Tags: blog, tv, comedy, essential, 2026
Author: KickingK
Date: Wednesday September 30th, 2026
All Gas and Gaiters
I need to be careful here as I’m going to make some sweeping generalisations about a genre that I’m not particularly knowledgeable: American sitcoms.
I mean, sure, I’ve watched quite a few. I’ve even loved a fair few as well: Frasier, Roseanne, The Good Place, M*A*S*H, Mork and Mindy.
But I’m not as knowledgeable about them in the same way that I am about UK sitcoms.
So, from my view from across the pond, there's a fundamental difference between the genres of British sitcoms and American sitcoms. And its the notion of being trapped.
A short, but admittedly slightly selective list of truly great British1 sitcoms:
- Black Adder - Trapped in the British class system
- Red Dwarf - Trapped in deep space
- Cabin Pressure - Trapped at work
- Father Ted - Trapped on an island
- Steptoe & Son - Trapped in an abusive relationship
- Porridge - Trapped in prison
- Bottom - Trapped in gross incompetence
- Only Fools and Horses - Trapped in poverty
- Fawlty Towers - Trapped in the British class system, work, an abusive relationship & gross incompetence
You get the picture.
This makes sense for the structure of the genre. The sitcom was for decades, up until the ubiquity of handheld digital cameras, effectively a half hour comedy play that had to take place mostly on the same set. Any story that happens on that set must explain why the protagonist doesn't just get up and walk out and why they’re back to square one the following week. And the more outlandish and humorous the story, the more bullet proof is the required reason for staying put.
Basil Fawlty has invested everything in Fawlty Towers, the idea of him walking away is as unthinkable as Edmund Blackadder just walking out of the trenches. It just can't happen. And so each episode starts in the same way all the others did, with the main character trapped and trying to escape.
Except that's not how US sitcoms work. They have the same reliance on set, on everything being the same at the start of each episode, but the characters aren't trapped and fighting to get out.
The cast of Cheers aren't trapped by alcoholism. Frasier isn't held at his radio show by blackmail or an inescapable mortgage.
I suppose we could argue that workplace and family sitcoms trap their characters. We can’t choose our family or bosses, we’re stuck with them as much as Richie is stuck with Eddie. But few of those American characters are fighting tooth and nail to escape from their predicaments.
OK there are a few: some of the cast of M*A*S*H are as desperate to escape as Edmund Blackadder. But the only American sitcom that I know of that tries to crush it’s characters in a pressure cooker for our amusement is The Good Place. The setting of which (trying to avoid spoilers here) is very telling as to how American’s view British sitcoms.
Maybe it's the subconscious effect that living on a small island, has on people. We Brits love our seaside holidays. It's a privilege to never be more than a few hours away from a beach from which we can look out on the vast, expansive ocean. But whilst doing so, you're always reminded that that is as far as you can go, without undertaking an activity that humans weren't fundamentally designed for.
And maybe Americans don't have that experience? Even when staring out to the ocean, they can always turn around and travel across vast, expansive, continent scale geographies. Maybe the notion of being trapped isn't something inherent to them in the same way it is for us Brits.
Maybe. Like I said, sweeping generalisations, not particularly knowledgeable.
So, what has this got to do with Hacks?
Well, the main characters of Hacks are also trapped. Not by their situation, but by themselves. Deborah Vance, an ageing stand-up comedian, coming to the twilight of a highly successful career. Only she doesn't realise that yet and certainly isn't ready for it. She needs a joke writer to help bounce ideas off and polish up quips for when she's cutting the ribbon on a new supermarket. But her agent, Jimmy, is struggling to find someone as nobody wants to work for an act that's so obviously a dead end.
What Jimmy does have on his books is Ava, a young, up and coming comedy writer who is on her way down and going nowhere after being canceled. She posted something stupid, got fired and (as she's not a rich, old, white guy) can't find any work. She's jobless, aimless and lost.
So Jimmy sends her to Deborah. Quelle surprise, they hate each other from the moment they meet, immediately having a blazing row in which Ava resigns and Deborah fires her.
Except that row is funny. Really funny. Funny enough to make Deborah realise that Ava is someone she can use even if she pisses her off. The key word of that last sentence is use. And where else is Ava going to find work? She needs a way to work, to hone her craft and rebuild her reputation.
And thus the trap is set.
Because whilst they both realise they need each other professionally, they actually need each other a whole lot more than either comprehend or will admit. And the moment either of them start to realise how much they depend on the other, one or both recoils, pushes away and then everything collapses again until they can begrudgingly reconcile.
The way the traps are constructed vary in quality. Some are little clunky, others are breathtaking. The final episode of Series 3 is one of the finest constructed cliff hangers ever seen in a sitcom. A series of scenes that winds everything so tight that the explosion is inevitable and still shocking.
And all of those traps are laid by Deborah and Ava themselves. Two people trying to come to terms with a relationship that neither of them asked for, but both need. There are articles to be written about the themes of legacy, mentorship and inter-generational friendships (none of which I'm going to write as I've already spent far too long waffling about sitcoms) as portrayed in Hacks. As in the best comedies, it's richly textured.
Most importantly though, this is funny, funny, funny. Every episode guarantees at least one belly laugh and regular chuckles. Especially as the show starts to get to grips with it's characters and how the actors are playing them. The way the later episodes utilise Hannah Einbinders ability to make goopy eyes at dazzling blondes2 comes from the writers knowing their cast and using them to the fullest.
The fifth and final series lacks the bite of the previous four. The creators have, by this point gotten too fond of their created family. It still contains some of the best episodes of the entire run. However, at the end of the final episode the trap snaps shut again. Everything back as it was at the beginning. But is it even a trap if you are where you want to be?
Poster Credit Where to Watch
1. Yes, Father Ted is Irish but it was made by a UK production company for a UK TV station, so it counts. Also, it was half written by someone who went on to become a vile transphobe so make sure you pirate it if you want to watch it.
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2. Foreshadowing for a later review.
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Tags: blog, film, horror, essential, 2026
Author: KickingK
Date: Monday September 28th, 2026
Giddily exciting
Working in retail for most of my adult life, I'm extremely familiar with the kind of empty, or useless space, that now gets referred to as 'liminal space'. Empty, featureless corridors that serve no use other than to connect two fire doors. An extra, unused store room or office space for a business that's moved into a building slightly too big for it's usage. Weird gaps above, below or beside the tacked on facade of the shop and the actual structural shell of the building it's in.
And as a life long player of video games, I'm also intimately familiar with 3D video game architecture. The kind of architecture that's designed to mimic or evoke real world spaces, but with the intention of providing a space to play in, rather than a space to live or work in. That disconnect of intention resulting in a kind of 'uncanny valley' effect, where everything looks kind of real, but also feels just slightly off.
Backrooms combines these two aesthetics superbly. Mostly set in a kind of hybrid empty retail/conference/hotel/warehouse space that hasn't been designed for any of those purposes, but evokes that form anyway. The link to video games made explicit via the way that furniture and furnishings 'glitch' through the architecture like a buggy first person game. The makers of backrooms lean into this sense of unease completely and wholeheartedly, basing everything around the feeling that something isn't quite right.
This extends to the lives of the characters. Both Chiwetel Ejiofor's Clarke (who finds the near infinite backroom) and Renate Reinsve's Mary (his therapist, who sets out to find him and bring him back) have lives that are holding patterns, going nowhere. They both look like one thing, but something isn't quite right. They're the space where a person should be, a gap in the shell of a life, missing the purpose that would fill their shape.
The result is not only a sense of profound dread, but also one of comfort and familiarity. Nostalgia, almost. As I say, I'm familiar with these spaces, or at least the concept of them. I'm familiar with these lives. Most of us have been in a dead end job, or without a job at all, lacking purpose or direction. The trap with these situations is how easy it is to stay in them. How comforting it is to sit still in our own entropy. How still and peaceful that empty space is.
This, along side We're All Going to the World's Fair and I Saw the TV Glow have created a genre of modern horror where the terror is as comforting and beguiling as it is horrifying.
Maybe this means that even the most existential dread we can conjure still feels strangely personal and comforting, compared to the impersonal, planet-burning reality we actually live in. Or maybe it's about the way that algorithms and marketing constantly try to personalise, tailor and individualise our experiences but never do so in a human way. The 'uncanny valley' gap between a person enthusiastically recommending their new favourite thing, and an algorithm constantly trying to sell you whatever slop it thinks will keep you on a platform for thirty seconds longer. The latter mimicking the former, creating a slick, grotesque simulacrum of culture.
Either way, Backrooms contains enough ambiguity to allow anyone to pour their own thoughts into the movie. It invites the viewer to stare at it. To look hard at the monsters we create, and not just sit passively in their view.
Poster Credit Where to Watch
Tags: blog, film, horror, 2026
Author: KickingK
Date: Monday September 14th, 2026
's alright
Hokum is the rarest of rare things, a horror movie I find merely 'ok'.
Horror movies are usually love or loathe for me. They either get under my skin and creep me out or, much more commonly, absolutely infuriate me and insult my intelligence.
Hokum does neither of these things. It's perfectly well constructed, the plot moves along at a decent pace, it know not to insult it's audience by treating them like idiots. The jump scares are a bit predictable, but work anyway, it's decently creepy. Adam Scott plays a complete arsehole but knows how to do it without making his character irredeemable.
But it all adds up and amounts to not very much. There's nothing here that get's under the skin. It never gets really nasty and never boils over. Tension builds but never explodes.
At the end there's an undercurrent of the Magdelane laundries, a genuine real life horror from Ireland's recent past that's far, far worse than anything in this film. It's a faint and brief connection, possibly I'm reaching too far, maybe there's some clearer signposting that I missed, but the rest of the plot does nothing to link to it. Either specifically or tonally so it adds nothing to the film.
A perfunctory, well made horror. Nothing more, nothing less.
Poster Credit Where to Watch
Author: KickingK
Date: Thursday September 10th, 2026
A Persian Hermione Grainger
A day, a long day, in the life of Ziba, as she celebrates her exam results with her friends. Ziba wants the day to be perfect (and has planned it in meticulous detail) before the end of the day and...
The film sets the stakes out right from the start but then let's Ziba make the choice to put all that to one side to spend her day with her friends. She doesn't want to be pitied, the film doesn't want us to pity her. The outcome isn't important, the day is, the day has to be perfect.
And, in a way, it is. It's long and never-ending, in the way that teenage days and teenage years are. Like it's going to last forever, only realising much, much later that it was all over in a blink of an eye.
Ziba and her friends are enjoyable company. Incredibly smart, impossibly beautiful, ridiculously giddy. So enjoyable that the film is comfortable letting us enjoy the day with Ziba, the drama isn't the focus, the day is, the experience is.
Part of that experience is the soundtrack. Part urban, abstract pop, part dream-like Iranian-flecked score, it's a constant, lush presence throughout the film.
But you can only hold back the rest of your life so long, the inevitable has to crash in before the end of the day. Reality bites, childhood ends, A lusher depiction of a teenage summer you'll struggle to find.
Poster Credit Where to Watch
Tags: blog, film, comedy, recommended, 2026
Author: KickingK
Date: Sunday September 06th, 2026
All! The! Exclamations!
The makers of Airplane! famously bought the rights to Zero Hour! and then simply remade it, adding in jokes whilst doing so.
Stop! That! Train! has a similar relationship to Airplane! It's almost a re-make, but with added drag queens.
And whilst I've lamented the lack of similar films, using Airplane! as a base does rob it of one of it's underpinnings. Namely, the gap between the absurdity of the jokes and the seriousness of the plot. Here, nothing is serious, no Leslie Nielson playing it straight, refusing to acknowledge what's happening.
Neither does this film have the required tempo of jokes. There's not the necessary rat-a-tat-tat of jokes being fired out to keep you laughing constantly.
But that's where the negativity ends. The jokes may not be frequent enough but they are really good jokes. One repeated wordplay refrain is as good as 'Surely you can't be serious?' and fans of nineties R'n'B groups will be howling at one part.
And one thing Airplane! didn't have was musical numbers, which is the point where Stop!That!Train! does manage to cram in the jokes faster than you can get them.
This is a fun little piece of nonsense that kept me thoroughly entertained for ninety minutes.
Poster Credit Where to Watch
Tags: blog, film, action, recommended, 2026
Author: KickingK
Date: Sunday July 26th, 2026
I HEARD YOU!
The first thing we have to talk about when discussing The Furious is the dialogue. Martial Arts movies have a long and interesting history when it comes to dialogue, language dubbing and subtitles. So infamous is the culture of weird martial art flick dialogue it even seeps into other genres, such as the Police Academy documentary series.
But even by that colourful standard, The Furious stands out.
The film is set 'Somewhere in South East Asia', but never named specifically. Some of the film uses a variety of local languages, which are subtitled, even when the actors use English idioms. Which is an uncanny, jolting reminder that you're reading subtitles.
But ninety percent of the dialogue is in English. And not the kind of over-dubbed English where the actor's lips bare no relation to the words that are coming out of them, the actors are actually speaking English. Just with weirdly precise American accents.
That's right, the actors are acting in English and then the studio have dubbed over them to remove their accents.
This is both the most oddly effective and bizarrely jarring technique I've seen in a non-English language film. No, your brain isn't dealing with the disconnect between mouth and sound. But on the other hand, I know what Joe Taslim sounds like and it's not that.
The sound mix makes it even odder, as it's mixed more akin to an animated movie, with the dialogue 'on top' of everything else, as opposed to traditional ADR where it's mixed 'in' to make it sound more natural. Which actually ends up being a positive as it means you get to here every line of dialogue as clear as a bell, despite the cacophony that's often happening at the same time. This is the anti-Nolan of film dialogue.
Oh, but some characters seem to be dubbed from their native language into English and the moments I spotted that I think my brain leaked out my ears at the incongruity of it all.
And I haven't even mentioned that the main character is deaf and mute. Which in the context of the rest of the film just comes across like a cost saving measure.
But how much difference does this make to the quality of the film and your enjoyment of it? Absolutely nothing, obviously. This is a martial arts action film and the only question worth asking is Does It Kick Arse?
Yes. It really kicks arse.
The endless fight scenes are inventive, funny, athletic and skilful. It's not at the quality of The Raid, it veers too much towards the flashy and overly complicated for my personal taste.1 But they're consistently entertaining and keep your interest going until the plot stops and we get a gang-busters five person, three way fight at the end, introducing Yayan 'no guns' Ruhian, Joey Iwanaga, who I last saw being great in Baby Assassins 2 and Brian Le jumping around like an angry frog.
There's some really great editing in this fight, with several very long sequences that are actually lots of intense, short sequences almost imperceptibly stitched together. There's also some very subtle cgi used to have multiple fights happening in camera at the same time.
Normally, the way to have this level of chaos on screen in martial arts films is to keep the choreography simple, with basic timing. Easy to repeat across multiple takes, rough enough that it'll look good when not performed perfectly and with enough breathing room between moves that you can get it right in one or two takes. You can't do Jackie Chan amounts of re-shoots if you have more than a handful of people in shot.
But the final fight here manages a staggering amount of chaos on screen whilst maintaining pace and technique. The downside being that it's difficult to marvel at the choreography when there's so much happening at the same time.
Pretty much the only time I gasped at the techniques on screen were when Joey Iwanaga moved so quickly the camera couldn't keep up. Blimey, he is rapid.
Still, taken as a whole, this is a blast and anyone wanting a proper, all out martial arts action film is going to be delighted.
Poster Credit Where to Watch
1. For my taste, the great modern fight scene is the lift fight in Merentau. Simple, great technique and tells a story.
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Tags: blog, tv, comedy, essential, 2026
Author: KickingK
Date: Thursday July 02nd, 2026
Honeytrap an Ayatollah
Riz Ahmed plays struggling actor Shah Latif who, thanks to a favour from a friend, gets a chance to audition to be Daniel Craig's replacement as James Bond. And, realising he has little to no chance of landing the role, leaks his involvement to the press, leading him into the centre of a media firestorm.
Crucial to the comedy working here is the tension between Riz the person, Riz the celebrity and Shah the character he's portraying. The script has him dancing around all three of them and refuses to settle. You never quite know where the truth lies so you're constantly wrong footed as it changes direction.
It comes from a long line of comedies featuring famous actors playing versions of not-quite-themselves. At it's worst it aggrandising and obvious. This is up there with the likes of The Trip.
Helping that light-footedness is the amount of experimentation that the six episode format allows the creators. Each episode shifts it focus to a different genre or influence. One episode is a Bollywood drama, another steals liberally from Tangerine and there's a Bourne/Bond episode that allows Rafe Spall to deliver a silent punch line for the ages. And it manages to do this without ever losing it's identity or forgetting what's it's trying to do.
The cast are universally excellent. Guz Khan uses his excellent comedy skills to mask just how good he is at pathos. Ritu Arya continues from her star making turn in Polite Society and Rafe Spall is, as ever, amazing. And if you ever thought you'd seen Patrick Stewart chewing the scenery, then this performance asks you to hold it's beer as he gives abusive, abrasive and angry voice to a severed pigs head.
And of course, Riz himself is fantastic. There are occasional flashes of just how good a Bond he would actually make. So good in fact that occasionally you wonder if this a double bluff audition for the actual part. Managing to show how good he'd be by showing how effortlessly skillful he can be bad at it. The Les Dawson approach.
I can't comment on the point that is being made here about Asian and Muslim representation in the media, that's not for me to judge, but it does feel incredibly heartfelt. It doesn't come across as a generic, PR approved message. It's clear that Riz Ahmed has something to say and has wanted to say it for a long time.
The question of why use the vehicle of James Bond to say it is something that hangs over the whole show. Yes it works but it doesn't seem necessary. That is until the end when the metaphor is repeated. Only this time, because of the journey we've watched Shah go through, it all makes perfect sense.
There's no doubt that Riz Ahmed would make an absolutely magnificent Bond. But if he's capable of brilliant and inventive fare like this, it would be such a waste.
Poster Credit Where to Watch
Tags: blog, film, sci-fi, action, 2026
Author: KickingK
Date: Tuesday June 23rd, 2026
Lone Wolf and Chub
I’ve just watched a bunch of middle aged men play with their Kenner Star Wars toys for two hours.
I wouldn’t mind if I’d watched a bunch of five year old kids play with their toys for two hours, at least that way it would have gone a bit bat-shit crazy. Had that spark of unfettered imagination that all kids have that makes them see stuff from weird angles and then mash them together with other weird stuff.
Nothing of the sort here. No wit, no spark, nothing memorable. I’d forgotten the first half of the movie by the time I’d got to the second half.
The plot of the film is that thing A happens, then thing B, followed by C, then D, we go back to C for a bit before moving on to E and then and then and then and then after five hours I check my watch and only forty minutes have passed.
The worst crime of this film is that the film makers don't care about Grogu and Mando. During the course of this film we learn nothing about either of them. Nothing is revealed about their past or their future. We learn nothing about their characters or their personalities. Nobody gets to to grow, to learn, to have to face up to uncomfortable truths. There is not a single character arc in the whole film.
The Mandolorian is a guy in a metal suit who shoots people. Grogu is a green alien baby who eats grubs and moves things. That is literally it. You could swap them for absolutely any other similar character you can think of and it wouldn't make a jot of difference to this film.
The visual aesthetic is nostalgia for the XBox 360 era of murky, grey-brown sludge. Having not a single piece of flair in the whole film, it is quite possible the most visually uninteresting sci-fi film I’ve ever seen.
Ludwig Gorannsenn tries his best, re comprising his magnificent score from the tv show, giving everything to try to elevate the story. But he’s got nothing to work with. You can neither polish a turd, nor inject any joie de vivre into something this dull and base.
I can see die hard fans of the tv series getting some enjoyment out of this. It's basically a filler episode of the tv series dragged out past the two hour mark and for some that'll probably be enough. But why bother spending time watching this when you could just ask ChatGPT to describe it to you? It'll leave the same mark on your soul.
I came out of the film humming the theme tune and then saw an urban fox.
So not a total waste of an evening.
Poster Credit Where to Watch
I've recently made the swap from hosting this website on a Synology NAS to a Raspberry Pi running Yunohost.
The main reasons being: A) I wanted to do more self hosted stuff and messing around with Docker containers was absolutely doing my head in. B) The Synology NAS was making too much noise with regular disk access.
Yunohost has been mostly straightforward to set up and has so far (touches wood) been extremely reliable. The Raspberry Pi 5 has been fantastic and more than fast enough for running this website and everything else I've been asking it to do.
Kiki has of course continued to be fantastic.
I'm going to keep the Synology pages below for reference. They're still relevant and may be useful in the future as I may use it again for another project.
Tags: blog, film, drama, essential, 2026
Author: KickingK
Date: Monday May 25th, 2026
Mary Magdalene, that'd be my first sin
All movies about pop stars are, in one form or another, about the gap between the fantasy of pop music and the mechanical reality it's built on. The interplay between the mask of the performer and the face behind it.
Todd Haynes' underappreciated masterpiece Velvet Goldmine is the absolute pinnacle of the genre and focuses on the idea of the Pop Star as an act of artistry itself, and the centring of that act between the person performing it and the audience who are moved by it.
Mother Mary explores similar territory whilst also taking inspiration from another masterpiece, Céline Sciamma's Portrait of a Lady on Fire, a film about seeing and being seen.
Anne Hathaway's Mary has the ability to hold an audience under her spell but her identity has been at least partially constructed by the dresses and outfits designed by Sam, played by Michaela Coel. Sam is the person who Mary, out of desperation and needing a dress with which to relaunch her career, turns to after being estranged for a long time.
Mary knows that Sam has the ability to create a look for her that captures the way she sees her. And Sam adores Mary with an intensity that combines the infatuation of a first love with the devotion of a pop obsessive. Sam is both a fan and a crush, the two multiplying each other.
Or was anyway. The walls that Sam has constructed since are fierce and solid. The interplay and tension between the two as they try to negotiate the design of the new dress boils and tears at the two of them. Mary attempting to re-inspire Sam (and through her, her audience), Sam trying to remain in control and not get swept away and engulfed by the very idea of Mary.
The characterisation of Mary and Sam are superb. Anne Hathaway is indecisive and unsure of herself but when in a position where she can express herself artistically, utterly magnetic. At one point in the film the pair tell each other a ghost story: Sam's is functional and supremely evocative. Mary's is completely unhinged in a way that drags every part of your attention into the scene, to the point where nothing outside of it even exists.
And yet it's Michaela Coel that the film actually focuses on. She's helped by a script that actors would probably kill for, down to earth yet occasionally so vibrant it veers towards spoken word poetry, perfect for Coel's East London dry and fruity wit. Director David Lowery clearly loves photographing her as the camera lingers on her long enough to capture the intensity of her, the ferocity of her unblinking view, the absolute force of everything she sees and feels.
And it's through this emotion that we tumble through the film, spiralling into the vortex that is Mary's personality and persona. That emotion is as believable as it is powerful, dragging everything to an ending that maybe isn't a conclusion. As by this point reality has been broken down by art and longing to the point where both characters are lost in their own truths. Or possibly fictions.
This film brilliantly updates the philosophies of Velvet Goldmine to a social media age. With that era of pop, there's an air gap between creation and audience where the fantasy and emotion can be poured into. Here and now, fledgling pop artists are in contact with an audience immediately and intimately, fan feedback helping mould the shape and direction of their early career.
How that changes the relationship between artist and audience, especially once they diverge and fall out of love, is what this film explores. It does so with an empathy and sincerity that is completely breathtaking. It treats pop music and it's fans with the passion, imagination and seriousness that they deserve.
The comparisons with Velvet Goldmine and A Portrait of a Lady on Fire are not made lightly, this film stands alongside them. If you've ever been a pop music obsessive then this film is one of the true greats.
