got out of the specific bath I've just taken - figuratively speaking - which is the best analogy I can think of. I can't even remember everything I've watched, if it wasn't for IMDB on my phone I would have overlooked at least one film, I think there might still be one missing.

So... this could be much different than normal...

Family Affair

My original review opened with great praise for the entire feel of the opening 30 minutes of The Fantastic Four: First Steps before slicing much of it apart or questioning the reasons behind why, at times, this felt like a much longer movie had an axe taken to it. This is a film that promises so much and delivers... only so much. It felt devoid of a place anywhere. The style is faultless; the cod-science is brilliant; the general personality building was just about adequate, but the middle and end felt like it was a subplot taking place behind the main act. 

I don't really get Pedro Pascal's ubiquity and yet he makes a reasonable Reed Richards; but he's not my Reed Richards, not by a long chalk. Vanessa Kirby was much better than I expected, but she's still far too old to play Sue Storm if they wanted to stay faithful to the comics - which on the whole they did. The twist with Johnny Storm is he's not as stupid as you thought he was, but in general Joe Quinn's character felt as though he was there to drive another, ridiculously contrived, sub plot along. However, the woefully underused Ebon Moss-Bacharach as The Thing was a delight; he lit up every scene he was in and captured the essence of Lee and Kirby's Ben Grimm to a tee. 

We heard about an entire subplot which was removed from this film, one involving John Malkovich's 'villain', who was actually Reed's father Nathaniel, who had travelled from the future to steal baby Franklin, but this entire section, which used Julia Garner's Silver Surfer as a foil might have explained her character's sudden volte face in the film's denouement, never got used or was finished. Therefore there are some gaping holes in this movie, but despite this it isn't bad, it just isn't as good as I expected it to be. As a cosmic horror film it's pretty good but it always felt like it was knocking on the door of corny. Julia Garner's Silver Surfer was not as bad as I expected, but equally her character felt underused, with little done to explain why she should betray her boss. Someone at Disney looked at the original film and said it was too long and convoluted and as a result we have a film that promises much and simply doesn't deliver. 6/10

The Evolution of Man

The concluding part of Alien Earth probably wasn't what many expected, except in many ways it was exactly where we were going, albeit with the finer details aside. There was some death and destruction, but in general this was about control as the ones who were being controlled take back control, with some help from a couple of xenomorphs. The overall theme of the show was never really the aliens - they were the smoking gun - it was about what was being created alongside the alien bugs and bogeyman. The 'Lost Boys' were a general annoyance throughout the series, with only Wendy exhibiting a purity that perhaps omnipotence brings, but if you have a smoking gun, you need the hand that's holding it...

The Boy Kavalier has been an excellent antagonist, but even that is brought into question when you understand the true meaning of what he's been doing on his version of Tracey Island. There have been some interesting weaknesses in this series, but like most things Noah Hawley, the ending is usually something you've had loads of clues about, but never managed to piece them all together. Even if the ultimate message of this show was realised, it annoyed a lot of viewers with the journey to get there.

Season two, I expect, will be set many years after this. 

Fake News

One of the great things about The Morning Show is how the story sometimes feels as though it's getting bogged down only for you to realise that it's actually whizzed ahead of you and  is waiting for you to catch up. This second episode felt like there was too much time but not enough detail spent on the idea that Alex (Jennifer Aniston) has been deep-faked and not enough time on Bradley (Reese Witherspoon) and Chip (Mark Duplass) looking as though they're going to work together again.

It felt a little like an old episode with so many of the original cast being involved in things that will ultimately tie everything together, but again it's Billy Crudup's Cory Ellison who gleefully wipes the floor with the other actors as you realise that his smile is there for a reason. It's a great show and while some issues seem to have been conveniently forgotten about, I'm okay with that.

Like a 60s Superman Comic

We're halfway through the second season of Gen V already - woo! Did you know that probably between 1956 and 1969 you could pick up just about every issue of Action Comics or Superman and you probably wouldn't have found much different. Whatever happened in the previous issue was forgotten about so Superman could save Metropolis from this month's threat. This is how this season of Gen V has felt, contrivances like what has happened before can be forgotten about on the conveyor belt of popularity that is this show's underbelly. It really is a massively poorly scripted heap of a mess.

Just because Hamish Linklater appears to be something of a god and has his own agenda - which I'm sure we'll discover what it is and how he's got to the position where he is to be able to enact it - doesn't make this good. He makes a great psychopath/scientist/tortured soul, but he's simply not carrying this patchwork quilt of disgusting ideas and lacklustre plotting. It feels like it was written by a 12-year-old at times and the superpowered pubes was this week's WTF. It simply doesn't feel like a TV drama any longer, but like a puerile comic that has been adapted, dialogue and all.

LA Lives

The search for films made between the mid-1990s and the late 2000s continues - a period when we would have rented films from the video shop so there would have been loads of films we never watched because I didn't want to spend money on them. I remember when Paul Haggis's Crash came out, it was a snap shot film, following the lives of a group of people as they go about their daily lives but end up becoming entwined by circumstances - a kind of six degrees of connection. A racist cop, a black producer and his abused wife, two criminals, a rich woman and other disparate folk who cross each others paths one weekend in LA. It is also the film that has two James Rhodes - War Machine - in it; Don Cheadle and Terrance Howard.

It was an enjoyable movie, which felt like it was a homogenised - PG13 - look at the lives of different people in the Valley. From Sandra Bullock's snobbish, lonely, bitter and angry housewife to Michael Pena's hard working locksmith always labelled by others as bad. My biggest problem with it was I found it tough to focus on the story; maybe the editing didn't agree with me, but it was just an okay thriller, with little of anything special. 6/10

Weird and Pissed Off

This opened the original blog; it was our Saturday night classic for this week (in a series of how many we can find) and as always it was a treat to watch. Ignore some of the cod science, the convenient plot contrivances or the complete chaos of the story, this is a quality cosmic horror story, possibly one of the best. Kurt Russell plays MacReady, who always is, and he's aided and abetted by the likes of Wilfred Brimley (as his career was about to peak), Keith David, Richard Dysart and Donald Moffat - all actors you would have seen in small supporting roles in TV and TV movies.

This remake of the 1951 film The Thing From Another World, which was based on a short story called Who Goes There, is about paranoia, a virus-like alien lifeform and nowhere to hide except everywhere. Set in Antarctica, it is a timeless movie that absolutely barrels along like a contemporary film and has some extraordinary special effects, for 1982. It also has some of the sharpest dialogue you can imagine, with exclamations fitting the real world if anything as crazy was to happen there. So many quotable lines my favourite being the incredulous 'You've got to be fucking kidding me!' When one of the crew sees a head sprout legs and run away. 10/10

Alternate Peace

The latest (or rather last week's) episode of Peacemaker was another almost instantly forgettable instalment. It's been nearly six days since I watched it and I'm struggling to remember much of what happened. It was in places quite compelling and in others 'get the fuck out of here' and the flimsy story - is there actually one? - ends with Chris leaving his reality in favour of the alternate one where he's treated like a hero. This has been a bit of a let down, but it's still far better than Gen V, which I think might stand for Vomit.

First Day Blues

I finally got around to watching Training Day with Denzel Washington and Ethan Hawke, looking so young. It came out during that period of time when I watched films that were on TV or on video and it never really appealed to me back in the Noughties. This is the story of a newly promoted beat cop to detective in drugs, except that's the premise of the story, what it is turns out to be a carefully planned attempt to either use the rookie and turn him into a bad cop or lose him in the subsequent fallout. Except, it never feels like that when you're watching it; it feels like a slightly puzzling series of instalments involving Hawke and Denzel, but they all end up being of consequence to the overall story. It's a watch it carefully and you can see where one of the cops' life is far more fragile than he thought it was. A complex and enjoyable film 7/10

Wizard Number One

We decided recently to watch the entire Harry Potter series of films from the beginning, mainly because it's been years since I watched them and to be honest I remembered so little about Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone I could have been going in a virgin. What a load of shite it is. I mean, it isn't, but you can see how the studio behind it maybe weren't as convinced at its budgetary potential as you might have imagined knowing now what we do now. The special effects were shoddy, I mean really poor; yes a few were okay, but everything from the ghosts to the Cerberus (Fluffy) looked like they were knocked up on an old Amiga consul using codes found in Computer Weekly.

The three kids, Daniel Ratcliffe, Emma Watson and Rupert Grint were all thoroughly annoying and startled by everything, but not in a 'dramatic' way, none of the other characters had any real screen time for you to remember anything but the fact you've just been introduced to them and the story was based on a lot of supposition, gut feelings and the need to drive the plot forward. Don't get me started on Voldemort's nose or the bad, switcheroo, plot devices the baddy and Alan Rickman (looking like he was going to enjoy the pay cheque) were forced to endure. But, it was a film for 11 year olds, like the next one will be for 12 years olds and I'm 63. It's just not aged well and I can see why Amazon want to do it again. 5/10 for the kids.  

The Task Master

Frankly, the new Mark Ruffalo TV series Task has felt like a remake of Dope Thief but with less humour and more incompetence. The crew knocking over the drug dealing biker gang are now running out of options and through trying to shift their 12kgs of Fentanyl they finally fall onto the radar of the FBI, which suggests with more than half of the series having not aired yet that there is going to be some kind of unexpected wrinkle about to happen. The interesting development is that while the biker gang deals with the distinct possibility they might have a rat in their ranks, the man in charge of the Task force discovers one of his team might be tipping off the biker gang - which we suddenly realise could be at least two of Ruffalo's three man team, suggesting it will be neither of them and the person we least expect.

Peace Off, Man

I'm really struggling with the overall lack of quality in this second season of Peacemaker. The decision to not have a story and just see if they could develop the characters has backfired and while we finally discover the downside of Chris's preferred new reality it felt like a so what moment rather than something important. This was really a low point in quality, in acting and in general; a slapstick episode with naff comedy and a contrived set up. Even the sudden appearance by Lex Luthor, tying this in with the Superman film, didn't do anything to enhance this at all. This has been a massive let down and it has only helped with the demise of superhero shows. I'm bitterly disappointed that this could jump a shark with such gusto and do it so badly. This episode especially felt like it was made cheaply, which considering it was written and directed by Gunn doesn't auger well for the coming years...

What's Up Next?

Hopefully not a week like this one. The Wigtown Book Festival is on for the next week and a bit, so it'll be interesting to see what time we get to even watch anything. Not that we're going to be attending - the wife is working and I'm doing everything else for the next nine days. We also have a house guest for the weekend and with the exception of this Saturday, the weather forecast doesn't look too bad. 

Viewing is going to be much of the same, TV wise, and will include some things you might not typically expect me to watch; plus there's a new series of Slow Horses which I'm not watching until at least five episodes are in the can. 

As usual, blah de blah de blah...

Album Review - LSD by Cardiacs

LSD by Cardiacs

This band caused a schism in my musical tastes about ten years ago, I discovered them and for a while everything changed. Despite getting into them after they'd ceased to exist is immaterial because Cardiacs will always be Tim and Jim Smith, but mainly Tim, because he was the musical genius pulling the band's strings. Not only was he good at his own music, he was also a natural arranger and that's what made Cardiacs unique. This is a new album that contains both Tim and Jim Smith, but I don't necessarily think this would have sounded the way it does had Tim been in a position to have been able to complete it. His own cardiac problems put paid to that scenario, so what we have is maybe 50% of an album that is Tim Smith and might not have had much changed from when it was recorded. We also get what feels to me another 50% of this album that feels, in itself, like two things - the need to sound as Tim like as possible and to do something that would have made him happy.

The schism I mentioned in the opening paragraph was the day I listened to Dirty Boy from the Sing To God album, which came out in 1996. The thing is Cardiacs had managed extremely successfully to stay off my radar from the late 1970s all the way until around 2012 (if my Facebook memories are anything to go by) when a friend posted a link with just the word 'this' written on it. It was the aforementioned Dirty Boy and I listened to it and it grabbed me. It was a remarkable thing because based on one song I became a disciple - a pondy - and I went out of my way to get everything they'd ever done...

But here's the thing; while I still believe that Sing to God is the greatest album ever made (not the best, or my favourite, or anything subjective, just the greatest album ever made) and I also like playing a lot of the stuff from 1988 thru to 1999, I don't play it very often. The rest of the stuff, old and live I don't ever listen to any more and many of the side projects, solo stuff and experimental music Tim was putting out between 1990 and 2008 varies in quality. Occasionally I'll listen to Tim's solo (and often not remembering much about it and realising how generally meh it was). Despite feeling like I'm a huge Tim Smith fan, I'm very selective with my Tim Smith tracks. There are maybe four albums and then an album's worth of tracks that I'm a huge fan of, the rest... meh not so much. A hugely inventive musician and songwriter, but he often wrote songs I wasn't keen on. I kind of think if he was alive and well today he would be making music I'd want to listen to though.

Which brings us to LSD which finally has arrived 16 years after it should have. I actually gave it a couple of days before listening, which maybe says more about my general personal realisation that Cardiacs possibly aren't musical deities and I've been hoovered up by the romance and tragedy as much the music. The thing is I think that proved to be a benefit because this morning when I realised it was there, I put it on and my expectations had levelled off. What I was treated to was what I said way up at the beginning of this - 50% Tim Smith and 50% homage, copy or imitation of Tim Smith. I felt that maybe 10 of the tracks sounded like the band I love and those tracks are quite divine, in varying degrees. Some of it borrowed a little too much from previous albums, which instead of continuity felt like patches or homage themed fixes to a production problem. Then there's the three, maybe four, tracks that sound like someone else singing a Cardiacs song and it doesn't matter what it sounds like, if it hasn't got Tim Smith's voice it ain't Cardiacs. 

It's a reasonably good album hindered by this nagging feeling that with the exception of a few tracks it probably shouldn't exist at all. I don't know why that bothers me, but it does. Finality, I suppose. It's an album that I really liked when I first heard it, but after four or five plays, I felt I didn't need to listen to it again. In fact, I put it on the other day and promptly switched it off and put something else on instead. I think my love affair with Cardiacs is over. It's probably due to the time away from each other and also the fact that I became infatuated with a band that, at their best, were brilliant, but suffered far too much from bombast and an occasionally overhyped reputation. I would have given this album an 8 a couple of days after its release, I think it's more of a 6 now.

My Cultural Life: 10 (and Other Ratings)

What's Up?

My monthly pub quiz at my local was last night. Yet again it was plagued by technology issues and that was after I'd got very stressed out about the sudden changes to the seating plan and my own stupid mistake that left one team without a table. We got there in the end but it does raise serious questions about Wi-Fi, routers, and all the other connectivity based operations we have our homes and businesses linked into. If it goes down, everything goes down and that can be from a break in internet coverage to what happened last night, a sudden fault that seemingly had no reason to happen which took 45 minutes to sort out. Ten years ago I would either have laughed or exploded.

Anyhow, it wasn't my most professional of performances, but it turned out to be one of the best - one of my contestants came up to me and said I was like Jack Dee but more honest, which I'll take over a certain dead 'comedian' who I was always likened to when I was younger. I had a few new teams, but in general I pretty much knew the other teams, even if I didn't know the people personally. Therefore I seemed to morph into a wannabe comedian hosting a pub quiz. The quiz would have overrun even if it hadn't been for the other issues because everyone was having a good time even though some of them were getting ribbed by me for some of their answers.

The wife thinks I suffer from stage fright, because until I put that mic in my hand I'm a bag of stress and anxiety, which tends to set off breathlessness, which I then have to handle and when I have a 45 minute delay... That's where my usual, polished spiel went out of the window and I was just me. I toned down the swearing, because I do swear a lot and it's a 'kids' show for adults, at least that's what a good pub quiz should be; camps of extremely sociable people having banter and laughs and even though they're playing for £200 the quiz is second to the fun. So, yeah, if I suffer from stage fright, it brings the best out in me.

Anyhow, it was a close run thing in the end with only about 6 points separating the top 6 teams and even the teams scoring low thanked me for a good night. It costs them £2 to spend three hours listening to someone talk and doing some thinking for yourself. I bloody love a good pub quiz; I just miss not being able to do one.

Oh, and I stood in my first ever election - as a community councillor - and finished last with 44 votes. That's really all I have to say about it, really. I know I have a reputation for being outspoken and anyone that knows me here will tell you I am passionate about where I live; two things you would imagine would be ideal for being on a council. But it was not to be and my brief flirtation with local politics is over as quickly as it started. I'm glad I did it. I'd like to thank the 43 other people who voted for me, even if they never see this. I think it's time, with my health and anxiety issues, that I retired from this kind of stuff and aimed for a stress free rest of my life.

The Greatest?

Our plan for our wedding anniversary was to go to the pub and watch the live band with many of our friends. However, as afternoon turned into evening, the storm clouds gathered and by 7pm we were in the middle of a series of thunderstorms and it was freaking at least two of the dogs out - kind of in the same way as fireworks do. The wife, concerned about two of the dogs, suggested we didn't go out and as we'd been out for a nice meal the night before, we decided to sit in and watch The Shawshank Redemption, a film that is now regarded as the greatest film ever made, or at least the world's favourite movie. The big question for all... Is it?

It is an adaptation of Stephen King's Rita Hayworth and the Shawshank Redemption, a novella the horror writer penned in the 1980s, which was one of the first stories without anything ghostly or supernatural in it. It is one of King's greatest stories and perhaps the reason why the adaptation is so good is because, while it does take a few liberties, it remains pretty much as the written story. Tim Robbins and Morgan Freeman are the stars; a tale of rights and wrongs, patience and virtues and friendship in the face of extreme adversity. It's about crooks on the inside and even worse ones on the outside and it is worth every one of its 9.3 rating on IMDB. It's maybe not as... magical as I remember it when I first saw it, but it is something very special and if you've never seen it, you should. 10/10

The Biggest of Hearts

The big fear now is after two nights of brilliant films we're obviously headed for some real shit for the rest of the week... I know Tom Hanks is an acquired taste; there are people out there who hate him - my eldest brother irrationally dislikes him and I really don't understand why. We've seen a lot of Hanks films, but A Man Called Otto has lived a charmed life in our house. I originally recorded it off of Film4 and it sat on the hard drive for about six months, then one day I deleted it because I couldn't see us watching it. About a month after that I caught five minutes of it on Film4 (again) and decided to download it, which I did, in May and it has sat on the Flash Drive of Doom ever since, being ignored, like it was when it was on the TV's hard drive. We finally watched it on Sunday night and... well... if we'd have watched it sooner we wouldn't have had such a fabulous Sunday night.

Otto is a curmudgeonly old bastard; he lives in a gated cul-de-sac and he used to be chairman of the residents' committee. Now as a grumpy old widower with nothing better to do with his life than be a miserable old git, he rules over his street with an iron fist (not that many people take him too seriously, which, if you watch carefully gives you some clue to what Otto might have been like before his wife died). One day, Marisol and her family move in over the road and in a really unfriendly way, Otto is very neighbourly and Marisol decides she likes him and from that moment on Otto's life changes. Very slowly at first, but soon he rediscovers how to live and it is such a lovely, funny, tender, moving story that the wife blubbed like a baby when it finished and I felt like joining her. It is a truly wonderful film that I thought they'd stopped making in the 21st century. 10/10

Spanish Send Off

The film that has been on the FDoD for the longest time has finally been watched. Pan's Labyrinth has been sitting unwatched for over three years until tonight (Monday). I've never really known what I would expect from this; the wife has seen it but a long time ago and she was worried it would be impenetrable and difficult to comprehend, but in reality it's a Spanish Civil war drama with a fantasy subplot, which may be, but probably isn't, happening to the young girl in the story.

Ofelia and her pregnant, but unwell, mother have been moved to the foothills of somewhere in Spain, to be with the Captain of the guard, the mother's new husband who is a cruel and ruthless man hunting rebels and communists. The young girl is desperately unhappy but learns about a fairy tale involving a princess from a different realm who is reborn on Earth and has one chance to return to her home. To achieve this she must brave the labyrinth belonging to Pan, a faun who is guiding the young girl. What this more probably is showing are the allegorical parallels between what is actually happening and what Ofelia believes will happen. The special effects are stunning for a 2006 film made with a small budget in Spain and it has gone on to become a cult classic. It's not a difficult film to follow, although it does leave a lot open to interpretation and scepticism. 7/10

Team Work

The second episode of Task at least propelled the story forward a considerable amount. The first episode seemed to focus on the grim and while this is no different it at least answers some questions and explains certain motivations. It is a TV show full of dysfunctional individuals on both sides of the law. Mark Ruffalo's newly put together team are getting used to working with him and each other and we discover the big thing hanging over Ruffalo's family, which I guessed but felt no real joy at guessing right. This was a much better, intelligently paced episode and while the similarities to Dope Thief are strong, it feels like this has even more menace and unpredictability. If they'd dropped this and episode one at the same time or sewn them together as a feature length opener, then this would have been much better.

Alien Language

The craziest thing in Alien Earth has to be the octopus eye creature, which has been pulling all the strings since it first got taken to 'Tracey Island' - this super intelligent eyeball has been responsible for the majority of alien security breaches throughout the life of this show and finally the Boy Kavalier has realised this and plans on trying to talk to it, especially now it has comically shown him that it understands everything that is said to it. However, while the eye that has hijacked a sheep is the most fascinating thing going on in this series, the rest of it has actually started to make some sense, even if it's all a bit too far-fetched. But, hey, having a synthetic human being with the mind of a real child being treated like an alien's mother and two other synthetic humans with real children's minds doing something catastrophically stupid... I'm going to stop, mainly because I don't want to get into it. This has been a below par series so far, but this penultimate episode was by far the ... I'm loathe to say... best. I still think the end of this series is going to end in some kind of weapon's grade carnage, but we might have seen that already and the finale might surprise us all.

Meanwhile, Back in The Boysville

I'm growing a little tired of The Boys universe and I didn't fawn over Gen V when it came out, something like three years ago now. Allegedly, almost half of the original season two had to be scrapped after the real life death of actor Chance Perdomo, who played Andre; but whether that's true or not this has always felt like a poor sibling to The Boys and that stopped being essential viewing after season two, when the need to shock overtook the need for a good story. The problem Gen V has, even if they're trying to dupe us into believing otherwise, is that it will always be the spin-off show and it doesn't matter how many characters from the bigger show turn up it's not going to change. The other problem is quite simple, I don't give a fuck about any of the characters, even the cute Emma (Lizze Broadway) is only just about bearable, but is so schizophrenic in her behaviour depending on who is writing her. 

The second season starts with so much contrivance you would have thought the show's writers just said, 'Ah fuck it, let's do what we want, no one will scrutinise it for too long if we have a man who can drink an entire keg of beer through his arse!' So that's what they did. Hamish Linklater joins the cast as the new Dean of Godolkin and my guess is he's probably going to be Godolkin himself or his son, otherwise we wouldn't have been introduced to the founder of the college back in 1967. All the rebel students who got locked up at the end of season one are - unfathomably - back at uni being encouraged to be social media stars again, apart from Andre, who everyone gets damp eyes about because he's dead. 

Amazon dropped the opening three episodes this week; it's not unusual, but equally it whiffs a little, but maybe that's me. However by the end of episode three something happens that you didn't see coming but promises to spice things up a lot.

Bad Morning America

It doesn't seem fair that we have to wait two years for every new series of The Morning Show. I say this because we came to season one four years after it debuted and that meant we watched season two almost straight after, then season three dropped while we were watching season two and now it's been a little over two years and we get to find out what happened to Bradley Jackson (Reese Witherspoon) over her brother's part in the January 7th insurrection and how Alex Levy (Jennifer Aniston) and her conspirators did with their hijacking of the takeover of UBA. 

You have to wait almost 40 minutes before Bradley's name is even mentioned; she's working at a college in West Virginia and is very much 'working' for the FBI or Homeland Security - in a seemingly slightly far-fetched plot wrinkle; but someone wants her back on The Morning Show, while the current hosts and Alex are gearing up for the 2024 Olympics from Paris. There's also the shadow of another Trump election victory on the horizon and Cory Ellison (Billy Crudup) - still by far the best thing in this show - is trying to make a movie in LA, but his name is shit even though he was exonerated of any wrong doing in the UBA takeover or whatever consequences arose from the Bradley Jackson business. This is quality TV and I breathed an inward sigh of relief as I was watching it - grown up TV is back; huzzah!

On the Job Experience

It's been almost 25 years since Training Day hit the cinemas. I'd never been particularly keen on watching it but I can't give you a definitive reason; it's not like I'm not a fan of Denzel Washington and I've seen very few Ethan Hawke films I haven't liked, yet it managed to escape me until it turned up on BBC2 one night a few months ago and I shoved it on the hard drive for a cold autumn night. Well, tonight wasn't cold (but it's coming) and considering this takes place over one working day in the life of an LAPD detective and the new rookie he's taking out, plenty happened. It's a strange movie because the first hour you're not really sure if what you are watching isn't some elaborate test by the detective to best ameliorate Hawke's character into the job, but then it goes off in a direction that you didn't see coming. It's a difficult film to follow at times, especially when there's lots of jive talking and LA slang used, but it has a solid story, some good sequences and an ending that felt all too real, given what we know about US cops. 7/10

What's Up Next

Much of the same. Much of the same.