Batman: Nora Clavicle and the Ladies’ Crime Club

“This is torture... at its most bizarre and terrible.

Oh dear. Oh dear oh dear. One must always be careful not to treat television programmes from fifty years ago in the same way as something made today; social mores have changed, and one must make allowances. But, having made said allowances... this is (mostly) unfunny sexist claptrap that is simply jaw-dropping to watch. Batman does second wave feminism. In 1968. And it’s every bit as squirmingly awful as you might fear.

Feminism can be the subject of humour, of course, like anything can. But here we have a feminist activist (later shown to have purely venal motives) who seems to fire all male police officers for no other reason but one-up(wo)manship. And their female replacements turn out to be rubbsh at their jobs because they're too busy doing lipstick, discussing recipes and shopping. Yes, really. And all this only happens because Mayor Linseed's wife forces his hand by refusing to cook or wash his clothes, which all of us real men routinely do for ourselves (and our wives). This is bad, cringeworthy and frankly alienating stuff. And it's a nasty, very lazy, knee jerk stye of "humour", weaponising the patriarchy to mock those who point at its existence.

It's a pity, as there are a couple of gloriously silly moments with the "Siamese human knot" and the slendidly absurd Pied Piper ending. But this doesn't wash away the nasty, punching down, sexism of the episode. Given how few episodes there are left of Batman, I suspect this will end up as my least favourite of the lot.

When Worlds Collide (1951)

"If our calculations prove correct, this will be the most frightening discovery of all time!"

Oh dear. I'm no scientist; I did English at uni. But my BAD SCIENCE sense is tingling. Yes, I know this is a cheesy '50s sci-fi B movie, but, well, here's the premise: a star (Bellus) and its planet (Zyra; both of these are very '50s sci-fi names) are spotted on a trajectory to Earth, headed straight for us. The planet will hit first, causing all sorts of cinematic and rather impressive-looking natural disasters, followed ten days later by its parent star, which will end all life on Earth. That's a bit of a bummer, really.

But fear not; there's hope, for a select few. An Ark is to be constructed which is to land on the offending planet, somehow still in one piece after its collision with Earth. We end with (some of) our All American (and, er, all white) heroes safely landed on this planet, a paradise of grass, strange vegetation and matte paintings. Yep. You heard right. Zyra  magically turns out to have a breathable oxygen atmosphere in spite of the collision and in spite of the influence of our Sun. Hmm.

Amongst all this the film gives us a bit of human drama, a love triangle, and a rather superficial attempt at exploring how humanity would react to impending Armageddon and only an elite few (mainly scientists, naturally) being saves, but there's never any real depth. The effect of this is that the film is too superficial to be serious and too preachy to be fun. I prefer my B movies to be much less po-faced.