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...

My Cultural Life - Octopus Prime

What's Up?

I feel there's lots I could write about, but most of it is depressing. The state of the world is a bit crap, so why should I add to everyone's misery? That said, I've had an up and down week. I participated in my first pub quiz for EIGHT years - in a team consisting of me, the wife and Jones - and we won £50; finished first by two points. On the other hand, I was prescribed something for my anxiety and like so many other drugs (legal or otherwise), my body went 'fuck off, I'm not having that in me.'

It's been a constant with me. My body doesn't seem to like very many chemicals. It took the doctors' four attempts to find a blood pressure medicine that didn't screw me up (one of them gave me anaphylactic shock!) - I am the side effects king! The most frustrating thing about it all is I now have to try something else and see if that has no side effects - never mind whether it works, just whether it doesn't...

Other than that, it's been freezing all week. Not bad weather, there's been plenty of sunshine, but the temperature has been nothing to write home about - or maybe it has: "Dear friend, it's been fucking Baltic this week! I've got my fur-lined pants on."

Right, go read some reviews now...

Rocky & The Man

It's the middle of May and finally a BIG film has landed. It seems like ages since Project Hail Mary came out, but it finally arrived on streaming platforms and DVD... was the wait worth it? Well, if you can look past the slightly comical parts and probable iffy science, this is a flipping excellent movie. It hooks you almost immediately and while it's on for almost two and a half hours, it only really feels like it drags towards the end and this is a minor quibble, because for most of the film it just whizzes along at a great pace. Ryan Gosling, who I really don't rate much as a comedy actor, does an excellent job as the eccentric and a little bit neurotic Ryland Grace, a scientist shunned by the establishment because of his wacky theories, who is asked to join a project to discover why the sun is dying and why it isn't just our sun, but almost every star in the galaxy...

There's a lot more to this than a review can really do justice, but once he arrives at the only star in the galaxy which isn't affected by this 'virus' he meets an alien, who he calls Rocky and the two are the only things to try and come up with a cure to be able to save their own planets. It's tense, funny, slightly silly (but that's okay), is jam-packed full of modern culture and film references and was absolutely great fun to watch. This is a mainly feel good film, with a couple of unexpected WTF moments, but it's going to be vying for Movie of the Year, I expect. 9/10

Octopus's Garden

Sally Field will be 80 in November, but she doesn't really look it in the twee, but enjoyable, Remarkably Bright Creatures. This is the story of an elderly woman who works in an aquarium to keep herself active; she has a tragic past, a dead husband and a son, also dead, by mysterious circumstances. She meets Lewis Pullman, a bit of a drifter, who is searching for his father, who he believes is a wealthy construction engineer. Their stories are brought together by Marcellus - the octopus, voiced by Alfred Molina - who is an escape artist and longs to be back out in the ocean. Okay, this felt a little like a made for TV film - it's on Netflix - but it doesn't stop it from being a nice little story about lost people finding something they never expected. 7/10

A Warm Hug

I often allude to surprises when I write my What's Up Next outro. Things that turn up that I had no warning of that make viewing worthwhile. One programme that simply pushes all the right buttons is Tucci in Italy. Stanley Tucci is an engaging host as he travels round Italy searching for food, culture and that specific Italian way of life. It is an exquisite travelogue programme, that just drips character, like the juice from a prime cut of meat. The second series dropped on Tuesday and it's like HDTV was made for it. Every moment of this superb series makes me want to go to Italy; the problem is it's a big country and I want to see all of it and I'm far too old. Highly recommended.

Peed-o

30 years. It's been 30 years since we last watched Speed and Jesus, time hasn't been kind to this movie. Cartoon villains, comical bombs, overwrought over acting, a script that could have been used for a spoof Die Hard film and Sandra Bullock, who treats driving a bomb at 50mph as stressful as drinking a coffee on a French avenue. This is a truly stupid movie. As someone who has driven for over 45 years, I can tell you that keeping anything going at 50mph or higher is easy if you're on the M6 further north than the Lakes, but in LA? Turning corners and hitting cars? Not a chance. The thing is even the camera work made the bus seem like it was ambling along at a leisurely pace. Keanu Reeves set acting back about 75 years with his riveting performance as Wooden Cop. Dreadful. 4/10

Death and Glory

The penultimate episode of The Boys was a strange beast. I felt it needed to move the story on towards a conclusion, but instead it focused on individuals and their motivation. The issue now is whether to fight Homelander or run away and hide and the way he's having swathes of the population wiped out is running away even an option? Billy, Frenchie and Kimiko are trying to recreate Soldier Boy in a lab, while Mother, Annie and Hughie are on a mission, but for what exactly isn't really made as clear as you'd like. There's an ending for a couple of characters and it was all a rather lowkey affair with added Gen V-ers, OTT violence and gore.

Not Funny

Suddenly Widow's Peak stopped being funny and wandered into the hugely disturbing. This fourth episode focuses on Patricia (Kate O'Flynn), the deputy mayor, who so far has seemed like a timid mouse in the town, but seems has a past that she can't live down. This was a snapshot of her life and how she's desperately lonely, unhappy and wants either friends or their respect. It all gets very strange as she organises a party, which seems to be a bad idea, but ends up being very... busy and as weird as fuck. There is some very odd imagery in this week's episode and it's just got a little more interesting. Great stuff.

Orgy of Violence

There are two notable things about the latest Marvel Television special Punisher: One Last Kill: it's much shorter than I expected and the actual story is quite light. However, it was just over 45 minutes of visceral, angst-fuelled lunacy. The premise appears to be simple; Frank has wiped out the last crime family he feels are responsible for his family's death and now believes he has nothing to live for. The streets are burning and lawless, but he's not interested. Then the widow of the family he killed appears at his tenement building and tells him that she has put a hit out on him - she has offered money to anyone who kills him and she's told them all where he lives. What follows is a violent ballet; a relentless period of time where Frank fights for his life against a constant stream of people wanting to kill him. It is quite extraordinary for the company that has brought us so many shite movies over the last few years to deliver something as raw and fantastic as this.

Things Fall Apart

There was a period when both the wife and I wondered why we were watching Your Friends & Neighbours and now we're seven episodes into season two and it's still an excellent show that has gone in directions we never saw coming. This week life for three of the Coopers goes from bad to worse - Mel gets involved with a chemical toilet; Tori gets arrested and Coop starts to discover just what a scary man Owen Ash is. Hunter is off partying with Ash's daughter and she's as dodgy as her father, meanwhile Samantha also discovers that her boyfriend (Ash) is probably a very big crook. This is quite a brilliant show, made all the better for Jon Hamm's louche acting style.

Worlds To Conquer

As we approach the final few episodes of this season of For All Mankind things are slotting into place. Mars is about to be invaded by hostile forces of the M6, requiring the revolutionaries to do something drastic; while 900million miles away, the crew of the Sojourner miscalculated their landing and are too far away from the place where they believe they might find life, so they have to take chances, which will put their lives at risk. There are new alliances formed which we probably didn't see coming. I've enjoyed this series even if the wife hasn't; it's been claustrophobic and compact, but I think that was the point. it has been renewed for one final season, set in 2026...

What's Up Next?

There's all manner of stuff to be watched and I can't be arsed to list it all. 

My Cultural Life - Before the Reformation

What's Up?

Why so glum? Is it anything to do with the rise of Führage? Are you looking at the English council elections and worrying about the future, for yourself and those you love? Well, fear not, my friends and regular readers. All is not lost, at least it's not lost if the people take notice.

The gains made by Reform UK Ltd™ do make grim reading. However, if you've taken any notice of what's happened at council already controlled by Reform UK Ltd™ you will see just how badly they are doing and what a right royal cock up their wannabe Nazi councillors are making of having a little bit of power. These are, after all, mainly racist Tory voters mixed with racist Labour voters who don't like brahn people.

Reform UK Ltd™ do a bad job at running councils and their councils have no reflection of their party politics - they can't; Reform UK Ltd™'s USP isn't covered by councils.

We just have to sit back and hope that the media point out just how badly Reform UK Ltd™ are running councils and before long you'll be growing tired of Führage's pointing the finger at everyone else and blaming them. You will start to wonder what this mob would be like if they ran the country rather than just a county council out in the sticks.

Local politics is a different beast, but not different enough for people not to equate the chaos Reform UK Ltd™ brings to the party and what Führage wants to do to the country. This is good, because we have three years to see just how bad they are; three years of other parties pointing and laughing at the weekly soap opera that these 'politicians' bring to the table. Three years is just enough for people to go 'What the actual fuck?' Enough time to educate people and for them to learn... Yes, I know this is remarkably optimistic for me, but it's also very feasible - Reform UK Ltd™ has nowhere to hide, any longer. They have to deliver and what they deliver won't be less immigrants, because councils don't do that.

It could be a fun ride. Don't give up, just yet.

Everyone Loses

Does it really matter what happens at the end of Daredevil: Born Again? If the MCU is really going to end and a new one reborn in its place, there's likely to be a new Matthew 'Daredevil' Murdock, a new Karen Page, a new Foggy Nelson and a new Wilson 'Kingpin' Fisk. A new twist, with younger actors, in a new direction. Or at least that is what should happen after all the upcoming Avengers movies. We might see one more appearance by Daredevil in the Spider-Man film this summer and that will probably be it; so the final part of this excellent, but at times slow, series was full of revelations, psychopaths, karma and fantastic realism - not realistic, just more real than fantasy. There is the feeling that there's unfinished business, some of the loose ends feel like a blue touch paper has been lit rather than a chapter closing and maybe a third season before the universe goes pop wouldn't be a bad thing...

King of the World

Everything has been leading up to this point. All of the episodes of The Boys since it became a lot less interesting has been about Homelander becoming all important and that essentially happens in an episode that I saw coming almost from the start. The 'to kill the king, first you must make the king think he can't be killed' phase has been entered and that's what the next two episodes are going to be about as The Boys fail spectacularly in their mission to stop Homelander from locating V1 and becoming immortal. All that's left is some loose ends and the downfall - either by an allergic reaction to the drug that makes him god or by something stupid, probably accidentally started by the Deep. Two more weeks to go and then we can forget all about this nonsense.

Taking it Up the Gary

An unexpected TV treat! Something that came out of nowhere to brighten up our televisual experience! A bonus episode of The Bear subtitled Gary about Richie (Ebon Moss-Bacharach) and his cousin Mikey Berzatto (Jon Bernthal) on a road trip from Chicago to Gary, Indiana to drop a package off for 'Jimmy'. It's Frank Castle and Ben Grimm On The Road - what could go wrong? On paper it looked like a no brainer - two great actors, a fantastic series and a chance to find out more about Carmy's dead brother, Michael. However, after the near hour long special all I could think was 'Why? Why did they bother?' It's just an hour of shouty banter, mucking about and pain - because there's a Berzatto involved and mental anguish and paranoia go hand in hand with that family. This was dull, uninspiring and really pointless; even the reason for the road trip was essentially because FedEx were on strike. A wasted opportunity and a wasted hour of my time.

X-Men: Dark & Stinky 

The wife had a Saturday night out with the girls, drinking cocktails and eating fancy nibbles, so that left me alone in the house (apart from three dogs), with a couple of beers and the chance to inflict X-Men: Dark Phoenix on myself, because she didn't want to watch it again. This is a movie that has a 5.7 rating on IMDB, not the worst Marvel film ever, but obviously one of the worst; maybe this is because Sophie Turner - who plays Jean Grey - is about as good at acting as I am at ovulating. The thing is, however bad Turner's 'Marvel Girl' was it wasn't helped by a script and storyline that could have been written by a blind dog with half its brain removed. This is a truly dreadful film and should serve as a warning to Disney about how awful the X-Men are as a visual concept. In comics it works, on film it stinks to the rafters. However, if you can get past the shonky story, the bad acting, the confusing character arcs and the way the X-Men go from heroes to zeros in the space of two minutes, this is a bang average film. It maybe wasn't as awful as I remembered it, but frankly, I didn't remember it. 4/10

A Game of Lies

I was quite surprised at how many Leonardo DiCaprio movies I haven't seen. Some of them we'll probably never watch, but there are quite a few of the others that I simply missed out on. Body of Lies is one of them; the story of an American CIA agent in the Middle East - post Iraq War - trying to track down an Osama Bin Laden type Jihadist. It's a complicated thriller about the USA inventing a new terrorist - using a legitimate and unaware Iraqi architect - to flush out the guy they really want. Russell Crow plays Leo's boss - an arsehole who cares nothing for the people who do his bidding and Mark Strong - as the head of the Jordanian Secret Service, who cares about the safety of Leo because he trusts him as a person, add to the mix. It's maybe a little harsh at times, occasionally a bit turgid, but I was distracted for half the film by the events in a football match I was following. 7/10 

Angel is Bollocks

FFS. I have to stop doing this. After a couple of months, we decided to watch the third of the Gerard Butler trilogy about the President's bodyguard, after Olympus and London, this time it was Angel Has Fallen - a movie shot almost entirely in Bulgaria and Hertfordshire, supposedly set in the USA. This was a spectacular load of shite. It felt like a badly made Straight to Video film from the 90s and I actually said out loud towards the end 'Is this ever going to fucking end?' It's about Butler being framed for the attempted assassination of the President (Morgan Freeman), despite it looking totally like a set up. Awful. 2/10

Brilliantly Ridiculous

My dear friend, Phil H [yes, I know how that looks] asked me the other day if I'd ever reviewed Lucy and I hadn't; simply because it was last watched before I started my regular reviews blog. Therefore, I decided to watch it again, so that I could give it a review. What an absolutely bonkers movie it is; almost from the opening scene to the ending, it's a feature designed to blow your mind. Scarlett Johansson plays Lucy, a rather below average fun girl who gets roped into dropping off a suitcase full of an experimental drug to a violence happy Korean crime lord, who then decides to use her as a mule. Unfortunately, the drug - derived from foetal DNA - leaks into her body and starts a chemical reaction that allows her to use more and more of her cerebral brain; effectively making her a superhero and then a god. It's largely just a crazy idea that isn't always developed or delivered as well as you'd like - it is great fun though. 7/10

Zzzzzzzzz

I've never seen Barry Levinson's 1996 movie Sleepers and now that I have I probably will never watch it again. This sprawling story tells the lives of four good Catholic boys, who through a stupid prank end up serving time in a boys' correctional unit and are changed forever by it. It later picks up their story when they're older, as Brad Pitt's lawyer and Jason Patric's journalist hatch a plan to expose the correctional facility and the guards who worked there, in a daring court case that risks everything. The thing is, even with Robert De Nero, this was as dull as washing up water and remarkably superficial for a film that goes into some detail and still doesn't deliver. I suppose it needed to be made. 4/10

The Wake

Last week's Your Friends & Neighbours ended with a shocking thing and this week the aftermath of the shock is played out, mainly in Coop's folks' house. It's a very good episode, possibly one of the best of the entire show. It perfectly encapsulated what a 'funeral day' is like if you're connected to the corpse; it does overplay the familial tensions, but in general as a 'snapshot' section it's almost perfect. There is also a minor revelation, which the wife saw coming almost immediately, but kudos to the excellent Jon Hamm for being almost perfect for 40 minutes. 

Do the Hag

I wasn't completely sold on Widow's Bay after the opening two episodes, but this week I think I bought the farm. It's a clever little thing, something that balances humour with horror almost perfectly and while there were still plenty of intentional and unintentional LOL moments, there's a distinctly creepy undertone appearing, which suggests to me that while funny stuff will continue, the tone of the 'horror' is going to be ramped up. This, so far, has been a great addition to our weekly viewing and this week is all about a curse from the sea.

One Giant Leap

Man sets foot on Titan, a moon of Saturn! Set six months after the last episode, Sojourner has arrived at its destination, but things are looking bad and they might have to abort and go back to Mars without achieving their mission. Meanwhile, back on Mars, the breakaway government is struggling to both feed and keep everyone happy, six months after they set up an interim leadership and despite the threats from Earth. Dev hatches a plan to wrestle back control of the planet, but it goes disastrously wrong, meaning the situation has become impossible to guess. While on Titan, we could be about to witness the most incredible schism in mankind's belief system ever. This was one of the better episodes - despite the dance scene - of this season of For All Mankind.

What's Up Next?

This could be another short week because of possible plans. I'm going to a pub quiz on Wednesday - attending not presenting. The wife and I have split the team up; she's joining the reigning Phil's Quiz champions - making them pretty formidable, while I am joining Jones and her team to try and ensure they don't finish last. I've given myself an underdog role, because I will still want to win, so it's pitting me against them and I'm up for that - a shot to nothing if ever there was one.

I was going to review Stephen King's Never Flinch in these pages, but I feel so ambivalent about it, I wasn't sure if I'd praise it to the hilt or eviscerate it. I really like the Holly Gibney character and here she's placed in a situation that King does consummately and there's some elements of an older book by King, which I cherish as my favourite book of his, but it just falls a bit flat. It's all foreplay and no orgasm, yet it has the ability to want to keep you reading. Oh look, I've just reviewed it...

More of the same, maybe something different, always on a Saturday.