House of Cards: Episode 2

"Would you be into quickies at all?"

If this were to be made today, perhaps- and I haven't seen the American remake with Kevin Spacey- there wouldn't be so much attention on ho the sausage was made. We'd likely jump cut straight from his downfall being plotted at the end of last episode to the PM's downfall. But in 1990 telly could be slower paced, at least sometimes. This episode is an example of why that can be a good thing.

In contrast to the twisty-turny plotting of the first episode, we are concerned here pretty much exclusively with the workings of Urquhart's plot to bring down Henry Collingridge and very little else- but it's gripping. And we get the usual fourth wall breaking stuff, with an early monologue by Francis doing a bit of that pheasant shooting stuff that was an unremarked-upon pastime of upper class Tories back then. 1990 was a long time ago, when twentysomething political researchers could plausibly be called Kevin and, as per last episode, there's a fair bit of misogyny directed towards Penny. Urquhart does, at least, criticise Patrick Woolton for being boorish, lecherous, anti-Semitic and racist while manipulating him, although there's more than a whiff of snobbery directed at this north country foreign secretary.

Urquhart's manipulating ways work on everyone, culminating in the PM being cruelly ambushed on telly, yet everyone seems to think he's a "good man". Indeed, Mattie seems to think he's not only the ablest man (and men they all are) in the Cabinet but that he's attractive- and, as we see, he has permission from his wife to sleep with her. Shagging is inevitable at this point.

Like the potboiler on which it's based, this is unputdownable telly. And Ian Richardson is incredible.

Atypical: Season 1, Episode 4- A Nice Neutral Smell

"She's a girl who wants to touch your peen..."

A surprisingly eventful episode here as we reach the season halfway point. It's played for laughs, but Elsa is racked with guilt for her infidelity, and ends up dumping her lover and committing to her life of Doug being nice and her kids taking her for granted.

But this episode isn't really about Elsa. It's not about Doug, either, and the alienation he feels at the autism group with the constant anal pointing out of his occasional slip into non-"people-inclusive language". Nor, even, is it about Sam, with his incident in the crowd at the athletics track with the ponytail, or that a lot of screen time is spent with him clumsily making his way towards a relationship with the rather cute Paige.

No; this is about Casey, whose record-breaking victory in the 400m isn't witnessed by anyone in her family, and whose proffered athletics scholarship to a posh school is pooh poohed by Elsa because she "needs" to be in the same school as Sam to look after him. Because Sam is the special one, and no one wants it to be about her- so it falls to a brave and lovely outburst by Evan, who insists that it bloody well is about her and it's time people started recognising that. It's a very good bit of writing. And I can't believe we're already halfway through the season.

Good Omens: The Book

"Let us discuss my purchase in a private place, because I am buying... pornography!"

The quality and the humour doesn't let up for the superb second episode. The entire exchange on pornography in the bookshop between Angel and Aziraphale had Mrs Llamastrangler and myself in stitches. But this episode actually has a lot to do- it introduces the story of Agnes Nutter (the brilliant Josie Lawrence) and her Nice and Accurate Prophecies, and how she avenged her own death by blowing up the splendidly named Witchfinder Major Thou-Shalt-Not-Commit-Adultery Pulsifer and his silly underlings. It introduces Anathema Device, a very different, very Californian character than she appears in the novel; Newton Pulsifer and his Tom Baker scarf tie; and Witchfinder Sergeant Shadwell. It also introduces young Adam and his friends properly and, of course, in an amusing scene, War. I rather suspect the next three episodes will all feature a similar scene with a Horseman of the Apocalypse...

A lot of the laughs, though, still come from Crowley and Azirophale, despite their reduced screen time this time around, with Tennant and Shen again excellent. But one has to credit Gaiman's script, with so much plot to cram in, for managing also to cram in so many funny lines. I love how Crowley's car radio always seems to play the most appropriate Queen song, and how 666 is literally the phone number of the Antichrist, a nice resolution to our pair of angel/demons hunting Adam down without either of their respective Head Offices being in on what they're up to.

This is bloody brilliant. And we're really still only in the set-up phase.

Good Omens: In the Beginning

”Welcome to the end times..”

I've read the novel of Good Omens. In fact, I've read it half a dozen times, which puts it right up there with Life, the Universe and Everything. So you could say I'm the kind of fanboy you'd expect would be hard to please, except Neil Gaiman himself is showrunning this (Sir Terry being sadly unable to join him), and the cast looked mouth-watering. So, especially now I've obviously seen it, let us not pretend I'm not going to be saying I like this.

Because, well, even before we start it's clear that the source material is superb, and David Tennant as Crowley is the most appropriate casting choice since Robert Downey Jr as Tony Stark. But Michael Sheen as Azirophale is equally superb; Sheen is one of those actors who doesn't seem to have a style but simply to inhabit the character he's playing like a true chameleon, whether it's Tony Blair, David Frost or a moderate angel who is good mates with his fellow centrist from downstairs.

It all looks great, with loads of CGI, and it's a good way of structuring a first episode, with the backstory of, well, creation, but also of the ancient friendship between Crowley and Azirophale, and then straight into the old pastiche of The Omen. There are some nice additions, too. God as a narrator is a great idea, as is her gender. Jon Hamm as Heavenly middle manager Gabriel is inspired too, being to Aziraphale what Hastur and Ligur are to Crowley, and a bloody funny character too. The humour from the novel is translated intact, but the new stuff it just as funny. An excellent start.

The Prisoner: The Schizoid Man

" Your job, Number Twelve, is to impersonate him. Take his identity away."

This episode is an extraordinary example of institutional gaslighting, a word that probably wouldn’t have been used at the time, with Number Six told he is someone else and that he is to impersonate Number Six- and then introduced to a doppelgänger who seems to be far more himself than he is.

This idea is explored fiendishly, with devastating scenes at which the doppelgänger slowly and confidently makes him lose his sense of identity. And it’s arresting to hear him (well, his double) insisting that “I am Number Six “, the very thing he denies at the start of the episode. This is a deeply affecting example of destroying someone’s identity- all so he can reveal why he resigned “in your dream”. It helps that Anton Rodgers is a superb Number Two- with the venerable Earl Cameron as his deputy. But Patrick McGoohan is, as ever, superb, showing moments where our hero shows a rare, defeated vulnerability.

It’s interesting to see Number Six making a human connection with Alison, a believer in all this ESP nonsense; sadly Number Six believes in this crap, and accuses those of us who don’t of having no imagination!

But, as is traditional, we end with an escape attempt, with our nameless hero telling the latest Number Two that “Number Six is dead” and almost making it out in a helicopter. This is the cleverest plot yet, and the one which deals with some rather intense subject matter. One of the better episodes and a fine bit of telly.

And yes, I do have a certain track by King Crimson going through my head...

House of Cards: Episode 1

"You may think that. I couldn't possibly comment..."

Long before Kevin Spacey was a household name, let alone disgraced, Ian Richardson became a household name through his extraordinarily sinister, fourth wall breaking, insidious performance as Francis Urquhart. I haven't seen this since that late Autumn of 1990 when Thatcher fell, the only prime minister I could remember. This TV adaptation of Michael Dobbs' potboiler of a novel cheekily alludes to her downfall in its opening shot, an early example of the visual wit that made this series a cut above the original novel.

Other differences are that the party in power is explicitly stated to be the Tories, an of course the asides to camera which give the whole thing both its structure and its intimacy. Urquhart is not just our antihero, he is our intimate guide to the dark arts of politics. If Mattie is seduced by his charms then so are we all, even an old Liberal like me.

It's an uncomfortable reminder of my age, though, that I remember lots of things that happened in 1990, but they did things differently then. Here we see casual sexism and homophobia in the corridors of power, MP's actually speaking in the Commons without notes, an all-male cabinet and smoking everywhere.

But the episode insists entirely of skulduggery and plotting, and all from our Chief Whip’s point of view as he manipulates the wet drip of a PM (although I not that Henry Collingridge, a “wet” Tory, is depicted as wet personally too), his cocaine using fixer, the Cabinet and, through Mattie, the press. The relationship with Mattie is interesting: in a sense he’s grooming her, all for his own benefit. We end with a manufactured scandal about to break and the PM set to fall...

The Prisoner: Free for All

"Very good technique. Where did you get him?

"The Civil Service. He adapted immediately."

I know it's been a while since the last episode. Fear not; I spent a week not watching stuff while I applied for a promotion at work (fingers crossed!) and blogged only a couple of things I'd prepared earlier since that time, and afterwards I focused on current telly first. Fear not, The Prisoner will continue until the end.

Anyway, this is clearly a Very Important Episode, as Patrick McGoohan both writes (under a pseudonym) and directs. It’s also one with a very obvious subtext. It’s election time in the Village and Number Two (Eric Portman this time) decides that this time for once, he should be opposed, and Number Six accepts the challenge, not entirely seriously, using his candidacy as an excuse to goad the council, who are essentially a rubber stamp, giving a rather magnificent speech. At first, he’s the candidate of freedom, but he’s soon brainwashed, in a delightful scene with a former civil servant. So we have the prospect of someone with ideals standing for office and immediately abandoning those ideals in favour of the vested interests of the status quo. Of course, this would never happen in reality.

Before the election Number Six finally finds a place where he can get a proper drink (hallelujah) where he finds Number Two, who in private (a rare situation) is just as jaded with the Village as he is. Number Six wins by a landslide, but turns out to have no actual power and is beaten up, while the foreign maid-cum-spy who has been with him all episode turns out to be the new Number Two. It’s a superb indictment of the perceived impotence of the democratic process and, while I’m not at all in favour of “they’re all the same” apathy, especially in the current age of populism, Trump, Brexit and other dangerous nonsense, this has some considerable bite.

All this happens amongst lots and lots of splendidly disorienting surrealism, dreamlike, druggy, and utterly 1967. It’s a truly excellent episode.

Dead of Night (1945)

"Mr Craig is going to hit me, savagely!"

Oh well, I'm sure he can hit somebody else instead."

Wow. That blew me away, utterly and unexpectedly. Why is this not known as one of the greatest horror films ever? No, it's not exactly obscure, or indeed short of praise, but it's rarely seen in "best of" lists. This is an extraordinary film.

I can see where Amicus got the idea of the portmanteau horror film from having seen this, but Dead of Night is no B Movie and the horror is never cheesy but always effective. No monsters in make-up here, just ghost story uncanniness. And no silliness: there’s no silliness here, although there’s plenty of wit in the script.

The plot is fiendishly clever; an architect visits a house he’s never visited before, and recognises it and everyone there from a recurring nightmare, and events gradually unfold just as he fears, but with some devilishly clever twists at the end. Along the way he hears several tales- separate sequences by different directors- all of which are deeply effective, but the ones that stand out are Michael Redgrave and the creepy ventriloquist’s dummy and the bit of comic relief with a dead golfer haunting his estranged friend (“May the Lord have mercy on your handicap!”).

The acting is superb, with Redgrave and Googie Withers deserving extra praise, and although 1945 feels a very long time ago- no shagging before marriage, “how do you do?”, all the smoking, the plummy accents (the hide and seek lecherous wanker comes across very much like Tim, Nice But Dim...) - but this is an extraordinary film which will linger in the mind for a long time.

Atypical: Season 1, Episode 3- Julia Says

”I put my butt on his car...!"

Another well-crafted piece of drama and a treatises on faithfulness this episode. The series isn't about Sam; in a sense he's a kind of Greek chorus with his talk of a "practice girlfriend". The meat of the episode is Casey's shock at finding that their dad abandoned the family for a few months in 2004, overwhelmed by the difficulties of an autistic son. Doug is now full of regret and has been trying to atone ever since, but the father/daughter relationship may never be quite the same- we end the episode with Casey running alone.

We also end with Elsa, inevitably kissing the bloke from the bar. Yet, of course, she has an autistic child too, and although Doug tries to be an affectionate husband one has to ask if the two of them ought to be together if not for their children.

There is, of course, a lot of rather good humour, too, but at its heart this is a serious character drama rather than one driven by autism as a theme- so far, at  least.

iZombie: Death of a Car Salesman

”Herbie wasn’t evil. He was the Love Bug.”

I can’t believe how close we are to the end; previous seasons have drifted off the format a bit but this episode gives us a wanker of a murdered car salesman with both Liv and Ravi having some of his brain, and it’s all perfect. The fact that we’ve known these characters for so long just adds to it- Clive’s reaction to the two of them is hilarious but would not have been possible seasons ago.

We also have flashbacks with Martin, Liv’s dad, with Blaine, Don E and Scott E (remember him?) and seem to see that Martin is not only “Beanpole Bob” but was the original creator of that tainted utopium that causes the original zombie outbreak on that boat. Meanwhile, in the present, Liv tries to connect with her dad but is exasperated with her co tinging addiction. At the end, though, it’s clear that he fully realised that his daughter is Renegade...

Blaine, meanwhile, has a new business kidnapping teenage kids with Freylich’s Syndrome, walking zombie cures. I prefer Blaine as gangster to Blaine the tycoon; he’s in his element. And one result is the comedy pairing of, er, Don E and the teenage Darcy, who kiss. Urgh. Isn’t she about seventeen?

Still, four episodes to go. And iZombie has never been better.

Atypical: Season 1, Episode 2- A Human Female

“Nobody needs you, Mom!”

On the surface this episode centres around Sam’s crush for Julia and his comical misunderstanding that he has the green light to pursue Julia, something which takes up a lot of screen time and allows him to bond with his dad while doing so, but this is all neatly resolved. Meanwhile, more long term things are happening beneath the surface.

Elsa, for example, is responding very negatively to Doug’s attention and eventually finds an excuse to meet that barman again. It’s clear where this is going, and she isn’t a likeable character, but before we judge too harshly we should remember that she’s spend years with heavy caring response divinities and, decent though Doug is, we live in a culture where women are expected to do this sort of heavy labour.

We also see an intensifying of the relationship between the touchingly inexperienced Casey and Evan. After kissing him for the first time her reaction is utterly, utterly cute. So far this is the nice and fluffy storyline, acting as contrast to the worrying possibility of adultery, and meanwhile Sam is oblivious. This is promisingly well written stuff.

Years and Years: Episode 6

"This is the world we built."

Although we start the episode as one might expect- Vivienne Rook is PM, and she does a lot of Trumpy things like shutting down the BBC for being "enemies of the people" and denying Russian involvement in her election.And there's a lot of dystopian detail as per earlier episodes-
bacterial food that was never alive, working class estates being arbitrarily locked in, food banks closing- and Muriel's wonderful voice-of-the-author speech about how things have gone wrong since the millennium but how we're all to blame through wanting cheap stuff without considering the consequences. And there's a lot of horrifying stuff with Viktor and others in concentration cams which look very, very much like, well, you know.

But this is RTD. Things don't carry on through the same dystopian path. There is hope. Yes, it's undercut at the end by the point that the regime was opposed and falling anyway, but we see the Lyons family essentially toppling the government. And I now thing Edith is even cooler and Jessica Hynes deserves a BAFTA. But the point is that the very ordinary family we've been seeing turn out to be heroes- even Rosie and little Lincoln do heir bit against tyranny. Even Stephen goes some way to redeeming himself, much as though it looked for one horrifying moment that he was going to shoot Celeste.

Yet it's not just about the defiant note of hope, the insistence that yes, humans can be right bastards, but we have the potential to redeem ourselves. No; we have a fascinating final ten minutes of poetry as Edith, who I think represents someone the author would like to be, waits to die, and to have her memories and perhaps her consciousness (or just a copy?) uploaded online, perhaps to be immortal. There's a lot of philosophy about consciousness to unpick here, and I'd observe that, in all the futurology that RTD has given us, he's deliberately seemed to avoid the subject of the Singularity, of artificial intelligence becoming sentient. Is this the bit where he addresses such themes head on, being deliberately ambiguous? Is the "I am love" a statement on all this or just the endorphins of a dying woman? I don't know, but these six episode have been first rank telly.

Atypical: Season 1, Episode 1- Antarctica

“People on the spectrum date, you know."

This is a series on Netflix that Mrs Llamastrangler and I are going to be watching once a week, one or two episodes at a time- expect the next episode's blog in the morning. It's a comedy-drama about an autistic teenager, his family and, well, the comedy and the drama that ensues.

Now, neither Mrs Llamastrangler nor I are autistic, and those people we know are all at the Asperger's end of the spectrum- as, I'm guessing, is Sam. It's with mentioning that people we know who are on the spectrum are very different individuals, and by no means defined by the fact that they are autistic. There's also nothing wrong with being autistic; it's part of the world of neurodiversity, encompassing all sorts of things. Autism is not a mental illness.

So it's also worth questioning whether it's appropriate to use this subject matter for comedy. So far, though (and I'll keep reviewing this) this is a balance of humour with drama that seriously explores the issues f how the world treats autistic people. Humour can be a very effective way of making a serious point, and there's a balance to be struck in any case between nasty humour that punches down and being overly pious. Personally, I'm a hearing aid wearer, and I laugh at my own comedy mishearings all the time.

Anyway, Sam lives with his overprotective mother Elsa, who is exactly the sort of person I wouldn't like very much in real life, and his long-suffering dad Doug. The two of them are worn out from years of caring for him, and their relationship looks fragile, held together only by routine and worryingly endangered should the nest empty. And it's worrying seeing Elsa with that bloke behind the bar...

There's also Casey, Sam's wonderfully cynical sister, and both teenage siblings are slowly exploring relationships. Finally, there's Julia, Sam's therapist, who is handy for driving the plot and giving a reason for Sam to have his humorous and counterpointing monologues. This aspect is very Sopranos. But Sam is funny, likeable, and frankly adorable. And he knows a lot about penguins.

It's good stuff so far, well written and set up nicely for various things to develop throughout the fairly short season. Do Americans really say "twat" like that though?

Years and Years: Episode 5

"I’ll just topple the government. How about that?”

It’s 2028. Vivienne Rook is PM and initially little has changed- indeed, Rook’s public statements are just vacuous and meaningless platitudes. But the first thing we see is a critic being suddenly arrested on what looks like trumped up charges, mentioning the “disappeared”. Shades of Pinochet already.

Chez the Lyons there’s a struggle to recover from Daniel’s death, with Stephen visiting Viktor to tell him personally that he blames and will not forgive him. And it’s an even bleaker world- bananas are gone. Global heating means endless rain. Energy crises and co start blackouts mean much of what exists online is erased forever, and there’s an amusing scene of schoolchildren having to get used to this quaint little thing called paper. And then things get truly dystopian with dirty bombs causing radioactive fallouts in two major cities while floods erode the coast. There are floods of homeless refugees, both British and international. And this is less than a decade away.

There are positives; Muriel’s macular degeneration can be cured just like that, albeit at the cost of her family’s inheritance. But this is s world where civil liberties are despised, where “criminal” estates are walled off and where Rosie’s business is closed down because of where she lives. Each episode is getting more dystopian than the last, and scarily plausible in a world that contains such scum as Nigel Farage, Katie Hopkins and Donald Trump. I think RTD underestimates the liberal backlash but, this being part polemic, creatively that’s not necessarily a bad thing.

There’s a human side too; an increasingly bitter Stephen lives with a woman he doesn’t particularly like. Edith is increasingly cool and easily my favourite character, but she’s dying. Bethany’s joy at becoming a bionic woman is wonderful- but, as Stephen points out, she has become state property. And Celeste is increasingly bitter at having to be nursemaid to her mother in law. These are very real people, anchoring us to this world.

The shocking conclusion, of course, has Stephen humiliate himself to get a better job with an absolute wanker he went to school with, and briefly meeting Vivienne Rook, who casually mentions that is she ever resigned as PM, “they’d kill me.” And the contract they’re bidding on is one for concentration camps for refugees and other desirables, where Rook plans to solve the overcrowding problems by “letting nature take its course”. Because this is inevitably where far right populism leads.

The human dimension adds extra horror, too, as Stephen deliberately moves Viktor to the extermination camp. And Bethany knows...

This is utterly sublime.

Years and Years: Episode 4

"Turns out we were born in a pause..."

This is a bloody brilliant piece of telly. There’s so much going on, obviously- not least the fact we finally see Vivienne Rook attaining power, the consequences of which we are no doubt about to see. But the plot is about two things. Firstly, Celeste gives Stephen his comeuppance for his affair by humiliatingly outing him in front of the whole family, which crushes him- Gran’s reaction is devastating enough, but Bethany's Parting question is “What colour is she?” and, on being told she’s while, simply “bye”. Ouch. And, in a masterfully scripted couple of scenes, it’s clear that his lover is beginning to tire of him anyway, and unhappy being stuck with him.

We also see Rosie starting a new business and getting a rather annoying new boyfriend, and start to see just how far Edith would go to protect her family. There’s a lot of love here.

But most of the episode focuses on the incredibly tense and dramatic attempt by Daniel to get Viktor over to the UK rather than facing possible disappearance or even execution in the Ukraine. This gets a lot of screen time, but ends with the incredibly dangerous sight of dozens of people being crammed into a dinghy and pushed across the channel. The screen goes black and we see just a couple of horrifying flashes, and then we’re on a beach on the south coast of England with emergency services everywhere. Daniel is dead and we end with Viktor in their house alone, alive but empty.

RTD’s brilliance at writing character and drama is very much on display here, but it’s also a scarily plausible version of a near future of 3-D printed villages and burgers without beef, of deepfake videos, of Grexit, turmoil in Italy and a bankrupt Hungary, as America bans equal marriage and overthrows Roe vs Wade. This reveals itself to be better and better every week. So I’d better catch up quick...

Inhumans: The Gentleman’s Name Is Gorgon

”You’re like some kind of god of thunder!”

Another so-so episode- but have we seen the last of the scenes set on Earth? Please? Sorry, Hawaii, you’re picturesque and all, and I wish you well in your struggle against your imperialist oppressor, but I want to see Attilan, not you.

We begin with a flashback where it's hinted that Maximus may have killed his and Black Bolt's parents, something which I suspect is bound to surface later. Meanwhile, as the cousins plot to get Crystal and rescue Black Bolt's human friends, Medusa and Black Bolt debate how hard they should come down on Maximus. On Attilan, though, Maximus twirls his moustache with as much charisma as ever (Iwan Rheon really is the standout performer of this series) and overthrows a plot against him.

I'm afraid we have a bit of Earth stuff to do first, though. Crystal gets a proper snog with Dave but not much later the two of them seem quite sanguine about parting, seemingly forever, as a kind of holiday romance. Louise, too, seems oddly happy to give up the chance to see Attilan, staying behind to wait and be arrested for car theft. Is this really it for them? This series has always felt like a rigid plot structure is driving events no matter what, and characters' feelings and motivations must conform to this or else.

We do get some dramatic stuff, though. Auron is not immortal and, like a certain BBC character, can only regenerate and survive death for as many times as the plot requires.We are reminded once again that Attilan is a caste-based society and, whatever Maximus' motives, he is trying to change this. Karnak gets to be cool and, with Gorgon's assistance, get at least some of his mojo back. However, once Mordis finally decides to blow himself up (the character always was Chekhov's Gun on legs), Gorgon shockingly blows himself up, dying heroically. This will, I imagine have consequences and, fairly bland though the character was, it's a bit of a shock that such a well-known character should die.

This is very mediocre telly, though. Can we hope that the fact we've left Earth will enliven things>

iZombie: Filleted to Rest

"She fired people for existing wrong."

Another superb episode that, as this season is continuously doing with admirable skill, manages to pull off a genuinely impressive whodunit while still having lots of jaw-dropping arc stuff happen against a steadily deteriorating background of human vs zombie tension. And we end with quite the cliffhanger. Halfway through this final season...

The murder/brain of the week, a delightfully rude chef, is a particularly good one, and Liv on chef brain is a real treat. The murder of the week, to be fair, takes up a lot of screen time, and deserves to. It's too easy to forget that iZombie's basic format, still fundamentally there in spite of everything, is a bloody good one. Burgling as a murder alibi is a bloody good one.

And yet...a load of Fillmore Graves troops are killed in a terrorist attack, and after a far bit of intrigue Major gains proof that Justin- who is, let us not forget, a former boyfriend of Liv- is a traitor, shooting his recently former close friend while trying to escape. Ouch. Liv has a massive row with her mum, who we haven't seen for, well, seasons, but it's finally time to start tying up the loose ends.

There's a heartwarming scene where Michelle tells Clive that, no, he probably isn't the father... but she thinks he's a decent man and kind of wishes he was. Aw. Ravi's relationship with Dr Charlie Collier (and her twin sister!) develops a little, which makes me think they are going to share a more blatant sub-plot about a zombie cure.

But that cliffhanger, that this new player who is de-thawing zombies and appears to be Durkins' zombie mirror image is probably Liv's dad... wow.

Captain Kronos- Vampire Hunter (1974)

"What he doesn't know about vampirism wouldn't fill a flea's codpiece."

This is a film that, whatever its virtues, and notwithstanding that it isn't the last one, is as good as any to mark the end of Hammer. With Lee and Cushing pretty much gone from the scene, this film was intended to spearhead an entire new series of Hammer horror films- but it ended up having its delayed for two years and flopping at the box office. What went wrong?

Well, at first glance an awful lot went right. The script from Brian Clemens is clever, twisty-turny, full of compelling characters and nicely establishing a wider mythology about various types of vampires which behave differently- this one ages its victims- and can be killed in different ways, something explored nicely and which gives obvious sequel potential. It’s also creepily shot by Brian Clemens himself, with the vampire attack scenes creatively shot from the vampire’s POV and with plenty of suspense. There’s also a solid and effective cast of splendid British character actors, led by the superb John Cater but including Wanda Ventham, Ian Hendry and John Carson. It also features the very delightful Caroline Munro. There’s a lot going for this film.

Sadly, though, it has two big problems. The first is the casting of Horst Janson. The character of Kronos is awesome- I love his swordsmanship and how he deals with the ruffians in the pub- and Janson is pretty good, but if you have to dub all of your star’s lines because you can’t understand his German accent you have a rather big problem. There’s an awkward disjoint here that overshadows everything. And the second problem is, I think, Clemens’ direction. He can shoot certain types of scenes very well indeed, and you can’t fault his visual storytelling, but there’s a certain dull, overcast feel to the cinematography where a hint of swashbuckling fun was required. The tone doesn’t feel quite right.

It’s a real shame. There’s an excellent film inside this struggling to get out but alas it, and the continuing future of Hammer, was not to be.

The Masque of the Red Death (1964)

"Each man creates his own God for himself, his own Heaven, his own Hell."

I'd seen and blogged a couple of Roger Corman’s Poe films before, and found they’ve always been impressive in how they were scripted, shot and acted. But this one absolutely stands out as the finest by far. It’s superb, taking an Edgar Allan Poe short story and making a dark philosophical treatise that almost echoes Bergman’s The Seventh Seal.

The setting is simple; a gothic castle in Renaissance Italy and the dark, plague-ridden countryside. But the film eschews realism in order to make the countryside darkly stylised, while there’s a sense that this community is cut off from the rest of Italy, giving Prince Prosperous absolute power over all he surveys. An openly Satanist prince would not possibly have been able to survive in Renaissance Italy, of course, but the film exists in its own claustrophobic, deeply atmospheric little world.

And at the centre of it all is the magnificent, extraordinary Vincent Price, giving one of the performances of his career. His mellifluous voice, the arch of his eyebrow, the looks of sardonic sadism- all this makes him utterly compelling as a charming sadist with absolute power and a love of Satan. There are subplots- Hazel Court as a princess fated to a gory death after giving herself to the Devil, and the horrifying revenge of a dwarf for the insult to his lady- but the film entirely focuses around the compelling figure of Prospero, and his eventual comeuppance is glorious.

I’ve blogged a fair few Roger Corman films by now, many of them excellent. But this is his finest achievement by far.

iZombie: The Scratchmaker

”Let’s face it- we’ve all got a little monster in us.”

It finally happened; a Blaine episode, after his near-absence from the opening episodes. Following his downfall last week we now follow Blaine as he adjusts to his new reality- and survives, as he always does. Oh, there’s a perfunctory murder of the week with a matchmaker being murdered and Liv on match maker brain. But all this happens in the background. Other characters get their moments- now that Dale is off on maternity leave (I know they have shit working conditions in America- do they have that?) it’s fun to see Clive getting to sit in the big chair.

But this is about Blaine, stuck in a cell, forced to answer questions and, worse, his entertainment options limited to the TV edit of Snakes on a Plane in endless loop. He’s an evil, amoral, annoyingly witty man who we all live to hate, and this is probably the right moment to praise David Anderson to the skies for inhabiting this gloriously witty sociopath. iZombie without Blaine is a terrifying thought.

There’s a rather big change to the status quo here as it turns out Al is the niece of none other than Stacey Boss, who is behind all of this and planning to takeover Blaine’s brain business wholesale- successfully, although not without some cleverness from Major forcing him and his new sidekick Don E to lower the price. Interestingly,Blaine is left to think that the brain business has gone elsewhere, effectively coupled by Don E and his shadowy benefactor. I’m sure he’ll take it very well when he finds out.

All this and Major, who is on fire somewhat, has a bit of a mini-showdown with Durkins. Another splendid episode, then, and a final season which is coming along very nicely.

The Five Venoms (1978)

"Once an evil deed is done, it never ends.”

I haven't seen many films in this genre at all; I blogged another Shaw Brothers film a while ago but am still not familiar with the tropes. Still, although there’s a lot of kung fu here, and a similarly historical setting, it feels very different to The 36th Chamber of Shaolin.

The plot structure is extremely simple and info-dumped on us in the very first scene as a dying teacher of martial arts tells his half-trainer young student that he has trained five others and wants him to see whether they have ended up good or evil. We then get s montage of the five and their styles- the centipede, snake, scorpion, lizard and toad. And then the student spends the whole film just observing things until the very end. It’s certainly convenient that all five still live in the same town, but the fun is that, although we soon find the identities of the centipede and snake, we have to work out which characters in the film are the other three.

It’s not the most difficult whodunit in the world, and I guessed them all, but this way of doing things adds fun. It has a very odd but interesting feel of being a police procedural throughout, too, although the justice system is horrifyingly brutal, corrupt and atrocious, based on torturing suspects until they confess, and where judges can whip police officers to solve a crime quickly, inevitably resulting in wrongful convictions and judicial killings. I disagree with the sentiments of the last scene; that judge deserves a good kicking. But the film itself is a fun little way of passing some time.

Deathstalker (1983)

“Heroes and fools are the same thing...”

This is one of many sword and sorcery films that sprang up in the wake of Conan the Barbarian. A fair few of them were quite good. This one isn’t, but it’s one of the better known ones which are utter pants.

There are no real stars in it. It’s cheap as chips. But it seems to have amassed enough of a cult following that we’re here talking about it 36 years later. I’m not entirely sure why. It’s a fairly perfunctory plot about a cynical anti-hero whom we first meet saving a damsel in distress from some lecherous men who are disfigures and therefore bad, and then proceeding to, er, undress and grope her, giving us the first of many glimpses of boobies. Well then. No feminism here, clearly.

Deathstalker (what sort of a name is that?) then proceeds to deny he’s a hero and that he just steals and kills to stay alive. It may be sword and sorcery, but this is definitely the ‘80s. And not just because of the bean bags that are visible in several scenes...

It soon morphs into a plot which makes no sense but isn’t hard to follow, involving a witch, a few perfunctory MacGuffins and a kind of gladiatorial contest which an evil wizard is setting up for reasons which are not quite clear. But there’s a nasty pig man, lots of naked woman who, er, seem to exist for the pleasure of all those charming men, and a lot of fighting. And, er, that’s it. It’s a short, simple film which, to be fair, shows a quite well-designed lived-in, dirty, sword and sorcery world. But, really, there are plenty of other sword and sorcery films from this sort of era.

The Prisoner: A. B. and C

"This is a dreamy party..."

Well, that was certainly different.

I suppose this is early in the series, it's too soon to have fully explored the possible formats, but this one is decidedly odd. Yes, we again begin with Number Six waking in the village- will we always? There's a new Number Two- will there be a different one each time? I was amused to note we had the same opening dialogue between Numbers Six and Two, but with a different Number Two. Will this be a thing?

All that was familiar. And yet...

This week we don't really explore the Village, although I note Number Two has by now accepted a maid. No, instead we follow a science fiction scheme to control Number Six's dreams to attempt to find out which of three possible individuals from within the spy world Number Six was attempting to sell out to. And we may actually have discovered something; we don't know why Number Six resigned, but he wasn't switching loyalies to another side.

And that's pretty much it. Number Six gets a bit of agency in that he realises what is happening and ends up taking control of his own dream narrative. But it all feels suspiciously like filler, as I understand many of the seventeen episodes pretty much were.

This isn't a bad episode. But compared to its two predecessors it feels a little perfunctory.

The Prisoner: The Chimes of Big Ben

"I don't want a man of fragments..."

I’ve asked around and ummed and ahhed and done a bit of reading to see what the best order is to watch the seventeen episodes, and concluded that the order in my DVD set (the ITC order) will do. So here’s a somewhat arbitrary second episode for your delectation.

There’s a new Number Two, the splendid Leo McKern, although Christopher Benjamin as Number Two’s assistant seems to be a kind of Permanent Secretary. There is our first “I am not a number. I am a free man”. There’s the same opening sequence with the resignation, albeit truncated, I suspect the version we will get from now on. And there’s the Village, of course, both as Orwellian and as Kafkaesque as ever, with its curfews, it’s awful tannoy waking everyone up at the same time in a dreadful conformity, and, worst of all, “alcohol-free” whisky and vodka, which is an affront to civilisation itself.

This episode focuses on new arrival Number Eight, or Nadia, a seeming parallel to Number Six, from Estonia or so she says, although her surname sounds suspiciously Slavic to me. She gains his confidence and they exploit an art competition to escape together, believing they are in Lithuania and escaping across the border to Poland. They seem to arrive in London and... it’s all a simulation. They never left the Village, and it was all a plot to get him to explain to two familiar faces, both seemingly in on it, why he resigned. And Nadia was in charge all along.

It’s a fun little twist, and tells us something about what we may expect from the format. We have another escape, a last minute sleight of hand, and we are back to square one in a village which we no longer have any reason to believe is in Lithuania. There’s some interesting talk about “sides” and the Cold War which very much dates the whole thing, but it’s interesting that, overwhelmingly British though the Village may feel, we’re invited to consider that it is not necessarily in the UK.

A fascinating episode, although I’m genuinely intrigued to see what else they can do with what seems to be a rather restrictive format.

The Prisoner: Arrival

"We're all pawns, my dear. Your move."

This blog started out with Doctor Who and then Blake's 7; I think it's time I took a look at another example of British "telefantasy", to use a word utilised only by those of us who are fans of it. I've seen the odd episode of The Prisoner before, but that was in another century. I recall pretty much nothing, and I've only seen three or four. So this is all but a fresh viewing, my only preconceptions coming from the programme's reputation and the eponymous song by Iron Maiden.

So what have we here? The bare bones of a backstory- Patrick McGoohan's unnamed character (let's disregard Danger Man, partly because I haven't seen it and partly to avoid dull, reductive attempts to find a literal explanation) used to drive a flash car and work at a posh building in iconic Sixties London but has resigned on a matter of principle (I love the way we see, but don't hear, this happening), only to be returned home to be gassed unconscious... and wakes up in the Village, where we will be spending a lot of time.

Portmeiron is, of course, extraordinary-looking, striking, distinctive, all those things, as well as giving a very Welsh coast feeling of isolation. But what strikes me about the Village as a setting is the stultifying conformity, which is almost as bad as the ubiquitous Orwellian slogans discouraging curiosity. This is a tiny place where everybody knows everybody, with a few permitted pastimes in which one is not just permitted but expected to participate. This smells a little of forced jollity, even of Butlins, and there is nothing more totalitarian than that.

There’s a lot of surface charm in the Village, but it’s a place where a woman desperate to escape is persuaded to work as a “maid” (sexual services are implied) on empty promises of release. It’s also deeply surreal, as though the powers that be control reality itself- the big white balloon of death is scarily effective, and all the more so for being utterly surreal, but even more chilling is the fact everyone stands absolutely still while the balloon follows and kills a man for an unspecified crime. This is achieved by freezing the screen, giving the impression that the laws of physics themselves are under control.

We end the episode with the first of what I’m sure is many failed escape attempts, following a great deal of manipulation involving a fake suicide. Can Number Six (please let us never know his real name) trust anyone?

Even more sinister, it’s heavily implied that Number Six, who has knowledge very much desired by the powers that be, is being treated with kid gloves for the moment. What happens when the gloves come off?

Brilliant, philosophical drama that avoids reducing things to the literal and is delightfully weird. Nice cast, too- we see a young Paul Eddington and an especially young George Baker, whom I’ve just seen in I, Clavdivs. But at the centre of it all is McGoohan himself as a very macho, stubborn man who will not give up his freedom...

I, Clavdivs: Old King Log

"The man who dwells by the pool shall open Graves..."

The first episode, which seems so long ago, featured an interesting bit of breakage to the fourth wall early on as, while Augustus, Marcus Agrippa and co reclined and chatted, a couple of minor characters discussed how the old days never truly existed, that the past is an illusion. That was a clear acknowledgement by Jack Pulman that we rely on sources but we can never arrive at real historical truth, and certainly not via Suetonius.

And so it’s appropriate that, in this final episode, realism breaks down somewhat and the fourth wall is constantly pointed at- and not only in the above quote from Claudius’ farewell speech to the Senate, where he refers to Jack Pulman and Robert Graves. No; in this final episode Claudius has become convinced that he erred in ruling wisely; he reconciled Rome to monarchy instead of discrediting it. So Old King Log resolves to “let all the poisons that lurk in the mud gat h it”, leaning into the Sibylline Prophecy. So he marries his niece and favours Nero as heir over his own son Britannicus. In doing so he raises himself from a mere principal character almost to the status of author, truly Claudius the God. This is often humorous, as when he exasperates Agripinilla by anticipating her every wish without hiding his contempt. (How come such a noble couple as Germanicus and Aggripina spawned such a nest of monsters?). He exerts control over his own death. Yet the ferryman waits for us all in the end.

There is one thing Claudius can not control- his honourable yet naive son, Britannicus, who refuses to  go along with Claudius’ secret plan because “no one believes in the Republic any more”. Instead he chooses to put on his manly gown and face death. Claudius is not omnipotent, after all.

So Claudius gets his big death scene, and a chat with the Sibyll. We get the cameos we’ve longed for from the characters we missed. We get to know the loathsome Agripinilla and Nero (interesting casting!) who, as we won’t be following their exploits after Claudius, can be portrayed with relish, with Nero noting “What a pretty thing a fire is”. No subtext there...

A fitting end to a drama that is justly seen as one of the finest ever. Who cares about the obvious staginess. This is superlative telly.

Years and Years: Episode 3

"The gig economy, that's me."

Things slow down a bit in the third episode as the characters get a chance to breathe and respond from the huge events that ended both the first two episodes. But there’s a very definite sense that civilisation is declining as the 2026 election day looms.

There’s humanity, though, which stops things getting too depressing- RTD is a master at using time like this. Yes, Daniel and Viktor are separated, Viktor is in huge danger from bigoted wankers, and it’s all quite heartbreaking. But their love and devotion for each other is touching, and it’s wonderful to see Viktor make it to Spain, where the internment camps have conjugal arrangements.

But this is a moment of hope in the context of rising bigotry. We also see the hollowing of the muffle class as Steve and Celeste are forced to stay with Gran and replace their nice professional jobs with gig economy drudgery with appalling conditions. Meanwhile, Bethany and her fellow transhuman Lizzie are exploited into handing over £10,000 for a horrifying botched operation to replace their eyes with cameras- fortunately Beth escapes. There’s artificial meat, all cars seem to be electric, but society isn’t heading in a pleasant direction.

Yes the deaths of the siblings’ father allows them to bond at his funeral in another moment of humanity. Never mind that Rosie has lost her job, Steve is forced to take what work he has, Edith is dying and Daniel’s partner is in a cell. They have each other, even if Edith (easily my favourite character), er, drinks her father.

Seems with Celeste, proud and stoic to the last, discovers that Steve has been having an affair, and the election results are revealed- Tories and Labour finely balanced with the odious Vivienne Rook holding the balance of power. Simple and narratively necessary, I suppose, but where are my beloved Lib Dem’s? And what about the Norn MP’s? Whatever, the march of dodgy populism proceeds onwards. More superb telly although, after a superlative second episode, this is merely great rather than superlative.

iZombie: Death Moves Pretty Fast

"Can a thing that's known for doing a thing do that very thing?"

As if it were possible for this season of iZombie to ramp things up, well, that's exactly what seems to have happened. There's also a pretty good murder of the week too, although it's a shame the use of Blaine as a suspect doesn't last, and (SPOILERS!) only at the end do we realise that we're getting a prankster killed by his resentful sidekick... again. But there's a lot more going on than that, although I'm a little confused at Clive's injury? He seemed fine last week.

Anyway, the Dead Enders continue to be a menace, this time sneaking Alzheimer's brains into the tubes- and this leads to the culmination of the conflict between Major and Enzo, the hardliner with the outrageous French accent. The zombie cure leaks out, and Ravi is devastated because it's his fault that sufferers of the disease in question now all have targets on their backs. But the main focus of the episode, cleverly done, is how Al slowly uncovers the full truth about Blaine's murderous past, and we see him exposed, turned from hero to public enemy number one... and the supply of brains stops. Worse, Peyon is shown to be either stupid or complicit, her earlier relationship with Blaine revealed. Peyton's position is now imperilled, just when New Seattle needs her to persuade DC not to nuke the place... again. And where are the brains going to come from?

Suddenly things look very worrying indeed for our fragile civilisation in the city, and that's before Major learns, once Enzo is on ice, that a full seventeen people have been thawed out... cut to a cage full of Romeros and suddenly we're reminded this is the final season. Could everything end with an actual zombie apocalypse? Another superb bit of telly, although I do worry about this over-the-top comedy treatment of Vampire Steve.

The Driller Killer (1979)

“You should let him stick it up your ass once. Use KY jelly. It won't hurt."

This is the original video nasty which, in this country at least, led to a nightmare of Thatcherite censorship for many, many years. So what's the fuss about? Well, the deaths are extremely violent with loads of blood, as one might expect, as our anti-hero Reno Miller (the artist as Travis Buckle, if you will) is driven mad by poverty and rejection of his art, But the young Abel Ferrara, directing and starring, gives us a far more arty and far more philosophical work than that may imply, although there's also plenty of black humour.

The first scene worried me a little. I saw Ferrara's Bad Lieutenant many, many years ago, in my pre-blog days and indeed very possibly in my pre-Internet days. I hated it. I couldn't stand the crude, didactic, overdone Catholic imagery that was being constantly fetishised by the camera. So the opening scene, with similar use of religious iconography, worried me a little. Fortunately there's no more of this, just some nicely done handheld camerawork, naturalistic acting, proper rotary telephones, and blood. Lots and lots of the latter. And a rather good punk band which reminds me very much of the Damned.

The killings themselves are graphic and violent, but take up relatively little screen time. Instead we mostly get a low budget but very nicely shot version of Taxi Driver where the protagonist is a struggling artist, and where the art criticism can be as violent as the killings. A surprisingly and genuinely good film.

I Clavdivs: A God in Colchester

"Copulation on a cosmic scale!"

This episode is, to a large extent, a continuation of the last one with even more sex- although we are of course told, not shown, of Messalina’s shagging competition with the magnificently brazen chief prostitute, much as we are told, not shown, of Herod’s ill-fated, blasphemous and hubristic downfall and death. This is, as ever, a very studio bound series of talking heads and studio sets, and there are times it’s very obvious, when visually spectacular events happen only in dialogue. We notice this, but we don’t care, because I, Clavdivs is awesome.

Again we have Claudius being successful in policy- he successfully masterminds the invasion of Britain and wins a triumph, and he successfully opens his longed for winter port at Ostia- but the domestic life almost succeeds in destroying him and, emotionally, arguably does so. Messalina’s sexual appetites, psychopathic personality and extreme lack of discretion is very over the top and Grand Guignol, and no doubt the sources exaggerate, but all this has the serious point of emphasising Claudius’ humiliation. Here he is, the most powerful man in the world (Chinese and Parthian emperors notwithstanding), and he had been blind to a terrible humiliation and threat. Worse, Messalina’s lover plots not only to overthrow him but to replace him with, irony of ironies, a republic. We see how many depend on an emperor, too- his two freedmen ((one of them John Carter, the boss cop from The Abominable Doctor Phibes) are loyal to him because they are likely to be killed should he be murdered. Politics is a dangerous game.

All this and poor Claudius’ best friend betrays him, leaving him old, heartbroken and utterly alone. The tears in his last scene are extraordinary. Still, at least he’s big in Essex.

I Clavdivs: Fool's Luck

"Congratulations, Caesar. You've just passed your first sentence of death. How many before the people grow tired and pass one on you?"

Here we are, then. A full three quarters of the way through the series and finally we move on from adapting  I, Claudius to its sequel Claudius the God, and everything feels understandably different, as the premise of the series has suddenly changed. No longer are we looking at the exploits of a man who survives decades of murder and backstabbing through being thought a fool but how he copes when absolute power is forced upon him. And forced it is- he begins as the very real prisoner of the Praetorian Guard, and it’s only when the ever-reliable Herod convinces him that refusing the purple would mean not only civil war but his own murder that he accepts his position. His splendid speech before the senate is at once eloquent, directly addressing his physical disabilities and very much acknowledging that it is 400 soldiers of the Praetorian Guard who are in charge here, wielding a power that the senate “so spinelessly them”.

And we find that Claudius is and is not a fool. In affairs of state he is anything but, seeing through the corrupt machinations of his civil servants on the matter of building a winter harbour in Ostia. Yet he is but the puppet of his manipulative wife Messalina, and the episode is nicely structured in how it slowly allows her wickedness to unwind. In the end she achieves nothing but the pointless death of the good man who was unlucky to be fancied by her, but she survives u suspected, no doubt to up the ante. And apparently this girl is only seventeen.

Claudius is making s good start as Emperor, but the seeds of his destruction are already there, in the private rather than public realm. Unused to being wanted by women, he is easily manipulated. And even Herod oozes foreboding when he warns Claudius to “trust no one”. An emperor must be alone and friendless; it’s just that Claudius does not yet know this. His closing words- “I’m tired”- foreshadow much.

This is very different to earlier episodes. But just as superlative.

Years and Years: Episode 2

"This is a different country to the one I left..."

First episodes of new dramas are always, to an extent, set up, introducing us not only to the premise and the setting but also to the cast. It’s the sign of a great writer that, after seeing the first episode once, I started this second episode with a firm grasp of who was who, and feel that I know all the characters. And that’s important; a high concept, somewhat dystopian tour through the near future would be very dry without real humanity and character. Fortunately RTD has never been faulted with either of those.

So we really feel for Stephen and Celeste in the final scenes as a bank collapse robs them of the money paid for their house, and they become homeless and forced into an awkward dependence on Gran. The bank run scenes are a masterful marriage of writing and direction, with the policeman keeping order joining in at the end, a nice touch. And yet the world isn’t unremittingly awful in spite of everything as there is still booze, love and laughter, even in a world with s President Pence and where Putin is dictator for life. Yet the horrors are real; the immigration nightmare for Daniel and Victor, happy in their life until Daniel’s wanker of an ex has Viktor ruthlessly reported to a place where he is far from safe. It’s about time that serious TV drama showed us the barbarism of May’s “hostile environment”.

Edith is back, and back properly, with her characterisation quite a clever piece of writing. She’s had a huge dose of radiation, and probably has ten years before the cancer gets her, leading her to say “sod this” to a life of activism and just enjoy herself. As she says, it’s too late to sort the climate crisis and the mass extinctions; we must now deal with the consequences and they are brutal. So carpe diem. Not only that; she reacts to a creepy hustings with Vivienne Rook with “smash the world!” She seems not to care any more. Oh, there are flashes, as when she says “don’t do that” as Rook appropriates a superficial feminism for her own ends, but this is a terrifying cynicism.

Ah yes, the extraordinary Emma Thompson as Rook, propeller I to a by-election by a very RTD incident where the sitting MP gets decapacitated by a drone which is robotising Manchester’s workforce. Eat your heart out, William Huskisson. Her speech is utterly terrifying, as is her ignorance.

This episode has gone up a notch. This is more than “very good”.

The Old Dark House (1932)

"Even Welsh doesn't sound like that!"

I've been somewhat remiss in leaving it until now, when I'm forty-two years old, to see this excellent film (who cares about some dodgy attempts at British accents?) which is not at all the different-film-studio-but-pretty-much-Universal-horror type film I expected, in spite of he present of James Whale and Boris Karloff and a fair few chills. This is no horror film.

No; beyond the superficial genre tropes is a substantial script from J.B. Priestley himself, the famed Yorkshire intellectual of the early twentieth century, with fascinating characters and very real-sounding dialogue which now, eighty-seven years after the film was released, brings the past to life in a way few old films can. These people may be from a different age but they feel very real from the argument in the first scene onwards.

The cast is wonderful. Yes, Karloff is wasted as the mute butler in a role similar to last year's Frankenstein, but Ernest Thesiger delights as the extremely camp Horace and Charles Laughton shines as the rich but tragic, and very northern, Sir William. The cast is a collection of grotesques and sympathetic individuals, but it's the characters and cast, rather than the almost non-existent plot, that makes this film sing with atmosphere, pathos, danger and tension, in spite of the Charlotte Bronte madman in the attic. And at the centre of it all is the visionary and magnificent James Whale.

iZombie: Dot Zom

“The future will be obnoxious..."

Another clever episode, at its heart another whodunit of the week, but one through which the arc and its themes are rather interestingly explored- and where a new player unexpectedly emerges. This season so far is going splendidly.

The brain of the week is that of a Steve Jobs/ Mark Zuckerberg/ Elon Musk type dot com "genius", at once deeply fashionable and, while professing noble aims and sinking loads of money into a "bunker" to save a selected few from a vaguely upcoming armageddon, morally blink and unwittingly fomenting genocide. Rose McIver is, of course, superb as ever, but the moral is very much that such people are pretentious wankers.

There's a nice switch at the end; the zombie-hating racist is not, in fact the killer, but the spurned zombie ex-lover. Yet it is the red herring who is unmistakably the most evil, wishing to exterminate all zombies. And Liv's wider aims are thus not in sync with her sleuthing, a nicely made point.

Meanwhile, after a few hiccups, Peyton's and Ravi's sitcom is making progress, and Blaine (where has he been?) seems to have success in pulling a journalist, Al, who is interviewing him in a subplot which serves to illustrate the ongoing danger of the Dead Enders, who are gradually doxxing zombies to a world which hats and fears them. And there's an odd new baddie, in league with French Bloke, who has nebulous aims- and a mole in the camp of "Renegade". A surprising amount of arc stuff is being set up here. And, while yet again we have a top notch episode, it's all very ominous.

I, Clavdivs: Hail Who?

“Drusilla! I’m dying!”

So this is it; the big one. Claudius, amongst chaotic schemes, and while protesting that he wants a republic, is made emperor. And the whole thing, really, is played like a farce.

Caligula is still dangerously mad and capricious, of course, but the shock of all this most definitely peaked at the end of last episode. Not that we lack spectacle, or John Hurt being superb; on the contrary we get several minutes of Caligula in a dress performing as Dawn in a weird dance to Homer. But the focus has moved to Claudius. So the palace is a brothel at the start, but shown in relation to on Claudius, the butt of the joke but managing to save a couple of women from being raped. Caligula plays at being on campaign and makes war on Neptune, yes, and his booty is a load of shells, but the focus is on how court jester Claudius saves two messengers from death by beheading, and later saves the entire Senate by acting the fool. And on how the old and clumsy Claudius is married to the young and beautiful Messalina- as a joke.

Just as chaotic is the plot to murder Caligula- ultimately, and sbsurdly, caused by his silly habit of giving Cassius suggestive phrases to use as the watchword of the day. Nothing goes right, and the surviving Claudius is almost killed before he is declared emperor by a Praetorian Guard who want to keep the cushy life they have.

Less amusing, of course, and a brutal contrast, is the murder of Caligula's wife and baby daughter, a reminder that Cassius is no saint either. It is, as usual, a splendidly written and acted piece, although the range of settings- on camp near the Rhine, at the Gams- make it more than usually obvious how studio-bound it all is.

I, Clavdivs: Zeus, By Jove

"Don't go in there..."

In a sense this episode just goes to show an increasing sense of depravity in Julio-Claudia Rome, as Tiberius’ depravity and tyranny is followed by something even worse- a madman emperor who considers himself a god. Yet there’s a certain loss of the subtleties of character here as things go very Grand Guignol. The tone becomes less subtle and, although there are superbly written character moments such as Antonia’s commentary on all the depravities leading to her blunt, matter-of-fact suicide.

I’ve never read Suetonius but I understand Graves’ two novels were a toned down version of the garish details found in The Twelve Caesars. But I understand historians tend to view all this as much exaggerated, and there’s a view that Caligula may have been a bit of a troll, yes, but perfectly rational. That’s not what we see here. When he recovers from his coma he tells the sycophant who promised to give his life if Cæsar may be saved to carry out his promise. He openly cavorts with his sister Drusilla. He has his nephew be headed because of an annoying cough.He declares himself a god. And then, of course, there’s the shocking ending. It’s all very entertaining spectacle but compared to all the previous episodes it’s very one note, superlative though John Hurt is.

Also worth singling out is John Rhys Davis who, while being an utter wanker in real life, does an excellent job as Macro, an ambitious man who has gambled his own future on Caligula and worries about the nature of the horse he’s shackles himself to. And, of course, Margaret Tyzack owns the episode with her blunt words to Claudius just before her suicide. Claudius, as she says, survives everything.

I, Clavdivs: Reign of Terror

“Do you know him personally?”

“No, but I have slept with his wife several times.”

This time I, Clavdivs channels the Ben Jonson play Sejanus His Fall, and does it much better. This is telly of the very first rank, and a classic study in tyranny.

We begin with Sejanus’ control over Rome deepened and Tiberius, with his mother and son dead, utterly oblivious to his own manipulation. He is being pushed further and further to remove potential threats to Sejanus’ rise- Aggripina is banished to the island where Julia was exiled with a similar fate for her eldest son, and when she refuses Tiberius’ sexual advances she is flogged. Her second son is arrested and starved in his cell, with only his depravity and closeness to Tiberius saving her theirs son Caligula- shown as delightfully decadent throughout the episode- from a similar fate, and Sejanus has plans for him too. This, Livilla’s affair with Sejanus, and Claudius’ distance from his own wife, lead Antonia to decry the modern world in reactionary style- but she has a definite point.

Tiberius, though, forbids Sejanus from marrying Livilla, instead suggesting he marries her daughter Helen, to which Livilla reacts with predictable fury, driving a wedge between them. This is the first crack in Sejanus’ armour. His tyranny continues unabated but the cracks widen, and Antonia discovers more and more, including that Livilla is poisoning her own daughter out of jealousy. And it is Antonia who manages to warn Tiberius over in Capri, behind Sejanus’ back.

In a wonderfully perverse scene, it is Caligula who suggests to a suddenly frightened emperor that he can use the ambition of Sejanus’ deputy Macro to get rid of him, and talk of the ensuing purge becomes instantly horrifying. We aren’t shown much other than the bodies, but what we do see and hear is sickening. Senators quietly flee the senate as Sejanus is denounced. And when a soldier complains to Macro about killing Sejanus’ children, with the girl being a virgin, he is simply told to “Make sure she’s not a virgin when you kill her”. We see Sejanus’ fatal stabbing from his own POV in a nice piece of camera work, the last thing he hears being that his children are dead. He is a monster, yet he is human, and the script allows us to feel for him.

This is, once again, superlative, and I’m already running out of ways to say that. Interestingly, Claudius’ wife, Sejanus’ sister, begs Claudius to protect her and, although he is busy expressing his revulsion at what is happening, he refuses. She survives in the end, but we are reminded that Claudius, while saner than his relatives, is no saint.

I Clavdivs: Queen of Heaven

“He’s building a prison here, stone by stone.”

Damn all this current telly and it’s distracting me from the antics of those naughty Julio-Claudians. Now where were we?

Cleverness, that’s where. This episode is really all about plot, plot, plot but it does so with wit and gusto. The opening scene has to tell us that Tiberius’ reign has now reached its later point of extreme decadence and tyranny, but it does so by showing the hostess of an enjoyable dinner party, attended by characters we know such as Agrippina and Claudius himself and has the gracious hostess (Judith Caroon from The Quatermass Experiment) dramatically reveals the circumstances of her rape by Tiberius- and then stab herself. BBC2 In 1976 cannot show these depravities so it must simply tell- but it does so dramatically, and gives us some spectacle anyway.

It also develops how Sejanus is slowly assuming power from Tiberius, encouraging him with his treason trials for such things as “treasonous utterances” and already ruling Rome as a kind of proto-totalitarian state. And he is deeply ambitious- in a hilarious scene Claudius slowly walks across a room while Sejanus gradually gets him to divorce his estranged wife and agree to marry his own sister. He is also having an affair with Livia which, it is implied, consisted of some rather rough sex, and the two of them contrive to bump off Castor, who happens to be Tiberius’ son and likely successor. All this is done with humour and style, and in no way feels like exposition.

We also meet Caligula, or Suetonius’ version at any rate, played with absolute sublimity by the great John Hurt. Already utterly depraved, he bonds with Tiberius over porn and ends up as the likely next emperor simply because Tiberius wants his successor to be worse out of sheer vanity.

But the episode is about the death of Livia, aware of her many crimes and desperate for deification to save her from eternal torment, with another extraordinary performance from the great Sian Phillips. Interestingly, a lot of the meat of the episode revolves around Thrasyllus’ horoscopes, with a lot of very intelligent people believing in this woo woo. But, in an age before our present conception of science, astrology was not necessarily a stupid way to try and understand the world. Interestingly, though, the Sybilline prophecy, and that of Thrassylus, are shown to be true. Caligula and Claudius will indeed be the next to rule, and one who is going to die soon will indeed become the only God worshipped in the Roman Empire one day.

Bloody superlative stuff.

Years and Years: Episode 1

"Don't know if I could have a kid in a world like this."

RTD is back, after last year's superb A Very English Scandal, with the start of a new six-part drama which seems to have the critics wowed but is, well, very good (this is RTD) but not quite up there with The Second Coming.

We have four Lyons siblings- Rosie, Daniel, Stephen and the globe-trotting polemicist Edith, all glued together by their irascible, politically incorrect gran, and it is through them that we are to experience the next few decades, beginning here and now in 2019- so contemporary that a cleverly last mo ute piece of dialogue references the death of Doris Day. All of these characters immediately come to life as RTD gives them very real and very relatable dialogue, as always. Yet the constant backdrop of ominous news, and the little soliloquy of Daniel (the author’s representative?) makes it clear that this is a world where the future looks anything but bright- and yes, he’s not the only one who feels that something has been very wrong ever since the banks buggered things up in 2008. And through all this we see the slow rise of the blunt populist politician Vivienne Rook, played superbly by the great Emma Thompson.

We then go through the next six or seven years, through Trump’s re-election, through a new king, through nuclear tensions between China and the USA, and through a refugee crisis caused by an, er, Soviet (what???!!) invasion of Ukraine. We also see such things as Snapchat filters moving to the real world and Stephen’s daughter coming out as “trans”- by which she means “transhuman”; she wants to go to a Swiss clinic, destroy her flesh and upload herself to live forever as data. Wow. This would, of course, be literal death; the data uploaded would just be a copy. You would be gone. But I’m sure there will be those who think this way and it’s a clever thing to include. And this helps us get to know bewildered father Stephen and his very middle class wife Celeste.

We also see the gradual collapse of Daniel’s marriage to his stupid husband Ralph, who embraces silly internet conspiracy theories and decries those who won’t consider that the Flat Earthers, 9/11 triggers or Moon landing deniers “could be right” as closed minded. This kind of stupidity is, it can’t be denied, the main bad thing about the internet. And these people vote, usually for populist bullshit. This sort of thing isn’t harmless. We also see some staggering ignorance about Ukrainian refugees- “I voted Leave.” Grr.

And then there comes a siren, nuclear war between China and the USA, chaos, family recriminations and Edith dying in Vietnam with a big mushroom cloud. And fade to black. This is very good stuff indeed, it’s just that RTD can do much better than “very good”.

Scream and Scream Again! (1970)

“That bloody chicken wasn’t killed- it died of old age!”

 This is an odd film, not at all what the marketing, title and poster lead us to expect, but unexpectedly a rather good one.

The film's selling point is, of course, that it can boast the holy horror trinity of Vincent Price, Christopher Lee and Peter Cushing in the same horror film. But instead we get an utterly bonkers science fiction conspiracy thriller in which Cushing has but a brief cameo and the other two are not exactly in starring roles.

This is a gritty, realistic police procedural with slickly gritty direction, naturalistic acting and a basis in the more down-to-Earth end of science fiction. The plot may be utterly mad but pays off well, with the two apparently unrelated subplots- people being kidnapped and having their limbs surgically removed, while a sinister man with apparent superpowers commits a series of murders to climb up the greasy pole in a dodgy, unnamed, military dictatorship.

This all works rather well, as does the "A" plot of the pursuit of a serial killer with vampire-like attributes who kills girls whom he meets in nightclubs, which takes up an awful lot of the film. The film is, I suppose, rather disjointed, but it doesn't feel like it and is all drawn together in an effective climax. The overall effect is of a film which defies expectations in hat type of film it turns out to be, but in fact turns out to be surprisingly good.

iZombie: Five, Six, Seven, Ate

“Nobody puts Ravi in a corner!”

Another bloody strong episode here that continues to set up plot threads for the final season while still managing to function as the season’s first murder of the week.

Said murder is fairly banal if seen simply as a whodunnit, perhaps, but it’s based on a competitive samba dancing telly programme and has Liv on dancer brain. Even better, it has Liv and Ravi going undercover as new contestants on the show, at one point spending a lot of time on a rather hilarious sequence as Ravi very slowly learns to dance by the most efficient means possible- montage. It’s an utterly hilarious sequence and one which both highlights how great Rahul Kohli is at physical comedy and shows how the programme still knows how to balance humour with the darkness.

And darkness there is- Dolly Durkins May not appear but her baleful attempt continues as a school identifies and isolates its zombie pupils, causing yet more intra-community friction, and threatening to drive a wedge between Peyton and Major. On a more personal note we learn that not only is Dale pregnant with Clive’s baby but Michelle, whom he dumped last season, is also pregnant with a baby who may be his.

We end on a note of hope, though, as Liv, as Renegade, agrees to adopt the late Jordan’s two orphaned brothers, and they start to learn that humans among the gang can be wonderful people. Unlike last week’s very dark episode this one is full of humour, and ends positively. But I still think this season will take a turn for the Hobbesian.

Inhumans: Something Inhuman This Way Comes

"This is my office!"

So we begin with an amusingly post-coital Karnak, somewhat confused as to the feelings he has for Jen. The connection between them only deepens as Jen’s friends turn on her and they have to fight and flee for their lives, consoled at least by the deaths of the other two blokes until their replacements turn out to be bigger and even nastier fish. This subplot, at least, is somewhat entertaining.

Meanwhile Louise is acting as chauffeur to the royal couple, with Locus in the boot. There’s a presumably foreshadowing remote chat between Medusa and Maximus in which she relays the fact that Black Bolt threatens to have “a few words”, but these scenes revolve mainly around dialogue skirting around the hot topic of just how legitimate royal rule is, and the caste system which it supports and which Maximus, even accounting for his motives and tyrannical behaviour, is abolishing. One is reminded that even Caligula’s tyranny to the ruling classes didn’t prevent him being a popular and successful ruler for the masses. Black Bolt and Medusa are decidedly ambiguous figures and, if only Maximus twirled his moustache a little less, he’d be the goodie. Still, one can’t help thinking that a better script would have explored this more.

Crystal, with Lockjaw healed, has a bit of a holiday this episode as she frolics in the beach with the laid back Dave, presumably a love interest who will, ahem, teach her about humanity, bring her out of her shell and teach her an Important Lesson which she will apply back home. It’s clear that both she and Medusa are set to question their rejection of their parents’ radicalism, annoying though Medusa May be about it.

Gorgon rescues the captured Karnak and Jen and is surprised to see his cousin has become somewhat less arrogant, a reaction somewhat crudely set up by a series of flashbacks. We end up with the two of them reunited with Black Bolt and Medusa, although for some reason Jen has to bugger off. Meanwhile, on Attila, rebellion erupts...

Sigh. This is all very by the numbers. Still, as Magnus Magnusson used to say, I’ve started so I’ll finish.

Slender Man (2018)

"Once you see him, you can't unsee him."

This is certainly a contender for one of the worst films I've ever blogged. It's shockingly poor.

Slender Man is one of those computer game characters that the kids find utterly terrifying in spite of the character being but a decade or so old and whom I, at 42, am far too old to know anything about. The concept and appearance of the character seems quite terrifying, however, and you'd think it would make a good basis for a horror film, although perhaps not best released so soon after the well-known murder by two American schoolgirls of their classmate supposedly inspired by the character.

This is, to put it far too mildly, not that film. It's not just that the film is boring and talky, that we never get to know about the characters, or that the plot is simplistic and drawn out. No; the direction is so poor, even if you forgive the overly dark lighting in which you can't bloody see anything, that it fails to clearly tell the story and it's far from clear what's going on. Even if this were not the case, though, the film is shockingly dull, Mrs Llamastrangler fell asleep. Even the CGI sequences where Slender Man actually bloody appears are not worth waiting for. Avoid.

Unfriended: Dark Web (2018)

"Why do you think Twitter and Facebook are free?"

Yes, I know; I use the above two social media platforms to plug this very blog. The irony is not lost on me although, unlike AJ, I don't subscribe to conspiracy theories; Facebook and Twitter are free because your personal info is the product, and advertisers are the customer, not you. All conspiracy theories are dangerous bollocks that leads to the election of dodgy demagogue. Vaccinate your kids. Lee Harvey Oswald acted alone. There is no Illuminati. The real world cannot be boiled down to such simplistic fantasies.

Anyway, this isn't a sequel in any meaningful sense. It doesn't feature any of the same characters and is made by different people. What it is, though, is another very clever example of the rather fresh and welcome new horror genre initiated by the first film, where all we see is one person's screen as something supernatural or weird unfolds and everybody dies. It's a fresh and, indeed, superior take on the found footage genre as the possibilities are much wider.

In this case the added ingredient is the current fashion for dark web boxes, more conspiracy theorist bollocks but great material for films like this. The conceit of Matias, through whose screen we see everything, having stolen the laptop through we see everything from a criminal network named after Greek underworld mythology which kidnaps and tortures young women while manipulating others into taking the blame, is deliciously evil and utterly gripping.

It's also good to see, for once, a serious attempt at a deaf character. It's well-written and structured and the characters are compelling. This is a superb and underrated film, and I for one prefer it to its predecessor.

The Ghoul (1975)

”She never came out. None of them ever do.”

This is the second film I’ve blogged by Tyburn Films, an abortive successor to Hammer which uses much the same crew to make similar types of films but sadly didn’t last long. This film, alas, is rather perfunctory and forgettable, in spite of being shot well and a fine performance from Cushing as a man who, like himself, had lost his wife and missed her terribly. It’s chiefly of interest as a novelty, for Cushing’s performance, for a young John Hurt being excellent as a lecherous henchman, and for looking very suspiciously as though a certain Doctor Who story owes a lot to it.

Non-Who fans, please indulge the next couple of sentences, but Black Orchid, I’m looking at you. 1920s setting? Yep. Big country house? Yep. Son kept locked up in a room, having been turned into a crazed killer while in an exotic faraway place? Yep. There’s even a policeman. And a fairly big role for Professor Cliff from The Green Death.

There’s a lot of promise here, especially with the setting of a country house surrounded by mist and marshland, but the plot is clumsy and loses momentum as soon as the major character gets killed halfway through. The film never quite recovers from this and feels somewhat disjointed. Ultimately the problem is the script, and more specifically the awkward plotting, which feels at times like a first draft. There are also some opinions expressed about the Hindu religion, presented as a dark pagan cult, which certainly raise eyebrows. But ultimately it’s a shame that such splendid acting and direction are wasted on a half-hearted script like this.

iZombie: Dead Lift

”You ever feel like you’re an unwitting tool of the prison industrial complex?”

It’s still all about the arc as we start the episode with last week’s supposed murder victim instead having a druggy affair with “Glenn from accounting”, the three kids being smuggled dodge arrest, and Major continues to receive flak for his hearts and minds approach from hardliners at Chase Graves. But he has a point- they NEED humans to be on side or New Seattle will collapse into anarchy. And, this being the final season, that happening is a very real possibility.

Of course, there’s a lighter sign. Liv on fitness guru brain gives us a splendid example of the usual humour, and if anything the script is even wittier than usual. But there’s a very real sense of doom as Dolly Durkins’ Dead Enders foment outrage for immigrants... er, zombies among the human majority. It turns out that her lot have fakes the viral video of the woman being murdered by zombies but, after a drive-by shooting in a Dead Ender hangout by zombies affiliated by Chase Graves, Major allows fake footage of their “execution” to go viral. Both sides are using fake news already. This feels very much like Trump’s America, complete with the moral dilemmas on how hard to punch a fascist, whether one should act with integrity when the enemy has none.

Peyton is trying to run Seattle in spite of bureaucratic inertia but Ravi provides not only great sex but also a great idea: an online comedy called “Hi, Zombie” to try and improve relations. It’s such a good idea that Peyton commits fraud in order to fund it, something which again muddies the waters and will in no way come back to haunt her. You can see not only the threads but the themes developing.

Of course, all this pales in awesomeness next to the sublime D&D scene. But this season has got off to a very strong start.

Inhumans: Make Way for... Medusa

"Well, how did you guys get here?"

"My sister's teleporting dog."

So this is the episode where Medusa “heroically” manages to rescue Black Bolt and his mate from the new scientific prison in which he finds himself and we are, I think, supposed to see her as a hero. But she isn’t, is she? She speeds up and jumps a red light, thereby attracting totally unnecessary attention from the police, and she needlessly alienates Louise, whom she needs. Her people skills are crap and she’s completely charmless and unlikeable.

I wouldn’t go so far as to describe this episode as that, but there’s a sense that, plot-wise, characters are just being moved around the board for no good purpose and simply killing time until the inevitable showdown in Attilan. Yes, Gorgon gets close to his human friend’s and considers them “brothers”. Yes, the overly logical Karnak gets to learn about romance and have sex, but there’s no real depth to any of this, no wit or heart, and there’s no suggestion the Inhumans are learning anything here. The subplot with Crystal, the vet and her ex-lover, and the injured Lockjaw feels particularly like treading water.

Meanwhile, on Attilan, Maximus twiddles his moustache and disbands the Generics Council. This, at least, is interesting; his motives may be selfish, but undermining a genetics-based caste system has to be a progressive move. Thing is, if Black Bolt and co support this system, are they the good guys? Medusa especially cones across as a total bitch for rubbishing her parents’ idealism.

Four episodes in, and I’m worried that we may already have witnessed a leap over a fish of the genus carcharias.

Extremely Wicked, Shockingly Evil and Vile (2019)

“People don't realise that there are killers among them"

 This is, to put it mildly, a controversial film, in spite of the way its execution (er, no pun intended) seems to be widely praised. In the wake of, I think, #MeToo, our culture is currently rethinking the practice of using fictionalised biopics of serial killers, who are invariably killers of women, as entertainment. And there is, I think, a point there. Not that we should in any way ban or censor the use of this naturally dramatic subject matter, of course; it intrinsically says a lot about the human condition, and specifically male violence. Exploring this sort of thing is precisely what art is for.

All the same, though, we should be wary of how we treat the subject, where a straightforwardly lurid approach can show the male gaze at its most problematic. This biopic of Ted Bundy tries a different approach, framing the narrative from the point of view of his fiancee Liz, from the time they met in a bar (did Bundy at first mean to kill her, and relent only upon discovering her baby?) until his final admission of his guilt on the eve of his execution. We spend much of the film, unless we already know the facts, doubting Bundy's guilt. Only at the end do we unequivocally learn of his guilt. His persuasive charm allows Bundy to gaslight us the way he did to Liz, to Carol and to all those women who rooted for him during his trial. That's clever. It's also a treatment that doesn't need to focus on the spectacle of the murders themselves. We are also reminded, too, that those complicit in the use of capital punishment, from the judge to the bloodthirsty sheriff, are every bit as evil as Bundy himself.

The film is superbly structured, and everything looks very convincingly of the '70s. There's a smallish role for scarcely recognisable James Hetfield too, appropriate for a film shot by the director of Some Kind of Monster. Jim Parsons also valiantly struggles against his typecasting as the Florida prosecutor as The Big Bang Theory winds to a close. But it' is, in the end, al about the extraordinary performances of Lily Collins and a swiftly maturing Zac Efron. Highly impressive.