Talk To Me
Godzilla Minus One
Reality
No One Will Save You
What We Do In The Shadows (season five)
Ghosts (season 5)
Ghosts (Christmas finale episode)
Colin From Accounts (series 1)
Boiling Point (series 1)
The Bear (season 2)
Jury Duty (season 1)
Doctor Who - The Star Beast (episode)
Doctor Who - Wild Blue Yonder (episode)
Doctor Who (The Church On Ruby Road episode)
Planet Earth III (all episodes)
Only Connect (2023 episodes)
Match Of The Day 1 and 2 (2023 episodes)
* The BBC licence fee is worth every penny for the sport, documentaries, dramas, imports, quiz shows and their archives on iPlayer. Shout outs to the latter because I finally got around to watching all 5 series of People Just Do Nothing and a buncha old 60s/70s Doctor Who stories I'd not seen before.
* I like the 2023 reboot of Neighbours but I don't love it yet. At least Micha Barton's character didn't last long because there's something very jarring about hearing a Yank accent in Neighbours.
* My best cinema experience of 2023: seeing the 4k reissue of Joe Massot's 1981 documentary about the British 2 Tone Ska scene Dance Craze on the big screen. You better believe that's the best live concert footage of The Specials you'll ever see, and it had me green with jealousy of anyone who got to see The Specials, Madness or The Beat live between 1979 and 1982.
* My worst cinema experience of 2023: paying to see The Killer on the big screen. A bargain bucket (hat) Le Samourai which had me enduring the sound of Morrissey's singing through gritted teeth. Fuk that movie, everyone who made it and anyone who luv it.
* If we're talkin' movies and TV then my fellow ex-baby blue alumni Party Sparty AKA Harry Twist Of Cain is the illest blogger.
* Special shout out to the Mo Farah episode of Big Zuu's Big Eats where Mo dropped science that pilau rice & chopped banana is the Somalian equivalent of fish & chips. A game-changer for me - no question, the combination makes my taste buds sing.
* That Ghosts finale episode hit the spot, but it's not my favourite Ghosts yuletide special or even my favourite yuletide-themed of 2023. This got me thinking about my own personal pantheon of Christmas-themed TV classics. All I want for Christmas is 12 gold teeth, a fresh candy blue jeep, a .44 heat, and these festive TV treats:
The Twilight Zone (The Night Of The Meek episode) (1960)
Porridge (No Way Out episode) (1975)
Only Fools & Horses (Thicker Than Water episode) (1983)
Blackadder's Christmas Carol (1988)
Rab C. Nesbitt (Seasonal Greet episode) (1989)
Round The Twist (Santa Claws episode) (1989)
The Simpsons (Marge Be Not Proud episode) (1995)
Seinfeld (The Strike episode) (1997)
The X-Files (How The Ghosts Stole Christmas episode) (1998)
OZ (Out o' Time episode) (1999)
Christmas With The Royle Family (1999)
The Sopranos (To Save Us All From Satan's Power episode) (2001)
Everybody Hates Chris (Everybody Hates Christmas episode) (2005)
The Wire (Final Grades episode) (2006)
Peep Show (Seasonal Beatings episode) (2010)
Wellington Paranormal (Christmas Special) (2019)
Ghosts (The Ghost Of Christmas) (2020)
The Bear (Fishes episode) (2023)
Those are the best, but what are the worst? Let's talk turkeys.
21 comments:
I'd better check out these other shows cos Wwdits and ghosts are in my contemporary gentle sitcom pantheon (alongside detectorists and rev) and I've heard a lot of great things about Colin from accounts, for one.
Never really watched Dr Who but your endorsement might sway me to give it a go.
I was out at a work do the other day with various ppl in their late 30s/early 30s who all said the license fee was a scam, much to my outrage. Sad to think that's the way things are going.
Re: the killer, I really liked it as a satire of self help spouting would be alpha/sigma types, and a sort of "what if John wick was slightly realer i.e. a horrible psychopathic serial killer not a righteous avenger".
Talk to me was fantastic! Past Lives was very good. And I finally caught Oppenheimer on blu ray and was shocked at how much I liked it.
Memento and The Prestige are the only Nolan flicks that have ever rung my bell.
I've still never seen Detectorists but only heard good things about it.
BBC licence fee is a billion times better value for money than any streaming subscription. The Planet Earth III episode with the thieving macaque monkeys bodies Netflix's entire output.
Cheers for the shout, Marty! 🍻
Godzilla Minus One is easily the biggest success story of 2023.
Fassbender really ought to have EPMD on his playlist instead of The Smiths, imo.
Vintage Doctor Who on iPlayer has been great. Revisited my faintest memories of the show with "Genesis of the Daleks" and "City of Death". Superb episodes.
City Of Death is such a crazy story 😄 Definitely one of Baker's best.
The xmas episode of Mad Men is great too.
Not seen that. I only ever caught a few random episodes of Mad Men.
I watched a lot of older movies this year that I liked but out of the 30 new ones I saw I'm not sure I'd recommend anything unreservedly. Missing, They Cloned Tyrone and Across the Spiderverse weren't bad.
Best old movies I saw for the first time this year:
The Vagrant
Chimes At Midnight
Tape
Where Has Poor Mickey Gone?
Another Round
The Sadist
Extreme Prejudice
Sparty's recommendations I need to watch:
Messiah Of Evil
Miracle Mile
Fred's recommendation I need to watch:
Goodbye Pork Pie
The Vagrant and Goodbye Pork Pie are class!
I'd never heard of The Vagrant before my m8 mentioned it.
While watching a documentary on Messiah of Evil the other day, I found out its directors were also responsible for Howard the Duck. 😁
Life is cruel sometimes.
Though I'd rather watch Howard The Duck again than ever watch Killers Of The Flower Moon, Beau Is Afraid, Opppenheimer or Napoleon.
Don't know about Oppenheimer, but Killers of the Flower Moon and Beau Is Afraid were a slog to watch due to their epic run times. I'd watch Napoleon though, largely because I trust Ridley Scott with never horrifying me with the sight of Joaquin Phoenix's balls, and for having form with turning a biopic into a comedy.
I can never decide whether I hate Leto's acting more than his music. His upcoming biopic of Karl Lagerfeld is sure to be a top 3 worst movie of this decade.
Don't know how if he's just producing it, but I'm expecting Jordan Peele's remake of The People Under the Stairs to be top 3 worst of the decade. Is nothing sacred?
Have you seen The Guardian's best films of 2023? I liked this exchange about it in the comments section.
😄
Did not know that One Movie Wonder™ was remaking TPUTS smh. The only good remake of the last decade is Jumanji: Welcome To The Jungle.
A few random thoughts:
RIP Andre Braugher and Matthew Perry.
By far my favourite films of the year were Ken Loach's "The Old Oak" and Scorsese's "Killers of the cinema-goers' buttocks." The former was my ideal blend of happy-sad. Runtime aside, it's difficult to recommend KotFM "Yeh go see this excruciating movie
about the slow yet inexorable malignancy alignance of structural racism."
My least favourite flicks of the year were Denzel Washington sitting in a chair and doing his best Steven Seagal impression for 2 hours and, Fiddy Cent and meghan Fox posing in front of worse greenscreen than Chibnall-era Doctor Who. Thankfully the MCU and DCEU have now conclusively collapsed in on themselves.
The only Doctor Who RTD reboot I enjoyed from start to end was "Wild blue yonder" (that's the one with the "my arms are too long" parasitic Doppelgängers right? I enjoyed the Toymaster episode until it descended into cakeism in the third act. They're just going to keep bringing Tennant back now every time the ratings dip. The Christmas episode was standard bright and noisy fun. The other episodes were just trite trope inversions and a bunch of buzzwords to trigger/pander-to culture war bores.
Were Guardians of The Galaxy 3 and Spiderverse 2 this year? I'm sure I really enjoyed them at the time but evidently they haven't left any lasting impressions.
The Star Beast actually did justice to its source material (my favourite Who comic story as a kid) and even the #tokeness couldn't ruin it.
First CYE thread in years and Mindbender ruined it :)
FFS. The more things change, the more they stay the same.
Shout out to Admiral.
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