It’s A Sin – Channel 4

It’s a Sin is powerful and unflinching; a drama in the true sense of the word, with that delicious sweetness and vulnerability at its heart that’s a Russell T Davies hallmark. There’s glittering ambition, buzzy energy, naïve innocence, and fates entwined. A group of friends, really a little self-made family, are pulled together by fate, proximity, poverty and circumstance. Big characters sweep up the quieter ones in their wake; waifs and strays form an unbreakable life-long bond, and we take that plunge with them, ready for the ride of their lives.

It’s 1981 and we meet adorable little Ritchie (played by Olly Alexander) from the Isle of Wight, off to seek his fortune at university amongst the bright lights of London. His new friends are the gorgeous cross-dressing Roscoe (Omari Douglas), son of a strict Nigerian Christian family who want to pray the gay away, lovely innocent buttoned-up Colin (Callum Scott Howells) from South Wales and mother-hen Jill (Lydia West). I adore her snuggly jumpers and her warm heart. They’re all ready and set to take on whatever London throws at them, and they’ve got big plans for the future. They’re full of life and dynamic energy that looks exhausting to my middle-aged eyes, excited to take all the opportunities for fun they can find, in their studies, their work and their sex lives.

But already there’s a gate crasher at this party. Interspersed in the fantastic campy pop soundtrack there’s whispers of gay men mysteriously dying in New York. And the only outcasts in the local gay bar, so welcoming to everyone else, are the doom-mongers leafleting about a “gay cancer”. As Ritchie says incredulously “How can a disease know you’re gay?”. In the early 80s there’s nothing about AIDS in the news, there are no public health campaigns, GPs are dismissive (the elderly white male doctor as the face of authority is baffled that Jill wants information to help her friends), and conspiracy theories run rife. At this point in time it doesn’t even have a name. Sounds familiar? Having been filmed well before the Covid-19 pandemic, RTD never intended the AIDS storyline to be quite so timely, but the parallels are incredible and the tragedy is acutely painful.

Continue reading “It’s A Sin – Channel 4”

‘Charlie Brooker’s Antiviral Wipe’ – BBC2

I know it’s so hard to want to engage in yet more corona-content 9 weeks into the UK’s hokey-cokey style lockdown when it’s everywhere, but a little something from Charlie Brooker back on the BBC after all this time was rightly worth getting excited about. And what else are you going to do this week… or next week, or the week after? The only people going out are those with a death wish (either their own kinky predilection, or suffering under a death-wish government that really doesn’t care either way if they die). Charlie’s Wipes were always filmed without a studio audience, looking a bit lo-fi and home-made. Charlie has always been alone on his sofa with assorted props, shouting as his TV. It’s absolutely the most relatable thing I’ve seen all year.

With the help of returning experts Philomena Cunk and Barry Shitpeas, Brooker reflected on basically everything that’s happened so far this year, all that stuff that seemed like a big deal in January – Brexit, assorted Royal Family nonsense, Philip Schofield’s big revelation – which now barely feels like a footnote in the 2020 Big Book of Doom.

Continue reading “‘Charlie Brooker’s Antiviral Wipe’ – BBC2”

Streaming Not Screaming: What to Watch in Lockdown

It’s an unprecedented global pandemic and suddenly everyone’s a critic. Everyone, and I mean truly everyone has been giving unsolicited advice. Not just on how the earth is healing and humans are the virus (fuck off Extinction Rebellion), dangerous drugs that will kill you, not save you (fuck off Donald Trump), or nonsense symptom checkers that have no basis in fact (fuck all the way off thickos on Facebook). People everywhere are desperate to tell you what you should be watching while you’re stuck at home. I mean, let’s be real, no one has ever read Stylist magazine for culture. And you don’t see me advising on nail polish trends for the season (but it’s black, it’s always black) so stay in your lane Stylist! The person you need in a time of crisis is a socially awkward anxious organiser who has been running this precise scenario in her head for years, and has concluded the only logical thing to do is get really comfy and claim control of the TV remote.

Now, finally, you have the time! Binge away! But don’t binge the news; that’s something you need to limit for your own sanity and peace of mind. And by all means if you have the great American novel in you (or any nationality will do), and you have the motivation, go for it! But don’t feel pressured to be productive. Everything is wild and your whole year has gone tits-up in just a few days. You need time to process what’s happened, and find the mental resilience to get through through the day. Dump those haters who make you feel guilty for being a bit unproductive. Do what makes you feel good. But please, for the love of God, keep any and all coronavirus poetry to yourself.

Read On…

'Bandersnatch' – Netflix

Are you the kind of person who always remembers to say thank you to Alexa? Are you careful in how you describe the great and benevolent Google when you’re within earshot of a Home Hub? Have you had a good long look at your Facebook privacy settings and do you actually understand what all that nonsense means? In which case you’re already familiar with the themes of Charlie Brooker’s Black Mirror, a huge worldwide Netflix success (as far as we can tell with a company notoriously cagey about releasing their viewing figures) poached with extreme prejudice (and bucket-loads of cash) from Channel 4 back in 2015. Technology is a crutch for the human race, a wedge that drives us apart and the idealism of “do no evil” is an absurd fairy story. We’re being corrupted and driven to the point of madness by our own beloved, addictive creation.
Bandersnatch doesn’t make my life easy. This review is particularly hard to write. Usually I’d give brief outline of the story and then get into the nitty gritty. But everyone’s story here is slightly different, especially the multiple possible endings. So let’s cover the very basics and see where we go from there.
Continue reading “'Bandersnatch' – Netflix”

'Acquitted' – Walter Presents

It’s been a long while since I started a new Scandi thriller. I’ve been struggling with some pretty serious health problems. Turns out concentrating on anything when you’re really ill is extremely bloody difficult. I guess it’s why mindless daytime tv does so well. And concentrating on high-quality drama with subtitles is completely out of the question. My top tip for sickies is fairly short YouTube content, but avoid ones that make you laugh too hard, so you don’t bust any stitches, or ones about eating nasty things, so you don’t start puking again.
But the wonderful Walter Presents peaked my interest in Norwegian drama series Acquitted. Aksel Nilsen is a very successful Kuala Lumpur based businessman who returns home to little Lifjord after 20 years away to finally confront his unhappy past. Aksel is pouty and good looking, extremely well-groomed and manicured to a shine. In his beautiful bespoke suits he looks like a Ken doll crossed with a perfume advert (pour homme, pour femme, pour Norway). He’s done alright for himself in KL, with a corner office, a beautiful successful wife and a bolshy teenage son. His colleagues all have perfect English spoken in English accents; Nicolai Cleve Broch as Aksel does very well, but it’s his swearing that lets him down. He gets a call for help from Lifjord’s major employer, drops everything and chases off to the other side of the globe to try and save the town.
Continue reading “'Acquitted' – Walter Presents”

'Horizon: Clean Eating – the Dirty Truth'

Sometimes the BBC’s flagship science programme serves up a well-timed piece of investigative journalism, and this was a doozy. Dr Giles Yeo is a geneticist studying obesity at Cambridge University, so is well placed to investigate ‘clean eating’, a recent diet craze and social media sensation. He nicely separates fact from fiction in the bizarro but strangely attractive world of green juices, spiralized vegetables and Instagram meals.
Dr Yeo is a bit of a superstar, with a calm demeanor in the face of utter nonsense and appalling pseudoscience. I would not want to play him at poker. He looks super cool driving a Mustang around America. His style reminded me of Louis Theroux; he’s very kind to nutters. He is measured and thoughtful;  willing to engage and break bread with crazy people (although of course not actual bread – it’s got the twin evils of gluten and grain in it and it will KILL YOU DEAD!!) He seems patient and doesn’t get riled easily. I’d just want to shout, which sadly doesn’t have the desired effect on idiots. He on the other hand is happy to listen and then explain with empirical and measurable data exactly why your claims are nonsense.
The first person he meets is food writer and clean-eating superstar Deliciously Ella (seriously, I’m not about to accept advice from anyone with a cutesy baby name, on any subject, ever). Her cookbooks and philosophy seem like entry-level woo. It’s largely sensible advice about diet – eat more fruit and veg, eat less processed stuff, cook from scratch more. However she then claims she cured a rare illness she was suffering from by making changes to her diet. This big change to her diet seems to have worked for her, and good for her. But what works for one person may not work for another. In fact, a radical change in diet may be significantly unhealthy if you discount your doctor’s advice and just work by what’s popular on the internet or what looks pretty on Instagram. Can you see how easy it is to slip into nonsense?
Continue reading “'Horizon: Clean Eating – the Dirty Truth'”

'Witness for the Prosecution'

After last year’s Agatha Christie adaptation And Then There Were None, hopes were set high for short story turned into two-part drama special Witness for the Prosecution, but this was quite a different beast. No mansions, no dinner guests being offed one-by-one, no detective twirling his enviable moustaches and not a normal Christie ending. Much interfering had been done, and there wasn’t much in the way of original Christie to be seen.
We’re transported to the roaring twenties and Kim Cattrall is Ms French, a wealthy widow living it up and having a fine time with her fancy man Leonard Vole much to the disgust of her loudly disapproving maid Janet. These days Emily French would be mocked as a cougar, a woman of a certain age who is attracted to younger men and has the nerve to go after them. These prejudices are certainly represented and Emily knows her actions make her unpopular and looked-down on in high society, but she doesn’t really care. Money is a pretty good insulator against what people think of you. Cattrall, famous for a strikingly similar character in Sex and the City, is essentially playing Samantha 70 years earlier.
Continue reading “'Witness for the Prosecution'”

'House of Hypochondriacs'- On the Box

Important note: this blog post was written after watching the show and I’ve left it exactly as written at the time, but please see the comment from Shaun (a participant on the show) below. He’s not happy with how his comments were edited by Channel 4, and I’m very thankful for him contacting me to set the record straight.
I am not well.
It’s a virus, or a weird skin thing, or very possibly both. I need to leave it alone and it’ll get better and I need to hurry to Clinical Photography and get pictures taken to aid diagnosis. I need to continue life as normal and I need to stop using soap, cut myself off from all contact with humans and animals and never even look at another kiwi fruit for the rest of my life.
Continue reading “'House of Hypochondriacs'- On the Box”