Tags: blog, tv, comedy, recommended, 2026
Author: KickingK
Date: Friday January 09th, 2026
The Good-ish place
The problem with having a really great concept and then nailing the execution on your first try is how do you follow it up?
The first series of A Man on the Inside is such a perfect idea and so well executed that it's difficult how to see how the same trick could be pulled twice.
It's a problem that the show's creator, Michael Schur, has encountered before. Previous success, The Good Place, had one of the all time greatest sit-com first series, ending with a bang that made simply repeating the formula impossible.1
And you can see the lessons learned from that shows evolution on display here, A Man on the Inside doesn't try to pull the same trick twice. For a start, Charles Nieuwendyk is actually good at his job now. He's grown and improved.
Now the 'inside' is a university campus that Charles must infiltrate by posing as a temporary lecturer. The contrast is obvious, going from old people nearing the end of their life to young people just starting there's. Which makes it curious that the show makes no use of that switch whatsoever. The students barely exist in this, instead it concerns itself mostly with the teaching staff whilst also pulling across half the cast from the last series as well.
It ends up having too many characters to keep track of to truly make any of them stick. There's too many stories that start and end neatly in the same episode. Everything rattles along a little too quickly for its own good.
The flip-side is that there's always something happening and nothing ever stands still. It never suffers from trying to replicate it's past success, it's too busy moving forward. Plus, having such a wide variety of characters means that there's always someone or somewhere to pull a joke from. This season is consistently, effortlessly funny.
It also features a genuinely great heist in its penultimate episode. It's no Relay or How to Blow Up a Pipeline but it actually feels believable.
It's let down a bit by the final episode which doesn't really make sense. But the ride to get there is a fun and entertaining jaunt. Just don't expect the same level of heart as the first series or anything like the depth of The Good Place.
Poster Credit Where to Watch
1. To be clear, the following series of The Good Place are fantastic as well.
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Tags: blog, film, drama, essential, 2026
Author: KickingK
Date: Sunday January 04th, 2026
Next time is next time.
The first thing that Hirayama does when he steps out of his front door of a morning is look up. Every day, without fail.
He spends quite a lot of time looking upwards. Often, it's just a glance. Sometimes, like when he's is the park, surrounded by trees, he'll take the time to drink in the sky as he tilts his head back to drink his carton of milk.
He takes pictures of the leafs of the trees as the sunlight dapples through them.
What is he looking for, exactly? It's never explained.
It's a curious habit for someone who spends most of their time looking down to care for things. Hirayama works as a toilet cleaner, meticulously and methodically caring for the state of Tokyo's public toilets. And in his spare time he likes to find tiny saplings growing in inhospitable places and care for them in his small scale arboretum in his front room.
He seems happy and contented in his deliberately simple, small scale, human scale routines, all contrasted against the huge Tokyo sprawl and the colossal Skytree tower. And we're happy following those routines, following the satisfaction taken in a job well done. But why is a man who is clearly a dreamer and a thinker, whose natural instinct is to look up, looking down at toilet floors?
Why is a man who clearly cares for little things, not just for their intrinsic value, but for the value they bring to everyone around them, not caring for bigger things? Like whole people, loved ones or dear friends?
We get a hint of something in the background when his niece turns up unannounced. He doesn't break his routines though, he just lets her tag along and for a brief time he gets to care for her as well. It doesn't last for long before he gets his unaccompanied life back but not before we see something he may have lost. And may even be hiding from.
Before the film ends, he's given one more hint of a possibility of something more, something outside of his routines.
How does he feel about it?
We don't know. In an extraordinary scene we get to see all his emotions fully let go, but without an explanation as to what those emotions are.
This is a film that explains nothing. It asks so many questions but always expects you to come up with your own thoughts. This should be infuriating but the deep love it shows to its subjects, not just Hirayama but the entire world he inhabits, draws you in and captivates you.
If I were to list all the delightful small details in this film, this review would take as long as the film itself. And whatever conclusions you draw from them will be your own.
Many thanks to vga256, the creator of the kiki software this blog runs on, for recommending this film to me.
Poster Credit Where to Watch
Tags: blog, film, action, sci-fi, essential, 2026
Author: KickingK
Date: Sunday January 11th, 2026
This one has legs
Oh what an absolute blast!
The plot is simple, the script is tight. There's a protagonist, there's an antagonist and that's it. No extra bells and whistles, no side plots or machinations and everything contains only what it needs to.
The action scenes are terrific. They start off merely ok, but get better and better as the film goes on. Whereas most action movies try to make everything look cool and amazing, P:B instead leans into it's weirdness. The focus is on action that is clever, inventive and funny. There's one fight scene that has Jackie Chan levels of wit and that's not a comparison I make lightly. It's goofy as hell and has fun with it.
Did I say there's 'a' (singular) protagonist, with no extra bells and whistles? That was a bit of a lie. Whilst, Dek's journey is clearly laid out, no such clear explanation is given for Thia. The film very intentionally hides the fact that she's actually the main plot driver of the film and that her character arc is just as important as Dek. The two dovetail together beautifully.
It's a nice little detail for those who want something to mentally chew on in their big, silly, dumb action movies.
But whilst P:B is certainly big and silly, it isn't dumb. It treats it's audience with respect and treats it's subjects with care. The number of great Predator movies stood at One before Dan Trachtenberg came along and now after Prey and Predator: Killer of Killers he's on a personal hat-trick.
Best popcorn action movie for years.
Poster Credit Where to Watch
Tags: blog, film, thriller, comedy, recommended, 2026
Author: KickingK
Date: Wednesday January 07th, 2026
I mean, say what you like about the tenets of New Apostolic Reformationism, Dude, at least it's an ethos.
Three films in to the Knives Out series and I'm beginning to understand how Rian Johnson sees the murder mystery genre. He views these films not in terms of genre but in terms of form, like a limerick or haiku. He's not interested in making the perfect who-dunnit. He's interested in what he can say, using the form of a who-dunnit.
Glass Onion was a spiky and sharp skewering of tech-bro oligarchs. Wickedly funny but relatively simple in its pointedness.
Here he uses the congregation of a small town American church as a microcosm of right-wing Christianity in America. Using division and an in-group/out-group mentality to gain control and power in an ever dwindling congregation. None of which is very subtle but it is smartly done. As is the murder mystery itself, which contains enough twists, red herrings, subterfuges and revelations to work as a solid entry into the genre.
Where it stands out though is through Josh O'Connors depiction of Father Jud Duplenticy, the initial suspect in the case who must fight to clear his name. And that fight will cause him a crisis of faith.
And where it really stands out is how that crisis is depicted. Usually, films depicting doubt amongst the believers has them questioning their beliefs in their religion, their god or their church. But Father Jud's troubles are depicted more as a crisis of character. It's a crisis in his faith in himself, of whether he can truly be the person who he's trying to be.
What good will this fight do for him, if winning it means losing his sense of self?
There's a moment part way through the film, where the tension is mounting, Father Jed is being backed further into a corner and the mystery is deepening. When suddenly a character of no consequence to the film ignores the conventions of the murder mystery genre and simply asks for help on a completely unrelated and deeply personal matter. It's a breathtaking moment as we realise that this is the whole point of the film right there. We recognise the pivotal moment that's just happened, but will Father Jud?
The moments after this tell us everything about how he will handle the fight ahead.
Rian's point here, deeply made and deeply felt, is that religion isn't about Creed and doctrine. It's about Culture and the people that make and practice it. If we lose sight of that, we lose everything. If we remember it and care about people above all else, we can fight anything.
And to top it all off, this film is funny. It gets more slapstick mileage out of dead bodies than any film since Weekend at Bernie's. And there's a Big Lebowski joke that is one for the ages.
Poster Credit Where to Watch
As an addendum to this review, may I heartily recommend this four part Reith Lecture from Kwame Anthony Appiah which has stayed with me since listening to it nine years ago and helped me appreciate this movie a little more.