Tags: tv, blog, sci-fi, thriller, 2025, essential
Author: KickingK
Date: Tuesday May 20th, 2025
There's an episode of the tv series Spaced that features the greatest depiction of clubbing in cinema history. It's greatness is that it understood that a truly great night out isn't just about the club you go to. It's what you're running from, to get to where you end up. It spends most of the episode detailing the tensions and problems of the cast, the bit in the club is literally just a few minutes. But because of the time spent on the tensions and anxieties and problems and fears, you get the release of an epic night out.
Anyway...part way through the second series of Andor, fifteen episodes into a relentless narrative equivalent of a Shepard tone, there's a wedding party scene. And it goes OFF
And maybe Spaced doesn't have the best club scene anymore.
I don't think I can add much to the conversation regarding Andor's greatness, other than my slightly shonky Spaced comparisons. Pick an element: music, costumes, acting, script, anything at all, it's all superb. However, I do want to mention a couple of personal highlights.
Firstly, the brokeneness of the antagonists. Every single character working for the empire is a shell of a human being, living half a life. Too many movie and tv villains are hyper-competent, charismatic, sexy bastards. When the reality is these kind of people are deeply pathetic, emotionally limited turds.
Secondly, all of them are punsished for their loyalty and competence. Literally every single one of them is crushed by the weight of the system they are trying to uphold. If any of them had just clocked in, did the bare minimum and clocked out again they'd have been fine. But the one thing fascism absolutely demands is comformity. Stick your head up too high and it's going to get scythed off.
And lastly, if there's one point that Andor hammers home relentlessly, it's that fascism contains within it the seeds of it's own destruction. Fascism won't work, can never work, will never work because it will always create the conditions that will bring it down. The harder the Empire pushes, the more the people push back.
To go back to that G.K. Chesterton "quote"
Fairy tales are more than true: not because they tell us that dragons exist, but because they tell us dragons can be beaten.
Andor tells us that whilst that victory is long, painful and must be fought for, it is inevitable.
Tags: tv, blog, comedy, drama, 2025, recommended
Author: KickingK
Date: Saturday August 02nd, 2025
In praise of mid-range TV
Great art should be challenging. Great art should challenge what is possible, should challenge what I am capable of comprehending.
But when I've got home after thirteen hours working two jobs, when I've only got a few hours to sit down and decompress, before I have to go to bed and get up ready to do it all again, I don't want to be challenged. I want to be entertained.
It's times like this that I miss the days before "prestige" tv, before multi-series story arcs and a cast of thousands. I miss being able to switch on an episode of Columbo or Quantum Leap or Star Trek TNG, know who all the characters are within the first few minutes, and then get a story with a start, a middle and an ending.
Poker Face gets this, it's not a challenging show. You don't even have to work out who the murderer is, it just shows you right off the bat. But what Poker Face also understands is that I'm not an idiot and I don't want to be condescended to.
Poker Face is smart. It just puts those smarts into producing a solid, witty, delightful story into every forty five minute episode.
It does have some concessions to modern tv mores. The first and last few episodes of each series act as story bookends, setting up and paying off Charlie Cales' dealing with the Mob and the FBI. But it's not where it's at it's best. It's at it's best in the middle episodes of the series which most closely hew to the syndicated shows like Columbo and Murder, She Wrote that it's so clearly enamoured with. Episodes 5 to 9 of Series 2 in particular is an astonishing run, every one a belter. The John Cho & Melanie Lynskey helmed "The Sleazy Georgian" is the standout. Fun, funny, smart and deeply empathetic. The kind of storytelling that makes you feel connected to the world and the people around you. That makes you feel good about going to bed and getting ready to start the day anew.
Author: KickingK
Date: Thursday April 11th, 2024
Dick Turpin and His Essex Gang
Over the last ten years or so, sit-coms seem to have gradually shifted in tone. Less snark, less sarcasm, less satire. More inclusive, more diverse, more hopeful. It's not just that the news is so relentlessly grim that people want something to take their minds off it. It's also the fact that the news is so utterly stupid that it's impossible to satirise, so completely shameless in its stupidity that even if you did there would be no point.
And whilst I loved the snark, sarcasm and satire of the comedies of my youth. A combination of wearied age and experience means that I'm very much enjoying this new inclusivity, diversity and hope.
The latest sit-com to push those qualities to the fore is Noel Fielding's Dick Turpin, which is amiable and good natured to a fault. It's border-line 18th Century Ted Lasso.
Dick wants to be a famous highway man but also wants to be good and kind. Much of the comedy comes from this incongruity. His crew want to be a team of tough criminals, but they also want to be themselves. Even more comedy from this. It's often delightful, occasionally laugh out loud funny.
There's a couple of stand out performances: Hugh Bonneville is in cracking form, and Kiri Flaherty is a delight as Little Karen.
Only Connor Swindells disappoints as Tommy Silversides and that's only because his character is so clearly inspired by Lord Flashheart that it's impossible to avoid the comparison. And comparison to Rick Mayall is never going to end well.
So it's not Blackadder. It is however, very much Maid Marion and Her Merry Men. Which either means my initial observation about the changing tone of sit-coms was wildly incorrect. Or Maid Marion... was massively ahead of its time.
Tags: blog, tv, comedy, fantasy, 2024
Author: KickingK
Date: Thursday May 30th, 2024
Dead, dead good
The third best thing I can say about Dead Boy Detectives is that if this had been made twenty years ago it would have been one of the most radical pieces of tv of the era. And yet now it’s depictions of same sex relationships feels completely normal. In fact, those relationships are possibly the most ‘normal’ thing about the show. This is a very good thing.
The second best thing I can say about Dead Boy Detectives is the way it handles real world darkness (such as domestic abuse, child abuse, male violence, bureaucratic ‘violence’, homophobia, agoraphobia etc) whilst staying in the framework of a ‘Monster of the Week’ show. It either deals with this stuff head on, via metaphor, or subtly and in the background. There’s a lot going on here, everything feels like it’s about something and the fact that it packs so much in without feeling over stuffed, ponderous or frivolous is a marvel.
And the very best thing I can say about Dead Boy Detectives is that this is just fabulous entertainment. Funny, warm, witty, imaginative, caring. Honestly, the superlatives could keep flowing for pages. The entire cast play their roles to a tee. A special mention has to go to Lukas Gage’s supurrrlative1 Cat King and it’s a wonder that there’s any scenery left at the end after Jenn Lyon has so enthusiastically chewed through it.
Magnificent.
Poster Credit Where to Watch
1. Sorry, not sorry ↩
Tags: blog, tv, comedy, 2024, essential
Author: KickingK
Date: Monday April 15th, 2024
Peak Minty
Whisper it: I think this is the funniest thing on iPlayer.
Diane Morgan has taken the essence of the 80's British sitcom, it's idiotic main characters, it's absurdly contrived plots, it's mixture of utter banality and occasional surrealism. She's jettisoned all of the set-up, all of the fluff and filler, anything that isn't generating a laugh every few seconds. And she's ended up with a fifteen minute show that's a rocket fuelled gem.
She's improved upon her influences in just about every way. Let's start with the main character, Mandy.
Each episode see's Mandy Carter trying her hand at a new job, usually at the behest of her exasperated Job Seeker's officer. And each episode it goes disastrously wrong. But not because Mandy's stupid or clumsy. It's usually because she's just bored (something we can all relate to at work) or distracted. Sometimes it's because she's actually hyper-competent and ends up taking things too far.
Because Morgan clearly loves Mandy. Mandy isn't an object of scorn or ridicule. We laugh at her, yes, but it's always with affection. Mandy is, in a very bizarre way, somebody to be admired.
Then there's the celebrity cameos. A combination of Morgan's eye for casting and the fact that each episode is so brief means that there's an avalanche of celebrities of all stripes prepared to give up a day (probably significantly less) for filming, all looking like they're having the time of their lives.
And each one is a surprise. Either because the cameo is deliciously played against type (Sonia-from-Eastenders channeling her inner Don Logan from Sexy Beast is an absolute treat) or because the setup is so misdirected and obfuscated that the punchline is glorious.
And finally there's the surrealism. The sheer pace of the jokes and inventiveness leaves no place for something as boring as reality. If it's funny: it's in. So even though the form of the jokes feel familiar, the way each joke jackknifes the plot further away from mundanity makes everything a surprise.
Just glorious, an absolute gem.
Oh Mandy, you came and you gave without taking...
Tags: blog, tv, animation, sci-fi, 2024, essential
Author: KickingK
Date: Thursday April 25th, 2024
Stranger, Wilder Things
A standard way to start a review like this would be to give an overview of the main characters and the start of the story. But the characters who find themselves crash landed on an alien planet aren’t really the protagonists and it’s not their story.
The star here is the planet itself and the ecosystem that exists on it. The story is one of billions of years of evolution and adaptation. The ecology here is wild and fantastical. Some things are seen in the context of a co-dependant ecosystem. Others are presented completely devoid of context or explanation, with no clue as to whether it’s a once-in-a-millennia moment or an every day occurrence. The planets complete indifference to the characters who are journeying through it is both terrifying and awe inspiring.
Terrifyingly, the only thing on the planet that really pays attention to them sees them as a resource to be exploited. 1
That’s not to say that there’s nothing to the character’s stories. Whilst the beauty of the alien world is incredible, it’s the beating hearts of the humans that drive us through it and allow us to experience it alongside them. Whilst the animation is the showstopper, it’s the warmth of the story that’ll get you to binge watch it in a few evenings.
Unique and essential viewing.
1. Whilst the humans only want to survive and get off the planet, the only alien that is interested in them is driven by traditional human motivations of exploitation and greed ↩
Tags: blog, tv, comedy, drama, 2024
Author: KickingK
Date: Wednesday May 08th, 2024
Totally Completely Thomasin McKenzie
This show starts with Vivian, her life a mess, contemplating suicide, finding out her grandad has died. The man who raised her from a small child when her parents died in a car accident spilts his estate equally between her and her two elder brothers. John gets his massage recliner chair. Hendrix gets his golf clubs. Vivian gets his huge cliff edge mansion.
Except it’s a set up. It turns out that the huge, vertiginous cliff face on which the house is perched is a hot spot for suicide attempts. Her grandfather’s calling was attempting to dissuade those attempting to jump. And, by passing that calling onto his granddaughter, hopes that she might save herself by saving others.
The undoubted highlight of this series is the family dynamic between the three siblings. Watching each of them bicker and argue, all of them failing to come to terms with their grief and decades of feuding is both funny and heartbreaking. This is one of the most believable onscreen families I’ve seen.
A large part of that is down to Thomasin McKenzie who is approaching Toby Jones’ levels of watchability. Like Jones she has an absolute charisma that is constantly engaging. And yet also seems so completely normal and down to earth. She has an ability to make me believe in any story she’s telling.
My only criticism1 is that there’s two story elements fighting for space in the script: the one about trying to save people from committing suicide and the one about the family coming to terms with grief. And whilst both feed into one another, it’s the family narrative that gets most of the attention. And whilst that’s arguably justified, it’s absolutely wonderful after all, it feels a little unbalanced. Lives are at stake here and yet it gets less screen time than Hendrix’s marriage.
It’s not helped by the fact that Amy, the first suicide attempt that Vivian prevents, is one of the least well drawn characters in the show.
Still, despite the fact that it never quite manages to live up its central premise, there’s enough good stuff here for me to heartily recommend it.
1. Well, apart from the music which is either slightly too kooky for it’s own good or has needle drops that sound like they were chosen and edited by the same people who work on Home and Away. ↩︎