Christmas isn’t Christmas without the gang from Charles M. Schulz’s much-loved comic strip, Peanuts, making a very welcome appearance. While most people will generally play the 1965 classic, A Charlie Brown Christmas – and for good reason; it’s a sublime piece of festive joy – it’s 1992 successor, It’s Christmastime Continue Reading
TV
Breaking fourth walls with glee: Thoughts on She-Hulk – Attorney at Law review (ep. 5-9)
Aiming to be meta and actually delivering on it in a way that doesn’t feel twee or force is a magical balancing act that few TV series pull off convincingly well. Breaking fourth walls and addressing the audience or melding the fictional with the semi-factual doesn’t always work, with narrative Continue Reading
Small acts lead to a seismic change on Andor (S1, E10-12 review)
——————– SPOILERS AHEAD ——————– Rebellions, and the revolutions they often, though not always, give rise to, are often big disruptive things. Intrinsically a militantly passionate act of opposition to oppressive or authoritarian government, they often involve big epic moments such people deciding en masse that enough is enough, mass acts Continue Reading
Birthday documentary review: Street Gang – How We Got to Sesame Street
When you’re a kid, and you really love something, you assume without thinking about it (because kids are nothing if not instinctive) that it’s always been in existence. After all, when you switch on the TV and a program you love is always on when it’s supposed to be, you Continue Reading
A violent splintering: Thoughts on House of the Dragon (E1, S7-10)
SPOILERS AHEAD … AND SOME *BIG* DRAGON MOMENTS … Power is inherently seductive to quite a lot of people. Makes sense – you have control, you get to set the course of events and remake whatever small patch of the world falls under your purview in your, hopefully benevolent and Continue Reading
More Wednesday on a Friday! Title sequence plus character posters …
SNAPSHOTA sleuthing, supernaturally infused mystery charting Wednesday Addams’ time as a student at Nevermore Academy. Following Wednesday’s attempts to master her emerging psychic ability, thwart a monstrous killing spree that has terrorized the local town, and solve the supernatural mystery that embroiled her parents 25 years ago — all while Continue Reading
A comeback that’s long overdue: Thoughts on Blockbuster
Workplace comedies are a tale as old as time. Well, as old as TV anyway which embraced the idea of humour derived from banal everyday work environments – the “sit” to the “com” – pretty much from the get-go, realising that in all that wage-earning ordinariness was an hilarity-inducing mix Continue Reading
An ever-growing pushback – on both sides … Thoughts on Andor (S1, E7-9 review)
As a people, we are in love with the idealism of taking a stand against something. In the hallowed, lofty part of our minds where noble intent and purity of belief exist, there dwells an incorruptible part of us that sees the world in the possible and the hopeful, that Continue Reading
Two terrifically tantalising TV trailers: 1899 and Poker Face
Yes, we have potential viewing schedules of existing and up-and-coming shows that are the televisual equivalent of To Be Read piles so high and tottering that they will likely fall and crush us one day. True, we need spreadsheets to keep track of what we’re watching/long to watch and we Continue Reading
UPCOMING READS: Cover reveal for J. S. Dewes’ next novel Rubicon + trailer released for The Flatshare by Beth O’Leary
There’s always a lot going on in the publishing world with books arriving on a happy tsunami of reading possibilities and those same books, if the author is lucky (and with the ravenous maw of streaming services these days, more are being offered adaptation deals), finding their way to a Continue Reading