Doctor Who: Flux, Chapter One- The Halloween Apocalypse

 “What's the matter with Sheffield?"

"Too near Leeds...

Here we go then: a new season of Doctor Who, after what feels like an eternity and after some rather big revelations in The Timeless Child that the Doctor's past is more complicated than we thought. Those revelations were certainly a bombshell and I was rather impressed. However, those revelations need to work in the long term, not just add shock value to an "event" episode. I suspect we shall see during this interestingly structured six parter how this pans out.

I don't mean to suggest this episode is one of the greatest ever: let's have some perspective. But I enjoyed it. The opening, with the Doctor and Yaz in media res in a Bond villain deathtrap, was the perfect opening, and I'm pleased to see that Chris Chibnall seems to be improving the humour content of his scripts. And there's a suitably epic scale. We have this mysterious "Flux", a kind of storm that is destroying the universe for reasons unknown. We have a baddie, who reminds me of Eldrad, imprisoned since the dawn of time and now free... and this baddie seems to recall the Doctor from her Division days. Meanwhile, we have the concept of the red herring species, the dog-like Lupari, pair-bonded to humans to save them from the Flux. And one of their number, the nicely exasperated Karvanista, seems to have connections to the Division.

There's also a mysterious dig in  Liverpool... and modern day Scouser Dan, played rather well by John Bishop, a new companion who is shown to live in poverty, for such is Britain in 2021. He makes a good impression, likeable and resourceful while acting as the voice of the audience who, now that Yaz is a seasoned adventurer and TARDIS co-pilot, can fulfil the traditional companion role of saying "what's that, Doctor?".

There's also Claire, who has met the Doctor and Yaz although they haven't yet met her, something which really ought to happen more often on a time travel show. I suspect this has something to do with the Weeping Angel she sees, in a truly horrific and effective sequence. And we also have a nicely entertaining scene with two amusing Sontarans looking forward(!) to the Flux. There are a lot of elements and sub-plots in play, which I like, which is a real strength of doing the season as a single six part story.

It must be said, too, that Jodie Whittaker has never been better. She's nearing the end, but her Doctor is charismatic and cool. Let's just hope the script gives the Doctor a little more depth. Last season was an improvement on that store but there's still some way to go.

Still, this is a very promising start. Let's hope the quality stays at this level.

To the Devil a Daughter (1976)

 “Damn you!”

I thought this was supposed to be a terrible film, the flop that ruined Hammer. It may not be as good as The Devil Rides Out, Hammer’s previous Dennis Wheatley adaptation, but few films are. Why is this film, which I have just thoroughly enjoyed,so widely disliked?

This is an oddity. Hammer did very few films in 1974, but here comes their last hurrah, two years later, post-dating the attempted revival of the format by Tyburn. And, as far as I can see, this is a wonderful Satanic horror film, not quite up there with Hammer’s very best but very much bubbling under. The plot is gripping, the direction sublime, the tension exquisite, the performances superb. Christopher Lee has never been more charismatic nor more evil. Richard Widmark is the perfect tough guy hero. Klaus Kinski’s daughter is bloody good. Honor Blackman and Denholm Elliott are extraordinary in supporting roles.

I’m baffled as to why this flopped. I enjoyed this much more than Don’t Look Now last night.

Don’t Look Now (1973)

 “The one who’s blind. She’s the one who can see.”

This film has a reputation of one of this country’s famous horror films, despite the fact that it’s largely set in Venice, and one of its two co-stars is Canadian. I am, I’m sure you’ve gathered, blogging this because it’s Halloween weekend. Yet this isn’t the film I was expecting.

The direction is filets and full of nice little tricks and juxtapositions. The whole directorial grammar is that of a horror film. Nicolas Roeg, whose I work I have never previously, to my fault, seen, excels. Julie Christie and Donald Sutherland are excellent. There’s a lot of cleverness here, from the echoes from John’s job being to restore the murky and faded past, which is awfully gothic, to the whole presence of Venice here in this very British yet also very Italian, Giallo film.

Venice is so very present- reminding me of nothing so much as Siouxie and the Banshees with their video for their cover of Dear Prudence- but has never been more dark or creepy.

And yet, good as the film is, it somehow doesn’t particularly impress as a horror film until it’s too late. This film is seen as a classic of the genre, yet beyond the considerable style, I must confess, I find little substance beyond the obvious.

However, the film is very well shot, and Venice is. Wry pressure. I just wish I’d enjoyed this more.

I, Robot by Isaac Asimov

I should say, at the start, that this novel, unlike all the other Asimovs so far, isn’t one I’ve ever read before.

This, like the Foundation trilogy, masquerades as a novel but is not, strictly speaking, any such thing. Yet the various short stories are linked together into a kind of narrative by the narrator, with the common themes revolving around Asimov’s famed Three Laws of Robotics.

Yet the whole thing has a kind of coherence, and the short stories are fun to read- revolving, as the do, on the puzzle of how a robot is behaving in a certain way in relation to the Laws.

It’s amusing, of course, to see the course of the twenty-first century as seen from the 1940s. Gender roles are very much as they were. Smoking is ubiquitous. Even in 2052 there are no issues with oil and gas. The “Machines” that control the economy are interesting to contrast with modern computers and AI, and our fears of the Singularity. There is also an annoying and American prejudice in the final story, seeing Europe as old and exhausting. And we end with a dispiriting kind of infantile utopia where the Machines take care of humanity but we have no agency.

For all its flaws, though, and for all its lacking the depth of ideas of Foundation, this is nevertheless an extraordinary novel that develops the idea of the robot in ways that others- including Asimov himself- would go on to push towards bigger and better things.

The Stars, Like Dust by Isaac Asimov

This is, on the surface, a science fiction novel. Spaceships and alien planets abound. There are even little nods towards the fact that this is the same continuity as the Foundation novels,  albeit millennia before those events- things like interstellar travel working the same way, or that psychic musical instrument from Foundation and Empire.

And yet the trappings of science fiction are just that- trappings. This is essentially a spy novel full of clever twists and turns but no mind-boggling science fiction idea. While the plot twists are clever and entertaining, and I enjoyed the novel, Asimov’s limitations here in terms of prose and characterisations loom larger here in the absence of big ideas. This is a fairly good novel but, I fear, not touched with greatness.

Second Foundation by Isaac Asimov

Yes, I got through this bloody quickly, but these novels are so damn readable. Again, the prose and characterisation are basic, but nobody cares when the ideas and the plot twists are so good. Like The Jetsons, too, this is a space-hopping future that is a kind of eternal 1950s but, again, we can allow ourselves a brief amused smile and move on. This is bloody brilliant.

The plot is full of revelation and counter-revelation, with both halves of the novel turning their attention to the mysterious and fascinating Second Foundation, a society of rigorously mathematical psychologists- no Freudian quackery here- who are the guardians of the Seldon Plan, desperate to put things back on track after the Mule ruined everything. Everything here is a game of ten dimensional chess, with the truth hidden beneath many layers. The whole thing is profoundly addictive to read and is the perfect end to the original trilogy.

And it doesn’t matter at all that Asimov can’t write teenage girls or dictators’ mistresses for toffee.

I fear I don’t currently have access to the later Foundation novels. But more Asimov is coming..

Foundation and Empire by Isaac Asimov

This second novel is not, in a sense, a novel at all, just like it’s predecessor. It is a compilation of a serialised succession of short stories telling a story, and Sotho question of where one Foundation novel ends and another begins is a little arbitrator. Yet there is a certain coherence to this instalment, as the expansion of the Foundation runs up against the remnants of the Galactic Empire.

There are two segments. The first pits the Foundation against the decaying rump empire and is very much Gibbon with spaceships, cleverly using the fact that any emperor will be suspicious of the loyalty of any successful general.

We then more on to the Mule. The ideas here are magnificent- the Seldon Plan being led astray due to a mutant who can control minds, and hints as to the Second Foundation. Yet the oppressive gender roles as depicted mainly via the character of Bayta, and the silly dialogue of the “clown” Magnifico, are a little embarrassing.

None of that means that the ideas here, or the central concept, are anything other than extraordinary. The flaws of prose and characterisation cannot undermine this novel’s greatness.

Foundation by Isaac Asimov

The Michael Moorcock marathon is briefly interrupted by an unexpected change in my circumstances (nothing to worry about), so I’ve managed to squeeze in this short and extremely readable old favourite.

This isn’t so much a novel as a rather obviously serialised sequence of linked short stories. The prose is basic and functional. There are few women in it. This far future, to the reader of today, quite obviously has the mores of the mid twentieth century, with everybody smoking and no women in professional positions. Characterisation is no less functional than the prose.

Yet this is quite possibly the greatest science fiction novel of all time, and a real joy to read.

This is a novel of big ideas. Tens of millennia in the future, humanity has spread throughout the Galaxy, and comprises a Galactic Empire. Yet this empire, in terms Gibbon May recognise, is falling, slowly but inevitably. But one Hari Seldon, mathematician and “psycho historian” plans a Foundation on an obscure planet which will slowly grow in power, shortening the Dark Ages to come. And he does this via a mathematical science of predicting future historical trends, on the basis that, given sufficiently large populations of people, individual foibles cancel out.

It’s a superb central idea, and seeing how Terminus progresses over its first few centuries of Seldon Crises is utterly gripping. Who cares about prose and characterisation when the ideas are this good. 

Jurassic Park (1993)

 “An interactive CD-ROM!”

“An interactive C-D ROM!” 

I had a vague impression I’d seen this film 🎥 before. I hadn’t. It is, to avoid all beating around any bushes, brilliant. Oh, the cast is superb. Sam Neill and Laura Dern star with great brightness. Dickie Attenborough gives us a real career highlight. Jeff Goldblum gives us the prototype of the splendid maverick scientist role that he would come to own. Bob Peck, a find actor, finally makes it in Hollywood.

The CGI is dated. The science, perhaps, too: dinosaurs ARE birds. And, yes, Ian is highly charismatic. Yet his spiel against John’s sci-fi dinosaur DNS nonsense is subtly religious, objecting not only to John’s playing around with the ecosystem but to his perceived blasphemy- and “blasphemy” is a concept accepted only by tyrants who despise freedom and crave theocratic absolutism. Also, there’s an amusingly obvious subplot of getting the kid-hating Alan to begin to tolerate the little soda.

That aside, though, this is a solid blockbuster from the esteemed and too often snobbish my dismissed Mr Spielberg. Long may he direct.

I May Destroy You: Happy Animals

 "It's declined. Can I get a selfie, please?"

As ever, this is a thought-provoking episode with lots to unpick, centred around Terri's birthday party and the fact that Bella, still needing to earn a living despite the rapes, is broke.

Bella's treatment by the publishing boss she'd previously idolised is horribly, patronisingly casual: an advance isn't forthcoming. And she's to fulfil the contract, not write things about rape. All of which follows from humiliation in the supermarket.

We also see Kwame beginning to process what has happened to him, telling Terri about it. And we get some awkwardly racialised stuff about climate change. The pastor spouts absurd climate sceptic conspiracy theories bases on colonialism and white exploitation of resources which is, on the face of it, absurd and harmful..,. but then Theo confesses she got paid more for introducing Bella as an influencer because she's a "person of colour". Yet Theo is honest, and very frank about the ethical problems. She very much seems a decent person... but, as Terri mentions, the sins of the past have yet to be acknowledged. There are no easy answers here.

Terri and Bella pronounce their undying, and rather drunken, love for each other at the party... but an earlier conversation with an aggrieved Simon indicates that Terri may have more to do with the abandonment of Arabella to her eventual rape that night than previously thought. The plot thickens. Again, this is good, ethically nuanced, uncomfortable yet sublime telly.

Squid Game: The Man with the Umbrella

 "It hurts a lot. It's like trying to push out a kid..."

After last episode being so drama-heavy, this is all about the island, the mysterious masked people, and the game- which an impressive 187 people out of 201 have returned to play after their respective bruising encounters with the real world.

We start with the undercover cop, Jun-ho, who is searching for his brother. In showing how he smuggles himself on the island and disguises himself as a masked underling, we get to see how these underlings are treated- unable to speak, highly regimented and living in horribly spartan and featureless cells on on site, never able to remove their masks for any reason, thereby symbolising their identity as corporate drones. This is maintained even to the point that the boy who is taken hostage, and his mask removed, is shot by the boss. These people need to get unionised pretty sharpish.

The game is, of course, evil, and therefore hugely enteryaining. The tension is incredible, and the shooting free and wide-ranging. Yet, as ever, this is all about the characters. There's our resourceful North Korean defector, and the wonderful Sae-Byeok, with her resourcefulness and her potty mouth, who may be rivalling the old man as my favourite character. Interestingly, she seems to be throwing her lot in with the gangster.

Teams are forming- and Gi-Hun is with Sang-woo, the old man and Ali, a mostly likeable bunch. It's becoming clear that, yes, the games are a glorious bit of grand guignol. But at its heart this is a series about people. And is, beneath it all, quite angrily political.

Breaking Bad: Mandala

 “This game we're playing? You don't got the street cred to survive it."

This ewpisode really raises the stakes and moves things to a higher level. The pressure is on, not only for Walt in keeping both his lives together (Or is it Heisenberg? It's increasingly ambiguous which is the alter ego, with a lot of credit due to Bryan Cranston's facial acting, as ever) but for Jesse and Walt in maintaining the meth dealing in the face of increasingly hostuile competition.

The first scene- with one of Jesse's underlings being killed- is extraordinary in how bloody tense it is, and the horror of the eventual killing (by a kid on a bike with a gun!) really hits home. It hits home for Jesse too, who falls completely to pieces, his rewaction being a total contrast to the now clearly sociopathic Walt. It's clear that Jesse is far from cut out for the role he's occupying- and, implicity, the role that may partly have made Jane fall for him- and he's only there because, as Walt later says out loud, he does what he's told.

Except, of course, having fallen to pieces, he doesn'r- with consequences not only for Walt but for Jane, the poor girl, who has fallen for him hard. After so much effort to give up, she gets back on the heroin wagon for him, and we get a deeply disturbing scene straight out of Trainspotting.

Meanwhile, Walt's life continues to be complex. His improved condition means that further surgery looms- and, this being America, this means forking out a six figure sum, which is a lot of meth. I can't help feeling that the NHS must be keeping this country's drug problem from reaching quite the same level. His relationship with Skyler continues to be deceptively smooth; there's no conflic, but they're increasingly distant, and both have secrets.  Noonly is Skyler clearly close to affair territory with her boss, but a bit of forensic bookkeeping seems set to lead her to dabble in criminality, rather neatly paralleling her husband.

Oh, and the baby is due. Speaking as a father, I can say that this is the biggest thing that can ever happen to a bloke.. yet Walt, with more superbly subtle acting from Cranston, clearly cares about this much less than the meth.

More the focus of the plot, though, is our introduction (via Saul, becoming more and more Hyman Roth) to Gus, a distributor who is professional, risk-averse and, I'm sure, important. I know this more, perhaps, than would have been obvious in 2009 as Giancatlo Esposito has since become a well-known actor, courtesy of The Boys and The Mandalorian.

The end shows how clever the plotting is: with Jesse out of it, Walt is under pressure, taking huge risks to get the meth to Gus' underlings. And that's when Skyler's waters break....

An extraordinary, and pivotal, episode.

Squid Game: Hell

 “Out here is worse!”

This is an interesting way to do a second episode in many senses: we’ve seen the premise, and now it’s suddenly taken away as the surviving players (narrowly) decide to leave the game and return to their lives. Yet the episode is crucial in getting us to know the characters and where they’re coming from; to believe that they are so desperate, by the end, to return to the games; and to show yet again the grinding effects of poverty that form the underlying theme of the series.

So we have Ali, the polite and good  immigrant trying to make a decent life for his wife and child in a society that seeks to rip him off and keep him down at every turn. Yet his boss (nicely done industrial accident, incidentally) has not been able to afford to pay anyone for months

We have Sang-woo, high flyer turned embezzler who is wanted by the police, in more debt than anyone and has all but gambled away his mother’s home.

We have the desperate North Korean defector who wants to bring her family across, and is prepared to be as badass as she has to be in order to achieve that. 

We have the nice old man, dying and lonely, who can either find meaning with the games or end his days alone.

And finally, we have Gi-hun, whose mother is desperately ill with diabetes but cannot afford to be treated because South Korea, incredibly for a first world country, has no health system. And if that’s not bad enough, his estranged wife will soon be taking his daughter out of the country with her new husband and he will never see her again- because of poverty meaning he is unable to support her. To add insult to injury, his ex’s husband tries to throw money at him to go away.

We don’t need the games, or the death. The Dickensian poverty of modern South Korea- just like the UK- is horrific enough. This is gripping and well made telly, games or no games. 

Phoenix in Obsidian by Michael Moircock

.

This is the second in Moorcock’s Eternal Champion and, if rather less unified in its structure than the previous novel, is a very interesting- and, in my experience, very fast- read.

There are lots of ideas here- a dying, frozen future Earth where humanity has become decadent, knowing that there is no future. Threre are some nice touches in describing such a culture: the visual arts and the prose of this society are absurdly over-complex, as is the architecture. Less fortunate is the kink-shaming description of their somewhat adventurous and painful sexual habits as a sign of decadence, but this is 1970.

We have a Moon that has long since crashed to Earth and become a mountain range, We have a scarlet fjord. We have long-lost technologies. We have a baddie who is a most worldly bishop and makes me think of those popes of the time of the Borgias. We have tantalising habits of the Eternal Champion's many existences and his ultimate backstory.

Yet the ideas here are all brilliantly imaginative rather than the sorts of ideas than may raise a novella of science fantasy weirdness to aspire to the literary. Unlike its predecessor, I don't think Phoenix in Obsidian does that.

That, however, is no crime. This is a hugely enjoyable piece of pulp fiction that can be read by a time-poor reader in the space of four or five days. We do not need to ask for more.

Right. One more Moorcock to go, then something else...

Squid Game: Red Light, Green Light

 “Would you like to play a game with me...?"

Yes; I've finally jumped on to the bandwagon. All the other series I'm blogging will continue, but Mrs Llamastrangler and myself will be watching this on most Fridays until we've done all nine episodes. So at last I'm starting to know what the fuss is about and hopefully understand some of those ubiquitous memes.

Essentially, before we even get to the premise, characters and themes, this is very well-directed, written and acted telly. Our main character, Gi-hun, is a poverty- and denbt-stricken fortysomething deadbeat dad and failure in life, who lives with and off his elderly mother. He has all sorts of character fkaws but means well, and is played superbly in an alternately comial and tragic performance from Lee Jung-jae, in a performance that had to be pitched perfectly for the whole thing to work.

We'll get to the gore in a bit, but this sereies is really about poverty. The poverty that grinds you down, steals your dignity, destroys your soul, removes your freedom and wastes yoiur life. There's some subtle politcal subtext here, in allowing us to see the unpleasant sides of desperate poverty, with its loan sharks, violence, humiliation and magical thinking that leads nowhere. Gi-hun getting slapped in the face for losing the game may be darkly funny, but the loan sharks are no better. There may be no humanity within the game, but there's none outside either.

The aesthetics of the games island are brilliant, with its bright, childlike colours, masked baddies and big boss ("Front Man") with his V mask and glasses of scotch. And the game itself is creepy; essentially What's The Time, Mr Wolf? with a big, creepy, plastic little girl. At first it's just eerie, but one player can't say still... and then he's shot. And things slowly build towards a massacre in which over half the debt-ridden, desperate players are killed.

This is brilliant. It reminds me, and I'm sure many others, of Saw. But the real horror here is poverty. A society without an adequate safety net is not a free society.

Hammer House of Horror: Charlie Boy

 “I’m going to get YOU…”

This is not the greatest episode so far but, after the misstep that it was its predecessor, it's a solid return of form for this tale of a voodoo curse emanating from a sinister African fetish. Hey, it's 1980: the phrase "cultural appropriation" doesn't exist yet. African art may be valuable and admired, but it's seen to come from a mysterious, exotic and somewhat magical culture.

The way the story unfolds is utterly predictable, but that's exactly what makes the whole thing so enjoyable: we know which characters are going to die, and in which order, so it's a question of when and how. There's a clear influence here from The Omen;  the deaths are all due to pleasingly gory incidents.

The cast is good, too, especially Angela Bruce as the sensible (and Geordie) Sarah, and Marius Goring as the slightly sinister German stereotype Heinz. It's also fun to see a young Jeff Rawls in a minor part.

This episode is good, not great: it isn't going to be one of those episodes that lingers in the mind. But it's a solid and enjoyable piece of telly.

I May Destroy You: The Alliance

 "I'm here to learn how to avoid being raped..."

We see yet another angle on rape and sexual assault in tghis clever and subtle episode. Arabella finds a support group run by Theodora, an old friend, who appears to be awesome, and a survivor of sexual abuse. There's no denying that Arabella benefits from being there, even if the words she says are utterly heartbreaking. She's terrified of being raped yet again.

Yet Theo's past, seen in a flashback to 2004 (surely just a couple of years ago...?), is full of ambiguity. On the surface, she falsely accuses a boy, Ryan, of rape- and it is, sadly, not exactly immaterial to how the complaint is treated that she has her "white girl tears" and Ryan is Black. Ryan is exonerated when the phone footage is found, and his friends, including a young Terry and Arabella, help him celebrate as Theo mutters a racist epithet under her breath.

Yet there's more to it; it seems this isn't the first time Theo lied about such things, being coached by her mother to lie about her father sexually abusing her and domestically abusing her mother for reasons of custody. Making a child do that is itself abuse, and Theo's behaviour is part of a cycle of abuse.

And, it must be said, Ryan is a dick. Theo wanted love, but she got a cheap shag for money, with photos taken without her consent in what is arguably a kind of sexual assault. Things are ambiguous, as ever. This is excellent, thought-provoking telly.

Breaking Bad: Over

 "You cannot beat the thermal efficiency of the C3!"

This episode may not have the high concepts or dramatic incidends of recent instalments, being very much a character piece. But it's an utterly superb, and very subtle, bit of drama, getting to do subtle little things with all these characters that are made possible by the previous gradual development of all the characters.There's some interesting stuff with Jesse and Jane, with her reluctance to introduce him to her dad seeming to indicate that she likes this stoner with criminal connections, wants to sleep with him and spend time with him, but doesn't see a long term future in the way he does. Ouch.

But essentially the episode is all about being an alpha male, Walt's need for it, and the places he can find it.

He can't find it at home. There's Hank, competing with him as father figure to Walt Jr as well as at being a man generally. His fight with Hank about how much tequila the sixteen year old Walt Jr should drink may be petty, but it's about status, not how much a teenager should drink. And it's revealing that, in the heat of the row, Walt should look at Hank with Heisenberg's eyes- which shows where this is headed.

He's not a man at home, where his over-the-top DIY hardly impresses Skyler. He's at the back of his own party, delivering an embarrassing speech. He's very much the beta male- and, if he only knew, Skyler's boss is being the kind of sensitive, attentive, caring man to Skyler that he isn't. And Skyler is very much noticing.

And yet he's top dog with Walt, who is totally dependent on "Mr White". And he seems to effortlessly switch to being Heisenberg at the end as he warns competitors off his territory. This shows that, much as Walt may imagine he can leave his new life as a budding meth godfather, he can't. It was never really just about paying for the cancer. It was always about being a man, an alpha male.

He needs that. And always will. This, I suspect, is the seed of his destruction.

Superlative telly, as though that needed saying.

Logan (2017)

 "Don't be what they made you..."

I'm going to do my best to watch the few remaining X-Men films from Fox in order. It'll be Dark Phoenix next, fairly soon, but for now we have this rather unexpectedly styled and surprisingly good film based on a limited series featuring Wolverine in the future (2029!) well after my time.

My knowledge of Marvel comics is fairly comprehensive up to circa 1993, and fairly nonexistent after them. So I know of Caliban- played here (and rather well) by Stephen Merchant of all people, and of course of Donald Piercxe and the Reavers, from the late 1980s stories by Chris Claremont in a rather differrent context.

But the situation here is different. Logan- more than two centuries old in a fairly depressing life- is dying of a myserious ailment; Charles Xavier is dying and suffering from dementia, a terrifying outcome for someone with his mental powers, and something which led, a year ago, to the "Westchester Incident" in which several, including multiple X-<Men died. And this is a world in which, for reasons ultimately explained, no mutant has been born for a quarter of a century. Oh, and, unexpectedly, by means of a test tube baby and sperm theft, Logan has a daughter. With claws.

This is a superb film, with superb acting elevating a quite good script to somewhat more than that. Hugh Jackman is excellentt but Patrick Stewart is sublime. The best X-Men film yet and, I suspect, unlikely to be bettered.

The Eternal Champion by Michael Moorcock

 

I’ve never read this before, or indeed any Michael Moorcock novel other than the two I’ve already blogged. This is a much earlier novel, much less tied to real human history and mythology, and so a very different experience, despite the obvious shared links with Moorcock’s Multiverse, which I am now infinitesimally closer to understanding.

It’s a highly satisfying read, both philosophical and full of unexpected yet entirely logical twists and surprises as what is, on the surface, a very simple narrative deals with heave themes of the ethics of war, the darkness of human nature and its propensity for atrocities, and a devastatingly bleak view of racism and ethnic conflict. 

And yet, I confess, I found the opening chapters difficult. The idea of John Daker somehow having multiple existences in multiple realities and being cursed with that knowledge is fascinating, but it serves as texture rather than as the focus of the plot. We begin with Erekose exploring an unfamiliar Earth with continents and cities unknown to us, at a time in history (past or future?) which is equally unknown. Despite the subtle prose and characterisation this presents Gigi unties for the reader, yet the novel soon settles down and hooks the reader with its prose and characterisation.

The ending is extremely satisfying-and leaves all sorts of questions which will, I’m sure, be echoed in other novels. Is this our Earth, or another Earth of the Eldren, colonised by humans in the far future? Or is history just cyclical? Regardless, this novel is fascinating.

Halloween II (1981)

 "I've been trick or treated to death tonight!"

This, despite its fairly high wattage cast and its script credit for John Carpenter, may be an above average horror film but it can't hold a pumpkin to the original. Yes, Jamie Lee Curtis and Donald Pleasence (despite his accent slipping a bit) are very good. Yes, the killings are effectively done in a way which places this above your average slasher. But the first film was superb, and shot with aplomb by Carpenter himself. This is a bit of a let down in comparison. Such is, I suppose, the fate of most sequels.

There's some interesting stuff here, not least of which is the intriguing twist at the end. It's leaned into, but not made explicit, that Michael Myers may be a bit supernatural. After all, Loomis does shoot him six times, and he may have mentioned it once or twice.

There's also some nice use of Night of the Living Dead being shown on the telly in one of the killings, a nice echo of the parallel use of The Thing from Another World in the first film. The acting and dialogue are decent, and there's a reasonable amount of character stuff for this sort of film.

Still, there's not an awful lot here that's fresh, and a lot of that is down to the decision to make this the story of the few hours immediately after the first film. These events feel like an extended postscript, and they are exactly that. A fairly decent slasher but, disappointingly given its predecessor, no more than that.

Hammer House of Horror: The House That Bled to Death

 "House prices are ridiculous these days..."

Ah, 1980. When, apparently, a hospital porter and a housewife could get a mortgage on a house that needed doing up... or could they?

This has the finest title so far, but despite some nice twists, a nicely creepy and mysterious Milton Johns, and some nivce set pieces with loads of blood, it drags a bit and, for me, doesn't quite manage to pull it off or, indeed, grab the attention. I suspect that has much to do with the relatively flat direction, as well as an uninspiring performance from Nicholas Ball as William, a character who needs to be portrayed with much more nuance in order for the conclusion to work.

Spoliers. Read on only if that's ok.

The twist at the end sort of works, although surely the shock of William and Emma not being married must surely have been old-fashioned even in 1980. But the clues that they are not really a couple, at first, are nicely and subtly done. And the ending is appropriate as the couple get their comeuppance.Yet the set pieces don't really work visually, and the miscasting of Nicholas Ball is a disaster.

I don't think it's the fault of the script. But this one, I'm afraid, is a relative dud.

Sex Education: Season 3, Episode 3

 “Yes, Jeffrey, you sex god!”

This episode is bloody eventful, and bloody good. On the other hand, it made Mrs Llamastrangler cry.

There's some strong use of humour tomundercut a lot of the real darkness here, from the cat that was killed by shagging to the way Aimee unburdening herself to Jean about her sexual assault (and how to love her vulva) is swiftly followed by the goat having a poo on the floor.

It's an episode with Jean and Otis adjusting to Jakob and Ola as new members of the household, and making compromises. It's about Maeve reconnecting with her mum, and forgiving Isaac after his heartfelt and rather lovely speech. It's about Hope dragging the school into the rip off industry that is the school uniform, an institution that exists only to extort money from parents. 

It's also about Viv abandoning all principle in pursuit of power and Jackson's disgust, as well as his anxiety now he's no longer a swimmer, an actor or head boy. And he seems to get on rather well with the ambiguously queer Cal... and their weed.

It's about the double date, and Adam not yet feeling ready to say to his mum that Eric is his boyfriend... and his concern at Eric's forthcoming trip to horribly homophobic Nigeria. Already that's a lot going on, but we also haveLily's obsession wth alien conspiracy theories driving a wedge between her and Ola... and Otis being allowed into Ruby's unglamorous but sweet home life. Sweetly, we gradually learn how Ruby is more besotted with Otis than she lets on... but when she declares her love, he doesn't say it back. Ow.

So much going on here- but the episode doesn't feel crowded. This is a real leap of quality that gives me real hope for this season.

Breaking Bad: 4 Days Out

 “You made poison out of beans, yo!”

This extraordinary episode could be summed up quite easily, I suspect. Walt is expecting bad news from his CT scan and expects he doesn't have long to live, with little to leave for his family. So he and Jesse go to the desert and cook, but end up stranded there (after cooking $672,000 worth of meth- each!) and nearly die of dehydration before Walt pulls some chemistry teacher Macgyver superpowers out of his arse and saves them with science.

But there's a lot more going on than that, and I'm not just thinking of the extended meth cooking scenes which no doubt improved the quality of meth in the USA for years to come. There's Walt's death wish, and deep down shame. There's the fact this is an extended two hander between him and Jesse, giving a bit of depth to their relationship. We see them bond over how much they've cooked: they are potentially very wealthy man if they can keep it up long term. And Jesse may whinge, but he sees "Mr White"  as an authority figure and subconsciously accepts his subordinate position, as well as marvelling at his cleverness. Walt thinks Jesse is a bit of a prat- but a trustworthy prat, and one with necessary connections.

Meawhile Walt and Skyler have made up, but the easy, natural couple stuff has gone and the affection they show each other is much less coded as sexual. It's not the same. And even Saul says exactly what we viewers are thinking: this double life of Walt's is simply not sustainable. I suspect that this season will end with a dramatic demonstration of that.

It is, needless to say, peerlessly good.

I May Destroy You: It Just Came Up

 "Rapebusters!"

This is an incredible bit of telly, genuinely groundbreaking and meaningful. It's taken a few episodes for I Will Destroy You to introduce and flesh out its characters and themes, but now we are properly into a sublimely constructed dramatic exploration of sex, consent, and all those nuances of behaviour, orf attitudes to sexual assault, of what we may or may not define as rape.

Bella goes through the wringer here. Still under pressure to write her new novel- life, and work, must go on- Bella soon learns that a DNA sample has been taken and a suspect arrested, which seems wonderful. Yet it also means the DNA of consensual partners must be taken, which means Biagio. Ad this seemingly caring and decent man starts to blame her for not being careful about her drinking rather than blaming, you know, the rapist that actually raped her. Wanker. It's a powerfully written and devastating scene.

Yet she gets a triumph, of sorts. Learning that what zain did- craftily removing the condom during sex- is rape both morally and legally, Bella plays on his mind for a bit before dramatically, and publically, outing him at the ens, in a victorious moment.

For Kwame, though, there are no such mixed experiences as his reporting of his own sexual assault to the police turns out, despite good intentions on behalf of the somewhat inarticulate policeman he speaks to, to be a humiliating embarrassment.The law seems not to be well-aligned with casual gay sex.

There's a lot to think about here. This is superb, serious drama.

Free Guy (2021)

 "IP's and sequels. That is what people want."

See the quote, in which the film's villain summarises Holluwood This is a deceptively clever film. It's full of CGI,which works in the context. It's certainly very funny. Yet behind the well-executesd humour in this deceptively extraordinary film, a philosophical treatise hiding behind a blockbuster, is a bloody bit of brilliance.

Guy- a clever name for an NP-is a piece if sentient code devised by Keys and Millie. Yet he is also a genuine incidence of AI, a phemomenon that will, barring my outrageously premature death, be made manifest within my lifetime.

This is a film full of of humour amd witticisms.The tone is light. Yet, at its core, it is very philosophical indeed, being focused on a character (Ryan Reynolds) who is a sentient AI. And the film, with a real lightness of touch, really explores the idea of artificial sentience.

Look, I realise the '20s (yes, i know, none of us can quite believe it;'s the 2020s.), and we can quite be legitimately raise an eyebrow at how the film at the end uses such properies as lightsabres (in a scene where it could, of corse, symbolise,,, ahem) and Captain America's shield. Also, I appreciate the metatextual fun in characers such as Buddy and Dude. but, ultimately, this is a film which cheerdfully disregards and, indeed, freely attacks the fourth wall throughout, right until the romantic ending.

A rather good first film of 2021.