Archive for June, 2026
2026 Reading: The First Half
Posted by cathannabel in Literature on June 23, 2026
I seem to have travelled even more widely than usual in my reading over the first six months of the year. Some of the books I read, those set in Finland, Estonia and Latvia, reflect my own travels, and were chosen to enrich my direct experience of those countries (Finland is particularly well represented). In addition, I have through my reading, travelled widely in Africa, to South Africa, Botswana, Egypt, Uganda and Ghana (that last will, I hope be a travel destination before too long).
As always, I haven’t reviewed everything I read. In addition to the books listed below, I also read the final title in Attica Locke’s Highway 59, Val McDermid’s Silent Bones (from her Karen Pirie series), Mick Herron’s latest Slow Horses title, Clown Town, Henning Mankell’s The Dogs of Riga (a Wallander title, chosen because of my trip to Riga), and Sarah Hilary’s The Drowning Place, first in an intriguing new series. All were excellent. There was one which I started but could not finish (not included because I don’t know whether it was me or it), and others that I finished but could think of nothing much to say about (very few of those, I’m reasonably picky, and if I read something poor by someone who I know is capable of better I tend to review them to make that point).
I’ve tried to avoid spoilers, but you take your chances.
FICTION
Peter Abrahams – Mine Boy
Abrahams was born in South Africa, but left as a young adult, and subsequently moved to Jamaica where he spent most of his life. Mine Boy, published in 1946, is set in South Africa, before the full implementation of the apartheid system, but where black African workers were treated as expendable resources. His protagonist, Xuma, is the titular mine boy, a worker in the mines. The narrative powerfully conveys the precarious nature of life for black workers, the hierarchical nature of racial classification (Abrahams himself was Coloured, as was his mother), the poor conditions of life in the townships and the pernicious racism that affected every aspect of life. The book was one of the first African novels to get significant attention in the West and was republished in the Heinemann African Writers series in 1963.
Anne Bronte – Agnes Grey
I’d never read this and only came to Tenant of Wildfell Hall many years after reading all of Anne’s sisters’ novels. This doesn’t have the range and power of Wildfell Hall but it’s a vivid account of the life of a governess, and the impossibility of genuinely teaching and guiding children when their parents do not accept the governess’ authority or judgement. There’s a gentle romance as well, and a happy ending. According to some sources, Anne was distressed that Charlotte used similar material in Jane Eyre, though to very different effect.
Emily Bronte – Wuthering Heights
Re-read this with all the chat about the Emerald Fennell adaptation (haven’t seen it, not in a rush to do so), which reminded me that I hadn’t read it since I was in my teens. I’d forgotten what a dark, disturbing read it is. It’s not a romance, not a great love story – love here is obsession and possession, a twisted thing, closer to hate than to affection. How Emily came up with this is a wonder – and the reason the recent biopic (see my 2026 Screen blog) invented a doomed and clandestine affair for which there’s no actual evidence (but who knows).
Sally Carson – Crooked Cross
Another brilliant Persephone republication. This was written and published in 1934 and is a dramatic and thoughtful account of a German family in the early years of Nazi rule. The narrative opens in 1932, and shows a disaffected generation turning towards Hitler, an older generation largely failing to see the danger that this represents or powerless to argue against it. There are two sequels, which are high on my wishlist. Carson herself died in 1941 so did not live to see just how perceptive and farsighted her account had been.
Emma Donoghue – The Paris Express
This could be described as a thriller – there’s certainly suspense here, and real peril. It’s based on a real event, and some of the passengers on board the express train are real people who were on that actual train in 1895, but with authorial imagination exercised to flesh them out. We move through the train, from first to third class, meeting each of the characters repeatedly and each time learning a bit more. The tension mounts gradually, just as we gradually invest in the characters on board. As the Guardian reviewer said, ‘It is almost Beckettian, really, this vision of life as individuals crammed into metal containers, enduring clanking discomforts and talking at each other as they move towards the inevitable end. The real question is human and timeless and, frankly, rather apposite. As Blonska puts it: “How to carry on minute by minute, when you don’t know how long you’ve got.”’
Janice Elliott – Life on the Nile
Elliott’s books are out of print, which is a massive injustice. This isn’t my favourite of hers, but it’s beautifully written, perceptive, and insightful as she weaves together the story of Charlotte, a tourist on the Nile, with Phoebe, her great-aunt, who lived in Egypt as the wife of a colonial official. There’s a constant undercurrent – in both timelines – of unrest, of resentment and mistrust, of failures of understanding. A review (from 1989) in the Herald, says that ‘although this is a mystery story, on several levels (which Elliott probes with the delicacy of an archaeologist), and it is a story concerning death, it is in the end a story about life, an Egyptian Book of the Living. While it is formal and orderly in its manner, something like an Egyptian painting, it is not flat. As you read, the quiet title fills with colour and noise, and acquires meaning.’
Percival Everett – James/I am Not Sidney Poitier
I knew when I saw the film American Fiction, based on Everett’s Erasure, that I must read him, and James was the first one I read. It is a reimagining of Huckleberry Finn from the point of view of James (Jim) the runaway slave, and Everett explores that point of view with both empathy and rage, and with plenty to surprise the reader. I am Not Sidney Poitier plays with Sidney Poitier’s film roles, and has fun with a name that invites circular conversations – ‘I am Not Sidney Poitier. Who are you then? No, I am Not Sidney Poitier, that’s who I am’, and on and on, but as a lot more than a ‘Who’s on first’ word game. Being clever isn’t enough to make me return again and again to an author but Everett, whilst being one of the cleverest writers I’ve read recently, is also a great deal more than that, endlessly inventive, and I will be sure to read more.
Eli Goldstone – Strange Heart Beating
Eli Goldstone’s debut novel is set largely in Riga, Latvia, where her protagonist Seb heads after the tragic death of his wife Leda (or Leyla), to find answers to his questions about her, and her life before they met. The more he finds, the less he feels he knows. It’s dark, funny and intriguing.
Graham Greene – Stamboul Train
An early Greene (1932) that I hadn’t read yet. Like the Donoghue, it’s set on a train, on which a variety of characters, most with something to hide, are heading for Istanbul. Interesting for its portrayal of a central Jewish character – I was bracing myself, having read a lot of fiction from this period which use stereotypes and slurs just as a given, but Greene is much subtler than that. He shows the stereotypes that other passengers reach for so readily, the assumptions about Myatt’s motivation and personal morality, but he also shows that these are wrong, and treats Myatt with sympathy.
Robert Harris – Munich
Having seen the film Munich: The Edge of War I knew the plot of this pretty much, but Harris is always an enjoyable read and his plots always thoroughly researched, and he offers a much more complex and nuanced view of Chamberlain’s ‘appeasement’ of Hitler than we tend to get from our privileged position of hindsight.
Bessie Head – A Question of Power
Not an easy read. I read this a long time ago but recalled only that it concerned a woman struggling with her mental health, experiencing highly disturbing hallucinations. Elizabeth is a South African exile in Botswana, working as a teacher and with a local cooperative, but beneath the surface she is tormented by representations of good and evil that soon become more complicated than that, and with which she must wrestle in order to survive. It’s powerful and deeply personal – there are many autobiographical elements, and Head herself died at only 48, just as she was starting to achieve literary success.
Tove Jansson – The True Deceiver/The Summer Book
Ahead of a holiday touring Helsinki, Tallinn and Riga, I decided to immerse myself in some fiction from those countries. I knew Jansson of course as the creator of the Moomins, who were part of childhood for me and my siblings. The True Deceiver is kind of a psychological drama, not exactly a thriller, because there is no very dramatic action involved, it’s much more subtle than that, and beautifully written.
I read The Summer Book whilst in Helsinki, a visit which included a boat trip around the archipelago of tiny islands, any one of which might have been the one described. Ali Smith describes the book thus: ‘lit moments, gleaming dark moments, like lights on a string, each chapter its own beautifully constructed, random-seeming, complete story. Her writing is all magical deception, her sentences simple and loaded; the novel reads like looking through clear water and seeing, suddenly, the depth’.
Daniel Kehlmann – The Director
The Director is – more or less – G W Pabst, who fled Nazi Germany but then finding himself out of place and being fobbed off with second rate projects in Hollywood returned, in part at least due to his mother’s illness, and was trapped there throughout the war. This book won’t tell us what actually happened – there are layers of ambiguity, there are characters with no real-life counterpart or that are composites of real people – but there’s a disturbingly woozy feeling about what happens here, whether it is invention, dream, distorted memory. Very powerful.
Leena Lehtolainen – My First Murder
Another Finnish read, this one a straightforward but very well-done crime thriller. I’ll be happy to read about her subsequent murders.
Vaino Linna – Unknown Soldiers
This is a Finnish classic, an account (based on first-hand experience) of the Continuation War, when Finland allied with Germany against Stalin’s USSR. It should be up there, I think, with All Quiet and other classic war novels, particularly as it gives a different perspective on WW2. The Finnish army was not fighting for Germany as much as it was fighting (for its often precarious existence) against Stalin. I learned so much about Finnish history by going there, but this book gave me a really strong sense of that history and of the people, whilst at the same time drawing out the universal themes of war writing – the physical miseries, the tension, the arbitrariness of military discipline, the arbitrariness of death.
Hisham Matar – My Friends
Weaving fictional characters into actual events – most notably the siege at the Libyan embassy in London in 1984 – Matar explores how one can live with the separation from home and family, and the constant (and entirely reasonable) sense of being under surveillance and under threat. ‘This is a book about exile and violence and grief, but it is above all – as the title tells us – a study in friendship’, to quote the Guardian review.
W Somerset Maugham – The Painted Veil
I’m never sure if I’ve read any Maugham. I’ve read so much over my reading life, which now tots up as around 65 years, that there are books and authors that I really don’t know whether I’ve actually read them or just know of them. I also read fast, and one of the reasons I do this blog twice a year is to counter one of the effects of reading so much and so fast – not being able to remember the books I read, not savouring them, not letting them stay with me. I am certain I hadn’t previously read this in any case. Its attitudes (to colonial life and to Hong Kong, the setting for this) are of their time, but the story has emotional heft and multi-dimensional characters, so I enjoyed it, and will read more Maugham.
Dinaw Mengestu – All Our Names
A young man, sometime in the 60s/early 70s, heads to the capital of a newly independent African nation (we can work out that this is Uganda), where he meets a would-be revolutionary called Isaac. He himself, as he puts it, gives up ‘all the names my parents had given me’. In another narrative strand, a caseworker in the American mid-west meets and works with an African exchange student called Isaac. How these two narratives relate becomes gradually clear(er). ‘Weighted with sorrow and gravitas’, as one reviewer described it – a powerful read.
Haruki Murakami – Superfrog Saves Tokyo
I read this Murakami short story in a gorgeously illustrated edition. It is, on the surface at least, a funny, fantastical tale of a giant frog who enlists the help of a young man against a threat to the city. There’s more to it than that, the discussions between frog and man suggest layers of ideas about art, history, life and all that. Rather delightful and intriguing.
Caleb Azumah Nelson – Small Worlds
I loved Nelson’s Open Water a year or so ago, and I love this one. The writing is gorgeous, it’s suffused with music (so much so that I ended up making a playlist of songs referred to in the text and it’s over 4 hours of music). It’s about love and roots, and the account of the protagonist’s return to Ghana after his mother’s death was moving and – especially to me, as I plan a trip to Ghana where I lived as a child – powerful.
Eeva Park – Trap in Infinity
Set in and around Tallinn, this is a dark, dark story of a young woman escaped from traffickers, trying to find a way forward, finding allies and temporary refuges. This is not the tourist Tallinn of the beautiful Old Town, it’s pretty unrelentingly bleak.
Arto Paasilinna – The Year of the Hare
This is most engaging. Published in 1975, it’s the story of a disillusioned journalist who accidentally injures a hare with his car, and abandons job, home, marriage and everything, living a peripatetic life, always accompanied by the hare who he nurses back to health, navigating threats both from the wild environment and from Finnish bureaucracy.
Matti Ronka – A Man with a Killer’s Face
Finnish crime drama, with the narrative moving between Helsinki and Tallinn. It’s the first in a series, which I might well follow up.
Donal Ryan – The Spinning Heart
I’ve read quite a few of Ryan’s and rated all of them very highly. This was his debut novel, and it’s obvious why it had such an impact (the word ‘virtuoso’ crops up in quite a few reviews). The setting is rural Ireland, as the recession hits, businesses collapse and communities are in crisis. Ryan tells the story through 21 individual voices, which requires frequent readjustment on the part of the reader, but creates a vivid polyphony building up the tension towards a tragic finale.
Ian Watson – The Embedding
My shelves include a lot of science fiction, all of which M had read, many of which I also read, even if I can’t now recall much just from looking at the cover and the blurb. Watson, who has just died, was always one that M rated particularly highly – he was always interested in the more philosophical end of sci-fi, Ursula le Guin, Christopher Priest and others, rather than the space battles/star wars, and he was often enraged by the misogyny and fascistic ideas which he met in the pages of some 70s sci-fi. I remember him flinging one across the room before binning it. Watson is a much more interesting and thoughtful writer – The Embedding is his first, and I don’t think I have read it previously. It’s not without dated language but it’s full of ideas, it’s truly speculative.
Niall Williams – This is Happiness
This is a sequel to History of the Rain, which I haven’t read yet, but whose title could equally be applied to the opening chapter here, which is all about the rain (it made me think of the fog of Bleak House’s opening pages), and what happens when it stops. The narrative is often funny, romantic, touching, and it moves with the rhythms of rural life (I was reminded occasionally of Jon McGregor’s Reservoir 13, although their styles are very different).
NON FICTION
Gwen Adshead and Eileen Horne – The Devil You Know: Stories of Human Cruelty and Compassion
Many of these accounts are tough to read. But Adshead, a forensic psychiatrist and psychotherapist, starts by asking each patient about the start of their story, not about where they ended up. None of the desperately sad stories that emerge excuse in any way the crimes that these people committed, but what we’re being invited to do is to begin to understand how it is possible that someone can do such things, monstrous things, without being just a monster. Adshead starts with curiosity, and offers compassion – and hope that understanding might enable us to identify people at risk before they commit these crimes, provide better treatment for their mental illnesses.
Kwame Anthony Appiah – The Lies that Bind: Rethinking Identity
Appiah’s Cosmopolitanism is a book to which I have returned more than once. He is in some ways the embodiment of that subject, the son of Ghanaian politician/lawyer Joe Appiah and Peggy Cripps, daughter of Sir Stafford Cripps (my parents knew the couple when we lived in Ghana in the early 60s), now a professor of philosophy and law at NYU and a naturalised US citizen. The Lies that Bind is another pressing and pertinent subject, and Appiah doesn’t underestimate the complexities of the issue of identity, nor does he present us with a definitive statement, rather, as the review in The Philosophers’ Magazine puts it, ‘a contribution to a conversation’. His writing is, as always, elegant and clear, and his arguments grounded in common sense, as he invites us to ‘simply recognise that our identities have been and can be lived in different ways and that their meanings are open and contestable’. This may not be enough but it gives us a way of starting to deal with these questions, recognising that identities are not and never will be fixed and final, and that we need to live with and be open to that complexity.
Andrea Ashworth – Once in a House on Fire
Narratives like this tend to get lumped together as ‘misery memoirs’. And there is misery here, for sure. Ashworth’s mother was involved with a succession of violent men, after the death of her father, and life for the children was precarious and terrifying. Various ‘new starts’ turned out to involve more of the same, as yet another man who appeared initially to be caring and protective took to using his fists when anything went awry. All of that makes for a tough read, but Ashworth is a very talented writer, and the vividness of her style lifts it. The review in Kirkus comments that ‘this self-portrait is stylistically fresh, written in short, cinematic bursts of memory, its strengths in its physical detail: images of her mother stewing her little sister’s dirty nappies in the kitchen, her evening-arriving stepfather’s key rattle and boot brush and scrape on the front doormat’, even if the tale it tells is ancient. It’s not without hope – for Ashworth, school and literature in particular offer her a way out, to a very different world.
Bill Bruford – The Autobiography
Bruford has a most engaging style, wryly humorous, and a way with words. Reading this was an excellent prelude to seeing the man himself live with the Pete Roth Trio at Jazz Leeds, and took me back to the music I already have on CD. The book isn’t structured like a conventional chronological autobiography, rather it takes the questions that interviewers ask, and responds to them with anecdotes and insights.
Paul Dodgson – On the Road Not Taken: A Memoir about the Power of Music
This is indeed about the transformational power of music. But it’s not the usual trajectory, from practising songs in the bedroom or garage to gigs to fame to the problems that brings… Dodgson was captivated by music, obsessed. But he didn’t quite have the courage to live out his dreams of performing to audiences. He lived a different life, but those dreams never quite left him and in middle age he finally sang his songs on stage. The memoir alternates between these different phases of his life, and it’s constantly engaging and often very touching.
Warren Ellis – Nina Simone’s Gum: A Memoir about Things Lost and Found
It isn’t something I would do, to collect a used wad of gum just because it had been chewed over by someone I admired and loved. But Ellis makes his tenure of this odd memento make some kind of emotional sense as he charts its journey to becoming a museum exhibit cast in silver. Along the way he tells us of his own musical journey, including collaboration with Nick Cave. As odd as it still seems to me, this is a charming memoir.
Matthew Goodman – Paris Undercover: A Wartime Story of Courage, Friendship and Betrayal
This is fascinating. Two well-off middle-aged women find themselves in France as the Nazi Occupation begins, and begin a clandestine life of arranging the escape of captured Allied servicemen. They were arrested, and Etta Shiber returned to the US via a prisoner exchange. What happened to her British friend Kate Bonnefous was much worse, and she barely survived. Shiber was persuaded to publish a book, Paris-Underground, giving a ghost-written and partly fictionalised account of their exploits (it was published in 1943 and made into an even less accurate movie). It’s that publication that brings about the last twist in the tale.
Adam Higginbotham – Midnight in Chernobyl: Untold Stories of the World’s Greatest Nuclear Disaster
This year marked forty years since the nuclear disaster in Ukraine that terrified the West, and helped to bring about the collapse of the USSR. That’s a gross over-simplification of course, but Higginbotham’s meticulous account shows how the Soviet culture of denial that anything could have gone so horribly wrong undermined its stability, as the truth inevitably emerged, both within and beyond its borders. It is often enraging, but it’s also heartbreaking to read the accounts of the people who went in, in good faith, to try to fix things, and those whose lives were ineradicably altered by the (literal) fallout. I watched a couple of documentaries marking the anniversary, and the excellent TV mini-series (see my Screen blog).
Carol Ann Lee – Somebody’s Mother, Somebody’s Daughter: True Stories from Victims and Survivors of the Yorkshire Ripper
I was hoping this would be the equivalent to Haley Rubenhold’s The Five, which reclaimed the stories of the original Ripper’s victims – it’s not quite that strong a piece of work, and in particular Lee dwells too much on what Sutcliffe did to these women. We know that already, as much as we need to, and it takes the focus away from the women to the man who murdered or tried to murder them. When Lee is focusing on the lives of the women, their working life, families, financial struggles, it’s an important corrective, and challenges the lazy assumptions that were made at the time (women of easy virtue/loose morals, sex workers) so that the distinction the police made between guilty and innocent victims is wiped out.
Oliver Moody – Baltic: The Future of Europe
I admit to not have read all of this, or not thoroughly. It was part of my preparation for visiting a part of Europe about which I knew very little, and I focused on the countries I was going to – Finland, Estonia and Latvia. Reading about the Singing Revolution and the human chain across Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia was brilliant background – our local guides talked about these events, particularly in Latvia where we saw the monument to those who barricaded the town against the Soviet would-be occupiers. It’s a very accessible account, well written and vivid.
Morag Rose – The Feminist Art of Walking
Morag Rose – artist, academic, activist – is founder of the Loiterers’ Resistance Movement which for the last decade has been organising public walks, dérives, games and spectacles in Manchester and elsewhere. The book takes us back to cities which have played a part in Rose’s life, and explores what it meant and means to walk there, how the experience of walking changes, how it is different for women, and for anyone with an energy- or mobility-limiting condition. It’s fascinating, passionate, funny, personal and political.
Patti Smith – Bread of Angels: A Memoir
I loved Just Kids, which focused on Smith’s relationship with Robert Mapplethorpe, and M Train, which expanded in a more discursive way on aspects of her life (including her love of Midsomer Murders). Here she takes a slightly more conventional autobiographical approach, and it’s often deeply moving, particularly when she talks about the loss of her husband (that was always going to hit me particularly hard), but there are so many other losses.
Francis Spufford – I May be Some Time: Ice and the English Imagination
Taking his title from Captain Oates’ farewell words to the other members of Scott’s Antarctic expedition, Spufford (one of the most interesting novelists of recent times) explores why this failed adventure resonates so powerfully with us, and the lineage of exploration which gives it a context. It’s fascinating, beautifully written, and got into my head so much that I sought out music that responded to those icy landscapes. Fittingly, I was heading north after finishing this, and seeing the huge Icebreakers in Helsinki harbour reminded me of it again.
Andy West – The Life Inside: Memoir of Prison, Family, and Learning to be Free
This was the source for the brilliant TV drama, Waiting for the Out (see my Screen blog). West teaches philosophy in prisons, and it is those abstract notions – shame, time, love – that structure the book. But there’s also West’s family – his father, uncle and brother have spent time inside, and he feels that vicarious shame, and argues constantly with ‘the executioner in [his] head’, ‘a conflict between two features of his identity: how he sees himself and the part of him that is shaped by his family’, as Krista Thomason puts it in her review of the book: ‘West’s shame is a continually pressing internal question about who he really is’.
Poetry
I think I’ve read pretty much everything else by James Baldwin, whose novels, short stories and essays have huge power for me. But I didn’t realise that he had published poetry. I can’t read these without hearing that distinctive voice, the cadences of the church and of the blues. They are infused too with the fire of his politics – see the long first poem, ‘Staggerlee Wonders’. The poems vary stylistically, and some feel like song lyrics – given Baldwin’s stated desire to write like a blues singer that’s not much of a stretch. In not only his fiction but his essays, Baldwin’s voice is not only resonant with church and blues/jazz but is always strongly narrative. In his famous televised debates he uses narrative – the narrative of slavery above all – to confound the patronising arrogance of his opponents. There’s less space for that here perhaps, although it’s certainly not absent, but Baldwin’s voice is still always vital, never more so as the achievements of the civil rights movement are challenged and undermined.
Pete Green – Hemisphere/The Meanwhile Sites
Green’s Sheffield Almanac is one of my favourite contemporary poems, and these two publications only add to my love of his work. Hemisphere is ‘the story of an impossible journey, told in verse, which circumnavigates the politics of interaction between people, places and poetry. On a chaotic round trip from the Hebrides across the north Atlantic, Canada, Alaska and Siberia, the poem invites reflection on government and nationality, geography, language and ‘post-truth’, fertility, decay, and imagination.’ And The Meanwhile Sites explores transitory and marginal places, with wit, invention and humanity. Poet/novelist Helen Mort says ‘Pete Green’s poems dislike fences and I love them for that. They are feral, elegant, beautifully observed. I recommend following where they lead you.’
2026 on Screen: The First Half
Posted by cathannabel in Film, Television on June 23, 2026
FILM
I saw One Battle, The Stranger and Sinners at the cinema, the rest on the smaller screen. There are a number of women directors in the films listed: Sam Taylor-Johnson (Back to Black), Christine Molloy (co-director credit on Baltimore), Frances O’Connor (Emily, her debut), Celine Song (Past Lives, her debut), Antonia Bird (Priest), Hettie Macdonald (Harold Fry) and Maura Delpero (Vermiglio). Sinners is notable for its black director and leading roles (and, sadly, for the furore at the BAFTA ceremony, which reflects badly on both BAFTA and the BBC). Films in this list are quite a mixed bag in terms of genre: biopic, thriller, comedy, historical, war, fantasy… There’s no correlation between the length of the review and the excellence of the film, as a longer review may simply mean that I’m having an extended rant about something prompted by the film. I always try to avoid spoilers but you take your chances, especially if you click on to a linked review.
As for the best of the bunch, I’d pick One Battle, Sinners and The Stranger.
Back to Black
I should know better than to watch yet another musical biopic. It could have been a lot worse, but it shouldn’t really have been attempted. A life that was complicated and messy gets simplified and played for tears, the voice imitated well enough but still not The Voice. Remind me next time.
The Ballad of Wallis Island
A truly lovely, funny, touching film. Tim Keys is wonderful as the islander who gets two estranged musicians/partners to come back for one last gig, and Carey Mulligan and Tom Basden are great as the musicians. It steers clear of mere soppiness, and its treatment of grief and loss is beautifully judged – the link between music and memory is a very precious one for me.
Baltimore
I assumed we’d be in Wire country, but the title actually refers to a village in Cork. It’s the story of Rose Dugdale, heiress turned IRA member, who served prison time for an art heist aimed at getting IRA prisoners released. Imogen Poots plays Dugdale and is excellent at conveying the intensity and volatility of her political convictions. It’s quite an impressionistic, almost hallucinogenic take on the events, sometimes seen through Dugdale’s dreams or fantasies.
Crime 101
Excellent thriller, with a brilliant cast – Chris Hemsworth, Mark Ruffalo, Halle Berry, Nick Nolte, Barry Keoghan, Monica Barbaro – tightly plotted and with each of the protagonists given just enough depth and back story to make one care, without slowing the pace of it down. Ruffalo channels Columbo, and Berry strikes back against a sexist/ageist boss.
Dark Waters
This is excellent – Mark Ruffalo is great in the lead, dogged and weary. The only problem I have is that essentially this film follows so many of the same narrative twists and turns as every other film about someone taking on a powerful corporation. The arrival of the documents legally requested through ‘discovery’, which turn out to be unimaginably vast numbers of boxes, I remember from a TV series about the opioid scandal (Painkillers, I think). The point when they think no one is going to join in the class action and then are overwhelmed by the response, is straight out of Mr Bates vs the Post Office or Toxic Town. I’m not suggesting any plagiarism here, merely that my response to this film, as good and as powerful as it is, was perhaps dulled a little by familiarity with the tropes.
Dead of Winter
Emma Thompson as action hero. Kind of. She plays an older woman, a widow, who’s just trying to honour her husband’s wishes about where his ashes should be scattered when she gets in the way of a very nasty kidnapping. It was filmed in Finland, doubling here as Minnesota, so we’re definitely in Fargo country, and Thompson is definitely channelling Marge Gunderson. Most enjoyable.
Emily
I loved a lot of things about this, especially Emma Mackey’s performance as Emily Bronte. It does distort events though, suggesting that Emily was the first of the sisters to get published whereas in fact Jane Eyre appeared just before Wuthering Heights, and Agnes Grey very shortly afterwards, and also showing Emily receiving a copy of Wuthering Heights with her name on the cover, which didn’t happen in her lifetime, sadly. Those things annoyed me a little – I was less troubled by the fictional love affair, since the most we can say is that we don’t know that Emily did ever have a lover, that there is no evidence for it, which is practically an invitation to invent.
The Fantastic Four
Marvel superheroes for me went off the boil somewhat after Endgame – I have enjoyed the films that have come since, but I recall the anticipation and the excitement of that sequence of films in particular, and that’s not been recaptured, quite. This one has a light touch, with the depiction of a domestic setting peopled by superheroes (seeing three superheroes struggling to fit a baby car seat was a particular joy), and delightfully played by Pedro Pascal, Vanessa Kirby, Joseph Quinn and Ebon Moss-Bachrach (that last unrecognisable as The Thing). It remains to be seen how/whether this and other recent films will develop the Marvel arc but I’d happily watch this lot again.
The Fugitive
A classic of its genre, and Harrison Ford is excellent as the man framed for his wife’s murder who escapes from custody and tries to clear his name. The plausibility wouldn’t hold up to very intense scrutiny but in the moment it’s the last thing we’re thinking about as we follow Kimble’s attempts to keep one step ahead of the law.
The Life of Chuck
A very faithful adaptation of one of Stephen King’s best short stories (from the volume If It Bleeds), with Tom Hiddleston as Chuck. I won’t say much more because you have to watch it and let light gradually dawn (as it did for me when I read the story). But it’s lovely, beautiful and very moving.
A Most Wanted Man
A John le Carré adaptation, and one of Philip Hoffman Seymour’s last films. It’s typically nuanced, and downbeat. The Independent reviewer found it ‘strangely muted and low-key’, another found the style cold and distant. I didn’t get that – it seemed to me to be classic le Carré, in its ending in particular.
The Old Oak
Ken Loach film set in a depressed and deprived former mining community in the north-east, where a publican’s encounter with Syrian refugees provides a sense of purpose. It’s sometimes a tad predictable, but very touching.
One Battle after Another
Violent, funny, tense, with great performances all round. I don’t know how deep it is, but it’s a wild and enjoyable ride. Di Caprio is lovely as the erstwhile revolutionary who gets very stressed when called upon to remember the passwords and security questions that he’d been trained on years ago (we all know that feeling, even if we haven’t spent the intervening years in an alcohol/weed haze). There’s a brilliant car chase – even if you think you’ve seen every variation on the car chase, this one is special. And Sean Penn is mesmerizingly horrifying as Lockjaw.
One Life
Of course it builds up to the That’s Life moment, where Nicholas Winton realises he is surrounded by the people he helped to save through the Kindertransport from Prague. Fair enough, and it earns the inevitable tears by acknowledging the grief that Winton feels for the children on the last train who didn’t get away, most of whom were murdered. The script didn’t seem to make it quite clear enough that the reason these children were in danger was because they were Jewish. The rescue effort wasn’t just prompted by the desire to remove children from a generally violent and dangerous situation, but to remove children who would be specifically targeted. I found it odd that this salient fact didn’t come through until a later stage in the narrative.
Past Lives
Wonderful, low key, subtle Korean/US drama about a relationship over 24 years, more of which was spent a long way from each other than together. It doesn’t go for easy plot resolutions, and I found John Magaro as the husband particularly touching.
Peaky Blinders: The Immortal Man
It may not have been entirely necessary, but it provides a satisfying coda to the series. Cillian Murphy is as brilliantly compelling as ever, as is Barry Keoghan as his son and heir.
The Phone Call
Oscar winning short film starring Sally Hawkins and (unseen) Jim Broadbent. She’s covering the phone in a crisis helpline, he’s struggling after the death of his wife. It hits hard, and it doesn’t give the viewer false comfort, but it’s somehow uplifting, nonetheless.
Priest
This one, directed by Antonia Bird from a Jimmy McGovern script, got an absolutely scathing review from Roger Ebert, with which I disagree strongly. I don’t see the film as having a clear agenda; the whole point is that the Church deals in absolutes, in right and wrong, sin and virtue, while human beings are much more chaotic than that, and the attempt to live by those absolutes can take a toll. The film is a depiction of the pain caused when desire, loneliness and love are in conflict with a chosen vocation rather than being, as Ebert would have it, ‘an attack on the vow of celibacy, preferring sexuality of any sort to the notion that men should, could or would live chastely’. The film has a slightly dated feel about it (it’s from 1994) but it’s a passionate, occasionally preachy, but ultimately intelligent and insightful study of faith and doubt.
The Rip
Excellent action thriller, starring Affleck and Damon as cops, which builds up real tension as we try to figure out who is deceiving whom.
Roman Holiday
A rewatch for the pleasure of seeing Rome and Gregory Peck at their most gorgeous (oh and that Hepburn lass isn’t half bad either) in a film that is just pure delight, sweet and funny.
Salt
Silly. Monumentally silly. Not worth pointing out the plot holes or the ludicrously improbable stunts. It passed the time moderately enjoyably.
Shakespeare in Love
I’d somehow never seen this before and was reminded to watch it by reading the Stoppard obits and realising the screenplay was his. It is indeed brilliant, the dialogue is so richly intertextual, but somehow the whole thing is light and lovely rather than being weighed down by cleverness.
Sinners
The latest from Ryan Coogler, who directed the Black Panther films, and Judas & the Black Messiah, all of which I loved. And I loved every minute of this except perhaps the minutes when I was wishing desperately that I hadn’t gone to an evening showing at the cinema on my own, and with no hand to grab hold of when things got really scary. The soundtrack is glorious, the performances too (I loved Wunmi Mosaku especially) & if it isn’t an academically sound history of the blues, or an entirely coherent allegory about music and roots, I’m not sure that I mind that much. There are layers there, and nuance, and terror and joy and magic, and that’s more than enough. I look forward to rewatching it at home, with the doors securely locked and all the lights on, and/or with someone whose hand I can grab hold of when things get really scary…
Sisu
If you have a weakness for action movies that don’t bother too much about logic or plausibility, but have a single focus motivation for the violence, Sisu might be for you. Empire’s reviewer says that ‘this is a film about one mad bastard [Aatami Korpi] killing a gazillion Nazis. It’s almost impossible not to love it’. My ostensible reason for watching is the setting – Finland (specifically Lapland) as the Nazi army retreats leaving scorched earth and Finn corpses behind them. I’ve been reading a bit about WWII Finland in preparation for a visit to Helsinki (see also Unknown Soldiers, book and film). I wasn’t really expecting this though. The lorry load of young women prisoners that the Nazis are taking with them reminded me of Mad Max: Fury Road, and the ability of our hero to survive explosions, a plane crash, gunshots and myriad other threats to life could not help but invoke the Black Knight (‘Tis but a scratch’). Anyway, I don’t think I learned much Finnish history but maybe got a sense of Finnish myth, and the meaning of ‘Sisu’. This is basically an absolute bloody-minded refusal to give up whatever the odds, as exemplified by our hero, and by the huge icebreakers moored in Helsinki harbour which were pointed out to us on our tour, one of which was called Sisu.
The Son
By the same director as The Father, which was a brilliant study of dementia from the perspective of the person who is progressively losing their hold on reality, time, memory and sense of self. This doesn’t really match it. It’s an often affecting account of the impact of teenage depression on a family, but whilst the actors are top notch, the tone often veers into shouty melodrama. It’s easy to take against Hugh Jackman’s Peter, given his self-regarding diatribe to his son, and his failure to recognise that his own behaviour (echoing that of his father in turn) is part of what is triggering the son’s depression. The ending is signalled a bit too clearly with one of the most obvious instances of Chekhov’s famous principle that I can recall.
Stillwater
A rather problematic thriller based (rather loosely and controversially) on the Amanda Knox case. It’s Damon’s film, as he plays the redneck, baseball-cap-wearing dad who’s desperate to prove his daughter’s innocence, and he does it well. But even he – and Abigail Breslin, who plays the daughter – can’t get over the weak plotting and the many implausibilities (not least of which is Damon’s romance with Camille Colin). It also pissed Knox off a great deal, understandably, since it uses the general circumstances of her case in a way that could be seen to cast doubt on her innocence.
The Stranger
Francois Ozon’s beautiful monochrome adaptation of the Camus novella is a faithful rendition of the book, although of course we can’t inhabit Meursault’s head as the book does, so we’re observing him observing the world and other people as an outsider, trying to work out how he is expected to behave, what he is supposed to feel. Memorable and troubling – and it ends, brilliantly, with the Cure’s song ‘Killing an Arab’ playing over the credits.
The Taste of Things
Another for my list of slow, quiet films (Perfect Days is perhaps the ultimate, but see also The Straight Story and The Quiet Girl). It’s the antithesis of what I’ve often thought of as the archetypal French film where people talk about philosophy whilst having affairs with each other’s spouses. There’s not a lot of talk here, and what there is is all about food, the growing, the cooking and the eating of food, and the creation of new dishes and menus. It’s really very lovely.
The Thunderbolts*
Another new Marvel, and this one has a lot of promise. I’m definitely there for Florence Pugh (in anything but especially here as Yelena), and Lewis Pullman as Bob. And the Void is a Big Bad that anyone with experience of depression can connect with. * is part of the title of the film, as you’ll understand if you watch it.
Train Dreams
This almost qualifies for my ‘slow, quiet’ list except that it’s bleak rather than melancholy, and without much to set against the bleakness. I liked it a lot – I saw some reviews that said it didn’t do justice to the original novella, which may be so, but I can’t judge that; on its own merits I found it quietly powerful and moving. Joel Edgerton, who I think I last saw in Loving, is again a man of few words but deep feelings.
Two Faces of January
Thriller based on a Patricia Highsmith novel, looks gorgeous, well-acted by Oscar Isaac, Kirsten Dunst and Viggo Mortensen, ticks all the boxes and is enjoyable without offering any real depth.
The Unknown Soldier (aka Unknown Soldiers)
An adaptation of Finland’s classic war novel, by Väinö Linna, who himself fought in the so-called Continuation War between Finland and the USSR (1941-44). Like the book (see my Books blog), the film moves around between a number of characters rather than having one main protagonist, and we can have no confidence that any of the people we’re investing in will not be unceremoniously despatched at any moment. Just like real war, I guess. We go from tense battle scenes to vignettes of the soldiers’ lives on the front line, with their side hustles of ring making or furniture making, and the brewing of some very potent bootleg booze, and to vignettes of their life at home during their brief leaves.
The Unlikely Pilgrimage of Harold Fry/The Great Escaper
Jim Broadbent and Penelope Wilton are marvellous as Harold and Maureen, but the film stretches credulity beyond breaking point as the former sets off to walk from South Devon to Berwick-on-Tweed on some kind of mission to save a friend of his from dying. Frankly, Harold, having led a rather sedentary life, wearing unsuitable shoes and being a pensioner would have carked it on the first leg of this marathon, not got by with a few nasty blisters. I guess we’re not supposed to think about whether a 500-mile walk would even be possible in the time frame suggested. It had its moments, particularly when it focused not on Harold but on Maureen, who feels (is) abandoned, and in effect bereaved, and who gradually reveals more about their marriage and the loss of their son to drug abuse and suicide.
The Great Escaper features Glenda Jackson’s last film performance, and she is superb – I love seeing her at this age (see also Elizabeth is Missing) and Michael Caine is great too (I’m not a massive Caine fan but this is an understated performance, in which a lot of conflicting emotions are conveyed with a minimum of drama).
I’m putting these two films together as they have so much structurally in common – in both an elderly man (Bernie is 90, Harold in the book was 65 which, to be fair, barely counts as elderly from my perspective) embark on an impulsive journey (Bernie to get to the 70th anniversary commemoration of the D Day landings, Harold to ‘save’ an old friend in a hospice). Both leave their wives behind, though Bernie does so with her agreement. Both become briefly media sensations, but are puzzled and troubled by the appropriation of their quest. Both find the end of the quest is not what they expected (Harold realises his old friend is beyond help, Bernie finds the headstone of a young soldier who he had encouraged during the landings and then seen die). Both are affected by trauma – Harold sees his dead son at various points on his journey, Bernie is haunted by memories of the carnage at the landing.
Both were touching, sometimes moving. Ultimately, I felt that Harold engaged in a bit too much whimsy and an almost magical approach to his achievement of his quest. And because of the vagueness about Harold and Maureen’s age, I was irritated by the way they were portrayed – even the names are not those of people (like me) in their mid-sixties now, they are of my parent’s generation. Bernie and Irene are old, they look their age, and move accordingly. These days I find myself quite frequently distracted and irritated by portrayals of older people (see The Thursday Murder Club, for example, where Celia Imrie dresses exactly like my Gran (b. 1901) did). I guess it’s inevitable – as a teenager I raged against television portrayals of my age group, and heading into middle age I often couldn’t see myself in the middle-aged women I saw on screen.
Vermiglio
Beautiful, slow, subtle Italian film. As the Ebert site review says, ‘The movie has the feeling of a tale passed down through generations. A lot of the time we don’t know why characters make particular choices, only that they make them. Sometimes a silent glance is all it takes to communicate that a change is about to occur, or happened offscreen.’ We have to read what we see on the screen, most of the major developments aren’t shown to us directly and there is limited dialogue to fill in the gaps. The film asks us to concentrate, to allow ourselves to be absorbed into this world and this community. If we can do that, it’s a rewarding experience.
Wake up Dead Man
I didn’t like this quite as much as its predecessors (Knives Out/Glass Onion) but it had a great deal to commend it: excellent performances (Josh O’Connor especially) and a thoughtful script which touched on questions of faith and guilt.
TELEVISION
As always, I haven’t reviewed everything, only those programmes that impinged on my consciousness after the credits rolled, for good reasons or bad. There is as always a preponderance of crime/thrillers, and only a little comedy, although the comedy that does appear here made me laugh a great deal.
Picking the best of is always a tough call. But I think Waiting for the Out, Tip Toe and Small Prophets were the ones that not only gripped me (in their very different ways), but surprised me and made me think about them long after the credits rolled.
Drama
Believe Me
This is a grim tale. It’s the stories of the women who John Worboys drugged and raped, and was able to continue committing these crimes over a long period of time, simply because the women who reported him were not believed. If they had drunk alcohol before getting into his cab, that meant their testimony was not taken seriously – and the very fact that the man they were accusing was driving a black cab led to incredulity on the part of the police. That incredulity led not only to cases not being logged as crimes, but to carelessness with evidence and a total failure to connect the cases with each other, which allowed Worboys to continue unchecked. The drama focuses on the women who decided to challenge the police and to challenge the decision to grant him parole and their rage is at the heart of the drama..
Buffy the Vampire Slayer
I’ve been meaning to rewatch Buffy for a while. Not all of it – I don’t think I will ever rewatch ‘The Body’ because it was harrowing enough before I had to do chest compressions on my husband whilst waiting for the paramedics, and there are other episodes that just haven’t worn so well. But I have been deterred by the Whedon problem. The last time I watched these, I still thought of him as wise and witty and feminist. Hearing the voices in recent years of women who worked on this series with him, I felt that I’d been tricked, made a fool of. But ultimately, what Whedon helped to create is more than him, and as anyone who loves Wagner’s music (for example) knows, a person can be pretty vile and still create beauty. Anyway, my mind was made up by a series of losses – last year Michelle Trachtenberg died, aged 39, this year Nicholas Brendon died, aged 54. And then Anthony Head, who played Giles, the lovely librarian and demon hunter, buttoned up and British, but also a father figure, a hero. He was always my hero (I was too old when I first watched the series to legitimately have crushes on any of the supposed romantic leads, although Spike’s cheekbones did lead me astray for a while). Head was 72 which might not be as heartbreakingly young as Brendon and Trachtenberg but is still far, far too young. So I re-watched ‘Once More with Feeling’, the musical episode, and then went back to the beginning and watched the first two episodes of the whole thing, and then ‘Band Candy’ in which Giles relives his edgier past and plays Cream’s ‘Tales of Brave Ulysses’ turned up loud. I’ll pick some other Giles-heavy episodes to watch. Just not ‘The Body’.
Chernobyl
I read Midnight at Chernobyl (see my 2026 Reading blog) and remembered that there had been a highly regarded TV series about it which I’d missed at the time it was broadcast (I think it went out while M was still with me, and he had a limited appetite for grim so probably vetoed it…). It was a tough watch, but pretty true to the events as far as I could judge, and very well done. Great cast – Jessie Buckley and Barry Keoghan pop up in minor roles, as well as other familiar faces. It manages to maintain just the right balance between focusing on individual tragedy and seeing the bigger picture – how the Soviet government (under Gorbachev at the time) reflexively denied, dismissed and covered up the truth until they no longer had any choice, and the part these events played in the fall of the Iron Curtain.
Dear England
I saw the National Theatre Stage on Screen production a couple of years back, which was superb, so I wasn’t sure what might be gained from a four-episode television version. I suppose I’m still not sure, but I enjoyed it, and was moved all over again by Southgate’s determination to address the malaise that had affected the national team, and his care for his young players. I remember feeling that something had changed when I watched his England team play. And I remember that cold feeling which had to do with so much more than losing a football match when three young black players failed to score penalties. The abuse they received was so ugly – but the response to that abuse was more powerful. The TV version takes us through to the 2024 Euros final and Southgate’s subsequent resignation, with a brief glimpse of Thomas Tuchel…
Dirty Business
Jason Watkins and David Threlfall as the Mr Bates equivalents in the true story of ordinary blokes on a mission to expose the persistent pollution of rivers and beaches with untreated sewage, and the risk not only to marine but to human life that this represents. In the Post Office corner, not only the water companies, but the Environment Agency, which comes off very badly indeed, lacking the will and the courage to challenge the big businesses that actually run the water companies.
ER/The Pitt
The entirety of ER, on Netflix! I used to love this, and turns out I still do. The blend of soap opera and medical drama is usually perfectly done, only rarely tipping in the wrong direction (the wrong direction – for me – being too much soap and not enough bradying down, asystoles and Foleys and all that marvellous medical jargon). It’s also a window on to the world back then (it starts in the mid-90s), with AIDS still a major concern, although it’s acknowledged by the time we’re into the mid-2000s that this has changed dramatically. And in urban America, not just MVCs but GSWs arriving through the doors every day. In contrast to Casualty, where we always used to start with people going about their day, whilst the viewer calculates which of them will come to grief and how, usually (and I prefer it this way) in ER we know only as much about the people on the gurneys and in chairs as the docs do. It’s not perfect, of course. Binging it as I have, the ramping up of the melodrama is very noticeable, sometimes with (inadvertent?) comic effects (Romano v helicopter – twice – for example). But despite this, and the occasional bouts of soppiness, especially in the Christmas episodes, it is superb. A random thought – a poster saying Cure Autism appears on various walls throughout the first decade of the show, which surprised and troubled me – was it really thought until the mid-2000s that autism was something that could be and needed to be cured?
Having had all the ER that there is, obviously I headed up to Pittsburgh for The Pitt. It’s inhabiting very much the same territory. Both interweave the stories of the patients with those of the medics, addressing the same challenges of hospital bureaucracy and funding vs patient care and staff safety, of treating people who cannot pay for medication, of identifying ‘drug-seekers’ and abuse victims, of getting the balance between optimum treatment and being, as we are often reminded in both series, a teaching hospital. There are new issues of course – whilst the anxiety of undocumented migrants in seeking medical help was regularly covered in ER, in the final episode of The Pitt series 2 we see masked ICE officers dragging away a patient, and arresting a medic who tried to defend her.
Where the two series differ most is in the structure of each episode. ER experimented with that over the years, with varying levels of success, but The Pitt is very simple: each episode covers one hour of a shift. So across the whole series we have witnessed that whole shift, which allows for us to get much more deeply into each of the cases that come through the door (and the concerns of those who treat them). It took me a while to get to grips with it, to grasp that if Dr Robbie was desperate for a piss in episode 1, he was even more desperate in episode 2. We get so used to time jumps of anything from minutes to hours that we don’t expect that degree of continuity. But it’s compelling, even stressful to watch, and the structure means we get a powerful sense of the relentless pace of the ER. I can’t wait for series 3.
Gone
Much better than average crime series, partly thanks to the performances – David Morrissey in particular is marvellous as the buttoned-up headmaster whose wife disappears. It doesn’t twist for the sake of twisting, and the dénouement makes emotional as well as logistical sense.
Hijack
I watched both series. The first was genuinely heart in mouth, and whilst I couldn’t swear that the plot entirely made sense, it was exciting enough to not mind. Series 2 was less compelling, and the plot more convoluted, but it was exciting enough to not switch off.
How to Get to Heaven from Belfast
From the creator of the absolutely wonderful Derry Girls, a very funny, very sweary mystery. The Guardian’s review says that it has all of the ‘verve, acuity and havoc dancing on top of the immaculate plotting that you find in McGee’s masterwork’. It’s a wild ride.
Lead Children
There is common ground between this gripping drama (based on a true story) and Chernobyl (see above), in the culture of denial that anything could be wrong with the great Soviet industrial machine, even as the evidence mounts up to show that children living near a smelting works in Silesia in Poland, are being poisoned by lead fumes from the works. That evidence is painstakingly accumulated and stubbornly presented by Dr Jolanta Wadowska-Krol (played by the superb Joanna Kulig, who I last saw in Cold War), who comes up against the system’s resistance at every step.
This is ‘the true story of a group of ordinary men and women recruited from the rank and file of Her Majesty’s Customs in the early 90s, given three weeks’ training and sent undercover to infiltrate and bring down two massive drug cartels that were filling Britain’s streets with heroin and really pissing Mrs Thatcher – head of the party of law and order, don’t you know – off’. I was wondering why this reminded me of The Gold, until I realised both series are created by Neil Forsyth. This one has a great cast – inc. Tom Burke, Hayley Squires, Steve Coogan – and it’s a great watch.
Lynley
I never got into the much earlier dramatisation of these novels (or the novels) and I’m not sure I will bother with another series, should there be one. It’s yet another odd couple pairing – this time posh bloke with blunt working-class woman – but there’s only so much mileage you can get out of that, and the plots are pretty much run of the mill. One might hope that writers of crime series would get tired of that trope – it became tiresome quite quickly in the recent Cooper & Fry series, which I reviewed last time.
Missed Call
An impressive cast (Joanna Scanlan, Rupert Graves) but there were too many plot holes, too many things not adequately explained, and the usual mad mess of a final episode which strained credulity beyond breaking point.
The Night Manager
This was an excellent, unexpected sequel to the le Carré original, with lots of peril, twists and turns that left me shouting at the telly, and great performances from all concerned. I feel there must be another series in the offing and I’m up for it.
The Other Bennet Sister
Everyone urged me to watch, and I eventually complied and found that yes, it was every bit as lovely as they all said, a complete delight and a balm for the soul in troubled times. Wonderful.
Paradise
Excellent sequel to one of the best things I watched last year. It’s very different, in that a lot of the action is now outside of the bunker, and the sequel’s trajectory is bringing those two worlds together – we are left on a massive cliffhanger so I’m hoping for a season 3. Very well written, and great performances.
Ripple
Highly addictive – the series introduces us to four people whose lives intersect, some only briefly but in ways that have significance, others whose lives remain connected. The concept is that some seemingly trivial incident has ripples that impact in unforeseeable ways on the lives of others. It’s sometimes soppy, and sometimes a bit contrived, but most enjoyable.
Secret Service
Cut above the average spy thriller, with a great cast – Roger Allum, Alex Kingston, Rafe Spall, Gemma Arterton – tight plotting and a good script. Looking forward to season 2.
Small Prophets
As good as everybody told me it was (I was late to the party as I so often am). Decidedly odd, funny, touching, rather beautiful. And with Michael Palin. I will not say more because spoilers. Just watch it if you haven’t already, you’ll thank me later.
Steal
Well done heist drama where pretty much nothing is as it appears in episode 1. The ending could suggest that there will be a sequel, but I don’t think one is needed.
Stranger Things
When a series is as loved as this one, the ending is almost bound to disappoint at least some of its fans. But for me it drew the threads together beautifully in this final series and left enough questions hanging in the air about which we can make our own minds up – or choose to leave them unmade up. There were some lovely touches (I loved Dustin’s valedictory speech at the school graduation event, which, with its own incidental reminders of Buffy, paid tribute to the late and much-lamented Eddie by being as subversive, disrespectful and inappropriate as Eddie had promised to be). There was, on the other hand, an excess of exposition, none of which was particularly enlightening (sometimes it’s best to just leave it as what one of the Buffy writers called ‘Phlebotinum’). Also not enough Joyce, from my POV – not that there ever has been – though she got her Molly Weasley moment. But the flaws are probably inevitable – the long gap meant that viewers had the choice of either rewatching four previous series to remind themselves of who/what/where/why, or just leaping into the final season and hoping they could figure it all out. And, inevitably, the very final episode crammed too much in, particularly as it needed to give each of the characters a satisfying last act, as well as to resolve as many as possible of the plot threads. There’s also the problem that the more you love a series the harder it is to let it go, for it to be all wrapped up with nowhere to go and nothing more to do. It had to finish, and for me, it did so as well, as bravely, as it could, honouring the things that were best about it over the full nine years.
Tip Toe
Bloody hell. We are shown at the very start where all of this is going to end – in violence and horror. And as we build up to that we are beset on all sides with foreboding, with the dark predictions of how the gains for LGBTQ people are vulnerable. Melba says that whereas they used to come into a room with a ‘Ta da!!’, now they go on tiptoe. If at points I wondered if this was getting a bit melodramatic, the final episode made the descent into hell entirely plausible (and real-life events in Belfast and Southampton, whilst prompted by xenophobia rather than homophobia only added to the sense that Melba was right). Alan Cummings and David Morrissey are both superb, and Morrissey is terrifying.
Under Salt Marsh
A cut above the average crime thriller. It has other themes than the investigation of murder, though that’s part of it – it’s concerned with community and how resilience and independence can become problematic in the face of environmental crisis and family trauma. Excellent performances, and although it does provide twists, they’re grounded in the story, not just the desire to keep the viewer guessing.
Waiting for the Out
Based on Andy West’s The Life Inside (see my books blog), this is a brilliant, sometimes funny, often gutwrenchingly sad drama about a young man with plenty of issues of his own, teaching philosophy in prisons. Josh Finan is outstanding as Dan, and the supporting cast are all beautifully drawn, with clichés and stereotypes swerved and/or undermined. As the Guardian reviewer said, ‘With a mixture of exquisite lightness and overwhelming heaviness,Waiting for the Out suggests that it’s never too late. We can still write our own stories’.
The Witness
The murder of Rachel Nickell on Wimbledon Common and the failure for 16 years to find the perpetrator, along with the use of an undercover officer to set a ‘honeytrap’ to encourage the police’s preferred suspect to incriminate himself, are fairly well-explored territory. This drama, however, focuses on Nickell’s partner and her son, who was with her when she was murdered As Alexander (aged 2 at the time of the murder) was the only eyewitness, there was pressure to find a way to get more information from him that might lead to an arrest. That process is hard to watch, as is the child’s father André’s frustration and distress whilst it is happening and anxiety about how it will affect Alex. The police come out of this pretty badly, but perhaps the most repugnant element is the behaviour of the press, who pursued André and Alex relentlessly, going through their bins, goading André to try to get him to lose control, besieging them in their home, first in the UK and subsequently in France and Spain where they had fled. It’s a powerful drama, and an honest one, not painting André and Alex as heroes or saints, but as any of us might be in those circumstances, flawed human beings trying to survive something utterly traumatic.
Documentary
The Assembly
The Assembly is a panel of autistic, neurodivergent and/or learning-disabled interviewers who can be relied upon to ask the questions no one else would dare ask, or would even dream up. The various celebrities who are at their mercy are all fully briefed and respond with humour and humility, even if they can’t quite believe what they’ve just been asked. And these interviewers will absolutely go for the heart – asking Nicola Sargent about her miscarriage, Stephen Fry about his suicide attempts… It’s rare that the interviewees don’t end up in tears at some point, and I always do.
Bobby Kennedy for President
Fascinating documentary series. I vividly remember seeing the news of Bobby K’s assassination – I was 10, nearly 11, and we just got in from an evening out and my parents put the news on, and before they realised what we were going to see, there was the blurry footage of Kennedy falling. I didn’t know much about him then, unlike MLK, about whom I knew enough to know why he was so important, but my parents were devastated by RFK’s death too, and this series shows both why he meant so much to so many people, and the flaws that might have become more evident and problematic had he achieved the presidency.
The Titanic Sinks Tonight
A minute-by-minute account of the sinking, with segments of actors portraying some of the passengers, sailors, engineers etc aboard the ship. I knew the bones of the story, of course, but there was a lot here that I had no idea about, and the individual stories were both engaging and very moving. I have visited the excellent Titanic exhibition in Belfast since watching this, and it was fascinating to see the history of the ship from initial design through to the recent rediscovery of the sunken wreck.
Passing Time 