Hammer House of Horror: Guardian of the Abyss

 "Don't you know the power of positive evil?"

This episode is one of the finest yet. Written by David Fisher, who had written some impressive episodes of Doctor Who over the preceding two years, this is essentially a Dennis Wheatley pastiche, played very straight. It reminded me very much of Hammer's The Devil Rides Out (although To the Devil a Daughter is much underrated) in its structure- a devil worshipping cult, scrying glasses, cows, invetrd crosses and all the iconography, all playing out over a landscape of posh country houses and deceased decadent aristocrats.

Yet it's more than that. The John Dee connection is clever. The use of voodo dolls is creepy. John Carson is a superb villain. Paul Darrow is great fun as a creepy cultist. And the twist at the end is excellent, the perfect capstone to a fine script, very much foreshadowed and earned. I can forgive the driving with no seatbelts (hey, it's 1980) and the amusing sex scene where Mike and Alison start doing foreplay while still wearing clothes over their naughty bits in the time-honoured television fashion.

This may ebe the best yet. Not many episodes left to beat it...

Squid Game: Gganbu

 "I'm pretty good at getting the things in the holes, huh?"

After weeks and weeks it's been quite clear that Squid Game, while being fundamentally plotted around the deadly games, is also a bloody good drama with character and subtext... and emotions. But dammit, this episode made this forty-four year old man cry.

The gimmick is simple: the characters pair off... and it turns out they have to play marbles against each other for survival, with characters tending to have paired off with their friends or, in one case, spouses. Naturally, the pairings are for maximum emotional cruelty, but the first casualty is poor Mi-Nyeo, whose desperate charm cannot save her from being the one character unable to find a partner, and thus the first to die. Ouch. I liked her.

Up to a point it's not hard to suppose that the characters we've followed will best the randomers against whom they are pitted, so it's no surprise to see Deok-su, not yet receiving his inevitable comeuppance, survive. Nor are we surprised to see Mi-Nyeo win out against a woman we haven't really seen before, but the circumstances are heartwrenching as this lovely lady willingly lays down her life after a heart to heart, concluding that Mi-Nyeo has more to live for.

Then there's the evil Sang-woo, whose dirty tricks doom poor Ali. I hope he bloody well dies for this. But most heart-wrenching of all is the pairing between Gi-hun and the old man, who sacrifices his life for the younger man but not before teaching him a stern moral lesson about exploiting the weaknesses of others. The old man's death scene is utterly devastating, although he at least has the dignity of being shot off-screen.

This is excellent, devastating television.

Doctor Who: Flux, Chapter 5- Survivors of the Flux

 "Fetch your dog!"

This is, let us confess with all due squeeing, if that word still exists, that this was a somewhat exciting episode, teasing us almost as much as the Nepalese seer with his Conan Doyle obsession. We had Dan, a rather fetchingly dressed Yaz  and Professor Jericho (yay!) as Edwardian Indiana Joneses. We had Bel and Vinder. We had the Grand Serpent manipulating the history of UNIT, complete with what may have been a bit of Nick Courtney's voice, until Kate Stewart proves to be his match. We get the beginnings of an explanation for the Williamson tunnels. We get, in short, the beginnings of some answers, as befits a fifth episode of our first literal six parter since The Armageddon Factor, another story about time, cosmic balance and war.

Chibnall does well to balance the enormous number of characters here, and gives us feels as well as exposition. There is a lot of character development, from the Doctor's affection (love?) for Yaz to Yaz's resourcefulness as the leader of the intrepid gang stranded in Edwardian times. She's tough, and Dan and the Prof are lucky to have her.  Yet we also feel for poor Mr Williamson (with his anachronistically modern Scouse accent; a Scouser in the 1820s would have sounded more like the rest of Lancashire) as he is at last believed.

It has to  e said, though, that the best bits are the fun, globe-trotting, action set pieces in 1904, as well as the little bits that are bound to pay off later- UNIT, se see, has the TARDIS as it was at the end of last episode.

But the big event is the Division, and the revelation that Barbara Flynn is in fact playing Tecteum,the Doctor's adoptive "mother" (and, by implied retcon, the Claire Bloom character in The End of Time?), as well as that the Division exists outside of time, and has been shaping the history not only of our universe but a whole multiverse (right at the point where I'm reading loads of Michael Moorcock)... to the poinyt of wanting to destroy this universe and move to the next one. Which, incidentally, may be the universe from which the baby Doctor-to-be had just arrived by wormhole when first found by Tecteum, whoincidentally has the Doctor's memories stored in a Chameleon Arch pocket watch.

Deep breath. This is exciting stuff, and if that's not enough the Sontarans are invading, Swarm and Azure have just killed Tecteum and it seems the Doctor is next, amongst some rather exciting silultaneous cliffhangers.

And... breath. Yeah, that was a bit good. And Chibbers wrote it...

Once Upon a Time... in Hollywood (2019)

 "Now, that's the way a cigarette should taste..."

This is, seen one way, a typical Tarantino film. It has his signature cinema-literate metatextuality (there’s an extended riff towards the end on spaghetti westerns and the whole Italian B movie industry, which I much enjoy), his narratives within narratives, his sense of controlled irony, his non-linear narratives and his deliberately ambiguous elements- did Cliff kill his wife or not, as many seem to think? He seems a decent man, but people are complicated.

And yet, in another sense, this is a real outlier in that it is not an action film at all but a serious drama with big themes- how one responds to the approach of middle ag;  male friendship and how it develops when the two men are not of equal status, with one living in a Hollywood mansion and the other in a trailer; how, in 1969, the era of Westerns and war films is slowly ebbing away towards an era of auteurs, hippies and changing values. It’s a film that uses footage cleverly to show us all the different sides of 1969, with Tarantino’s usual visual wit, and has a similarly evocative soundtrack, as his films invariably do.

This is not really a film about the Manson “family”, despite Margot Robbie’s splendid turn as Sharon Tate: it’s appropriate that Charles Manson himself only appears briefly and is told to go away. His “family” are shown as shallow, duplicitous petty criminals, manipulating a blind old man with dementia to get a place to stay- and, arguably, raping him. It’s fitting that Tarantino should do as he did in Inglourious Basterds and have history pan out differently and far more pleasingly.

This film is superbly shot, superbly made, and full of both heart and complexity. It may well be Tarantino’s masterpiece.

A Study in Scarlet by Arthur Conan Doyle

The first shock upon reading this justifiably admires piece of pulp fiction is how unexpectedly short it is. But then, like so many “novels” of its era, it is in reality just an extended short story written for publication in a periodical, much as many of what we know as lengthy Victorian novels were serialised versions of the same. Yet, as a murder  mystery and as the introduction of the immortal Sherlock Holmes, it is a work of magnificence.

This is not quite she Sherlock Holmes we shall eventually come to know, of course. Both he and the still physically frail Watson are young men, both certainly in their twenties. Holmes May disdain Poe’s C. Auguste Dupin but, like the earlier fictional detective, he is shown to rarely leave his room in order to investigate crime, the case depicted being very much described as an exception.

Indeed, the very profession of “consulting detective” as shown here is not as we shall come to see it. Holmes is not a private detective with his own clients but rather a consultant who aids other detectives, including both Lestrade and Gregson, with their cases. This is not quite the fully-formed Holmes, and the section where Watson describes the odd gaps in his knowledge feels awkward.

Nonetheless, the tale rattles along very pleasantly indeed, including the Mormon flashbacks, which rightly decry the twin evils of forced marriage and forced religion and read much better now than they did when I was young, and skipped them.

I rather enjoyed this. I may as well zoom through the rest of the Sherlockian canon, but first let’s have some more Michael Moorcock…

Superman and the Mole Men (1951)

 “Why, you give the impression you’re leading a… a double life!”

 This is a fascinating little document. It may be the first ever full length superhero movie, but it feels in many ways like a typical 150s cheap sci-fi B movie. The Mole Men of the title look hilariously rubbish, with their obvious wigs and pantomime costume. And yet this silly little short film is full of heart and, in its own way, very faithful to the character of Superman. 

It's instructive, in particular, so compare this to the Christopher Reeves films of the '70s and '80s. There, Clark Kent's hat and oold-fashioned suit make him look like an old-fashioned, out of touch country bumpkin, a figure of mockery. He dresses the same way here, but it's 1951; he looks completely anonymous. And Reeves doesn't play Kent as a klutz or as any other kind of comic figure. He's an experienced, professional and very inquisitive reporter.

We also have a Superman here who is much closer to the liberal wish fulfilment figure of the early comics. The eponymous Mole Men aren't trying to conquer the surface: insteasd, they've been disturbed by humans drilling, have come up fpor a look, and are quickly persecuted by murderous lynch mobs. The enemy isn't them; it's human intolerance. This is an interesting message for the time of McCarthyism, when reds were under the bed. It's an allegory for all sorts of persecutions of all sorts of minorities, and Superman at one point accuses the mob of being "like Nazi stormttroopers". Even a silly little cheap B movie can have a subtext.

It's interesting to see how relatively underpowered Superman is here, but he's not fighting mighty foes but social evils, a fascinating dynamic. No wonder this little movie begat a long running television series. It's cheap, it's silly, yet it's also strangely heartwarming.

The Final Programme by Michael Moorcock

This is a very different book from all the previous Michael Moorcock novels I’ve read, to understate hugely. 

There are some similarities and echoes with what I’ve already read, of course. I’m already aware that Jerry Cornelius I’d an aspect of the Eternal Champion, and the ending with the hermaphrodite is echoed, no doubt deliberately, in The City of the Autumn Stars.

Yet this feels different. It’s more light-hearted, and absolutely a product of the London of the part of the ‘60s where mod was yielding to psychedelia, and both drugs and sexuality were becoming more fluid, although there’s also more of a hint of James Bond. This novel very much evokes that age and, if it feels a little more tough and ready than other Moorcock novels, with as much in common with William S. Burroughs than science fiction, I enjoyed the ride.

Groovy, man. I have no idea what the other Jerry Cornelius novels are going to be like…

Doctor Who: Flux, Chapter 4- Village of the Angels

 “Mrs Hayward, you appear to be... at night."

Right then. I've been pretty positive about pretty much every episode this season so far, leavened by a little apprehension about exactly what Chibnall is doing with his retconning of the mythology and whether the end result will do the show good or ill. I'm enjoying the ride, but perhaps not unconditionally.

Well, this episode is not one for such equivocation. It's bloody sublime, scary Who at its greatest. Well done Maxine Alderton, who gives us another slice of proper behind the sofa scares. This episode treats the Weeping Angels easily as well as Steven Moffat used to, and is crammed with excellent suspense-filled set pieces of exactlythe sort that Doctor Who should be doing. The Angels are the perfect television baddies, literally dependent on being seen by the camera for the very effective scares. And there is, of course, a television within a television, because we all remember that an image of an Angel becomes an Angel.

Yet the setting- a village cut off from the world and a base under siege along two time zones- is compelling and, moreover, so are the characters. We have Claire, suffering the horror of being stranded decades in the past and the further body horror of being possessed, Exorcist-like, by an Angel. We have the likeable Professor Jericho, whose bravery stems from the fact that the horrors he's witnessing tonight are as nothing to the horrors he witnessed at Bergen-Belsen. There's even a brief exchange of words showing that Gerald (who thankfully dies; apparently a second touch of an Angel simply kills) is the worst kind of authoritarian patriarch. This is good writing, and well shot too.

Yet there's more than scares and characterisation. The story of the week may take centre stage here, as in War of the Sontarans, but the arc plot continues apace. Vinder is still (in a nifty mid-credits sequence at the end) on the trail of a rather heroic Bel, while Azure is luring countless victims into a Passenger. The TARDIS crew all get good stuff to do. And there are revelation- The Weeping Angels are (sometimes) working for the Division, and the whole thing is a trap for the Doctor, suddenly recalled to the Division at the end in an effectively shocking moment. And Yaz and Dan are still trapped in 1901.It's all the more effective for seeming to come from nowhere, yet the whole plan makes perfect sense.

I have no idea where this is going, but perhaps I really ought to put aside my reservations about Chibnall's work and admit I'm just enjoying the ride.

The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp (1943)

 "It was English cooking..."

This is, of course, a wonderful film. But the wonder is that, for a British film with a military theme made in 1943, it’s strangely lacking in jingoism. Indeed, I understand Churchill tried to have it banned. I’m rather glad he didn’t succeed.

This film is at once superb and unique, fitting into no real genre. It’s all about war but is not really a war film as we know it. It’s as creatively and wittily directed as one might expect from Powell and Pressburger, with clever visual motifs abounding and a non-linear narrative which is human, cultured and above all realistic about war, and the essential similarities between soldiers who happen to be fighting on different sides but could easily have been friends if fate had not led them to try and shoot each other. 

Yet this is also a film about love, about forgiveness, about not allowing one’s opinions to become too reactionary as one gets older. It’s a film about the essential absurdity of Prussian duelling, about war versus sportsmanship, about the excitement of waiting for the next instalment of The Hound of the Baskervilles in Strand magazine. It’s also a film with quite a large part for an alarmingly young Private Fraser from Dad’s Army.

Most of all, it’s human and warm and funny and wonderful. If you haven’t already, watch it.

The Man in the High Castle by Philip K. Dick

 I’ve never read a novel by Philip K. Dick before, despite having knowingly seen at least three films based on his work. This is a highly impressive introduction to his work, a novel as thoughtful as it is imaginative.

The fact that one should not perhaps look to closely at the realism of the alternative history presented here in no way harms the nov: sleight of hand is an honourable technique. And the world presented here, where the Axis won the war and split the former USA between them, is compelling and three dimensional.

Germany and Japan are slowly slipping into a rivalry, inevitable with the Nazis’ fundamental and horrifying racism, with the Holocaust having been extended to an African genocide, with others implied. The Japanese are presented sympathetically, despite the awkwardly contemporary hints that they merely imitate others’ cultural products, rather than create. They have culture, feeling, and that nebulous thing called creativity. The Nazis, by contrast, are a society with no culture or humanity whatsoever, a dark and empty dead end. They have put a man on Mars, joylessly, yet television is only now being rolled out. And now, it is implied, they are slowly gaining the upper hand which may result in nuclear Holocaust of Japan.

Yet this is told through real, human characters such as a Jewish craftsman, a German spy and a Japanese businessmen, with an oddly fascinating sting subplot about the forgery of antiques. There is a lot of thoughtful musing on the nature of art and morality through the medium of Eastern religious philosophy, most of which is lost on this godless reader. But the novel is full of wonderful little touches, with the mental universe of this world feeling thoroughly thought through.

Best of all is Dick’s nicely self-abnegating articulation of the death of the author, as his counterpart within the novel, the creator of the novel within the novel, explains that he was simply the medium for a novel that wrote itself. It’s a clever, challenging, perfect ending to a novel which deliberately resists the concept of arbitrary endings. A superb novel.

Black Moon (1934)

 "If I ever find him in the house again, I'll have him whipped."

This is... well, a very racist film. We're not talking a few dated attitudes, we're talking the whole hog. It's not Birth of a Nation or anything: it doesn't emanate hate. It's just... well, first things first.

This film isn't anything special, but for a B kovie of the time it has a somewhat impressive director and cast, starring noless a figure than Fay Wray. It's well shot, with some impressive sequences, but also manages to be both slow and too rushed at the end. If we ignore the implications of the film being about a handful of white people being surrounded by thousands of hostile Black "natives" and their weird voodoo, there's a fairly effective threat.

However, you see the problem. The setting is an island in the Caribbean, based on Haiti, There's a comedy Black American Uncle Tom figure, and every other black character is a creepy Voodoo savage. The white patriarch at the centre of the island lives in a "plantation" and his white underling, killred fairly eaerly on,is an "overseer". It's clear that this family, which takes pride in having ruled the island for two centuries despite six uprisings and "not running away", once ran a brutal slave regime and its morals in 1934 seem little better: Dr Perez actually utters the line quoted above. The Black population of the island are called "natives", glossing over how and whythey came to be on the island. The original sin of slavery, and its horrors, are completely glossed over. Just othering the Black population like this, and treating the white family as virtuous, is extremely problematic. None of this is deliberately hateful, and I'm sure would not have caused the disgust in 1934 that Birth of a Nation did in 1915, but it's impossible to ignore.

The social attitudes of the time permeate everything. FayWray's secretary heroine is besotted with her married boss but "won't live in sin", and spends the whole film acting out all the features of traditional feminine virtue before, it's implied, eventually marrying Stephen. And it's not usual for a film even of this vintage to be so utterly alienating in its attitudes. Still, it's a fascinating curio from a very different time in a way so many films from the same era are not.

I May Destroy You: Social Media Is a Great Way to Connect

 “You kind of had penetrative sex with someone under false pretences, Kwams.”

Yet again we get a multifaceted and fascinating episode. It’s partly about how Arabella is continuing to bury her feelings about the rape- the fact her bags haven’t been looked at and have stayed under the bed since the police returned them speaks volumes and is a blatant metaphor for repression.

Then there’s Bella’s anger, her desire to carry the world in her shoulders. Anger against white men, straight men, men in general. And the injustice she rails against is literally real.

Yet anger is not a healthy or a nuanced emotion where taken too far, and neither is social media. Bella has to step back from anger and realise that, while structural injustice and make violence aren’t going away, not everyone is evil- like her seemingly decent white and male flatmate.

Yet, at the same time, we mustn’t minimise the existence of bad things. Bella is right to be appalled that Kwame should have had sexual with a Roman before telling her he was gay. Yet it takes time- and sight of a foetus she (legitimately; it’s her body) aborted, to realise that her locking him in a room with that bloke at the party was wrong too.

And then, at the end, she returns to Ego Death. This seems to be an important moment. Either way, it’s phenomenal telly.

Hammer House of Horror: The Carpathian Eagle

 “Are you going to be strict with me?”

This is an odd episode, not least because it's based on a purported Polish legend of a wronged countess who led men to her bed and had their hearts plucked out with an eagle. It feels more like a police procedural than a horror story... until the very kinky final scene.

Indeed, it's only at the end, with the detective being killed and the killer surviving to copy yet another female serial killer, that it becomes clear what a clever script this is. At first the police spculate the killer may be homosexual, and there's a sympathetic and very out LGBT character, certainly not typical in 1980. Yet the cleverness here is in reversing the gender roles of the sexualised violence- these creepy men perving on much younger and poorer women turn out, here at least, to be the victims.

Sian Phillips has a memorable role, if a surprisingly small one, and there's a small part for a very young Pierce Brosnan. But the star here is the script, a triumph and the finest so far.

Doctor Who: Flux, Chapter 3- Once, Upon Time

 “Time is playing games with you all."

I have to admit this episode is pretty damn awesome, and has me bloody excited. I have my usual reservations with Chibnall's retconning of the Doctor's past and continuity- has it been thought through? Is it going to benefit the show in the long term rather than buden it with confused and conflicting continuities? There's a reason why the so-called Cartmel Masterplan quite deliberately never amounted to the odd vague hint. However, in the moment, I'm enjoying the ride. A lot.

I've been reading a lot of Michael Moorcock lately, and this feels very much like his work. Concepts like the Passenger, a planet called Time and awar between Time and Space are very Moorcockian, if that's a word. The Flux is decimating space; now the same is happening in time. The narrative is complex, with the Doctor, Yaz, Dan and Vinder jumping between different times and places simultaneously, some real and some relived memories- but memories with details changed. Nothing is stable. I have reservat ions about how the general public will take to this, but this middle aged geek loves it.

We get nice little glimpses into the pasts of both Yaz and Dan, good character moments for the pair of them Dan and Diane are sweet together and she's clearly besotted, and Dan is horrified to discover she's trapped within the Passenger. We also learn Vinder's past- and he's a whistleblower in a corrupt society who was punished for doing the right thing, a difficult concept to grasp in the "in no way corrupt" Britaoin of 2021 (Ooh, bit of politics there...). We also see the mysterious Bel, on a quest (with her unborm Tamagochi child or summat) for love that encompasses hordes of Daleks, Cybermen and others.... only to discover at the end that she and Vinder are a couple on mutual quests for each other.

Oh, and Vinder knows what a TARDIS is, which is interesting...

But we also, of course, learn a lot about scenes from the Doctor's past which she relives alongside people she sees as Yaz, Dan and Vinder. Yet her own reflection shows her as the Jo Martin Doctor, while Dan is really Karvanista, who must be bloody ancient. So who are the other two...?

The Doctor is leading an army for the Division, an agent of law and order against the same two baddies as the present day. But are they baddies? They seem to have an ideology (Time must not be constrained) which is not obviously any more right than that of the Division.But we get very little context... until a mysterious scene with Barbara Flynn as a mysterious woman who explains that the Flux and all this is deliberate, the universe ending is the point, and it's all the Doctor's fault.

Oh, and there are some awesome action sequences with Cybermen and especially Weeping Angels, now right up there as iconic baddies. Yes, I loved this episode, and Chibnall wrote it. But let's hope what he's doing to the mythology of the show doesn't break it, or I may well look back upon this episode less fondly...

The Dragon in the Sword by Michael Moorcock

 

This is the last of the Eternal Champion trilogy, and a fitting ending that draws together many threads from both earlier novels, as well as the two Von Bek novels. It fleshes out Moorcock’s ideas of the Multiverse to a satisfying degree, and shows us a existence of Law forever warring against Chaos in ways which make me highly suspicious that Games Workshop, and others, have been merrily lifting concepts from Moorcock’s novels. Yet these ideas are not just cool but also have intellectual substance. As with the Von Bek novels, the idea seems to be that humanity needs to grow out of gods and the supernatural, and to find the moderate path between Law and Chaos, excess and monkish restraint, licence and tyranny.

Not all ideas are philosophical: we have magnificent fantasy concepts here such as a linked series of worlds in a system resembling a wheel with spikes. But the characters are compelling, especially the likeable version of Von Bek we have here, a man of deep integrity but also humour, distracting us from the somewhat morose personality of the Champion himself.

I’ve enjoyed my mini-Moorcock marathon. There will be more in a while, but first I’ll turn to something else…

The Torture Chamber of Dr. Sadism (1967)

 "The blood is the life..."

This is a cheap German film which, like many of its ilk, happens to star Christopher Lee who, while phoning it in by his standards, cannot help but ooze charisma. It is, I must observe, a splendidly lurid translation in English, despite being essentially a version of Poe's The Pit and the Pendlum, as becomes quite obvious at the end... with said pendulum clearly positioned at crotch level. Ouch.

I don't know any of the other actors; Lex Barker is apparently a former Tarzan. But this is a well made little film, with locations and sets evoking nineteenth century Germany superbly, if less expensively than Roger Corman. Karin Dor is extremely attractive. 

Yet let us not pretend this is anything other than a B movie cashing in on Lee's name. It is corniness itself, splendidly soo. The "priest" character is very silly. Lee only gets moderate amounts of screen time. The plot is risible. The butler is hilariously violent. The opening seqence with the Count's execution is not so lurid as promised, what with his supposedly being quartered by four horses, which it appears we are going to graphically see untilthe camera cuts to what os undoubtedly a lurid shot, but equally undoubtedly a shot of a painting. This film is not one for torture rubberneckers. Nor is it unmissable for Christopher Lee fans. It's nothing special. But it's a fun little B movie.

And we love those, don't we?

Squid Game: A Fair World

 “Everyone is equal…”

The mid-way point, and we get a very interesting episode with an underlying theme of equality. The cliffhanger is resolved, and a team including several women and an old man proves easily able to vanquish a team of arrogant young men. Gi-Hun persuades Deok-su with clever psychology that a night of peace is in order. And the team slowly starts to bond more, although not without friction.

But the most fascinating sub-plot involves the undercover cop, who discovers a secret organ-smuggling ring which is using the dioctor- and giving him clues to get an unfair advantage.When they're caught, it is this last point that the big boss finds unforgivable: all players must be equal, and unfair advantages are most certainly allowed. After all, it's been that way for years: this is by no means the first year the games have been played, as we and the cop discover.

At last we begin to get the first drips of revelation as to the backstory behind the games, as well as foregrounding a few more players whom we get to know a little more- a bloodthirsty priest and a gobby atheist woman. Let's home they acquire some actual character traits too.

This is intriguing. We're getting some answers as to what's going on, or beginning to...

X-Men: Dark Phoenix (2019)

 “She’s not your little girl any more.” 

It's always instructive where a movie that has a lot seemingly going for it, like this one,turns out to be mildly disappointing. Not that it's terrible, but there's no denying that it fails to translate the excellent of Christ Claremont and John Byrne's source material, nor that the promising first half hour with lots of interesting character development and subtext yields to a load of dull fighting against a bland alien threat. Beyond the fact that we can by now be sure, I think, that Simon Kinberg isn't the person who should have been in charge of these films. But what went wrong?

There's a lot of good stuff in the early part of the film. All the characters feel real and well-rounded, even relatively minor ones like Quicksilver and Nightcrawler. There's some interesting questioning of Charles' habit of manipulating people's minds for their "own good". There's also a nice point made of Charles pushing the X-Men, at great danger, to be superheroes and to be popular, as the alternative is to be hated and feared: it's effective to see how quickly Jean's antics have the X-Men change overnight from popular celebrities to feared outcasts. It's unexpected, and effective, to have Raven die at the hands of Jean.

And yet, James McAvoy and Michael Fassbender aside, the main cast are all a bit bland, despite a splendidly charismatic performance by Evan Peters as Quicksilver, for the last time in this continuity. And then there's the vague nature of where the Phoenix force comes from and the equally vague aliens looking for it. There's a lot of good ideas here, but no real way of resenting them once the plot gets moving. A sad ending for the Fox X-Men movies. Let's hope we see them again under happier circumstances.

Hammer House of Horror: Children of the Full Moon

 "It's getting dark outside..."

This is a good 'un. A creepy, very well-directed werewolf episode with an unexpectedly creepy Diana Dors magnificenly defying her usual typecasting in a scene-stealing role. She really is extraordinary. The whole thing is a trap for the unfortunate newlywed couple, of course, but the fun is in watching the whole thing inexorably unfold.

Yes, I suppose the werewolf costume is a bit rubbish. But we only glimpse it twice and, frankly, with a story this atmospheric, who cares.We get creepy kids. We get a compelling mystery. We get a clever, surprising, yet logical resolution. If little details aren't all tied up (why does the car accelerator jam early on?) then,well, that's all part of the uncanny feel of successful horror, and the fates of both Sarah and Tom are suitably gruesome, yet it's the anticipation of the horror to come on which the horror relies, not gore.

This is one of the finest episodes yet, although again we see how society has changed in the last forty years. These days one wouldn't say "how do you do" to anyone, let alone a child. And the existence of mobile phones would scupper the entire plot somewhat.

I May Destroy You: Line Spectrum Border

 "It's no longer an active investigation."

Yet again we have a fascinating episode, full of all sorts of moral ambiguities. We begin with Bella's extraordinary speech at the support group about men who knowingly push boundaries, wanting to be on the border of sexual and other abuse without quite getting to the point of unambiguously crossing it. This is then juxtaposed in the next scene with Kwame discussing the fluidity of sexuality and how, having been sexually abused by a man, he's now getting a date with a woman.

Bella goes through the wringer here, again. She's broke, and the police investigation has come to a dead end. So she morally blackmails Terri into sending her to Italy, and Biagio, where things go wrong, and complicated. She's there to "apologise", even though he was a judgemental and victim blaming dick to her over the phone about the sexual assault. He's not happy to see her, and locks her out of his room to get ride of her. And yet... she's there without his consent, in his flat.

Then there's Kwame. The date goes ok, and is no more awkward than one might expect, although it's clear she has a thing for black men, fetishising an ethnicity. There's a bit of awkwardness about his (white) female sexual partner being reluctant to sing along to the "n" word in a song, but then she turns out to be casually homophobic and chucks him out, disgusted. But was he not dishonest in pretending to be straight, and was he not using her?

This is clever, thought provoking, first class telly that is careful not to tell you how to think as it explores the issues.

Breaking Bad: ABQ

 "He's just decent. And he always does the right thing."

Here we go, then: the finale. There's tension throughout, a sense of foreboding. It's not necessatily because of what's happening, but the fact that the storytelling, in terms both of script and framing of shots, is full of awkward juxtapositions between the domesticity of Walt, decent family man, and the death and misery caused by Walt, drug lord. Scenes of Jane's dad being quietly devastated by something which is ultimately Walt's fault are juxtaposed with Walt holding his baby girl. Scenes of Jesse being "fixed" by a new character who reminds me of Harvey Keitel's character from Pulp Fiction are juxtaposed with a cosy breakfast scene chez White. The very structure of the episode is foregrounding how Walt's double life is not sustainable. It can't continue.

And it doesn't.

Walt is no longer a decent man. As Hank has worked out, his blue meth is now spreading well beyond New Mexico, causing exponential misery. He's killed Jane, and destroyed her father. He's ruined Jesse's life, however much he may now be cared for. And the ultimate expression of this, the huge metaphor, is how Jane's grieving dad, an air traffic controller, causes two planes to crash into each other right above Walt.This is the meaning of those arty monochrome openings- the pool, the eye, the teddy bear. Destroyed innocence. Hundreds dead before their time. All cleverly foreshadowed.

Walt has one and truly crossed the moral threshold. Heisenberg is now the real Walt. Jekyll has become Hyde. And Heisenberg does not deserve his family. Walt's lies were never sustainable, and so just two words "Which one?" cause the whole thread to unravel. Suddenly, Skyler (with some superb acting from both Anna Gunn and Bryan Cranston) is dangerously close to knowing all. And Walt is alone, and separated from his baby. Take it from a father; being separated from your baby for more than a few days does not leave yiou in a good place.

This is a magnificent bit of telly. 

What next?

Doctor Who: Flux, Chapter Two- War of the Sontarans

 “Repair must not be undertaken by idiots!"

Once again, for the second week in succession, I must admit this episode is pretty good. Chibnall's scripts have a certain lack of wit and polish, but he's getting better. And, much as I'm not sure how the general family viewing public will be reacting to this complex, universe-spanning, timey-wimey plot, I'm quite enjoying it.

The main season plot chugs on underneath as our three mysterious baddies from the dawn of time- Azure, Swarm, and the bizarrely named Passenger- attack a planet called Time, which isn't supposed to exist, where mysterious priests called Mouri keep Time itself under control as, apparently, when Time is uncontrolled it is "evil". All this is brand new mythology, unknown either to us or, interestingly, the Doctor. It'll be interesting to see where Chibbers is going with this. So far it seems to be about providing a Perils of Pauline-style cliffhanger for Yaz and Vinder, now integrated into the gag, just to give us a cliffhanger, but the concepts are cool.

Meanwhile, the Sontarans have exploied the Flux to invade Earth and, in a nice touch, are basing their claim on Linx's exploits all that time ago- and they seem to have time technology far more extensive than that of The Time Warrior, invading Earth at all points in its past in a plan which is rathere confusing to think about. But the extended sequence of the Doctor and Mary Seacole in the Crimean War is rather fun as an A plot for the episode, and I must confess that history being changed so that the British, French and Ottomans are fighting the Sontarans, not the Russians, is pretty damn cool. And I like the portrayal of the Sontarans- comedic, yes, as they have been since RTD brought them back, but also brutal.

As is the Doctor. Jodie Whittaker proves to still be on fire here: she's awesome.So, too, is the character of Dan, merrily slaughtering hordes of Sontarans with a wok given to him by his mum in Sontaran-occupied Liverpool, as you do, in scenes which reminded me a bit of Independence Day.

There's also that sceptical bloke ffom 1820 wandering around in the temple on the planet Time, and so many cool concepts and set pieces not least of which is a Sontaran on a horse. I must admit, I'm rather enjoying this.

Delayed Doctor Who Blog

 I always try to blog Doctor Who, of all programmes, on the day of broadcast, but tonight that won’t be possible because of real life. We’re looking at tomorrow, possibly, but more likely Tuesday.

The Fashion in Shrouds by Margery Allingham

It is commonly assumed that, of all the writers of whodunit novels during that golden age of the 1920s and ‘30s, Agatha Christie was the unquestioned queen of them all.

Now, I haven’t read any of her works for a decade or two, and before long I shall remedy that and see if my opinion remains. But read a lot of Christie in my youth, until I reached an age where the prose, the characterisations and the snobbery of the authorial voice made it impossible for teenage me to continue. Her plotting may be second to none, but prose and characters do sort of matter.

And that is why Margery Allingham is the true queen of the whodunit, and Albert Campion a much better character than Hercule Poirot, with actual non-superficial character traits. The plotting may be excellent, but the characters are real people and the prose is wonderful- witty, ironic, joyous to read.

There are a couple of bits of dialogue that make one wince: there’s talk of colonial affairs in what was then the Gold Coast where the n-word is bandied about. The word wasn’t as taboo in 1938 as it is now, but one should not go to the other extreme in excusing it. The whiff of the forbidden surrounding the word may have been less strong than today, but it was their. It is, to say the least, unfortunate. Nor can one simply gloss over the fact that Campion tells his sister Val, who is “hysterical”, that she needs “a nice rape”.

Yet, such moments aside, this is a hugely enjoyable read, masterfully plotted and involving three dimensions characters. And this isn’t even a particularly well known example of Allingham’s Campion novels. I must read, or re-read, some more soon. 

Inspector Morse: Last Seen Wearing

 "You were so keen to have a murder. You should be happy."

One ought to bear in mind that Colin Dexter's novel was written fifteen or so years earlier, but it's striking to see that, in 1988, missing persons cases were dealt with via paper files, and in the case of Valerie Craven the number of files means that Morse, "the three file man", has to be called in. It dates the programme quite as much as the appearance of the London Docklands.

The characterisation of Morse here, while fascinating, may be a bit of a time capsule too, and I shall focus on this rather than commenting on the whodunit: I remember the novel too well, He's presented as a devilishly clever chap who is allowed to behave in shockingly unprofessional ways- extensively drinking on the job, not bothering to look at the files, perving at the private schoolgirls doing PE who he denigrates as "rich and thick", being terribly cynical about the whole thing, even forging a letter to the parents of the missing girl- and getting bollocked by Strange for good measure.

Yet, after the bollocking, he gets results. And continues to be a beer snob, a definite point in his favour. The dialogue, and characterisation, is subtly brilliant here, from Morse to Lewis to Strange to the arrogant gaslighting Phillipson to the cultured, Irish, Yeats-quoting Mrs Craven. This is the subtlest, finest, adaptation yet.

But I fear we are, mostly, to be veering off Colin Dexter's path most of the time from here. Let's hope the quality remains.

Squid Game: Stick to the Team

 "I don't trust people..."

This is a superb episode- all peril, tension and dog eat dog action. And yet, by putting the characters under such stress and danger, it shows us so much about them as people.

The players really are put through the wringer here. Right after the last game they are deliberately put on short rations in order to generate friction and lethal fighting after lights out, following which it's straight into the next game in the morning- a tug of war. And this intensity is entertaining in itself. Far more interesting, though, is what is does to the people we've come to know, and their relationship. So Gi-Hun's gang of four from the end of last episode is strengthened, with even the old man (who seems to be forgetting his name bringing something to the table. And our North Korean defector seems to be joining the gang.

Meanwhile, Deok-Su, having no morals whatsoever, tries to survive by seizing alpha male status, making enemies in the process and losing his moll the morning after they have sex in the toilet. His chances of surviving the last episode are, I very much suspect, zero by the iron laws of television drama.

We end with a tug of war cliffhanger, as though the episode hasn't been emtertaining enough. And hrough it all there's the ever-present sublimity of the design, from the costumes to the Escher-esque staircases. Squid Game is getting better and better.

Hammer House of Horror: The Silent Scream

 "Prisons without walls, cages without bars..."

This is an interesting episode- clever, imaginative, ingenious, with a strong central concept, and anchored superbly with performances from Brian Cox and none other than Peter Cushing himself, however cheap it must have been to film: this is quite blatantly the season cheapie. Either that or Cushing's slary took half the budget.

It's 1980. The wine is awful. A concentration camp guard could be of an age to be running a pet shop. Fairy liquid bottles look different. And attitudes to keeping big cats captive, forty years before Tiger King, are somewhat different. There's also an element of "this entire building is surrounded by film" in the stock footage sequences. Yet all this period charm, as well as the presence of Cushing and the bizarrely young presence of Cox, keeps us watching.

It's not a bad piece of telly. It certainly holds the attention and is both intriguing and well made. Yet it doesn't manage to be scary, and comes across more as a weird thriller than anything to do with horror. It doesn't quite work, yet it doesn't quite fail. It is, regardless, interesting.

Breaking Bad: Phoenix

 "If I gave you that money, you would be dead inside a week..."

I've mentioned before that this series is the tale of Walter White's represses sociopathic or psychopathic (I'm no expert) gradually revealing themselves as circumstances and temptation make his drift inexorably from humble respectability to the criminal underworld where life is cheap. But this is the episode, and a superb bit of telly it is too, that proves it beyond doubt.

It's not that Walt keeps Jesse's $480,000 share of the meth deal from him until he's off the heroin; that's the right thing to do, amusing though it is to see Jesse trying to confront him in the classroom and immediately getting alpha maled by a father figure he can't help but defer to.

It sort of is the casual lying to Skyler, which surely can't go on for ever- in this episode he rings her while drinking at a bar with music playing, pretending to be shopping for nappies, bonding with Jane's despairing father (John de Lancie himself!) with unexpected results.

And yes, it sort of is the devastating final scene where, having just been blackmailed by Jane for the $480k with which she and Jesse were talking about a new life in New Zealand but got high instead, Jane vomits while asleep... and Walt just stands there, calculating that her dying now is in his best interests. That's cold, and the scene is shocking.

But even that is not the main thing. It's how he can miss his own daughter's birth and, when he finally gets there, how he's clearly just acting, and trying to hide his coldness. I'm the father of a daughter, and let's just say that the birth of Little Miss Llamastrangler went rather differently.

There are other things in this episode- Walt's problem with being unable to find a way of being able to spend his money with everybody thinking he's nearly bankrupt, possibly solved by an innocent Walt Jr, Saul and two "Rain Man types" in Belarus; Hank not being a fan of public breastfeeding; Skyler's boss and potential lover Ted being at the birth. But man, Walt is cold. And this is as good as television gets.