Inspector Morse: Last Seen Wearing

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

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

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

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

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

Squid Game: Stick to the Team

 "I don't trust people..."

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

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

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

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

Hammer House of Horror: The Silent Scream

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

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

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

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

Breaking Bad: Phoenix

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Doctor Who: Flux, Chapter One- The Halloween Apocalypse

 “What's the matter with Sheffield?"

"Too near Leeds...

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

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

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

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

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

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

To the Devil a Daughter (1976)

 “Damn you!”

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

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

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

Don’t Look Now (1973)

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

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

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

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

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

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

I, Robot by Isaac Asimov

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

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

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

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

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

The Stars, Like Dust by Isaac Asimov

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

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

Second Foundation by Isaac Asimov

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

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

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

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

Foundation and Empire by Isaac Asimov

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

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

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

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

Foundation by Isaac Asimov

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

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

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

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

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

Jurassic Park (1993)

 “An interactive CD-ROM!”

“An interactive C-D ROM!” 

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

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

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

I May Destroy You: Happy Animals

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

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

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

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

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

Squid Game: The Man with the Umbrella

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

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

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

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

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

Breaking Bad: Mandala

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

An extraordinary, and pivotal, episode.

Squid Game: Hell

 “Out here is worse!”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Phoenix in Obsidian by Michael Moircock

.

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

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

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

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

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

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

Squid Game: Red Light, Green Light

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

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

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

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

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

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

Hammer House of Horror: Charlie Boy

 “I’m going to get YOU…”

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

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

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

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

I May Destroy You: The Alliance

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

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

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

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

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

Breaking Bad: Over

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Superlative telly, as though that needed saying.

Logan (2017)

 "Don't be what they made you..."

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

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

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

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

The Eternal Champion by Michael Moorcock

 

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

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

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

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

Halloween II (1981)

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

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

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

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

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

Hammer House of Horror: The House That Bled to Death

 "House prices are ridiculous these days..."

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

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

Spoliers. Read on only if that's ok.

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

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

Sex Education: Season 3, Episode 3

 “Yes, Jeffrey, you sex god!”

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

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

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

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

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

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

Breaking Bad: 4 Days Out

 “You made poison out of beans, yo!”

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

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

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

It is, needless to say, peerlessly good.

I May Destroy You: It Just Came Up

 "Rapebusters!"

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

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

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

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

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

Free Guy (2021)

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

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

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

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

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

A rather good first film of 2021.

Sex Education: Season 3, Episode 2

 "You're not going to paint over the Wall of Cocks, are you?"

Things are getting interesting this episode. The casual sex thing between Otis and Ruby is increasingly hilarious as Ruby becomes increasinly controlling, but we end with the two of them as a proper couple. Eric and Adam have an equally sweet virginity-losing subplot, as a spat turns out simply to be because of a top/bottom misunderstanding, although it'd rather fortunate that Eric should happen to be a top. Actually, I've always wanted to know how gay male couples sort ut the whole top/bottom thing, but it's not the sort of thing one can easily ask.

Equally sweet is how soon Jean and Jakob agree to get together, and that Jean so readily agrees to help Aimee recover from the sexual assault. It's also good that Isaac confesses to Maeve- still upset about her mother's stupid blaming her for everything- what he did at the end of last season, and suffers the consequences, as Maeve quite rightly doesn't trust him.

There's a lot else going on, though. Adam is trying todo better at school. His dad seems to be in the midst of a redemption arc- living with Colin will be good for him- while Hope is turning out to be frighteninglyauthoritarian, leading to Jackson being sacked as head boy and replaced by the crafty Vivienne. Ooh.

Oh, and Aimee had a poo which came out "like a gigantic orgasm". Which is nice.

I'm enjoying this. Lots going on already.

Hammer House of Horror: Growing Pains

 "For all the unloved children..."

Well, they can't all be good. Four episodes in, an attempt to do an episode with a creepy kid, and frankly it's a bit of a dud.

There are some good things here, in this tale of a workaholic couple whose neglected son dies, resulting in their adopting a creepy replacement. I like the clever bit of misdirection as we're constantly made to see James as creepy but he's just a red herring, his emotionless behaviour just thowing him to have experienced trauma. The subtext is nice, too: William felt neglected by his parents and seeks revenge from beyond the grave.

Yet it doesn't quite work. The story beats are awkward, there's the foregrounding of a character, in James, who sort of has to be played in a way that is robotic and charisma-free. And the direction shows a strange reluctance to employ any of the visual tropes of horror.

Still, one bad episode of four so far is not bad at all.

I May Destroy You: That Was Fun

 “I'm not drinking anything."

This episode shows a real deepening of the themes, the arcs and the characters as it carries on exploring the more distressing side of sex and consent. We see Bella struggling to adjust to therapy, to flashbacks, to being alone with her thoughts. We see society's uncaring side: the publisher still demands a first draft and, without it, she has no income.

Yet there are more things going on too. Unexpectedly, Bella has sex with the posh and entitled Zain who himself commits a massive consent violation by sneakily switching to doggy and removing the condom, which is an utterly contemptible thing to do even if he does 

We also see Kwame and one of his sexual encounters, too, also addressing the additional diffuculties of being a gay man from a culture  (Ghanaian) that doesn't accept such things. He ends up alone, and sexually assaulted, by the deeply uncomfortable Malik, who plays musuic with deeply homophobic lyrics as a power play. And he's deeply, deeply affected.

This is not exactly pleasantviewing. But my God, it's powerful.

Sex Education: Season 3, Episode 1

 “Sir, I need to take the goat out for a wee..."

So it's back, beginning with a rather well-shot sex-themed montage of all the characters we know up to all sorts of mainly sexual hi-jinks, although the highlight is without a doubt "The Colin Hendricks Experience".

And a lot has been happening. Eric and Adam have been rather sweetly seeing each other as a couple. Jean is now very pregnant indeed. Otis has been having secret sex with... Ruby. Yes, Ruby. And there's a new headmistress in town, one who seems quite cool on te surface but shows hints of evil peeking through. Mr Goff, increasingly desperate, is living with his rich wanker of a brother, played by him off of Harry Potter with less hair.

This episode is cleverly metatextual, based on a fraudulant new sex advisor whose silliness is brought to an end by Otis, leading to the demolition of the old toilet block, symbolically destroying the original format of the series. And there are some nice charactermoments all round. Yet it never really seems to catch fire.

Still episode one.Plenty of stuff to happen before the arcs get moving.

The Sarah Jane Adventures: Farewell, Sarah Jane

 "The Jackals of the Backwards Clock..."

I don't have time to blog a full episode of anything tonight (real life stuff) but, as RTD will be returning to Doctor Who and I have a spare thirteen and a bit minutes to watch at least something, this seems an appropriate thing to blog.

It's one of those unique little short video productions that emerged out of the early days of lockdown last year, made with rigorous social distancing. Hence the format is a narrated script with actors doing the odd solo scene, a kind of Big Finish "Companion Chronicle" with a camera pointed at it. And yet, as with all drama, this essentially stands and falls by the writing and performances.

And, yeah, in this case it most certainly stands. RTD's script is magical, poetical, tear-jerking, full of heart and full of life. Sarah Jane gets the perfect funeral in an affectionate and beautiful tribute to the late Lis Sladen. There are lots of little chances to be nosey into various characters' lives- Luke, Clyde and Rani are all successful young adults. Luke has a husband. Tegan and Nyssa are seemingly a couple. But it's not really about all that- it's about a character, and an actress, whom we in fandom miss very much. And tributes don't get much better than this.

Bloodbath at the House of Death (1984)

 "What is that?"

"Sounds like a lot of monks exploding."

This isn't Monty Python. Let's make that clear. It's nowhere near in the same league.  Yet, with some added innuendo, it's a similar style of humour. And, quite frankly, it doesn't need gto be anywhere near as good in order to entertain. This is never going to have a claim to be the greatest comedy film of all time, but it's a delightful way to spend ninety enjoyable minutes. And, knowing that good comedy doesn't have to be superlative to be good, one can enjoy a silly little film like this.

My dad is rather partial to Kenny Everett, and I watched and enjoyed a lot of his stuff as a kid. But he seems to have largely disappeared from the zeitgeist, his friendship (and patronship of the London gay scene) with Freddy Mercury aside. Puzzlingly, he's not a gay icon, perhaps because he was (it seems with tongue at least partially in cheek) a Thatcherite Tory. I am, I can say with some confidence, no Tory. but political affiliation, within the bounds of democracy, decency, tolerance and patriotism, should not disqualify an artist from acclaim.It's fair to say I will never blog Triumph of the Will, but let's have a sense of proprtion here. Kenny Everett was a damn good comic performer, as this film makes very clear.

Of course, Pamela Stephenson is magnificent too. Sex therapist she may be these days, but I certainly can't think of a thespian who can portray being pleasurably ravished by a poltergeist Beelzebub woth quite the same elan. And yes, I agree: that sentence may very possibly never have been written before.

 Vincent Price is, of course, magnificent as usual, with a comic talent very much on display, despite looking shockingly old and unhealthy. And the cast is, in general, superb, as is the direction. And the script, while having no pretensions to greatness, is very funny indeed in this alternately witty and very silly horror spoof. I want to see more Kenny Everett.

Russell T. Davies returning to Doctor Who

 Let’s not beat around the bush here: I’m bloody ecstatic. This is fantastic news. That said, though, it’s interesting that a past showrunner has been put back in charge. This is a possible sign that the BBC, feeling that the current iteration of the show is not quite right, is looking back to past glories. Yet this is RTD, who since his first stint as showrunner has improved his already stellar reputation with such masterpieces as Cucumber, Years and Years, and the superlative It’s a Sin. This is not a writer you bring in for reasons of self-indulgent nostalgia. He’s radical, brilliant and is going to really annoy the people who don’t like Doctor Who to be “woke”. These are all very good things.

RTD is not my favourite post-2005 showrunner. That would be Steven Moffat. Yet the reason for this is that the Moff wrote first class clever science fantasy for male, middle aged geeks like me. RTD may have been (slightly) less to my taste, but he had a firm grip of how to get the show to appeal to non-geeks, children, women. He’s a showman.

When RTD revived Who in 2005 there were reasons for him to be cautious. He downplayed the show’s mythology and had to live down an ill-deserved reputation of wobbly sets, wobbly scripts and wobbly acting, whereas Moffat was able to take more risks and be less formulaic.

This time things are different. RTD- now the RTD of It’s a Sin rather than Casanova- will have very different ideas and want to do something new. I’m not expecting seasons of thirteen episodes with a present-future-past opening tryptich.

RTD has mentioned spin-offs in the vein of Marvel shows such as WandaVision etc. He clearly has big ideas, and they are 2021 ideas, not 2005 ideas.

This is very exciting news. Let there be much imbibing of alcoholic liquids.

Crome Yellow by Aldous Huxley

One may perhaps assume, from the fact that I am going through a particular phase for science fiction and fantasy at the present time as I have just begun to blog novels, that it's what I've mainly tended to read. That isn't really true, although I've read a fair amount of said genres. I shall go through other phases, and indeed have done in the past. Like most people, I have my comfort authors as I have my comfort songs. One of those is Aldous Huxley.

Yet the Huxley is not the Huxley of Brave New World or The Doors of Perception: it is the younger Huxley, he of the novels of ideas of the Twenties and Thirties, which are suich fascinating records of the lives and the thinking of that fascinating period between the wars- war-scarred, Bohemian in a way, at least for a certain class of people, and replete with new ideas- of Freud, of Modernism, of the motor car- and new anxieties- of technology, of another war, of class conflict.

This, Huxley's first novel, which I've just reread after many years, is a shocking hundred years old and feels instantly modern. This may be far more comedic than its successor novels, but it perfectly captures the tenor of the time, where youn twentysomethings (such as Huxley himself) could be no less pretentious in their angsts and solipsisms than you or I were, or perhaps in your case are, at that age.

The pretentious Denis, the Freudian Anne, the determined introvert Henry Wimbush, the authorial mouthpiece (complete with predictions of the main concept of Brave New World...) Mr Scogan are all splendid comic creations, expressing the ennui and humanity of people who have abandoned God but not, despite their Freudianism, able to escape the extraordinary sexual repression of their society. This may be a novel in which literally nothing happens, but it is no less fun, and no less instructive, for that.

Hammer House of Horror: Rude Awakening

 "You shouldn't have killed your wife, Mr Shenley..."

For the second time in succession we have a superb episode. Yes, it helps to have a charismatic lead in Denholm Elliott, cast against type as an estate agent in the least posh role I've ever seen him in, but this script is superb, layering dream within dream and horror upon horror, leading to out increasingly deluded protagonist killing his wife in the belief that it's only a dream.

The structure of dreams within dreams, denying us a stable grip on what is and is not reality, works superbly, and allows the episode to play effectively with form, structure and tropes. Yet beneath it all is something fearfully desperate. This is an episode set within the psyche of one unhappy man.

There are such subtle touches here, beyond the obvious yet well done obvious scares as the creepy voice on the telephone, the collapsing building or the body in the dumb waiter. Yet cleverest of all is the revelation that Norman's secretary, with whom he's been carrying on an affair in a series of implausibly sexy outfits, is in fact just a young and unattainable women whom this unhappy man secretly likes. This is tragedy as horror, puncturing the delusions of a man whose life is without colour. And it's quietly excellent telly.

I May Destroy You: Don't Forget the Sea

 "The privilege of the underprivileged..."

An unexpected flashback this time, as we go back in time three months to Ostia, one time port of Rome and modern day seaside of Rome. Terry visits Bella and gets to see the relatively luxurious life she's getting to live, on expenses.

And it's an interesting episode, exploring how the millenials live and their sexuality without telling us what to think. We see how Bella first met Biagio, and how he's essentially a decent chap. We see how Terry has a threesome while on lots of drugs (Bella and Terry spend much of the episode out of their heads on stuff that I, my drugs of choice being real ale and red wine, know nothing about. I mean "molly" sounds like a Georgian gay brothel), and we're left to wonder whether she's living the life, being sexually exploited by creepy men, or whether we may perhaps be overthinking this in denying women agency in their own sexuality and falling intothe trap of seeing sex as something men do to women.

A lot of this is the sort of realism you don't usually see in dramas- the artificial awkwardness of sex during a heavy period for example. It's just ordinary blood, exactly like the substance running through my male veins, but there's such cultural awkwardness around it.

This is very good stuff, leisurely and not overwritten.

Hammer House of Horror: The Thirteenth Reunion

 "I don't know why we have a women's page. We don't have a men's page!"

Last episode was the fun and silly sort of Hammer Horror. This second episode could not be more dissimilar. Superbly and inteligentlly scripted and shot, it is a masterpiece of suspense that starts with a macabre mystery and ends with a truly nightmarish shot.

The opening scenes seem to promise, despite the witty and likeable nature of protagonist Ruth (the excellent Julia Foster), little more than an unusually brutal weight loss regimen presided over by Renton's dad from Trainspotting.Yet when Kevin Stoney appears we know that something's up and, by the time we meet the gang including Von Smallhausen from 'Allo 'Allo, the script is cleverly feeding us the morsels we need to work out exactly what it is that is happening and why, in a masterly use of the art of plotting.

This is subtle, intelligent, gripping horror and the best thing I've seen from Hammer since The Devil Rides Out. I have absolutely no idea what to expect next.

Breaking Bad: Better Call Saul

 "The Jew thing I just do for the homeboys..."

I was, sadly, aware of the spin-off in advance of watching the episode, so I can't quite say I was completely unspoiled. But Saul is an immediately likeable and cool character, and I hope we see much more of him. He's clever, delightfully crooked, and steals the show completely. That last scene, as he accosts Walt in the classroom and warns him how easy he is to track down, is an act of sheer balls, but gets Walt's attention. He can see, as I think I can, that Walt may not be Don Corleone yet, but promises to be. Saul is clearly an important character, but so is what he represents: another step on the road to what Walt is to become.

As Saul says, Badger won't be the last time an underling is caught.Walt needs to be ready for this, and a thousand other things. The opening scene with Badger and a narc, both sat on a bench filmed by an unmoving camera, is a masterpiece of acting and scriptwriting. This sort of thing is now part of the territory, which is why we need a character like Saul, with his hilarious adverts.

Walt seems again to get away with it at the end, but Hank- whose PTSD is masterfully explored here as he tries to pretend to be his usual self- clearly suspects something is up. Hank can only get close so many times, but the premise of the show means Walt can't be caught. Calling it now: Hank dies at the end of the season.

The family stuff is not much emphasises here, although Skyler is very much getting used to her job, but we discover that Jane (who is getting very close to Jesse) is a former addict, something of which I'm sure we will hear more. There are lots of things subtly happening, but everything points towards Walt Corleone. A superb episode of television.

The Creeping Flesh (1973)

 "That is why I shall have to employ someone for whom eythics have no significance..."

This is (SPOILERS, even if I remain vague) a film which relies entirely on a last minute twist, upon which all relies and about which I;m not going to be able to say much. I'm not generally strict on spoilers but this is literally a last minute revelation which raises a poor to average film, based on seemingly silly concepts, to a film based on a script which actually has some merit.

Not that the production can be much faulted: Freddie Francis directs and Peter Cushing and Christopher Lee star in a horror film, not actually by either Hammer nor Amicus, yet which evokes both. The question is not whether or not the film is well made; it's about to what extent the last minute twist redeems what has until then been a ho-hum film.

There, I suppose, feminist subtexts here, about how feminine expressions of sexuality are seen, in quite horrifying scenes involving mother and daughter, about how expressions of female sexuality are seen firstly as invitations to rape and, upon resistance, as insanity.

The poster decives in that the skeleton, while impressive-looking, is not seen moving until a brief, dramatic scene at the end of the film. Yet there is an interesting feminist subtext here in a script which takes its time to reveal what is really going on while appering really quite silly for most of its length. It's alsoa film in which awidowed Cushing is made to mourn his late wife.

This is an interesting curiosity, perhaps. But the last minute twist does not save it from mediocrity.

Things to Come (1936)

 "There may be an air raid, but it is not likely to be a dangerous one."

The quote above may have tickled me somewhat, the opening titles may be big and epic in a way that would later be subtly spoofed, not least by the Monty Python movies... but this is a serious film, with what little humour there is of the grimmer sort. It's also rather superb, with superlatively stylish direction, sets and costumes matched admirably by a magnificent cast headed by the highly impressive Raymond Massey.

It's bloody good. That's dealt with. But far more interesting is to look at how the future was seen in 1936 by the seventy year old H.G. Wells. This is no Whig version of future history with uninterrupted progress, but nor do we see the socialist utopia we may perhaps have expected from Wells. Mercifully, there's no hint of any of that eugenics nonsense.

What there is, though, is a war beginning eerily close to when the Second War would actually start, perhaps not hard to guess at the time: the international politics is kept intentionally vague, but the identity of the enemy was, I suspect, clear to the original audience. The devastation of the bombing of the city reflects, perhaps, a "the bomber will always get through" mentality and the prediction that there would be no declaration of war (such barbarism!) predicted not so much the Second War but every single war ever fought since then.  

The war lasts for twenty-six horrifying years, and is followed by a plague- interesting viewing in 2021. We see a near-collapse of civilisation with much warlordism and philistine dismissal of culture and technology as everything declines... until a bunch of grim, sonorous airmen save us all with their friendly chemical weapons. We then get a progress montage until it's 2036, mankind is set  to fly around the Moon for the first time... but a load of luddites riot against progress for some reason.

Yes, it may be described as po-faced. But it's gripping, really well-made and a fascinating look at a time, eighty-five years ago, when the future looked like this and a wife could say that she wanted to "serve" her husband and make him "heppy" without raising too many eyebrows. A unique and wonderful film, and a true visual triumph.

Iron Maiden- Powerslave (1984)

I suppose, if The Number of the Beast is the one Iron Maiden album one must own, this would be next on the list. The band's later work- including the bulk of the '90s when Bruce Dickinson went AWOL- is unfairly maligned and well worth a listen, but there's no real doubt that the '80s were their peak. And this album, in particular, comes along just at the right time as the band were at their very best. Significantly, it's the first album to feature the same exact line-up as the previous record.

It's a thing of beauty, at once a coherent soundscape and a collection of killer songs like "Aces High" and "Two Minutes to Midnight". This is far from the last time the band will master that little trick, but never again will they do it quite so well. And never again, to date, have they produced an epic to rival the rather long "Rime of the Ancient Mariner", even if they do decide to bloody butcher Coleridge's words, the philistines. Yet, given how bloody good the album is, I shall graciously forgive them.

And doesn't Eddie look good as a pharaoh?

I May Destroy You: Someone Is Lying

 "I had a threesome once..."

This subtly devastating episode begins with Bella trying to convince people, not least herself, that she's all right. But this narrative slowly collapses as the lies of a defensive Simon and flashes of memory lead to the sense that something definitely happens. And Bella does what sexually assaulted people in TV drama don't do and goes to the police- something far too few women feel able to do. But, with the massive invasion of privacy (they take your phone for months, and a woman's sexual history is for some reason seen as relevant) and the low conviction rate, I can't say I blame them.

Coel is superb with her devastatingly understated performance of a woman in horrified denial, and the reactions of those around her, preoccupied with their own lives, are realistic too. Sadly, this includes Alissa's rant at Bella in a nicely awkward scene.

This is compelling, quietly upsetting, devastatatingly human television.

The City in the Autumn Stars by Michael Moorcock

I read this novel, like its predecessor, long ago. I recall snatches and images- not least the balloon and the Diderot-worshipping fox- but I recall not liking the novel as much as I did this time round. Nor do I recall enjoying the subtext.

As with the previous Von Bek novel, with its hope that the horrors of the Thirty Years war would yield to an age of Reason, this novel again mixes historical and philosophical themes, this time from the other side of the Enlightenment, with fantasy which owes much to Christian mythology but which, I suspect, would be best understood in terms of Moorcock’s multiverse if I had more awareness of that backstory than I do.

However, this is a rollicking novel, at once a gripping adventure story, a fascinating novel of ideas and an exercise in world building that gradually adds increasing elements of fantasy to a very recognisable Europe of 1794, as in Paris the Terror proceeds apace while the capitals of Europe shudder. It mimics, enough to delight but not enough to confuse, the stylings of a novel of the late eighteenth century and is crammed with delightfully vivid characters, from the charmingly deceitful balloonist St Odhran to the mysterious and alluring Libussa, Duchess of Crete, whose fate is at once horrifying and symbolic of the appalling lot of women throughout history.

The subtext is rich, yet resistant to being reduced to some simple summary. The results of the concluding ritual are left sensibly ambiguous, although we are clearly ending an age of Alchemy and entering one of Industry. The protagonist, another Von Bek, is perhaps rather more passive than his war hound ancestor. But that is, perhaps, the point.

A gloriously weird, philosophical and exciting novel. I shall briefly read something else to cleanse the palate, then it will be more Moorcock for me.

Alice Cooper- Brutal Planet (2000)

 I haven't blogged an album in a while, so here we go.

There's a tendency, with long-established artists, for their early work to be popular and their later work neglected- sometimes justifiably so, sometimes not. It's true that the Rolling Stones haven't done anything interesting since 1972, but the likes of the late lamented David Bowie and the thankfully still with us Neil Young have released albums of varying quality over the years, some of them very good and others not so much. Quite often, though, even the failures are failures for interesting reasons and, well, I'll never stop defending Bowie's jungle period in the '90s.

Alice Cooper, while some albums are better than others, has been consistently good. His hits of the '70s and '80s are justly perennials of rock radio. But Vince is, at heart, an album artist, with both the alchemy required to move with the times and the sureness to remain himself, regardless of whom he collaborates with. This album, for instance, heralds a shift to a harder style of metal which is more or less retained from this point.It does not feel out of place in 2000. Yet nor does it feel so much of its time as to feel dated today, or pandering to fashions. It is simply a confident, quality, contemporary heavy metal record. No more, no less.

In a sense, then, the fact that "It's the Little Things"- Mrs Llamastrangler's favourite Alice Cooper track ever- makes blatant lyrical references to his past hits in the context of moving on stylistically, is revealing. The esteemed Mr furnier does not reject his past, nor does he wallow in it. The title track may be the one that has grabbed the most attention here, yet this is an album without filler.

It's an album worth listening to. And so are its successors.

Hammer House of Horror: Witching Time

 "You want me to burn!"

This is the first of thirteen episodes made in 1980, a few years after Hammer stopped making films, and all of which I shall be blogging. Superficially, given the age of the production and both the directorial style and the period's signature switching between videotape and film for location sequences (as Monty Python said, "This building is entirely surrounded by film"), this feels a bit like those '70s BBC M.R. James adaptations, a couple of which I've blogged.

Except this is Hammer, and things are not taken anywhere near as seriously. This is how you do it: with that nicely ambiguous gap between high and low camp that the later Hammer films did so well.

So we have an affluent, upper class couple working in the media, probably in the Home Counties, alng with a tawdry yet rather ho-hum affair of a very middle class kind. And into this we throw the magnificent Patricia Quinn to ham it up gloriously as the out-of-time seventeenth century witch Lucinda. There ensues some highly enjoyable set pieces, from poltergeist-type stuff to a pyre to a vicar played by Grandad from Only Fools and Horses talking about exorcism.

Looking forward to the rest of these...

Inspector Morse: The Wolvercote Tongue

 “Never, ever interrupt me when I'm booking my seat for the opera, Lewis."

Yet again I should start by saying that I've read all of Colin Dexter's novels, albeit some time ago. This includes The Jewel That Was Ours which, in a reversal of the usual pattern, was actually written for the telly first and only later novelised.

I remember only moments from the novel, which has not stayed with me much. I didn't remember the outcome, but don't recall being, as I was here, mildly disappointed with the resolution. I suppose there's a certain red herring cleverness in the Wolvercote Tongue having nothing to do with the killings, but there's something unsatisfying in there being two unrelated events in Laura's death and the theft of the jewel versus Theodore Kemp's shagging and its consequences- although Simon Callow is superb, as always. He's one of those actors who chews the scenery with aplomb, and most certainly in a good way.

I'm also enjoying the further fleshing out of Mose and Lewis, whose relationship is by now fully-formed with obligatory scenes of Lewis being whisked away from the pub when he's hardly started his pint. I'm also very much enjoying the sparring between Morse and Max, as much as the writers clearly are. Peter Woodthorpe's performance has made quite the impression.

We have here a mildly disappointing episode which nonetheless confirms the series is going in pretty much the right direction. John Thaw is superlative, better than any previous episode, with signs that scripts are being written with a known performance in mind. I look forward to the second series proper.

The War Hound and the World’s Pain by Michael Moorcock

It’s time to blog a novel not written by Roger Zelazny, I think. Eventually I will blog all sorts of authors. I may have a taste for literary science fiction and fantasy these days, but it’s all part of a balanced diet. Hopefully, within a year or two, this blog’s Novels Index will reflect the broad nature of my tastes.

So, Michael Moorcock. This is one of only two of his works I’d previously read. I first read this novel on a long flight between London and Los Angeles in 2008 or 2009, I forget in which direction. The initial meeting with Lucifer had stayed with me, as well as the idea of the Mittelmarch. But rereading it this time round it felt fresh and new, with the world, characters and subtext much richer.

 I’m aware, of course, that this is part of Moorcock’s Eternal Champion sequence, of which I know little at this point. It isn’t the first novel within this sequence which Moorcock wrote, but seems to have been retrospectively decided as a starting point, perhaps because of its historical setting within the Thirty Years War. I suspect the references to God, Lucifer, the Grail etc are Christianised versions of Moorcock’s own cosmology, but I’m sure I shall eventually see whether I’m right about that.

The novel is superb, on one level a typical quest narrative but subverting the cliches of such rather nicely, and on another a metaphor for the Enlightenment, a powerful argument for Reason over faith. The world is, indeed, better off with gods and devils leaving it alone. Von Bek is an intriguing protagonist, an amoral cynic who has commuted his share of atrocities yet who gains wisdom through both knowledge and suffering, leading a happy and long life in the end. It may well end in oblivion. But is that not so for all of us?

I’m very interested to see what other directions Moorcock takes. We shall see.

Jason Goes To Hell: The Final Friday (1993)

 "Planning on smoking dope, having pre-marital sex and getting slaughtered?"

So it's the '90s, as the fashions and the cars clearly indicate. I turned sixteen in 1993, and can attest that this way of dressing was once considered normal. This feels odd, of course, because this is the decade's only Friday the 13th film. And the first one not to feel like a regular instalment- despite the sequel-stealing final scene, this film has a blatant self-consciousness that it may be the last one that no previous instalment has had.

It isn't, of course. Nor is it the promised exploration of Jason's backstory, which is superficial indeed. It's a B movie. Yet, in the context of this franchise which, in an inversion of the usual pattern, started as nothing special and took until the sixth instalment to get good, this is fairly decent in context. It has no stars, no actors I recognise whatsoever, nor does it have anthing other than B movie performances, yet it pretty much manages to be entertaining enough.

It makes token attempts to be self-referential, most notably the opening sequence with a trap for Jason, but ultimately relies on the conceit of Jason (only briefly a returning Jason Hodder) jumping from body to body. It also relies on both melodrama and the intriguing, behatted, moderately charismatic, if cliched, character of Creighton Duke, as much as it relies on the usual jump scares.

It works. It's not a bad film. But I wouldn't use higher praise than that.

Murder on the Orient Express (1974)

 “Trial by twelve good men and true... is a sound system

I have read, probably, more of Agatha Christie's ouevre than not, although all of it- and it startles me still that I should happen to be of an age to say this- not much less than thirty years ago. Her plots are of course unparallelled: writing in an age where the tropes of the whodunit were well-estabished, she subverted and played with them, and did so with unmatched cleverness. In that respect, she was a genius.

Alas... he characterisation and prose were bloody awful, and she kept her snobbishness  close to the surface of her writing. I, in turn, have become rather more of a prose snob over the last few decades. Functional prose I can cope with. Bad prose I cannot. I prefer Margery Allingham.

However, there are always screen adaptation, which provide the wonder of Christie's plotting without the pain of her prose. This is a particularly sublime example, with a cast to die for, partly- Lauren Bacall, Ingrd Bergman- from Hollywood's golden age. Yet Albert Finney is incrddible. At first, having known only David Suchet as a screen Poirot, I didn't want to like him. Hercule Poirot, unlike Sherlock Holmes, is not a part known for many actors. Yet Finney's subtle and mannered performance makes the film. So does Sidney Lumet's visually creative directing style which nevertheless serves the plot well, masterfully combining subtly sublime camerawork- the backstory of the baby at the strt is particularly well done- with clear storytelling.

Sadly, I remembered over the decades who killed the late Mr Ratchett, so I was unsueprised, and noticed a few of the clues. But this is a hugely successful and enjoyable adaptation.