Who, what, where?

Picture this. 8 years of age and my first introduction to British SF is Jon Pertwee as Doctor Who. I was an avid watcher, never missed an episode. Then Tom Baker came along and within two or three multi-part episodes I'd given up. Dipped in again when Peter Davidson took over, dipped out with Colin Baker and didn't really bother with Sylvester McCoy (although I have heard some of the stories were considerably darker than the show's appearance would lead you to believe). I still struggle to like the Dr Who film with Paul McGann, although I do agree he might have made an interesting doctor given a longer run.

So when Dr Who relaunched in 2008, I didn't really consider myself a fan, but I was prepared to give it a go and subsequently, like a bad habit, I have been unable to give it up, even if I am just a one-watch and done kind of 'fan'. However, that said, before Christmas, on a whim, I watched the relaunched first series with Chris Ecclestone and was surprised at how dark it was for a family TV program - because that is what it has always been - and how surprisingly good some of the episodes were, even if some of them were maybe a little... naively executed. There's a reason for telling you this, because I'm now watching David Tennant's first full season as the doctor and Rose Tyler's last and it is also a strange mix of excellent and naff. I also think we forget just how vengeful the Doctor could be back in those days. He wasn't averse to killing a few aliens in the name of peace. 

Russell T Davies had a lot of detractors, but compared to what was to follow, a lot of what he did in those first two seasons hasn't been bettered. So the news that he's returning to run the show again is actually a positive thing in my mind, because the good Doctor needs some major surgery and quickly because there's a strange parallel with the original run; it becomes less important, more insignificant and ends up poorly executed, or in this case, jumping the shark.

From Matt Smith, through Peter Capaldi and Jodie Whitaker, the Doctor has become sanitised, homogenised and not at all the scourge of evil throughout the universe that shudders at his name if they're thinking of invading a planet and hear he's about. Whereas Ecclestone and Tennant had no problem chucking dynamite at a threat, more and more we've seen dependency on the sonic screwdriver and the Doctor's cod diplomacy. The edges are so rounded now, the program is a rolling ball and it's heading towards a black hole.

I've heard plausible rumours that Tennant might reprise his role, but as another incarnation and as a transition for the next in a couple of years; the clever thing about DW PR is it manages to keep a lot under its hat and this could just be a red herring to move journos away from the story. Then I got thinking, what if I was Russell T Davies, what would I do? Not who I'd replace Whitaker with, I really don't care who the Doctor is as long as he/she's good, but where do you take the story? Especially now there's this massive elephant in the room called ... is it the Lost Child? Whatever the Doctor is from whatever other galaxy he/she originally came from it has opened up a can of worms that is going to be difficult to ignore. It renders the rules fans thought there was around the Doctor obsolete and opens the door to massive abuse from the wrong people. I don't want to sound melodramatic, but it's broke and needs fixing and if it isn't fixed it'll probably disappear from our screens for another ten years or so. I enjoy it, even if I do fall asleep a lot.

So, what would I do? Thinking about this logically, the Dallas option would be the most likely, with The Master having manipulated events in a massive sting type operation to finally vanquish his foe, but how fucking lame is that? Too many bits of the box is open to try and stuff that back inside. So how do you deal with that and all the subsequent stuff that has given the Doctor an almost eternal existence? Perhaps you don't. Perhaps you meet it head on. Here's my take:

Finish Chibnall's run with Jodie Whitaker by not regenerating, but disappearing completely. Just zoning out - gone. Just Jaz is left, in the Tardis. End.

First of the 'specials' - Jaz is searching for other former assistants, looking for clues, but is coming up blank at almost every turn. Kate Stewart and her team are doing what they can and even Jack Harkness has been brought in. The Doctor is gone and now there's a new threat looming in the form of aliens the human race are unable to communicate with, are immune to any force and are enslaving the planet...
Glimpses of three different people, lost on unknown planets are scattered throughout the episode.

Second of the 'specials' - Earth and its inhabitants are enslaved by the unknown alien race, but they offer no specific threat; everyone is confined to their dwellings. Jaz, who is using the Tardis as her home, wakes to the sound of the ship moving. The Tardis is flying itself. When it stops, she goes outside and there is a fantastic paradise, sitting alone is a woman. Back on Earth, a breakthrough is made in trying to communicate with the aliens. They are not interested in conquest, they have come for one purpose, to find the one humans call the Doctor. Back wherever Jaz is, she is sitting with the woman who seems to be shifting between young, middle-aged and old. The woman says to Jaz that she must take an amulet she hands her and find the Doctor and once she'd succeeded they must end this forever...

Third of the 'specials' - As UNIT struggles to tell the aliens that they have no idea where the Doctor is, Jaz is back inside the Tardis staring at a glowing console. There is pocket where the Doctor placed all of her memories and Jaz deduces that she has to put the amulet inside it as it's glowing at her furiously. As soon as she does this, the Tardis starts up again and dematerialises. The Tardis makes three stops and each time a different individual comes inside claiming to be the Doctor, but unable to gain control of the Tardis which appears to be running the show. Jaz is recognised by each of the three claiming to be the Doctor and all three say things that only the Doctor knew. [At this point I should point out, I don't care if one Doctor is a man, a woman and a dog] The Tardis then transports them back to Earth. The planet is in a bad way because the people have now been trapped inside their homes for over a month. Illness and hunger is rampant across the planet, the aliens refuse to even communicate with the people unless the give them the Doctor.

The Doctors arrive just as the they start to merge with each other. They work out what happened; the regeneration was interrupted by the arrival of the aliens, splitting him into three entities, as they approach the reason for this original split the Doctor is now regenerating properly. The head alien - encased perhaps in massive armour - is revealed to be a human and she has come to this universe not to cause death but to ask that the Doctor returns home to help them prevent its destruction. Jaz opts not to go, but she tells him/her that the old woman that gave her the means to find him/her said she was The Last Doctor. They say their goodbyes and the Doctor and the Tardis disappear inside the alien spaceship and head to his 'home' universe...

So what happens now?

Episode 1 - The Origin of the Doctor

The new Doctor - an amalgam of the three [by the way, there's no real reason for a split doctor apart from it allows lots of time wasting before you got to the denouement] is transported into the next universe. Inside the Tardis, the lead 'alien' woman retrieves the vessel containing all of the Doctor's lost memories and crushes it in her hand, before the Doctor can protest, she explains that much of it was fake, slanted in a way to allow the woman who found the original version of the Doctor to be used for her own purposes. Yes, there had been regenerations he/she could not remember, but all of those would be revealed when the Doctor learned of his/her true origins...

Cut to a quintessential English cottage in the summer of 1962, We meet a handsome young husband and his pretty wife; we see they have a toddler. There is a bright light, the child vanishes. Cut to a bothy in the Scottish Highlands during the 1800s, a wee bairn is sitting on a blanket while his mother is doing chores. There is a bright light and the child is gone. Cut to and speed up; different scenes - inside an apartment, in the past, in the future, in India, China, the USA - children disappearing throughout history; an unknown number.

Cut to the inside of a giant space ship sitting in between the spaces inhabited by the two universes. This is a mercy mission of sorts; this universe is actually much older than the one Earth sits in and it is also strangely like our universe, because all it really is was a parallel universe. The plan is to take all of the children to this universe's version of our Earth to help repopulate it in the future - so we can take it they took hundreds of children from all eras of mankind. One thing is clear, this alien race - like the ones who came for the Doctor in the present - is in decline and decay and as the ship hurtles back into its universe something happens and all of the children on the ship are merged into one glowing baby. The ship explodes and the baby disappears, reappearing on Gallifrey to that Tektouine [sp] woman.

Cut back to the Tardis and the alien woman says to the Doctor, "That is you. You are the hundreds of children stolen from Earth to repopulate a different galaxy. You return to the place that made you who you are. Now can you see why you have such a soft spot for Earth and its people, because you are essentially a human even if you do share most of the Gallifreyan physiology. Your memories will return now because you know the truth. You are also now aware that you have hundreds of possible regenerations; each time you change you become the adult version of one of those children lost and each of those lost children gets to live his or her life as you. It is why each regeneration is you with a different personality."

"OK. So why are we here now?" Says the Doctor.

"Because we need your help to save our universe." Cut to images of the threat to this universe - nightmare versions of Daleks, Cybermen and any other Who villain you can think...

From that point on the rest of this mini-series focuses on how the Doctor helps the parallel universe defeat their versions of his greatest foes without the help of either the Tardis or his sonic screwdriver as neither work there. They save the day and allows the dying universe to plod on for a bit longer and returns to our universe and back to Earth, where the final scene of this series is the Doctor visiting a quintessential English cottage.

That sorts out the mess and allows you to pretty much continue with a clean palette. The Doctor is a lot of humans, reborn in the only place that might possibly understand how hundreds of children lost through time can understand its position in the universe with proper guidance, the kind provided by Time Lords.  Introduce new companions, revamp the Tardis, return to a Doctor who isn't afraid to kick some arse and maybe explore some of the original Doctors adventures by the current one encountering threats we've never seen before but he/she has or maybe bumping into a previous self on an adventure more often. I would be keen to put back the sense of dread and doom that many of those early rebooted episodes had; proper kids behind the sofa stuff that has been lost over the last five years or so. RTD obviously won't do any of the above, but it would be nice to see a different approach; maybe try and resolve the mire the continuity has gotten itself into. Maybe in the grand scheme of things it doesn't matter, DW exists as a form of entertainment the same way Teletubbies does and we don't expect that to have a continuing subplot, although I'd be keen to see what it might be. Yet it also attracts new fans all the time, much to my surprise and they all seem to care. 

Now I wish there was some way that they could link the Doctor Who universe to Mr Benn's...

Revisiting the Older Marvel Films (part 1)

It dawned on me the other day that X-Men is 22-years-old. I remember the excitement at the time about a live action Marvel film after some forgettable rubbish that had gone previously, most notably the Blade films, which were all right, the Punisher films which weren't and the odd thing like Daredevil etc. Yet with X-Men there was this sense that the 21st Century could be the time of the superhero live action film and to a not so aging geek like myself, not yet 40, this was a good thing.

It also dawned on me that I haven't seen X-Men for about 20 years, nor had I watched any of the five previous Spider-Man films more than once, with a good chance I've never actually got around to watching Andrew Garfield's second outing. I've that to experience, but for someone so involved in comics for so much of my life, not watching these superhero films more than once seems odd. I've now seen all of the recognised MCU films and I'm expecting to see the new Spider-Man film in the next few months, so I thought I'd give the 'originals' and the first three X films another look, to see if I could understand why I've only seen some of them once.

Spider-Man is odd. It's a clever updating of the origin but Parker (Tobey Maguire) and his peers are all basically too old and too much like their original 1960s comics counterparts. In fact it's dripping in nostalgia and homage to Steve Ditko and John Romita, the artists who draw Spidey for their first ten years. Aunt May almost looks like she'd walked from the pages of Ditko's early issues and everything was suitably slightly pantomime - lots of melodrama and facial acting. It does, in so many ways, capture the original comic better than any other comic adaptation since. The Spidey special effects are really good to a point and while there was an excessive use of webbing, it illustrated the uniqueness of the character.

However, when we wander into the world of Norman Osborne things get a little dodgier and with hindsight as there had been the hint there were other superheroes out there in a throw away line, having Ozcorp go against Stark Industries in a bid for a government contract might have been an interesting little nugget. The thing is there shouldn't be anything wrong with a science company trying to come up with a) a super soldier serum and b) a battle suit; I just couldn't imagine the US Military being interested in a battle suit that makes you look like a goblin and a flying hoverboard. 

Considering this was about Peter Parker the student now with enhanced abilities, there didn't seem to be much building on character or continuity or even an attempt to make the actors more than just the characters they were on the comics page, in a way they were even less. The preamble to the ending should have been a little more sophisticated in its set-up, but it all feels a little 1920 silent film peril and when the Green Goblin finally fights Spidey the overriding feeling you get is you're watching a slightly more expensive version of Mighty Morphin Power Rangers. The movement of the Goblin from fight scenes to extrapolating about how brilliant he is all look a bit Toho Godzilla.

Plus the ending stinks and was so unlike anything a Spider-Man of my early life would have done. It did, however, feel like a BIG film and important film and one that allowed Marvel characters the same gravitas afforded to Batman (and Superman).

X-Men - [let's come back to the ol' webslinger in a bit] Things I noticed quite clearly: 1) It's a remarkably short film for such a grand idea. 2) It's glaringly obvious, even with advances in CGI, that the X-Men are not as visually spectacular as many of the other MCU heroes and only Wolverine has the feel of a character with longevity. 3) It's a load of shit. It simply doesn't really make a lot of sense and when it tries to make sense it simply muddies the water. From the initial Wolverine and Rogue meeting where she's a runaway who introduces herself as 'Rogue' - WHY? He's a cage fighter called the Wolverine, that's almost plausible, but why a codename - she isn't a superhero? To the amount of testosterone on display throughout the film from Cyclops; James Marsden just growled like a spoiled teenager and the relationship between him and Jean Grey just seemed like it was there; the two characters interaction didn't suggest they were making the beast with two backs all the time. The woeful dialogue that sounds more like a PowerPoint explainer than a feature film. The fact they're just a bit crap and send a man with a metal skeleton against a bloke who controls magnetism? You could literally go on and on and on picking holes in this film, it's that bad. 

Turning people into mutants? For fuck's sake! As a holder of Biggest X-Fan in the UK for many years, I can honestly say I must have liked the film first time around because I've got the DVD, unless someone bought it for me, then I have an excuse. It has a bunch of fine actors hamming it up in a film so pantomime that it makes Spider-Man seem like a David Lynch film. These actors must have been paid a lot of money. X-Men might have benefitted if it had been made by David Lynch, because otherwise what you have is just a bunch of scenes sewn together with bullshit. I don't even really want to talk about it; it felt like an episode of McMillan & Wife with a budget.

Before I leave this alone, hopefully for the last time ever, I want to return to that point #2 and how the X-Men might not work on the big screen. Not only is the Marvel mutant universe fat, bloated and unwieldy to try and find a way of shoehorning it into the existing MCU - unless it's done when we have a reunification of the multiverse in a few years time - but Marvel has attempted to introduce various incarnations of 'mutant type' characters before and they've all failed. If Agents of Shield is cannon then there's The Inhumans in that series and the failed solo-series and, now, in many respects The Eternals represent a sort of higher level of mutantness - because the similarities between what the Eternals can do and what the X-Men do is a bit similar. 

All of the later X films, with the dreadful acting and SFX did nothing to convince anyone that X-Men work on camera - yeah some of them do, but if you're going to be selective about who you use and how you use them then the key reason The X-Men became so popular is lost.

It's my belief that mutants would work better as a Marvel/Disney TV series, the problem with that is it would need ramping and speeding up if you didn't want to spend the first half a dozen series plodding around with scene setting, because 1960s X-Men wasn't really a good comic until it was being cancelled. Nothing in the MCU rule book says the X-Men and mutants have to have a similar 'origin' to their comic roots like the other heroes in the universe have, but part of the reason the MCU works is its willingness to stick to the structure that made the comics successful in the first place.

Spider-Man 2 - Here's the thing; I know many people think this is the complete superhero film or at least the best Spider-Man film of the live action ones, but it's remarkably boring. The amount of time it takes Peter to persuade Otto to do the right thing I could have died and not given a shit. If Sam Raimi's first film was an exploration of and homage to 1960s Spider-Man comics, then the sequel is his attempt at doing a serious superhero film with the comicbook backdrop. This is all about struggle; all of the main characters are struggling with something - Peter with his life, Aunt May with the bills, Harry with the death of his father, MJ because of her love life, Otto Octavius because his work is not happening the way he wants it and it's already cost him his wife. If people aren't struggling they're crossing people who are trying to make them struggle.

With 2 we've ditched the Flash Thompsons, streamlined the core cast down, and devoted the time the first film should have spent on character development and failed dismally. I simply didn't care about any of the characters any more, not that I had that much emotional attachment after the first film. It is a good superhero film; the fight scenes are considerably better, with Raimi's stop motion blending in well, but the film needed another villain or an action distraction. Peripheral characters were so shallow they were literally plot devices. Don't get me wrong, it is a good film to a point, I just don't think that point is higher than about average.

The penultimate scene of the film would, most definitely, be a mid-credit scene now and the ending was about as perfect an ending you could have for a Spider-Man film.

A slight digression...

In 2005, Marvel had its name tagged onto a US/Australian film called Man-Thing. Everything about the film until it starts is Marvel. The flashing comic images, music, etc., it's obviously linked to the Multiverse in some way or shape especially if it can make Disney money. Let's just say that I have indeed sat through this film and I can honestly say that apart from the names of the characters and the ones named after Man-Thing creators there is nothing remotely similar to the comic apart from possible exposition. It makes the DC Swamp Thing films of the 1980s (with Adrienne Barbeau getting her baps out) look like true classics. If I were Kevin Feige I'd buy all copies and burn them.

And if you're waiting for X-2, The Amazing Spider-Man 1 & 2 and X-Men: Last Stand, that's going to be next time because I have some decent stuff to watch before I have to dive into that anachronistic bunch again.

Super Privilege?

There's a very good chance that when I first got the computer I'm writing this on that it was some bollocks, possibly about comics. I've used this PC for 11 years and it has felt longer. It's never been anything special, but it has been a faithful old thing and I'm amazed it's been working so... well, since I condemned it last week. The next blog I write will probably be on the new machine - once I get that sorted out.

In many ways, what I've had rattling around the ideas section of my brain for the last few weeks could easily be posted in my politics blog, but only if I really wanted to make a big socio-political statement about something that was invented as a source of pleasure and if there was some hidden agendas in comics then I didn't see it probably because I wasn't taking men in tights too seriously or my keen mind breezed over the stark messages in search of the fantastic. Who can say?

The thing is, I saw a quote once about the Inhumans TV series which made me do one of those penny drop moments but not so much of the bleedin' obvious, more of a key to open a door to a path of looking at something in a different way. The quote was something like, 'how can you feel sympathy for a pampered royal family when the people against them are living in filth?'

Marvel's first generation of superheroes; the ones all in films and TV now, were pretty much all from privilege or were in an environment that was always better than the reality of the time 'origin' stories were set. Even Peter Parker had an upbringing bordering on middle class. The underbelly of society was always from the dregs of society; the other side of the tracks. The world of early Marvel comics was pretty much black and white and in full colour.

There's a list coming:
The Fantastic Four - Marvel's first family - I can't recall where their wealth came from. Or who paid for the rocket experiment that transformed them into superheroes. Flashbacks showed them at top universities; they were clever people, even if Ben Grimm was portrayed as having been from the wrong side but came good. Who paid for all those fantastic toys, research equipment. The FF were privileged.
Iron Man - Tony Stark. Billionaire; inherited a lot of his wealth, very clever. 'Billionaire Playboy'. He is so privileged someone wipes his arse for him.
Thor - a god. A member of the Asgardian royal family. Original human identity was Donald Blake - a doctor. Thor is privileged. And Loki - might be a frost giant elf thing but he's still royalty.
Captain America wasn't a creation of the 1960s; he does have a sense of being from a good family; not poor, but definitely not rich. As a modern superhero I've always wondered how he earned money. Oh and he was chosen to become a superhuman and his life was changed completely, most probably for the better.
Spider-Man. Okay, yeah he's an orphan, but his parents were clearly middle class. Aunt May lived in a house. They never went without. She was originally as old as Methuselah, I think pensions were involved. Parker had a good education; was a 'talented' photographer - at a time when good cameras were expensive. He might not have been privileged but he wasn't the product of poverty.
Prince Namor, the Sub-Mariner - I'll give you a clue. It's in his name: Prince. Privileged.
Ant-Man and the Wasp - originally he was rich and she was an heiress. Privileged.
The Hulk - Bruce Banner worked on top secret government bomb experiments dealing with gamma radiation; he had his own private army; just because he chose to live like a hermit in the early comics doesn't mean he didn't have a bulging bank balance. Privileged.
Nick Fury - the comic version was head of a multi-government organisation and a war hero. Nuff said. Privileged.
Doctor Strange - he was a world renowned surgeon; that's got to come with a huge salary. Privileged.
The X-Men - original crew were all loaded. They were being sent to a private school funded by a bald guy who wasn't in the slightest bit creepy in a big mansion that didn't appear to have any staff, at all. Privileged.
The aforementioned Inhumans - a royal family in hiding wanting their throne back from a max brother who has returned it to the oppressed people doesn't sound like much more than an anti-communist, pro-elitist message to me. Privileged as fuck.
And don't get me started on Black Panther. Prince T'Challa? Heir to the throne of Wakanda, a super-advanced African country that chooses to hide itself from the rest of the world. A massive isolationist country that has ignored the famine, poverty and war that raged across their continent, preferring to fuck about in superhero costumes and travel to America. The privilege is dripping off these like they've walked out of the sea - the only positive thing is that they're black Africans, I suppose. Ultra-privileged black Africans...
Is it any wonder why Daredevil wasn't the most engaging superhero? I mean, in real terms he had a shitty upbringing. Orphaned, dumped in an orphanage, blind and with a mop of red hair... The thing is people will point at Ol' Hornhead and say, he wasn't privileged and to that I say, oh yes he was. He managed to become a lawyer, FFS!
Others that popped up in those early days had ambiguous pasts to suit their unknown natures - Quicksilver, Scarlet Witch, Hawkeye, Black Widow, Silver Surfer all acted privileged when they hit the big time.
Even major supervillains were privileged. Your bog standard ones were easy to deal with, but your Doc Dooms (monarch of a European country) of the Marvel Universe were often as ambiguous in their wealth as the heroes. The evil geniuses often had money for their evil schemes; no one wondered who was financing them.
How come we never saw scenes where villains were out at nightclubs like what they do in James Bond films? Originally, Groot said considerably more than just 'I am Groot!' and he wanted to destroy the earth... How is that not an expression of privilege?

Marvel was based on money; despite the origins of the powers, to be a superhero usually meant a wealth of money, even in the 1960s when a Fantastic Quinjet-car could be knocked up for less than it costs for a mobile phone today.

DC wasn't exempt. Bruce Wayne - privileged beyond your wildest dreams.
Superman/Clark Kent - d'oh Superman.
They had scientists, explorers, test pilots, Martian royalty, princesses, industrialists, more billionaires - fuck me, the DC Universe is just as rich as Marvel's with original superheroes that haven't really changed, even today. Origins can be toyed with but Tony Stark has always been one of the richest men in the world; Peter Parker has never known what's it's like to go hungry because he's got no money. There might have been newer heroes, ones that came along from the wrong side of those tracks, but the building blocks that placed us here were all based on privilege, wealth and connections.

How come none of the modern day heroes are as iconic as these rich or privileged ones? I suppose, deep down, to have power is a privilege, so whenever someone, from whatever background they're from becomes powerful, they inherit privilege?

I also know that the Comics Code of Authority prohibited publishers from doing much at all that pushed the envelope, but the bottom line was the superhero of the 1960s - the most diverse of decades for popular culture - must have all been working for the man. Off shot, there were business executives doing multi-billion dollar deals with the government (or maybe even governments) to finance their 'adventures'. How else could you explain not only the mind tom come up with a portal to the Negative Zone, let alone the machinery and skill required to build one. "Reed, you need to come up with a machine that will send this alternative reality Spider-Man back to his own universe and change their history so that coffee becomes the beverage of choice." "Oh okay. It's going to cost about 8 trillion dollars and about 9 months to build. Have you checked the bank account, Sue?" It never happened, did it?

In the films, Stark Industries was, by and large, a massive corporation with directors and executives, all drawing large salaries making money selling Stark's wares to anyone but the military, because Tony was off building an army of different Iron Man costumes, robots, AI supervillains and being a renowned international playboy... Did the man never sleep? The thing is they must have been generating a tremendous profit over and above overheads and he was spaffing it on making toys with more power than small European countries, so he could defend the world from cosmic threats and wankers. What did shareholders think? "I only got a $200 bonus. Stark built a machine that can wank him off while he dreams up new ways of being wanked off..."

I remember the more sophisticated comics fan lauding the 'realism' being introduced into comics - social issues; world issues all being covered in comics and I suppose it was better than it had felt. The thing is superheroes exist in a world with superheroes - it is accepted that because super people exist in this fictional reality, everyone accepts it. The fact we don't actually have superheroes in the real world is easily explained by two things - superpowers don't exist and even in this world of celebrity culture, you'd have to be some special kind of cockwomble to dress up and fight crime.

Pop Culture is Dead to Me, Part 219½

Television and film is coming thick and fast at the moment, so much so that we're freely giving up on things as quickly as possible so not to waste what's left of our life on pointless bollocks. This is a practice that hasn't paid dividends so far... Let me explain:

Star Trek: Black Female Jesus Saves the Universe Again and Again

Or Disco Very as we (well 'I') call it. This is fucking awful. I mean I don't even feel bad about saying it's fucking awful because it's fucking awful. It has steadily gone down a wormhole that has done nothing but accentuate how idiotic and stupid the people behind this fucking awful piece of shit must have been and still are. There are a couple of mildly interesting characters - the ugly horse alien and former captain with the wiggly ear glands; the fat sweary girl who's been canned and the gay, slightly-autistic chief engineer, who has stopped being interesting - outside of that, it's just fucking awful. Gene Roddenberry's ghost should be haunting whatever fucker is responsible for this fucking awful heap of shit.

Chapelwaite

A sort of prequel to Salem's Lot and (loosely) based on the short story Jerusalem's Lot by Stephen King. It stars Adrien Brody - you know the Oscar-winning serious thesp. My personal jury is still out on this; it was relentlessly grim, full of nasty characters and was genuinely creepy until episode four when... ah but that would spoil it. So, here's a kind of metaphor: the first SK book I read was Salem's Lot. I knew nothing about it when I bought it and for the first 200 pages it creeped me out. Then the fact the book was about vampires sort of diminished it and while it was a cracking vampire novel I felt it lost something being about something tired and old. This series also starts off very creepy and weird and quickly descends into 'campire' nonsense, with laughable villains and an almost paint by numbers plot. The only genuinely odd thing about it was the ending. My advice is it's much better than Midnight Mass but that doesn't set the bar particularly high.

Midnight Mass

Everybody was raving about this overlong, wordy and ultimately fucking awful vampire series. The pandemic has meant a raft of TV shows and one can only hope that when this is all over all these people will have died so they don't ever make another TV show ever again...

The Wheel of Time

Or Boring Boring Fantasy Boring. How do people make TV series like this and keep a straight face when they're delivering their lines? Does Rosamund Pike really need the work? She's an executive producer on this and one wonders if that was to tempt her in or if she's really a fantasy geek? Either way, she should have known better. As fantasy series go, apart from being dreadfully dull it's also fucking awful.

Hawkeye

This is fucking awful...

Aha, fooled you. This is actually the best thing I've seen on TV this year* and plays out like a slightly overlong feature film. I'm looking forward to clumping them all together and watching it as a film in a few months. It feels like an Avengers movie without most of the Avengers in it and also is another link to Marvel series from the past. It isn't over yet, it concludes next week, but I do think we're going to see a cameo from Daredevil. The Steinfeld girl is both really annoying and incredibly lovely and I was very impressed with the reveal, very early on, that Clint is almost as deaf as a post. Cracking TV.

*It's not, but it might be the best Marvel series so far

Superman & Lois

Anyone who knows me knows that around 1986 I kind of discovered Superman. Don't get me wrong, he'd been around for quite some time, but I always found him to be a bit... DC. Therefore a huge thanks to a bunch of creators who changed my perception of Superman, because by the late 1990s it was one of the few comics I was still reading (despite having deteriorated in quality from a high point in the mid 1990s). As a result, I have a weird soft spot in my heart for the big blue and this TV series was nowhere near that soft spot. I have struggled with DC's TV adaptations and pretty much avoided this when it first came out mainly because Tyler Hoechlin is the least super Superman I've ever seen.

However, watching it on BBC1 - harking back to the nostalgic days of Lois & Clark - it has proved to be slightly better than I thought. I like the idea, even if Lois looks a bit like a cross between a dead Margot Kidder and the ugly horse alien from ST:BFJSTUAAA. The kids are almost believable too and did anyone notice that Dylan Walsh plays Lois's dad - he was the straight (as in not crooked) guy from Nip/Tuck.

Doom Patrol

Do you remember last time? When I was just about ready to kick this series into touch? We were about a third of the way through the third series and I couldn't understand where it was going or why it was going in the direction it was. Then it all started to fall into place. Yes, some of the characters just seemed to be flopping about, treading water and there didn't seem to be any direction any more; just a group of weird characters knocking round a big mansion and the introduction of Michelle Gomez seemed like a stupid idea rather than an act of genius; then after that seeming nadir episode where I wanted to stop watching it suddenly started to make sense and in the end it was a dazzling example of how to write a superhero story without any heroics, no real villains and keep it fresh and weird.

I have no idea where this series is going to go now that Cliff is a 50 foot tall robot, Larry has a new passenger, Vic is no longer a cyborg and Rita is a proper no-holds-barred superhero. Frankly, I have no interest in what they do to Jane because I think they fucked up her character in season two and have struggled with her ever since; we need to see more of her superpowered alter egos not less of them.

Dexter: New Blood

It's great, except... is it? Yes, it's much better than the last couple of Dexter series but I always feel the word 'contrived' applies to this character. It's good to have him back and his dark passenger, but... did I say contrived?

The Walking Dead franchise

Let's just say that Fear the Walking Dead almost became essential viewing for a couple of years; Lennie James introduction and the Mad Max feel to it made it almost light relief from the main feature. However, the last couple of years have been poor, culminating in a nuclear disaster that has you scratching your head at times. 

The World Beyond - the series looking at life 10+ years after the apocalypse and featuring New Age Nazis the Civic Republic started badly and deteriorated beyond the 'fucking awful' stage and well into the 'who the fuck gave this the green light?' If the ultimate aim of the two series was to reintroduce us to Jaden (sp) the dumpster lady who saved Rick Grimes as a wannabe Nazi storm trooper then it succeeded. It offered us a clue to Rick's fate and introduced us to a new generation of utterly shite actors. I really don't want to upset overweight people, but one of the lead characters in this spent 9 months on the road, in a world that has little in the way of provisions and she was arguably a more rotund young lady at the end than she was at the beginning. It's like Tilly in ST:BFJSTUAAA surely a thousand years in the future if you had body size issues you'd just hop into a transporter and get them to lop a few kilos off? It was a fucking awful two-series fart and the sooner they finish this entire franchise off the better.

Dr Who: Flux

Is something I rather enjoyed even if it often made little or no sense and I couldn't quite fathom the significance of many of the characters because the writer didn't bother to explain. Chibnall's run on the good DW has been woeful; Jodie Whitaker just a little too in-yer-face and the supporting cast have struggled (although Mandip Gill has been excellent and hopefully will remain for a while). There are three more specials before RTD comes back. I think any casual viewer will just hope that this means stories that make some sense and have some fun and wonder about them. It all got a bit too PC and earnest...

We finally got around to watching season one of Fargo and I recommend anyone who hasn't seen it to watch it. We're going into seasons 2-4 in the New Year. We also dipped into a number of things and quickly dipped out. Foundation being an excellent example; we gave it three episodes before we started to lose the will to live. 

Moving onto films...

Dune

Very enjoyable in a not a lot happens kind of way. It looks fantastic and I expect the next two parts will cement it into cinematic history or something...

Shang Chi and the Legends of the Ten Rings

I expected more and less at the same time. It was an okay fun film but... I think we're seeing Marvel struggling with films featuring second rate heroes and also getting too clever with themselves. I always felt when Kevin Feige confirmed that the trailer did indeed have Wong fighting the Abomination that this was a red herring and so it proved to be. In fact, Trevor Slattery aside, this felt like an attempt to shoehorn in as much of the MCU past as it could. I expect I will enjoy it better in a couple of years when I watch it again, but ultimately it felt empty, pointless and a bit unnecessary. 

Free Guy

Was fucking awful, but also a bit of fun, but on the whole it was fucking awful and Jodie Comer was wasted (metaphorically, not literally... or is that the other way around?)

The Green Knight

Was The Guardian's #2 film of the year. I'll go along with the #2 bit. It was as boring a piece of shit as I can remember. It looked very nice, but it was unbelievably dull and left me thinking that people who liked this film probably also like modern art or will spend £50 on a shin of beef or mac and cheese at a Michelin starred restaurant... I like Dev Patel, but he's lost and a little wasted in this pretentious load of old wank (literally, but don't watch it just for that or like a warm bland wank you will be disappointed).

Venom: Let There Be Carnage

Really? I mean REALLY? This was worse than fucking awful and seems to exist entirely for the post credit scene where Eddie and Venom are transported into the actual MCU proper as opposed to the Sony pocket universe. FFS, even the special effects are crap. This is a film that was so weak and flimsy it struggled to make it to the 90 minute mark including aeons of credits. Sony needs to look at Fox's Marvel output and decide whether they want the future ridicule...

I haven't seen Eternals yet, I expect that will be available the second week of the New Year. Like Shang Chi, I had no real investment in these Marvel characters in the 1970s either and the reviews ranging from 'Watches like a Powerpoint explainer presentation' to 'Very dull and boring' don't augur well for a fun night in. With the latest Spider-Man film hitting cinemas about now, I expect that will be a spring thing for the Hall house and I expect by the end of it the Marvel MCU will probably be missing a Spider-Man.

If there was more and forgot it then ask yourself why I forgot it and don't bother...

Hah Bumhug - Phil's Christmas Message

"Christmas is something that should be held like the Olympics. Every four years, in some other fuckers country" is probably my most creative description of my general disdain for Christmas. It's largely down to three things - age, time and no children and therefore no grandchildren. For many years Christmas represented that midwinter break where we did fuck all and felt zero guilt or remorse. When I used to lie in, it was a group of days where I could simply lounge, but in the grand scheme of things I've usually viewed the day itself as like a Sunday but very quiet, with nearly all the shops shut.

It's also a period where we have to suffer looking back over the previous year as the media and communications industry slaps itself on the back (backs?). Remembering everyone who's died. Christmas specials. Whamageddon. Fucking cheerful people. Well, bad syntax, but you know what I mean. The Festive Season brings an entire train of anything you can shoehorn into the Holiday banner. Do you know, someone said to me the other day that Elf was a Christmas Classic Film© and I've never, ever, seen it and NO. I have no intention of seeing it. It's on my not to see list along with Titanic, Moulin Rouge and any Fast & Furious film. But, A Christmas Classic? If it makes someone happy and it's not starting a war, but... you know... Elf? 

It's all part of the getting-into-the-spirit thing that apparently is infectious - a bit like COVID - and before you know it we have a pandemic of happiness all around, shining through the dark nights and making us all lovely human beings again - for one night only - before we return to our Grinch-like hovels waiting for the moment we can take it all down because you'll be finding pine needles in your knickers in August. 

The thing is, I get it. It's why there are 60 odd midwinter festivals throughout the world and its numerous cultures and religions. They all started long before we invented God; midwinter represented a turning point but also a very low point - the three weeks either side of the solstice are often the grimmest and despite the worst months of winter usually still to come, the sun gets higher in the sky and subconsciously we start to think of spring and not just the relentless dullness of existence...

The idea of festivals was around long before fairy tales and the idea of festivals was to bring a little lightness, some relief, some thanks that for the sun coming back and it won't be long before we can go back to another year of relentless grind and misery to do it all again next year. It's human existence, ennit?

I believe I marvelled at Christmas in my earliest years because it was in Canada, it was always snowy and the streets looked like hundreds of Santa's grottos one after the other. Christmas on Canadian streets in the late 1960s was ignorant of the concept of light pollution and it was magical. It's probably why I have soft spots for Charlie Brown's Christmas, Burl Ives and White Christmas because I associate them with a time when I saw it through a child's eyes. I think people who embrace Christmas in ludicrous extremes are just capable of recreating or continuously attempting to recreate a time when their lives were so much simpler. If the worst thing that happened each year was the family row at Christmas, then invite as many living family members as possible.

The thing is there are a few things that are easily excusable about not enjoying Christmas. People who have lost loved ones. Those in abusive relationships. The people who are alone and have no one to share a small part of their lives with. People of different religions and cultures. It's why the term 'Happy Holidays' is used, despite it actually being invented by a Jewish card manufacturer, who got fed up with Christmas being seen as more important that Hanukkah or any of the other festivals different people celebrate and created the term so it was seen as ALL INCLUSIVE rather than an attempt to ban Christmas. Only idiots, xenophobes and cunts think that.

The concluding week or so of December should be spent as close to the things we love as humanly possible or whatever the most appropriate alternative is because I can't believe there are people out there who wouldn't want to see every person, good or bad, black or white have a moment of joy and peace sharing with someone else? I mean, we're entering, if not in, the sixth extinction event and by the time it's finished there'll only be about 5% of humanity left and today's disgruntled present receivers will be grateful for simply finding a 30-year-old tin of prunes in 31 years time...

Pop Culture is Dead to Me, Part 217

I don't want to talk about Babylon 5, but to put the following segment into some perspective it's necessary...

Babylon 5 is one of the most excellent and rubbish TV shows ever to air. It walked a fine line between genius and AmDram. It was a product of the 1990s that would, probably, have been a massive hit if it had come out in the 1980s, except technology would have made it far too expensive to make and more than likely it would have suffered a similar fate as it did when it actually came out. It also might have worked in the 2000s, if it hadn't been made before.

To cut to the chase, B5 was originally going to be a FIVE season story. It got cancelled and reprieved so many times, so late in the production calendar, that JM Straczynski - the creator - and his team were forever reshuffling their deck until, in the end, what we ended up with was five series that could probably have been crammed into two. It ended up having a lot of quick endings for long-simmering plots, which would have benefited from guaranteed survival and budgets and illness meant everything from the cast to the stories became far more fluid (in a brown and runny way) and haphazard than it was planned.

I have a soft place in my heart for B5, but watching a bunch of 'key' episodes last year made me realise just how rubbish it looks now. It was way ahead of its time but stuck in a familiar trope. It deserved better and one day, maybe someone, will reboot it and do it some justice (or maybe they won't). 

With that aside over, I should point out that the TV series I'm about to talk about had almost as many reprieves as Babylon 5 and probably suffered just as much from having to constantly rewrite and rethink how to go forward. I am, of course, talking about Lucifer...

When it started back in 2016 it was met with a lot of controversy. A TV show about the devil, as the hero of a show. Religious geeks were up in arms; if Christians and Catholics could have held a jihad against the creators of the TV show they would but instead it was just a crap cop procedural with the devil helping an LA police detective solve some of the easiest murders ever to reach the small screen. In fact, halfway through its first series, it became obvious that what we had was a crap cop show with a large helping of ad hoc chaos thrown in; just enough to make those who were hooked think we might be onto something different. The reality was, it wasn't. It was a formula based show that reinvented the Casualty idea of guessing who was going to fall victim by transposing that into 'is the first person they interview always going to be the killer'?

The element of chaos, especially in the first couple of series, was that Tom Ellis - best known as Miranda's boyfriend in the UK sitcom - didn't seem to be working off the same script as everyone else and the comedic element crushed the concerns of the religious geeks. By the end of season two the writing appeared to be on the wall for the show which was building as big a cult following as B5 had in the '90s. Season three was going to be the last and even before its three reprieves, the writers decided to leave it dangling with a cliff hanger ending.

Then Netflix came along, picked the show up and decided to give it another series and this is where the best worst thing on TV started to fuck up...

Lucifer, in many ways, is the 21st century version of Moonlighting, a show that was phenomenal until Bruce Willis and Cybil Shepherd got it on, then it struggled to have the same electricity and drifted into oblivion with only Willis coming out of it with any kind of lasting cinematic longevity. While Shepherd had already been a star for a while, it was Willis who became the superstar. You could sense by the end of the third season of Lucifer that Tom Ellis is going to be a huge star - the new Hugh Jackman; an actor who can sing, dance, do drama, comedy, and is as handsome as the devil. Lauren German, his foil in Chloe Decker of the LAPD, isn't likely to have anything like Shepherd's career, but as the series dragged into later, originally unplanned, series, you could see the writers were going to have a problem with her character.

The big ending to what was the final series was Lucifer revealing his true devil-self while protecting Chloe from the mob. It was a BIG reveal - it was the moment Bruce kissed Cybil in Moonlighting - and because of that the ongoing comedy 'secret' was now no longer a secret. What followed was, in truth, painstakingly dull and awkward and as the cast grew with more celestial characters and the plot became more convoluted, while remaining largely a police procedural. Season four followed a slightly daft plot of Chloe being recruited by a covert wing of the Catholic church to kill Lucifer, while simultaneously Lucifer gets involved with Eve (of Adam fame) [again] and all the while you wondered what the actual point of it all was.

Chloe's origin became celestial and what was going to be the final season five introduced us to God and whether Lucifer would become the new God as the old one wanted to bugger off with his ex-wife into an entirely different universe. Season five wasn't helped by being filmed during the start of the pandemic, which gave it a sparse, half-assed feel and the lack of anything resembling a decent budget made this huge denouement seem a bit crap - much like the reason for originally falling for the series. The introduction of Lucifer's twin - Michael - really didn't help matters and season five finished on a kind of extra-curricular cliff hanger, because Lucifer had just won the eternal throne and was now God.

But the final reprieve had already been granted by the time they finished filming, which meant they had to go, yet again, and try and stretch out stories that probably didn't warrant it. By the time season five concluded, Lucifer had simply become a crap TV show without any of the charm that made it such a hit. There were maybe half a dozen episodes in S5 that were any good and add that the the half dozen or so from S4 and you soon realised that you'd get as much out of watching reruns of early 1970s Colombo episodes.

It was still must see TV though, mainly because you were so invested in Tom Ellis's almost continuously excellent acting [as Lucifer, not as Michael]. His adlibs, distinctly British colloquialisms and ability to make everything seem irreverent and all about him never really grew boring, as you might expect it should have, but by the time Season six came along even that was gone, because we were in completely weird and wacky territory. We went into the final 10 episodes knowing a major character was dead but still in it and that Lucifer was stalling on becoming God, apart from that...

I should mention how Chloe's character and actress German both became dowdy and uninteresting for a large chunk of the reprieves. It almost felt like she didn't enjoy the way the show was going and showed it by putting in half-hearted performances; almost dialling in her performances, as the ending drew close you sometimes wondered just what Lucifer saw in her.

[I've purposefully not talked about the comic this series is very loosely based on because the TV show treated that like a lunatic half wit cousin that no one talked about and short of that brief mention all I'll say is that while some elements of the comic were touched upon it was as relevant as a remake of Alien with Matt Lucas as the monster.] 

You would have thought that with just 10 episodes to play with there would have been more urgency to do something truly different in the final FINAL season; they could have had a lot of fun because Lucifer is now a worldwide hit and they could probably have got away with it, as it was there is something oddly low-key about it, like it was still trying to remain what it was but all the characters had moved on. It introduces a time-travel element and essentially ties up all the supporting cast's own stories, leaving Lucifer and Chloe's to the final few. There's a strangely unfulfilling element to all of it and by the time we get half way through the penultimate episode, pretty much everything is resolved. There's a logic to the finale but I, personally, had long stopped caring.

I had an idea in my head how it would all conclude and I can say, quite honestly, that I got one right and one almost right, apart from that the final 53 minute show did enough to inspire me to write this...

I've purposely avoided spoilers because people will come to this show in the future and be charmed by it and enjoy it for what it ultimately became - popcorn TV. However, the final episode might possibly be the perfect way to end a TV show, for good. Once the main story arc is resolved and we know the fates of our lead characters it does something really weird; it montages the next years of Chloe's life until we come full circle to the point where the time travel plotline actually begins; it briefly follows the lives of all the supporting cast and concludes with something that I can only describe as... brilliantly awful - a fitting ending in many ways. Except, the ending is sweet and it makes you smile and it makes you sad and it makes you realise that there will be no reprieves this time. It also has, like many times before, the strangest of choices of music for said montage - an almost perfect choice, but don't ask me why. I don't really know.

I could go into great detail about the show, but that would be pulling wings off of flies. There is an awful lot not to like about it; the superficial nature of it all, but it is ultimately a fantasy series that never really took itself seriously and really failed miserably when it did. It was always best when it was a 'will they won't they' idea and it never seemed to want to dwell on the whys and the hows and the craziness of God and angels being real. It was always paced in that unique TV way that suggests life on TV shows can be ponderous and lackadaisical about pressing issues to whatever character it was happening to, unlike real life. It really was a case of "I know who the killer is, but I'll wait until we're back in the precinct or walking to your car before making the big reveal."

But that final episode was both crap and perfect and it has stuck with me much longer than I would have expected.

***

After rambling far too long on that, let's zip through a few...

Midnight Mass is a seven-part mini-series by Mike Flanagan, who directed the Haunting of Hill House series and the Stephen King book Dr Sleep. He's quite well respected and he does make relatively good TV. I don't want to give anything away in this series because almost any spoiler will give away some nice tricks, but it was unrelentingly wordy, religious and grim. You have to take everything about it out of context because it is set on a sparsely habited island 30 miles from an undisclosed US mainland coast.

It was all right. The continuity freak in me struggled to understand how some of the island can be in autumn, some in summer and some in winter all at the same time and why the acting was either really excellent or painfully grating. Hamish Linklater deserves to go on to be the next Tom Hanks, but by the end I was glad it was over.

***

Rewind a couple of years and read me waxing lyrically about Doom Patrol. It was unique TV and while it had 'issues' it was a fun and utterly bonkers ride. They seemed to lose that edge in season 2 and it became more character and story driven without really giving anything away and when the pandemic struck it ended on a cliff-hanger that all seemed a little meh. 

The characters who made the show - Larry Trainer, Rita Farr and to some extent Cliff Steele (although Brendan Frazer's voice gets on your tits sometimes) were bizarre and crazy and unpredictable; the bizarre, mad and unpredictable one was Crazy Jane, who seemed both not that crazy or often Jane and while her character's actor is the lead the mystery behind her was far more interesting than the consequences of it. However the focus seemed to centre on elements of these characters that seemed superficial or stupid during season 2 and there was far too much navel-gazing, probably because of COVID restrictions.

Season three has tried to go in positive directions but seems to have completely lost it. Removing The Chief's daughter - an irritating character you should really all want to hate - seemed like a great idea, but introducing Michelle Gomez to fill the void is... Let's put it this way, Gomez in West Wing was brilliant. Gomez in Dr Who was essentially Gomez in Green Wing with added madness and power. Gomez in Doom Patrol is a scattier, hair-brained version of those two combined and I'm now wondering if Gomez can actually do anything else?

The Chief is dead, but you kind of know he isn't, even if all vestiges of his body have been destroyed and we're left with an increasing annoying Robotman - Cliff's story is weak; a very out of character Rita - now doing stuff in a most unRita way; Larry's journey seems to have wandered round a maze for two seasons and Jane's multi-personality 'underground' is just boring. I want to know how it was built not why there's a power struggle, yet again, with her many personalities. Oh and Cyborg... He's always been the lamest character, but now he's a whiny annoying twat. Maybe this is on purpose, but the trend is for this over the last season and a half and I think that's the route the writers are going rather than stay weird and surreal. Don't get me wrong; they're trying to be that now, but it simply isn't working.

I stopped the most recent episode with 15 minutes to go and went and did a load of stuff before watching it about three hours later. I'd forgotten I was watching it. I'm having serious doubts about my staying power with it. That's a shame, there was once an endearing cheapness about it that is now just looking cheap.

***

I'm counting down the days to the end of The Walking Dead. Part of my life I'll never get back...

However, while that flops its way out of existence, the second and concluding season of The World Beyond has just restarted and despite it really being a dreadful pile of shite, there's finally a proper villain in this post-apocalyptic world that you can get your head around. Juliet Binoche as the 'Operations manager' of a division of an independent post-apocalyptic state called the Civic Republic, who, it appears are actually worse than Nazis and have most of the US military's equipment and nutters to back them up. If you think The Commonwealth is 'dodgy' if you're watching TWD, the CRM make jokes of every independent survivor left roaming the earth. In the opening episode they literally killed off 100,000 survivors because they didn't want the competition.

***

Free Guy didn't cost me anything so I watched it and it was free. It was a film. It was called Free Guy. It had Ryan Reynolds in it. I bet he wasn't free.

***

The Green Knight was pretty to look at and pretty bloody boring.

***

I gave up on What If? after one episode. Why did it have to be so dull, pointless and ugly? [See, that was better than the 3000 word bollocks you didn't publish about it!]

***

RTD is back on DW. Well, it can't be worse than the last bloke and his bloody earnest and dull fables.

***

Invincible? Gave up on it as it wasn't very good. I read the comic, briefly, in the early 00s and this didn't resemble it in my addled memory. Why does Western animation have to look so... fake and faux anime now? I expect it's because it's cheap, but it's also really lacking in all the key areas.

***

And then I started to realise that I've seen a lot of things since the last one of these (in June) and most of it has simply washed over me, or left such an impression that even bleach couldn't remove it. Take Werewolves Within for starters. The Guardian rated it FIVE stars, calling it a 'riotous comedy' with lots of twists and turns. It was not very funny at all, I LOLed once in the 93 minutes. Every single twist and turn was as predictable as the next scene and it was fucking awful.

***

We watched Clarkson's Farm. It was going to be me watching Clarkson's Farm but the wife gave the first episode a watch and deemed to want to watch all 8 over the space of four days. It was that good. It was post-modern Dadaist Clarkson surrounded by people - professional people - who didn't suffer fools gladly and before long it turned into an interesting series on the struggles of modern farming presented by a pillock who had to learn fast. However derided Clarkson might be, this was excellent TV.

***

I forgot to mention in previous blogs that we had also watched James May's cooking programme, which was a) a waste of James May and b) actually quite erudite and charming in a strange way. And also the Top Ge... I mean, Grand Tour of Scotland was disappointing on a number of levels, but probably the strangest was 90 minutes spent in a country and they didn't speak to one single Scotsman. I also think the new team doing Top Gear are, at least, making the show fun to watch again.

***

Have I said anything about Black Widow? I must have... Did I say that since I saw it I have OT Fagbenle's name ear worming me at times?

***

We have Foundation waiting for us to watch and probably a few returning series to hit over the coming dark and gloomy months, as we huddle round a candle for warmth and fight over the last carrot...

An Actual Film Review

Black Widow

As anyone following my sporadic glimpses into the MCU will attest, my initial buzz about the Marvel Cinematic Universe started to fade after Avengers: Age of Ultron and while there have been some excellent additions to the franchise, the only two films that have arrived since Avengers: Endgame have been generally a bit meh. 

We watched the 2nd MCU Spider-Man film again not so long ago and ... Hell's teeth, did they not bother to employ either a script or film editor for it? If the story was green lit by the Sony half of the partnership then Marvel are just prostitutes, if it came from the MCU then the franchise pretty much died with the post credit scene.

The other post-Endgame arrived last week on a multitude of platforms and other than being a bit meh, it's also a fun-filled action-packed film where we know the hero won't die and feels like some kind of contractual obligation movie carved out by Johansson's agent rather than the other way around. It added absolutely NOTHING to the canon, had some dodgy casting and probably could have been dissected, added to and made into six 30-minute episodes for Disney+, it was that... meh. The epic fight scenes were great - yawn - the rest didn't even really set up anything apart from pursuing, in the epilogue, a 'Suicide Squad' route, especially if James Gunn's reboot is as good as is expected, with The Dark Avengers... 

JM Straczynski said the biggest hurdle with Babylon 5 was having the totally cosmic story in the middle; people expect things to get bigger and better not more insular and lots of people struggled with it after. The MCU will if it makes it less 'cosmic' and more 'domestic', but, then again, the MCU is going to struggle to not constantly repeat itself until it runs out of profitable films. Shang-Chi and The Eternals need to be special and neither looks it.

Black Widow is okay. It fills two hours nicely and there are a few nice touches. Ultimately, however, even after such a long wait it was always going to be an anti-climax.