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When Hugh Grant asked Chloe East and Sophie Thatcher's Mormon missionaries if they'd like to come in out of the downpour they're stood shivering in I half expected them to say that they hadn't noticed it was still raining.

Jokes aside, Grant continues to enjoy the more diverse roles that are coming his way in late middle age with a remarkable performance as the villain in this edge of your seat, claustrophobic horror from writer/directors Scott Beck and Bryan Woods. It's not Grant's first horror film, let's not forget The Lair of the White Worm, but it is, alongside Paddington 2 and Wonka, definitely one of the best opportunities he's had to defy his previous romantic comedy lead typecasting. In short, more of these Hugh, and less Guy Ritchie.

A tense three-hander that must feel something like having the misfortune of going round to Ricky Gervais' house, Grant is astonishingly good, but his performance wouldn't work without the sympathy and grounding provided by Thatcher and East, two women who are ex-Mormons in real life.

I must concur with the consensus here and say that Heretic is at its best in the first hour, when it commits itself more to the psychological game play of the captor and his captives, rather than in the second act, which resorts to the more inevitable and predictable gruesome horror tropes. Sorry to say that as our characters descend into the basement, the film goes down too, and the carefully, wonderfully written screenplay of the first half loses its spark and begins to splutter. That said, I can't deny that this was a film that kept my undivided attention and, for a near two hour film, you never feel its runtime.

Also includes The Air That I Breathe by The Hollies and reminds us of another reason to hate the zionists of Radiohead.

Just rewatched Season 11. For the majority of episodes, it was the first time I'd revisited them since 2018. Here's my ranked listing;

1. Rosa, Episode 3
Not just the best Doctor Who story this series, but one of the best ever. Rosa was a proper, imioned and educational historical episode which approached its true-life subject matter (played beautifully by Vinette Robinson) with care, respect and love. It reminded us all just how remarkable this decades old series can be and proved that there was no limits to what kind of story it can tell. That it chooses to tell a story that will shape the minds of its young audiences for the better is the reason I love this show with all my heart.

2. The Woman Who Fell to Earth, Episode 1
One of the best debuts of any Doctor. Proof too that Chris Chibnall understands the ordinary working class experience more than Moffatt or RTD, because this was like Barry Hines mixed with James Cameron's The Terminator - who'd have thought that would have been such a good mix?

3. Demons of the Punjab, Episode 6
Like Rosa, this was another emotional gutpuncher of an episode. Demons of the Punjab was a deeply contemplative and dignified drama that explored an all too little known and contentious chapter of history and benefited from a timely piece of scheduling when it went out, in that it aired on Remembrance Sunday that year. Cast-wise, it reminded us that the performers who make up the TARDIS team are all solid actors and a fine ensemble, whilst the fact that the ing cast was made up of actors of colour shouldn't go unmentioned in this day and age either.

4. It Takes You Away, Episode 9
Arguably the most genuinely spooky episode of the year, It Takes You Away was quite simply brilliant. An inventive, dark and atmospheric thrill ride set in the Norwegian fjords with some cracking dialogue and the courage to go to some strange places (literally!). It felt a little bit like a New Adventure novel at times.

5. The Witchfinders, Episode 8
This was Doctor Who doing what Doctor Who does best; educating and scaring the living daylights out of kids, all at the same time. Hugely traditional, deliciously dark and undeniably witty. The Witchfinders benefited from two memorable guest stars; Siobhan Finneran and Alan Cumming as a fruity James I. Three if you include the hat Bradley Walsh had to wear. Talk about scene-stealing.

6. The Battle of Ranskoor Av Kolos, Episode 10
Some fans were quick to complain about a series of Doctor Who that contained no story arc or returning villains. But you know what, Doctor Who has got by several times before without resorting to season arcs and the return of the Daleks or the Cybermen every year, and it managed it again with series 11. Or did it? Because the real arc here was a much more rewarding character arc as this finale shows that each of our protagonists have come a long way since The Woman Who Fell To Earth (which this was essentially a sequel to), the Doctor included. And as for returning villains - the reappearance of 'Tim Shaw', one of the most gruesome and chilling antagonists of recent years, was most welcome.

7. The Ghost Monument, Episode 2
There isn't much position wise in either this or Ranskoor Av Kolos; they could easily be interchangeable. Yet, I feel really bad putting this in seventh place, because it's a cracking adventure. Believe me, it's 'lowly' placing should only really tell you just how strong this series actually was. The second episode was a traditional adventure in the Hartnell mould and allowed our new protagonists the perfect opportunity to bed in whilst working well with a small yet impressive guest cast; Shaun Dooley, the divine Susan Lynch and Art Malik. The Custard Cream moment was inspired I might add.

8. Arachnids in the UK, Episode 4
It may have suffered coming a week after Rosa, but this was a strong showing nonetheless according to m'colleague Graham Willaimson, and that's largely because it is so gloriously old-fashioned. Arachnids in the UK (great title, I wonder how many get that?) was very, very scary and very, very funny. OK, Chris Noth's Trump character may be a little bit on the nose, but it just about works. It was nice to be in Sheffield again too, and I really miss how much Chibnall understood locality. He really made Sheffield, and later Liverpool distinctive. Whereas RTS just goes for this generic London that's clearly Cardiff.

9. The Tsuranga Conundrum, Episode 5
Perhaps not the most gripping of episodes, but a first-rate base-under-siege story with some very funny character moments (Graham's belief that Call the Midwife will help him with his latest challenge - being a birthing partner to an alien male in labour!) and, in the Pting, the cutest, funniest, tiniest menace since Austin Powers' Mini-Me! The 'fans' continued their scornful pile-on, deriding the 'silly' CGI Pting and longing for the days of Tennant and RTD...seemingly forgetting the Adipose as they did. Something of a reunion for many in the cast too; Jodie starred alongside Brett Goldstein in the excellent Adult Life Skills and Lois Chimimba in Trust Me, whilst Bradley was in Law and Order:UK with Ben Bailey Smith aka Doc Brown

10. Kerblam!, Episode 7
Well there has to be a least favourite, and unfortunately it's Kerblam! If The Ghost Monument was Hartnell, Arachnids in the UK Pertwee and The Witchfinders Tom, then Kerblam! was McCoy. Now that ought to have been up my street, given that McCoy was really my Doctor and this story shared a good deal of DNA with the kind of adventures from the late '80s; a kooky premise, notable guest stars from mainstream drama and light entertainment (in this case former Corrie star Julie Hesmondhalgh and the comedian Lee Mack), and a glittery presentation that belied the storyline's dark tones and its commentary on the modern day world. But it just didn't gel with me, because the writer fundamentally misunderstood the politics of the show, and specifically those of the Cartmel era. The terrible flaw at the heart of this ep lay in the decision for the Kerblam system to murder the wholly innocent Kira (Claudia Jessie) in its attempt to make Charlie (Leo Flanagan) see the error of his ways. Now, this was bad enough, but to have the Doctor in no way onish the system, in fact she simply accepts what it was doing, is just plain wrong - and hypocritical given her big speech to Charlie was tailored around her contempt for his acts of cold blooded murder. Away from this glaring error of judgement, Kerblam is actually quite strong and operates on several levels; you can take it as a political allegory for the mood that inspired Brexit in that a lowly human worker has turned to terrorism at those he believes has 'come over here and taken all our jobs', or you can just enjoy it as a traditional Scooby Doo story - it was the janitor that did it after all! Terrible direction at times though, especially in the blocking of the cast. Those leaps from conveyer belts and fight scenes are woeful.

Four stars and a heart-shaped potato like.

Thanks be to God for the pudding bowl-haired feminist creatives!

Number 67 in my 52 Films by Women in 2025 challenge.

"We probably shouldn't have called Michael Eavis a cunt"

So says Jeremy Cunningham about the sweary rant The Levellers performed upon the Pyramid Stage in 1992, angered that Eavis had banned travellers from Glastonbury.

Oh I dunno, mate. Given that Eavis' subsequent interview in the film sees him crowing and full of disdain about your band and travellers, I'd say you were right the first time.

Second film from former Chumbawamba frontman Dunstan Bruce and I've spotted a little directorial trademark of his; it's blokes pissing on film.

I get that participation is an issue, but they really did just skip over Capaldi's era didn't they?

I'm just pleasantly surprised it wasn't just The David/Billie/RTD Hour, and that quite a significant chunk of it was given over to Jodie and Mandip. It was also nice to be reminded, via Confidential clips mostly, how much of a trio of goofballs Matt, Karen and Arthur were.

Ultimately, watching this, I felt a fondness for each era and a sense that, whatever the flaws their eras, each actor was the Doctor. I don't really see that with Ncuti. I think he had it in him, that this last season was building towards it, but we'll never know now, and I doubt I'll feel fond or nostalgic about this period in the future.

Feels like it was heavily edited to favour Billie in the wake of that divisive finale. Granted, only her and David appeared together in person here (Karen, Arthur, Jodie, Mandip, and Pearl Mackie were all webcam interviews), so it's naturally going to do that I guess, but David barely says anything of note and, unlike Billie, im not actually sure he's given a solo interview moment? As much as this is a (hastily cobbled together) retrospective of the last twenty years, it's clear it also wants us to keep looking to the future. RTD wants us to be invested, to make noise, to get it recommissioned. Unfortunately, given the clickbaity nature he's taking the show in, it's no surprise some fans don't feel that enthusiastic. It's no surprise some fans want as fresh a start as what we had in 2005.

I enjoyed the bit about costume design. It was nice to learn about Jodie's brilliant wardrobe, and Matt Smith's too. I'm glad they didn't go with some of the original ideas! Poor Matt looked embarrassed to be wearing some of those outfits, and I can't blame him. It's a shame though that they didn't make more of this feature and talk us through the others but, again, and I cannot stress this enough, Capaldi was done dirty in this.

Also, BBC3 are still just annoyingly placing random pop songs all over their documentaries? Wild. Like how can you possibly fully appreciate the Ninth Doctor's tenure without Gary Numan's Are Friends Electric? and Air's Sexy Boy?

I don't think anyone expected a sequel to The ant did they?

I've only watched it once and have pretty much forgotten all about it. It was only the sensitive representation of neurodiversity that stood out for me really, so it's rather disappointing that that aspect takes a backseat here in favour of the action and personalities, things I found less enjoyable first time around.

The ant 2 is just a generic action thriller. Fine if you like that sort of thing, but don't go out of your way to see this if it isn't.

The line dancing scene is cute.

Me: The Brink's-Mat robbery was a horrible thing

This documentary 55 mins in: By the early 90s, you could trace every single Ecstasy tablet in the growing rave scene to Brink's-Mat

Me: Hmm, maybe I've misjudged you

Rewatched series one of The Gold ahead of series two starting tomorrow, and decided to catch this documentary that I missed first time around.

Kenny Noye is murdering scum. The only minor flaw in Jack Lowden's performance of him in The Gold is that there's a small strain of likability, because he's Jack Lowden.

Outside the Blue Box is a series crossing the main Geek Show site and the Patreon looking at what the stars, writers and directors of Doctor Who get up to outside the show.

On The Geek Show today, I'm taking a look at a 1990 Casualty episode called Results written by Ben Aaronovitch and directed by Andrew Morgan, who had previously worked together on Remembrance of the Daleks in 1988.

Read it here

You can also read the first in this Casualty series, my interview with Andrew Cartmel, script editor of the McCoy era of Who and Series Five of Casualty, here

"...Whilst the commitment to highlighting the damage and vulnerability of its protagonists from the off – at a time when lesser filmmakers would be focusing squarely on the rainbows and sunshine – is refreshingly laudable, it does mean that Ian and Kira are not always sympathetic. Ultimately, the longer you spend with them, the more you begin to wonder if we’re meant to excuse their behaviour solely on the basis that they’re attractive people..."

Read my review at The Geek Show.

Number 65 in my 52 Films by Women in 2025 challenge.

Fuck the British Museum.

So many reviews seem to be focusing on what this film is not, as opposed to what this film actually is. Many argue that it's a superficial look, and that it doesn't explore the dark heart that can be found in Vegas and this kind of entertainment industry. Some argue that, without such focus, Gia Coppola is left reliant on empty, wordless vignettes of her characters standing around, looking lost. Some just argue that there's no dancing.

I disagree. The central character of Shelly (perfectly played by Pamela Anderson) is a veteran of old school Vegas show, Le Razzle Dazzle. After giving thirty odd years of her life to a spectacle she's proud to proclaim shares a lineage with Parisian Lido culture, Shelly's whole identity is wrapped up in her belief that she is somehow a descendant of a fin de siècle European cabaret. Whilst we see glimpses of how cutthroat and unappetising the industry is elsewhere - most notably in the scene in which Jodie (Kiernan Shipka) both relates and performs her audition piece for a striptease show - it would, as m'colleague Graham Williamson says be unfair of Coppola and screenwriter Kate Gersten to start piling further misery upon Shelly. For her colleagues, the closure of Le Razzle Dazzle is a bump in the road. For Shelly, it's an existential crisis.

The critics of those dialogue-free vignettes miss the point. They're not filler, they're there to showcase how the lines between reality and spectacle have become blurred. Scenes in which Shelly practices her steps on the sun-soaked parking lots of Vegas, or when the brassy former showgirl-turned-casino cocktail waitresss Annette (Jamie Lee Curtis, swinging for an Oscar nomination) stops everything to take to a secluded area of the casino floor and perform an impromptu dance to Bonnie Tyler's Total Eclipse of the Heart, speak of characters who have been doing what they do for so long that it's become a part of their daily life or a compulsion. The dance that some critics bemoan is non-existent isn't for their eyes anyway. The dance is wholly for the performers themselves.

Others have complained that The Last Showgirl is just too short. Personally, in this day and age, if a film clocks in at 90 minutes or under I feel like punching the air. It's eighty-five minite runtime is gossamer thin, and perhaps suggests the fragility of its protagonist, but it is a film that stays with you, and the overall aggregate is a quietly bruising quality.

There are some really good performances here, most notably from Shipka and Brenda Song as Shelly's younger showgirl colleagues, and Dave Bautista as the show's producer (sorry but Curtis felt too much at times, whilst Billie Lourd as Anderson's twenty-two year old daughter seemed miscast even before we factor in Lourd's real age) but The Last Showgirl is Pamela Anderson's movie, and a major reevaluation regarding her worth as a performer is required. There's a knowingness to her casting - again that blurring of fantasy and reality - as the veteran Playboy model and 90s sex symbol, the last of her kind before the internet took hold, takes the part of the eponymous "Last Showgirl", but there's a strength to her performance that shows she's capable of more than just a self-referential role. In the wake of this movie and her appearance in The Naked Gun reboot (yikes), Anderson has signed up for a couple of films - Rosebush Pruning and Place to Be - that will hopefully cement her status as a late-middle-aged actor.

Number 66 in my 52 Films by Women in 2025 challenge.

This isn't a review for Time and the Rani - I'm not putting myself through that.

So what am I doing?

Outside the Blue Box is a series crossing the main Geek Show site and the Patreon looking at what the stars, writers and directors of Doctor Who get up to outside the show. On the site now is my interview with Andrew Cartmel, who made his debut as script editor with this story.

From 1987 to 1989 Cartmel had a masterplan for Doctor Who that would take the show into the 1990s, but after it was axed in 1989, Cartmel found himself on script editing duties for the fifth series of Casualty, and he brought plenty of friends with him from Doctor Who to contribute scripts.

Casualty, specifically Casualty in the 80s and 90s, is a specialist subject for me, and some of you may know that I wrote a chapter on the show for Volume 2 of Scarred for Life, so its pretty inevitable I was going to write about the areas of a Casualty/Doctor Who crossover for Outside the Blue Box. Tomorrow, I will be taking a look at an episode of Casualty written by Remembrance of the Daleks and Battlefield's scribe Ben Aaronovitch (which was also directed by Remembrance's Andrew Morgan) and, in the future, I'll be looking at series five episodes penned by Rona Munro, Ian Briggs, and Stephen Wyatt too. But, for now, you can enjoy a very candid interview with Andrew Cartmel about his time on Casualty here.

Part music video, part road movie but a lot of it looks like a classy commercial for something.

YouTube

I mean, it's Tim Key and Laura Marling, so it's five minutes that are absolutely worth your time.

Initially, it looks like Marling has drawn the short straw, but what she has to play with is done very naturalistic style, which isn't something all musicians can manage when crossing into acting. Key once again impresses with the nuances he brings to his performances; those facial expressions that come and go like clouds ing the sun, and often quite as swiftly, must be honed to a fine art, but always feel of the moment, instinctive and, again, natural.

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M62 Presents

Fear and Loathing in Leeds.

M62 Presents

Not the biopic of John Craven I'd expected.

OK, now that silly joke is out of the way, Craven is by Elian Beaumont, the director of Together. He impresses once again here with what becomes an increasingly distressing, powerful watch. Great editing and very striking colour grading.

RIP Roland Curram 🙏🏻

An often atonal and discordant BBC Radiophonic Workshop-style score from Tristram Cary lends this salutary PIF-style thriller a suitably eerie, unnerving atmosphere. The Silent Playground is directed by Stanley Goulder, whose curious career navigated B movies like this and documentary work with the NCB film unit. Certainly his work in the latter imbibes the action here with a realist, docu-drama feel that adds to the overall urgency of the piece, which is complimented well by strong location work around South East London.

Meanwhile Curram, who ed away this week at the age of 93, may be playing (and arguably playing up) to the cinematic conventions of the stereotype of a learning disability at that time, but he nonetheless delivers a poignant and affecting performance as the hapless man whose actions inadvertently place a great many children in peril and lead to tragic consequences for some.

Previous review

I enjoyed it so much I went back to see it again and took my mum. I wasn't the only returnee, a mum and daughter I'd seen in on Monday were also back.

Back in selected cinemas right now to celebrate its 60th anniversary and released to Blu-ray on 16th June, John Schlesinger's multi-award winning Darling.

"...Schlesinger’s film depicts something of the rebellious instinct to kick out the fustiness and the hypocrisy of Macmillan’s patrician style governance which had included John Profumo’s scandalous affair with Christine Keeler. Refreshingly, it’s not a film that claims this generation has the answer, and it’s astute enough to know that those rebelling are likely to make all the same mistakes. Darling is a film that reproaches the vanities of its protagonists and, in turn, the new society in general..."

Read my review at The Geek Show

EDIT: Also, RIP to Roland Curram whose death at the age of 93 has just been announced today (4th June 2025)

"What were you on?"
"We were on BBC2"

Feel like pure shit just want her back.

After the shitshow that was the season 2 finale and the completely uninspiring situation the show is in, I'm rewatching Jodie's era. We keep hearing about Disney money, but this looked way more cinematic than anything we've had since 2023.

My God, they were babies when they made this! It's interesting to see the same beats and same gags that have gone on to appear in The Ballad of Wallis Island but that feature works better than this short because the age of time and the maturity of Basden and Key has added a greater resonance to both the characters, the narrative and its themes. Also, age has made both leads (and Key especially) more effective, nuanced performers of both the light and shade that are required for this premise.

"You're in for a treat" That was the words the guy checking the tickets uttered to each customer attending this afternoon's screening of The Ballad of Wallis Island at Liverpool's Fact Picturehouse. Usually, you'd just imagine that was some customer service hyperbole, but he was true to his word.

A very sweet and funny film (the pensioners could not get enough of Tim Key's wordplay) but also one with a profound and affecting message about how you can't recapture the past but, if you trust in its memory, you can rediscover yourself and find your future.

Nice songs too.

Previous review

Ruth Gemmell in that red and white polka dot dress is iconic cinema to me.

"That's right, yes, you're going. You've gone for ages, you've already gone, you're still here, just arrived, haven't even met you"

Farewell then to Ncuti Gatwa, this generation's Colin Baker. A good actor, though possibly a little miscast, given a two series tenure made up of some appalling storytelling.

And hello Billie Piper? Oh fuck off. Someone needs to tell RTD that it's not 2005 anymore. If Doctor Who is to have a future, it needs to be forward looking. The reason why the show has failed under his second term is that he's just content to keep playing the hits, at the cost of anything that is new and exciting or will attract new audiences.

As for the episode itself. It reminded me of Shakespeare, and by that I mean that "it is a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing". It was just noise and exposition, really, wasn't it? That and RTD's incessant desire to make this brilliant, unique character the Doctor so utterly ordinary and human. Varada Sethu was absolutely wasted in these episodes, literally shoved away in a box whilst the action went on elsewhere. Terrible wearing choice for the climax of her season. And the dialogue? Fucking hell. The "I sometimes think we're all your children" cue Murray Gold ramping up the score. Utter cringe.

One of the two best bits was Archie Panjabi, she nailed the Rani's character perfectly, even though RTD was essentially writing the Master in a frock. How could he introduce her and then do her so dirty, eaten by the most pointless iteration of Omega ever, in favour of Anita fucking Dobson? (I also did the Two Ranis joke a fortnight ago, can't believe he actually went there and did it)

The other best bit? The absolutely best moment in the whole thing? Jodie's return. God I miss her.

Sometimes, one of the most revolutionary and affirming things that you can do is connect with the land around you and stake your claim within its beautiful nature. "These hills are ours".

My second Chumbawamba adjacent documentary of the day. Boff Whalley follows me on Instagram.

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"Harry Hamer would like it to be known that he is no longer a member of the Labour Party" is one of the best bits of text ever to be tucked away in a film's end credits.

Given the full frontal imagery of Danbert Nobacon and Crass' Penny Rimbaud, there's an unexpected number of cocks to be viewed in this. An unsettling number for a Saturday morning in fact. However, the biggest cock on display here was arguably creepy Bill Maher, in an archive clip in which he acts all sneery and affronted when Alice Nutter says if people can't afford to buy Chumbawamba's music from the Virgin Megastore they should steal it. It's proof that Maher was always a wrong 'un, but he faces stiff competition (fnar, fnar) as the biggest dick in a film that also includes archive footage of equally sneery comments from David Quantick and Caitlin Moran, each offended because Danbert Nobacon tipped a bucket of ice over John Prescott at the Brits because of the government's stance towards the Liverpool dockers. the late 90s, when the MSM ruled that we couldn't be critical of our New Labour overlords? Oh well, at least back then you'd just get bad press. Now, new New Labour get the Met to arrest you for waving a flag.

An interesting and enjoyable documentary that's not just a look back at Chumbawamba, it's also a study in how you can continue to present an antagonistic and dissenting voice against the cruelty of the status quo when you're in your mid fifties.

Number 64 in my 52 Films by Women in 2025 challenge.

"Jimmeeee!" 😱

Scarred for Life classics.

A short film that is ostensibly an interview with Stoke born and bred Mike, a church custodian, overlaid with black and white stills photography of his hometown and place of work. Whilst the photography is very atmospheric, I'd have preferred this to be more than just a "slide show", especially as Mike's words were very effective - I'd like to have seen him in the mix too!

Amongst the many directors credited is one Andrew Morgan. But could it really be the TV veteran behind Doctor Who stories Time and the Rani and Remembrance of the Daleks? LB and TMDB says it is, but is it really? Seems like mistaken identity to me.

Vimeo

Number 63 in my 52 Films by Women in 2025 challenge.

Welcome back, Rolf Saxon. Capital City fans rejoice!

I get the criticisms that this is coming in for. The arguments that, in trying to tie up everything, it forgets to be something in its own right. That it's exposition heavy (poor Angela Bassett, having to deliver that monologue at the start; I bet she was glad she was off camera!), somewhat messy, and not always well paced. I get all that, but I don't care. I don't mind talky, and the stunts, when they came, were still awesome. Yes, it could have lost some of the montages. Yes, it could have been tightened up in places (the submarine sequence was so long and deathly silent that the mum and son in the next row began a conversation that lasted all the way through it), and yes, it could have been better, whatever that means. But, for a series that has lasted almost thirty years, I think it has earned its right to be self-referential, or even self-reverential. Fallout remains the peak experience, but this two-part finale has delivered some impressive goods in its own right, and Tom Cruise remains a mad bastard for doing those stunts.

I see you, Mark Gatiss. Doing your sweaty bureaucrat in a bunker Threads acting. Shout out to Tramell Tillman too, stealing his scenes as Captain Bledsoe.

If this really is the last chapter, then there goes the best franchise of our generation. I said what I said.

Addendum; I lost my dad three years ago, but I know he is always with me, and I felt him in the cinema today. Without giving away too much spoilers here, there's a moment where the words tension pneumothorax are uttered and an impromptu thoracostomy was required. Dad and I watched so many medical dramas through the years (Casualty, Cardiac Arrest, Bodies, Critical) that whenever the cry of tension pneumothorax went up, we would look to one another and go "we could do one of them now". I felt that moment again today.

Set in the fictional English town of Ripton but filmed in the Basque Country. Yup, it's Channel 5.

This edition of Forty Minutes provided the inspiration for the Star Pets French and Saunders sketch. As well as looking at the people who provide animals for ments as diverse as Dulux paint and Wimpey Homes, it also looks at the lucrative merchandise opportunities and personal appearances of retired Grand National winner Red Rum, and Blue Peter's Simon Groom, whose labrador Goldie was the series' dog.

Number 62 in my 52 Films by Women in 2025 challenge.

Liverpool Philharmonic, 6/5/2025

Hilarious as ever. I chatted to Stew after and he revealed that the A Fistful of Fun painting I did of him and which I gave him after a Basic Lee gig last year now hangs in his kitchen alongside several original spaghetti western posters.

A big congratulations to LB's Liam Willis who has directed this prize-winning short film in his second year at uni.

Flat 134 is an amusing spoof documentary purporting to be from the 1980s and looking at a group of disparate university students who dwell in the eponymous Flat 134. I haven't spoken to Liam, but I suspect his comedic influences include things like Look Around You and Leo Leigh's Rewind Britain, with maybe a dash of The Breakfast Club too. It's an ambitious move, trying to recreate a period from forty years ago on a student budget and, somewhat inevitably, it's not wholly successful but, in of character, including its yuppie student Fred (Donny Russell), and its VT aesthetic, it does effectively place itself in the decade, whils its humour adheres to its spoof origins and those likely faux 80s documentary influences rather well. Likeable performances from the cast too, especially Matt Pascall and Nyssa Wilkins.

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I'm surprised at the reaction that this has got about it not being historically accurate. For me, the writing was on the wall right from the start with Elle Fanning as Not Suze Rotolo.

I'm not really going to dwell on the poetic licence used here, except to say that Eliza Carthy's Instagram post regarding watching it on a plane to Atlanta with her dad, Martin Carthy, is very funny. "Dad is also loving the film, despite knowing the timeline is all bollocks. It was weird watching Bob sing Girl From the North Country knowing that dad hadn't taught Scarborough Fair to him yet...but Dad is just enjoying the ride" Eliza also goes on to say that "Ed Norton as Pete Seeger is just thrilling" and, when asked in the comments about who should have played Martin if he had appeared in the film, she answers "Tilda Swinton! All day long"

Unfortunately, I wish that I, like Martin Carthy, could have enjoyed the ride. I found A Complete Unknown a very attractive looking, impressive production, but one that was fundamentally flawed. The problem is that, in identifying that Dylan is, as the title alludes, an eternal enigma, there's a blank space at the core of James Mangold's film, and he's not the kind of filmmaker who can make that work; Todd Haynes could do it with the innovative and experimental I'm Not There, but Mangold is a much more mainstream, by the numbers, time capsule-favouring biopic director, as we saw with Walk the Line twenty years ago.

The key to how Mangold interprets Dylan appears in a sequence depicting his first date with Not Suze Rotolo. The young couple go to see the Bette Davis classic Now Voyager and, when Not Suze, talks of how Davis' character "found herself", Dylan is quick to correct her, arguing "She didn’t find herself. She just made herself into something different… what she wanted to be in that moment" For Mangold, Dylan is an inveterate reinvention, casting aside his mid-century Midwestern Jewish upbringing to construct a fiction more in keeping with the dustbowl troubadours and carny entertainers of the Great Depression, and when he's had his fill of that, he moves on to something else, leaving his peers and contemporaries, and especially his mentor, Pete Seeger, feeling betrayed.

What's interesting is that Mangold genuinely seems to want to explore the internal conflict that derives from this desire to continuously adapt as much as the external conflict, but he muffs it at each turn. Despite Dylan's relentless, near ruthless drive to reinvent himself, he is shown to pine for some of the things that he has inevitably left behind, specifically his broken romantic relationships. Unfortunately, none of these attempts at reunion ever works for the audience because the initial romance has already felt utterly flat thanks to the poor characterisation of both Not Suze Rotolo and Joan Baez. Ultimately, these strong young women are depicted as little more than envious, scorned lovers and there's little that Elle Fanning or Monica Barbaro can do to add any colour to such poor characterisation, though they do try. It's almost staggering to think that this film comes from the same director of Walk the Line which secured Reese Witherspoon an Oscar for her vibrant and impressive performance of a well-rounded June Carter Cash.

This desire to depict the engimatic legend impairs the central performance from Timothée Chalamet too as, with little to actually hang his hat on, it becomes an impression - a good one, for sure, but little else. Small wonder that Ed Norton got so many plaudits for his portrayal of Seeger, as it's with his characterisation that the film comes alive. To be honest, I'd rather have watched Norton star in his biopic.

Tell me something that's sweeter than octogenarian married couple, Nigel Kneale and Judith Kerr, sitting in their home and playing with old Quatermass props. I'll wait...

Previous review

Second watch, and it's still so fascinating and open to interpretation. This time around I paid particular attention to the enigma that is Curtley. Yes, he ignores Chantelle's question about his mum, but I noticed that he has spoken to Chantelle on the phone earlier, in a scene we do not see, in which she is checking if Pansy is going to go to the cemetery. Now, whilst we're not privy to that conversation, the fact that it happens implies they have a healthy enough relationship usually. It's telling that it's only when Pansy is in the room that Curtley clams up. It's not just around Chantelle either; he's perfectly affable and cheery in his greeting of Kayla in the street when he and Moses meet her from her jog, but he's monosyllabic with her, as he is with the rest of the family, later on. As for the flower scene, does he throw them out because he knows instinctively that Pansy will not tolerate them in the long run?

Between Terry Nation's classic post-apocalyptic drama series Survivors ending in 1977 and its brief reboot in 2008 there was The Last Train.

Made by Granada in 1999 and created by Matthew Graham, the man who would go on to create Life on Mars and Ashes to Ashes but was then hot from writing episodes of 90s landmark drama series This Life, The Last Train may wear its Survivors influence proudly, but it did in fact go on to influence much of the eventual reboot. For example, the character of the streetwise, smooth-talking criminal Mick, played memorably here by Treva Etienne, would go on to shape the 2008 series reimagining of Tom Price, transformed from Talfryn Thomas' Welsh poacher in the original to Max Beesley's - you've guessed it - streetwise and smooth-talking criminal. Likewise, the reboot's suggestion that a shadowy government scientific unit had been preserved in the aftermath of the apocalypse did not feature in Nation's original series, but it does derive from the organisation known as Ark that The Last Train's hapless band of survivors are forever searching for in the aftermath of an asteroid strike that has wiped out all but a small percentage of thw world's population.

Unfortunately, The Last Train arrived too early in the televisual landscape. Following the demise of dramas like Blake's Seven and Doctor Who in the 80s, science fiction and fantasy was considered the kiss of death to British TV in the 90s, with the media looking disdainfully upon those with any interest in the genre as anoraks. As a result, The Last Train only lasted for one series of six episodes. Like other series such as Bugs, Ultraviolet, Invasion: Earth, The Crime Traveller, The Uninvited, and Randall and Hopkirk: Deceased, it was an ambitious outlier that burned brightly but quickly in the wilderness of 90s British TV. Viewed now of course, when shows like The Last of Us and The Walking Dead are huge, The Last Train has much to offer. Granted, the special effects are ropey - early CGI made by Granada's in-house VFX team g2 at the very end of the last century is obviously not going to stand up to today's audiences - but the premise remains an intriguing and popular one to explore, and the cast are brilliant; Nicola Walker, James Hazeldine, Christopher Fulford, Zoe Telford, Steve Huison, This Life's Amita Dhiri, Janet Dale, Caroline Carver, the young Sacha Dhawan (now The Master in Doctor Who) and Dinita Gohil, as well as the aforementioned Etienne, all deliver strong and compelling performances that bring to life Graham's well written characters. It's actually a real shame that we never got to saw what happened to our survivors. This is the first time I've watched it since it went out and, dodgy effects aside, it stands up really well.

I know there's someone on here who includes warning for vegans in her reviews...all I can say is that she'd have a fit if she sat through episode three. If anyone does want to watch it though, someone has kindly ed it in full to YouTube.

Also on Youtube, at 35 mins and 8 seconds in; the Lee and Herring/Last Train crossover that I still think about a lot.

Featuring Clifford Barry of Knightmare (Lissard!) and Game of Thrones fame, who my girlfriend danced with at his daughter's wedding last year.

Victory to the Mimers feels like the kind of idea that might have been handled by The Comic Strip Presents - high praise indeed. It takes inspiration from the miners' strike, and its subsequent big screen dramatisation such as Brassed Off and Billy Elliott, and puts a satirical spin on it by having the proud, beaten but unbowed protagonists working as mime artistes - mimers - rather than miners.

Written by Steve Furst (who also stars) and director James Nicholas Green, Victory to the Mimers could have just been a one note gag, a play on words. Instead it seeks to draw parallels with what happened to the working class in Thatcher's Britain and what is happening today; successfully arguing that funding cuts to the arts and the devaluing of culture is once again robbing the working class of opportunity.

YouTube

"...Given its place in post-war Italian cinema and its emphatically working-class subject matter, you’d be forgiven for thinking The Railroad Man is an example of neorealism. While it’s true that – in mining the poignant relationship between a working-class father and his young son in extremis – the film owes a debt to De Sica’s 1948 neorealist classic Bicycle Thieves, Germi’s style here is altogether more conventionally melodramatic. The Railroad Man unashamedly tugs at the audience’s heartstrings, much like classic Hollywood (which presumably explains its international success upon release). Though I normally find such emotional manipulation too on-the-nose, I have to confess Germi’s film moved me..."

Read my review at The Geek Show

After a little break I return to The Geek Show today with a look at Radiance's Blu-ray release of Claude Faraldo’s notorious 1973 French satire, Themroc, a film that gained its notoriety here in the UK on of it being the first film broadcast in Channel 4’s Red Triangle season on 19th September 1986.

"...The fact that Faraldo hailed from a proletarian background, in which he claimed never to have read a book until his mid twenties, makes Themroc a rather rare, and therefore important, political film, in that it is refreshingly free from the middle-class, beard-stroking philosophising and abstract intellectualism of someone like Godard..."

Read my review at The Geek Show

Best fight I've seen on a tram since coming back from the Trafford Centre twenty odd years ago.

In all seriousness, that entire tram punch up/car chase/demolition derby sequence is brilliant, and a testament to how these films have built upon their incredible stunts in each instalment. And then they go and top it with as entertaining a climactic chase sequence as you're likely to see. The Lost Bullet films have been an incredibly enjoyable action franchise, and it's a shame that this is being billed, as the title implies, as the last one; though they have left the door open at least, and there's definitely more mileage in Lino and Julia's journey.

Justice for Álvaro though. Gutted about that.

Tony Blair jumpscare

I finally got round to watching this today, the day after London came to a standstill as 500,000 marchers took to the streets to commemorate the Nabka and demand an end to the genocide and apartheid of Palestine, a huge march which was, once again, not reported at all by the BBC. The day after Israel came second at the Eurovision Song Contest thanks, if many zionists issions on Twitter are to be believed, by a co-ordinated vote rigging scheme, whilst they're now pointing to the result (that they're itting they personally bought) as proof that Europe stands with them? Ooookaaay.

It's insane to live in this world right now. A world in which genocide is being ignored and complicit Western leaders overlook the truth to point to some "right to defend" argument that has long since lost any meaning, as the reality of what Israel wants to do has become increasingly clear.

And through it all I've been donating to MAP and to several families trapped in Gaza, and trying to raise funds for one family in particular via a Go Fund Me a friend set up. Please, if you like what I write on here, then please consider donating whatever you can afford here rather than simply hitting the like button at the bottom of this review. We can make a difference.

There should be an option to select a broken heart, rather than a heart, to like this film on here.

Number 61 in my 52 Films by Women in 2025 challenge.

Billy Drago, you evil son of a bitch.

As a kid in the 80s, I loved gangster films. I was brought up on Jimmy Cagney and Humphrey Bogart, and I developed a fascination for Al Capone, watching Corman's St Valentine's Day Massacre and Rod Steiger-starring biopic, Al Capone, all before I was ten. One of the other things I loved was the old 50s TV series The Untouchables, recording the repeats that Granada showed in the small hours - repeats that, now I come to think of it, were probably broadcast in the run up to this film's release, as a means of capitalising on it. As a result, once this actually came out, it was quickly rented from the video store.

Robbie Coltrane hated this. In Byrne on Byrne he explains to the artist and writer John Byrne that he'd just seen it and was disappointed to see that it wasn't like the pulpy 50s series and was "more like a Western". Certainly, as Steve G said in 2013, the film owes a debt to Peckinpah in its Canadian border sequence, and it's probably no coincidence that Charles Martin Smith was cast in this, given his role in several Westerns, including Peckinpah's Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid. I can't recall if I felt, as a kid, a similar disappointment that this wasn't like the TV series. I the opening scene, the murder of that little girl, and thinking this was more grown up and modern than it, and I probably preferred the TV series on the whole, but ultimately, I think this soon ed the ranks of films I loved about a topic that really interested me.

Of course, returning over the years to something you enjoyed as a kid can often lead to a mixed reception. I'm not sure if I like the politics or attitudes behind this film, as well summarised by Fitzmartin, and of course it's wildly inaccurate, but I still really appreciate a rattling good yarn with a directorial flourish.

Previous review.

Rewatch ahead of seeing Last Bullet, and again I'm bumping this up to 4. Do you know what I love about these movies? They have proper stunts. None of that CGI bollocks. I tried to watch that new Tom Hardy film on Netflix earlier this week and turned off after quarter of an hour because its big opening action sequence lookee more like scenes from a computer game.

Have you ever felt like crying over a car? 😢

Rewatch in preparation for the third in the trilogy, Last Bullet.

I don't know what I was on about back in 2023 about a messy start? In fact, I'm bumping this up from 3.5 to 4.

In September 1950, an inrush of liquid peat and moss engulfed Knockshinnoch Castle Colliery in Ayrshire, trapping one hundred and thirty five miners who were working underground at that time. The days-long rescue operation that followed was so unprecedented as to be considered one of the greatest rescues to ever be mounted on any coalfield in the length and breadth of the UK. To navigate the survivors to safety, the men of the Mines Rescue Service painstakingly formed a human chain across 800 metres of underground roadway, using 87 sets of Siebe Gorman Salvus oxygen rebreathers that had been loaned from local fire stations to ward off the deadly fumes. Though thirteen men ultimately lost their lives to this pit disaster, 116 men were succesfully brought back to the surface.

This triumph was quickly adapted for the big screen by the state-funded production company Group 3. Writers Montagu Slater and Lindsay Galloway set about dramatising the disaster, initially under the title What God Forgot, devising the fictional Balloch Moss Pit as the scene of the disaster, and changing a few other details, presumably for fear of being accused of creating entertainment from a the still recent tragedy; Knockshinnoch having only just happened two years previously. The father of British and Canadian documentary film John Grierson served as the film's producer, whilst directorial duties went to Philip Leaoock. The cast features several actors such as Andrew Keir and Fulton Mackay, performers who would go on to become familiar faces but were, at this early stage in their careers, of the Glasgow Citizens Theatre. This unknown status, combined with ther naturalism, lent the film a degree of documentary-like authenticity that the filmmakers - who had cut their teeth working in documentaries, specifically during WWII, were quick to mine (pun not intended), whilst the film's sole concession to a star name, John Gregson, was arguably there to attract audiences at the box office in the first place.

The Brave Don't Cry is a sensitively handled story of resilience in the face of disaster. Mixing neo-realism and documentary stylings (famously, the film has no musical score), it received its premiere at the Edinburgh Film Festival of 1952, where it was presented to an audience of invited miners who gave it their seal of approval, successfully proving those doubters who had concerns that a film was to be made from such a recent tragedy wrong.

A timely rewatch ahead of diving into Toby Hadoke's long awaited book, The Quatermass Experiment: The Making of TV's First Sci-Fi Classic.

As everyone inevitably says, it sucks that the bulk of this serial is missing presumed wiped from the archives, especially as what remains stands up remarkably well. It's easy to see why audiences in 1953 were hooked.

John Ackroyd
Edmund Anderton
Alexander Baines
Herbert Bamford
Christopher Bulmer
Jack Coxon
Leo Coxon
David Crabtree
Harry Crabtree
Derek Dempsey
Muriel Firth
Samuel Firth
Andrew Fletcher
Edmund Fletcher
John Fletcher
Peter Fletcher
Nellie Foster
Felix Greenwood
Peter Greenwood
Rupert Greenwood
Norman Hall
Peter Halliday
Arthur Hartley
Edith Hindle
Fred Hindle
Moira Hodgson
Eric Hodgson
John Hughes
John Hutton
Walter Kerr
Peter Lovell
Jack Ludlum
Gordon Mherson
Irene Mherson
Roy Mason
Frederick Middleton
Harold Mitchell
Elizabeth Muhl
Ernest Normington
Gerald Ormondroyd
Richard Ormondroyd
Robert Ormondroyd
Sylvia Pollard
Herbert Price
Amanda Roberts
Jayne Sampson
William Stacey
Craig Stockman
Jayne Stockman
Trevor Stockman
Howard Turner
Sarah Turner
Simon Ward
Robert Wedgeworth
William West
Adrian Wright

RIP 🙏🏻

M62 Presents

On the surface it seems like a story about a pair of down and outs, but Paul Chambers film reveals itself to be more via some intriguing experimentalism.

I managed 142 films directed by women in 2024. Let's see what 2025 brings...

• Bulldozer

  Dir Stella Scott

• Eight Hours Don’t Make a Day: A Series Becomes a Family Reunion

  Dir Juliane Lorenz

• Fassbinder

  Dir Annekatrin Hendel

• Choke

  Dir Helen Lyons Curran

• Their Finest

  Dir Lone Scherfig

• Mikey and Nicky
• Playing Nice

  Dir Kate Hewitt

• The Split: Barcelona

  Dir Giulia Gandini

• Strike! The Women Who Fought Back

  Dir Jess Howe

• Men Buy Sex

  Dir Alice Russell

...plus 57 more. View the full list on Letterboxd.

Outside the Blue Box is a series crossing the main Geek Show site and the Patreon looking at what the stars, writers and directors of Doctor Who get up to outside the show. Here is a list of my contributions to the series. Check notes for summary and links to the articles.

• The Future

  Robert Holmes
  BBC Schools series Scene

  Patreon exclusive

• Doctor Who: Time and the Rani

  Andrew Cartmel
  Casualty series five

  thegeekshow.co.uk/outside-the-blue-box-1990-andrew-cartmel/

• Doctor Who: Remembrance of the Daleks

  Ben Aaronovitch
  Andrew Morgan
  Casualty Series 5 episode 2: Results

  thegeekshow.co.uk/casualty-results-by-ben-aaronovitch-1990/

Since November 2016 I've been writing reviews for The Geek Show

These are the films I have reviewed for that excellent site. You can find the links to each review in read notes and on my profile at the site.

• Kes

  thegeekshow.co.uk/kes-masters-of-cinema-blu-ray-review/

• Napoleon

  thegeekshow.co.uk/napoleon-1927-bfi-blu-ray-review/

• I Am Not a Serial Killer

  thegeekshow.co.uk/i-am-not-a-serial-killer-2016-review/

• Someday My Prince Will Come

  thegeekshow.co.uk/two-films-by-mark-isaacs-dvd-review/

• Philip and His Seven Wives

  thegeekshow.co.uk/two-films-by-mark-isaacs-dvd-review/

• The Unknown Girl

  thegeekshow.co.uk/the-unknown-girl-2016-dvd-review/

• The Olive Tree

  thegeekshow.co.uk/the-olive-tree-2016-blu-ray-review/

• The Wedding Plan

  thegeekshow.co.uk/through-the-wall-2017-dvd-review/

• Who's That Knocking at My Door

  thegeekshow.co.uk/whos-that-knocking-at-my-door-1968-dvd-review/

• Alice Doesn't Live Here Anymore

  thegeekshow.co.uk/alice-doesnt-live-here-anymore-1974-dvd-review/

...plus 236 more. View the full list on Letterboxd.

M62 Presents are a central hub for nothern indie filmmaking talent that can be found on YouTube since 2023.

This list is a collection of the films I've seen and reviewed available from M62, to be added to and amended as I go.

• Trucker's Atlas
• Collection Only
• Sweet Street
• D'Ya Know What I Mean
• Chapel Of Rest
• HELLO
• Once a Clown
• Our Eddy - A Liverpool Feature Film
• Jumpers for Goalposts
• Needs Must

...plus 75 more. View the full list on Letterboxd.

Films set in and around Liverpool, Merseyside and The Wirral.

If I've missed any, suggestions are welcome!

• The Long Day Closes
• Distant Voices, Still Lives
• Children
• Madonna and Child
• Death and Transfiguration
• Of Time and the City
• The Black Stuff
• Boys from the Blackstuff
• The Muscle Market
• No Surrender

...plus 211 more. View the full list on Letterboxd.

These lists - compiling all the films you can recall having watched at the cinema - seem to be quite popular on here just now, so I thought I'd have a crack at it myself.

Unfortunately, I have a terrible memory when it comes to recalling just what I have seen at the cinema, so this is by no means an exhaustive, in depth, or utterly true record. I'm sure there are gaps and some of them will probably come to me at some stage.

I note there's quite a few gaps in the 90s - this is because my local cinema, the Cannon in St Helens, shut down then and the nearest one from there was Warrington or Wigan. We didn't get another hometown cinema (Cineworld) until the early 00s, which explains why I seem to have watched quite a bit from that period.

Then in the mid 00s I lived in Liverpool for a bit with an ex, and the local cinema was always full of tossers on their phones so I really developed an aversion to going to the cinema then - especially when you consider my anxiety issues anyway, which means sometimes being out in public isn't always great for me.

I use St Helens Cineworld these days, or FACT in Liverpool for the films St Helens never seem to bother with (anything that isn't mainstream Hollywood basically) Sometimes the Odeon at Liverpool One.

Couple of notes re this list: It attempts to be chronological. Yes, Boys in Blue really was my first cinematic experience. I still firmly recall watching Bambi, and telling my friends I wouldn't be back until night time, even though it was an afternoon showing. This is because when I had watched ET, it was in the evening, and I presumed all cinema ended at night.

The Wheelies in Return to Oz scared the shit out of me

I have no idea why I watched Little Shop of Horrors. I just banged on and on about wanting to and then got freaked out! Ditto Joe Vs the Volcano, though less freaked out, more bored.

In 1989 me and my mum went to see Oliver and Co, but for some reason it wasn't on and we were only informed of that after sitting waiting in the screen, on our own, for some time. They offered us Honey I Shrunk The Kids instead. On the way home, we found out my cousin had fractured his skull that day.

Films like Robin Hood, Indy, Star Trek and Dick Tracy were the big summer blockbusters of my childhood and mum would take me and the other kids in the street to go and see these. I must have seen Robin Hood 4 or 5 times at the cinema alone.

We went to see Cool Runnings and came back to find John Candy, its star, had died.

Four Weddings remains really key to me. It was kind of the first 'adult' film I had seen at the cinema.

I had to see Goldeneye twice at the cinema, leaving halfway through on the first watch because I felt really sick. My first panic attack I think.

Shaun of the Dead was a sort of date movie with the ex I subsequently lived in Liverpool with. Our second date movie was the tiresome Troy. She wanked me off halfway through it to stave off our mutual boredom.

Dad's Army is the only film I have genuinely wanted to walk out on. And considering some of the shite I've seen....

• The Boys in Blue
• E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial
• Bambi
• Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs
• Cinderella
• The Sword in the Stone
• Star Wars
• The Empire Strikes Back
• Return of the Jedi
• The Care Bears Movie

...plus 152 more. View the full list on Letterboxd.

List shamelessly cloned from Chris Browning because, of all the lists I've come across on LB, this is the one I wished I'd have thought of. You can tell I'm enamoured on of all the suggestions I've given him over the last couple of years.

• Radio On
• O Lucky Man!
• Soft Top Hard Shoulder
• Heartlands
• Butterfly Kiss
• Sightseers
• Robinson in Space
• Gallivant
• Gallivant (The Pilot)
• By Our Selves

...plus 78 more. View the full list on Letterboxd.

Films that deal with the strike, reference it, use it as a backdrop and/or deal with its legacy.

Justice for Orgreave : otjc.org.uk

• Pride
• Still the Enemy Within
• Strike: An Uncivil War
• Miners' Strike: A Frontline Story
• Miners' Strike 1984: The Battle for Britain
• Striking with Pride: United at the Coalface
• Strike! The Village That Fought Back
• Strike! The Women Who Fought Back
• Children of the Strike
• Brassed Off

...plus 76 more. View the full list on Letterboxd.

A list of films that are directly or indirectly about the Troubles - the term used to describe the conflict in Northern Ireland from the late 60s through to the Good Friday Agreement of the late 90s - and the repercussions that are still felt to this day.

See also The Irish Question for films on the subject of the fight for Irish independence pre-1969.

• Elephant
• In the Name of the Father
• Bloody Sunday
• Sunday
• Harry's Game
• Hidden Agenda
• Hunger
• The Crying Game
• Four Days in July
• Shadow Dancer

...plus 305 more. View the full list on Letterboxd.

According to my fellow LB'ers, these are my best reviews. In short, these reviews are the ones I have the most votes for from the LB community. See notes for a sample of the review, and the current rating afforded it.

What are your most popular reviews? Why not start a list, tagging it popular reviews.

*Updated: 28th May 2025 - Control jumps from 10th place to 7th, whilst new arrival Louis Theroux: The Settlers jumps into the top ten, arriving in 9th place and moving Peterloo down to 10th. They Shoot Horses, Don't They? finally leaves the top ten after being there for years.

1. Baby Reindeer

   "Baby Reindeer is a drama about cyclical trauma, abuse and an unhealthy co-dependancy. There are no heroes and villains here. Neither Gunning or Gadd approach their roles with such black and white thinking and, as such, their incredible performances are committed to just putting two damaged people on screen"

   Likes: 1,360

2. I, Daniel Blake

   "The point I'm trying to make, the point I think Ken Loach's film is trying to make, is that We Are All Daniel Blake. We are all just a wage packet, a bout of ill health or a stroke of misfortune away from what Dave Johns' everyman finds himself struggling with here"

   Likes: 1,187

3. Elephant

   "A brutal uncompromising look at Sectarian assassination that dramatises genuine events and forces you to consider the Troubles in a way that acres of news coverage cannot. Just what is your gut reaction at the end of it? Does the endless cadence of footfall and gunfire go some way to desensitise you or does it make you realise this has to stop"

   Likes: 956

4. Meantime

   "If you're looking to see what life in Britain in the 1980s was like, then Meantime is as good a place to start as any"

   Likes: 553

5. Jubilee

   "Ultimately Jubilee is the best film about punk because it dared to call out the hypocrisy at the heart of punk. It's a damning indictment, not just of the establishment they railed against, but of the movement itself. It wasn't the film the punks wanted, it wasn't their A Clockwork Orange, but the protagonists should know they don't get to tell the story or write their history. In Jubilee, Jarman managed to capture them, and their inevitable failings, warts and all"

   Likes: 512

6. Control

   "I am a believer in Joy Division. Fuckin' hallelujah!"

   Likes: 375

7. Land and Freedom

   "The sobering truth that factionalism is tragically endemic in the left. The right only have to preserve and protect the status quo, the left have to beat them and plot a course for a new world"

   Likes: 366

8. Kes

   "Now forty five years old the themes, message and approach Kes has has barely dated. It remains a grubbily realistic poetic evocation of northern working class life and tells us to grab our respite and dreams where we can and how we can. I imagine it still has just as much to say to a young boy or girl as it did when I saw it at that age and when the generation of children in the early 70s saw it too"

   Likes: 362

9. Louis Theroux: The Settlers

   "I guess he'd already used the title Louis and the Nazis."

   Likes: 311

10. Peterloo

    "There's a moment where Maxine Peake's matriarch Nellie calculates that her youngest daughter will be eighty-five in the year 1900 and hopes that the world will be a better, fairer place for her by then. The sad truth is we're still waiting for that equal society"

    Likes: 308

My rankings, should you choose to accept them...

1. Mission: Impossible – Fallout
2. Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning
3. Mission: Impossible – Rogue Nation
4. Mission: Impossible – The Final Reckoning
5. Mission: Impossible – Ghost Protocol
6. Mission: Impossible
7. Mission: Impossible III
8. Mission: Impossible II

Films set in, filmed in or just simply concerning UK New Towns. See notes for exactly where.

Now in alphabetical order! With miscellaneous at the end.

Have I missed any? I'm open to suggestions. The only criteria is that the film must be filmed in and/or set in a new town at the time the location was designated a new town (ie, there's some vintage shorts on Runcorn and Warrington but they all date from before the mid 60s, when new town status was given) I'm also not including any music concert films (there's a few shot in Milton Keynes)

• New Town Utopia

  Basildon

• New Town Original

  Basildon

• Community

  Basildon (the Five Links Estate stands in for the fictional Drayman Estate)

• The Red Ball

  Basildon

• I Start Counting

  Bracknell (fictional new town of Dalstead)

• The Offence

  Bracknell

• The Big Job

  Bracknell (fictional new town of Oldfield)

• Buddy's Song

  Bracknell

• Toxic Town: The Corby Poisonings

  Corby

• Toxic Town

  Corby
  Though much of it was filmed in the North West, including my hometown, St Helens

...plus 60 more. View the full list on Letterboxd.

40 Minutes was a BBC TV documentary strand broadcast on BBC Two for fourteen years between 1981 and 1994. Running for 13 seasons, the strand notched up a staggering 322 films in that time.

As a kid growing up in the 80s and 90s, I loved 40 Minutes. As a series, 40 Minutes was concerned with representing "the way we live now", it's how each film was subtitled each week in the Radio Times. Using a mainly fly-on-the-wall approach it recorded experiences and situations from all walks of life in the contemporary world. Its topics included communities and families, illness and disabilities, schools and occupations, celebrities and showbusiness, cults and sub-sects, and hobbies and leisure activities, to name but a few. There were even films devoted to the loo and the humble cup of tea. Famously, the series gave documentary filmmakers Molly Dineen and Adam Curtis their big breaks.

This chronological list comprises of the 40 Minutes films that can be found here on Letterboxd. There was only a handful initially (primarily the Molly Dineen ones which are available on DVD and the BFI player), but I have added more myself, those which I can find available to watch online. Some of these can be found on the BBC iPlayer (as of Oct 2025, several had been repeated on BBC4), some on Vimeo, some on the BFI player, and some on YouTube. I've included viewing links where possible.

I have literally typed all 322 titles into YouTube in an attempt to find them and subsequently create entries for them. Inevitably however, something may be missed. If you know of any 40 Minutes docs that are available to watch then please comment with the link below and I'll try and add them to the database and the list.

• Rough Justice

  vimeo.com/471028838

  BBC iPlayer as of Oct 2025

• Lol: A Bona Queen of Fabularity

  youtu.be/u-iHfJTLgtg?si=-JdaGI20MzcG7_i6

• Rocky Circus

  youtu.be/my4CZzaIKng?si=2GHgAXfSIIP8l9ge

• Alison

  youtu.be/NiAwt5-TBAc?si=0Ef_weEDlA11SXZo

• Rabbits Don't Cry

  youtu.be/zlpCxwJKfuk?si=GQ342GQxuU9t-lf6

• Children's Parties

  www.youtube.com/watch?v=eeaAwLOTMAU

• Hunt Saboteurs

  youtu.be/4MybkbbYufY?si=JKMPN7s5-eSq5jrV

• Skinheads

  youtu.be/s73M1lYeLtA?si=25XH6Z26tsxf41F6

• Miners

  youtu.be/wkYuCX_cJf0?si=lnZdLlE5Kxlz1V

• Mister Perks

  youtu.be/xDydHrETFeM?si=2MkMp9Q2ip-qiioR

...plus 73 more. View the full list on Letterboxd.

Til the day I die *nods*

Unions, the demands for better, safer working conditions, rights and/or a better wage, industrial action and militancy on film.

• Comrades
• Leeds United!
• Made in Dagenham
• Blue Collar
• Norma Rae
• Bread and Roses
• Matewan
• Pride
• The Rank and File
• Salt of the Earth

...plus 265 more. View the full list on Letterboxd.

Blackpool, Vegas of the North. The great British seaside resort. Blackpool rock, the illuminations, the Pleasure Beach, the Big One, the pier, the zoo, the Winter Gardens, the ballroom and of course the Blackpool Tower. Destination of many a summer holiday from my childhood, a place of fond memories here is a list of films made or set in Blackpool, either as the primary location or just a place to visit for a few scenes.

Whilst documentaries, travelogues and newsreels are included, I have, despite my initial temptation, decided not to put any stand up comedy or music concerts filmed in Blackpool venues on the list, so (for example) no Stone Roses or Peter Kay live.

If I've missed any, let me know!

(Cloned from Paul D's more wide-ranging British Seaside Films list)

• Bhaji on the Beach
• Funny Bones
• Bob's Weekend
• Away
• Eaten by Lions
• Blackpool
• Viva Blackpool
• Funland
• Frozen
• The Entertainer

...plus 47 more. View the full list on Letterboxd.

The Red Triangle season was the informal title for the then relatively new broadcaster Channel 4's groundbreaking season of provocative and avant-garde X or 18 rated films shown after midnight and for the first time.

The season got its name from the 'warning' sign of a red triangle with a white centre and the words "Special Discretion Required" that both proceeded each broadcast and was displayed in the top left hand corner of the screen throughout the film.

The content of each of the ten films shown in the season transcended that which had previously been permitted by the UK's TV censors. As such, controversy dogged the season even before it began. Mary Whitehouse of the National Viewers and Listeners Association campaigned against the broadcast of films she deemed to be 'pornographic', lobbying parliament and the IBA to call for the season to be cancelled as "It's not good enough to slap on a warning symbol and then indulge in sadistic madness of this kind." The press also ed the fight, using the scaremongering tactic that Channel 4 were broadcasting 'video nasties'. Such was the public preoccupation with the season that it is even referenced in Neil Jordan's 1986 film Mona Lisa; when Bob Hoskins' character is watching a porno on TV, Robbie Coltrane remarks "Channel 4, is it?"

This outcry did little to dissuade the viewing public however, as some two million+ tuned in for the first film in the season, the 1973 French black comedy Themroc on the 19th September. Subsequent films routinely pulled in around 3 million viewers (unsurprising given both the media attention upon the season and the lack of competition from other channels in this late night slot) but by 1987, with ratings dwindling and the objections from the press and Mrs Whitehouse remaining vociferous, Channel 4 brought the season to a close.

Less than ten years later in 1995, the broadcaster launched 'The Red Light Zone' mixing avant-garde material with more overt sexual content. However, with fresh competition from Channel 5 (the new broadcaster who sought to use the timeslot to screen salacious material that appealed to the 90s trend of 'New Laddism') cable and satellite broadcasters such as Live TV, and the decline in moral panic as the aging Whitehouse's influence started to decline, this revival was much less provocative and more commonplace.

When you consider that Channel 4 screen a show called Naked Attraction at 10pm - a show that claims to be 'a daring dating series that starts where some good dates might end - naked'; allowing the blind date to see the naked bodies of the candidates incrementally - it's clear that we've come a long way from the Red Triangle season of 1986 to 1987. Whether that's progress or not, I wouldn't like to say.

This list shows the ten films screened with the Red Triangle from late 1986 to early 1987. See notes for dates of transmission.

• Themroc

  19th September, 1986

• Pastoral: To Die in the Country

  3rd October, 1986

• Throw Away Your Books, Rally in the Streets

  10th October, 1986

• Identification of a Woman

  17th October, 1986

• Pixote

  24th October, 1986

• The Clinic

  31st October, 1986

• Montenegro

  14th November, 1987

• No Mercy, No Future

  28th November, 1987

• Out of the Blue

  10th January, 1987

• The Wall

  17th January, 1987

I normally don't comment on these lists, I think the rankings normally speak for themselves, but Trial is impossible to rank without comment.

Trial is arguably the worst season of Classic Who, certainly the most misjudged. It's my least enjoyable season, though Ncuti Gatwa's first season has definitely given that dubious accolade a run for its money.

If you'd have asked me twenty odd years ago, when I last watched this season, I'd have put The Mysterious Planet in the top spot. But now, Mindwarp is ranked at number one, despite me not enjoying it very much. My reasoning is that it's the only story that seems to understand the brief of the season's arc, for better or worse, and it has some proper energy, unlike the other stories around it.

1. Doctor Who: Mindwarp
2. Doctor Who: The Mysterious Planet
3. Doctor Who: The Ultimate Foe
4. Doctor Who: Terror of the Vervoids

1. Doctor Who: The Leisure Hive
2. Doctor Who: Logopolis
3. Doctor Who: Warriors' Gate
4. Doctor Who: State of Decay
5. Doctor Who: The Keeper of Traken
6. Doctor Who: Full Circle
7. Doctor Who: Meglos

This list is a companion to my The Troubles on Film list and the films included here feature events that predate the Troubles, ie films concerning the early calls for Irish independence, the Easter Uprising of 1916 and the subsequent partition and civil war of the 1920s.

The Irish Question is a phrase used in the early 19th century until the 1920s regarding this but I'm including films from both before this period, those that depict the very earliest fights for independence, and after this period, those that take us up to the 1960s which was when the period known as The Troubles started.

Suggestions are welcome.

• The Wind That Shakes the Barley
• Jimmy's Hall
• Michael Collins
• Rebellion
• Resistance
• Ryan's Daughter
• The Informer
• The Informer
• The Plough and the Stars
• Juno and the Paycock

...plus 97 more. View the full list on Letterboxd.

A series of British films made during the Conservative government of 1979 -1990 (or a little beyond, if they deal with the legacy of their policies) that offer a snapshot of life in the UK and are representative or critical/satirical of the ethos, values and culture of that period.

• Rita, Sue and Bob Too
• The Ploughman's Lunch
• My Beautiful Laundrette
• Sammy and Rosie Get Laid
• Meantime
• High Hopes
• Life Is Sweet
• Who's Who
• Close My Eyes
• Wetherby

...plus 194 more. View the full list on Letterboxd.

Rock 'n' Roll, British style. Trad Jazz, Skiffle, Beatniks and Teds. Here's a list of British films that have them all!

Essentially this list brings together several films that give you a glimpse of the pre-Beatles and pre-mod landscape of Britain, a time of coffee bars and cellar clubs, big attitudes and even bigger quiffs! Inevitably though, the Fab Four themselves do ultimately feature in biopics that depict their earliest guises such as Nowhere Boy and Backbeat.

A lot of these films are contemporary musical vehicles for the stars of the day (Billy Fury in Play it Cool, Cliff Richard in The Young Ones etc) some are nostalgia fests made in subsequent decades (David Essex and Ringo Starr in That'll Be the Day, Julien Temple's Absolute Beginners and the Joe Meek biopic Telstar) and some are straight dramas that I've included simply because they are full of that late '50s/early '60s style (The Leather Boys, The Damned etc). Some films were made after Beatlemania, but seem to belong to an earlier time and fashion, such as the Freddie and the Dreamers vehicle, The Cuckoo Patrol, and the indescribable Gonks Go Beat.

Just one rule; no documentaries. Now, have I missed any?

• That'll Be The Day
• Stardust
• Expresso Bongo
• What a Crazy World
• Telstar: The Joe Meek Story
• Absolute Beginners
• Play It Cool
• These Dangerous Years
• The Ugly Duckling
• What a Whopper

...plus 80 more. View the full list on Letterboxd.

The episodes of Charlie Brooker's Black Mirror series (Channel 4 and Netflix) ranked in order of preference. Yup, another of those lists - exactly what LB needs eh?

1. Black Mirror: San Junipero
2. Black Mirror: Fifteen Million Merits
3. Black Mirror: Be Right Back
4. Black Mirror: The Entire History of You
5. Black Mirror: Demon 79
6. Black Mirror: Nosedive
7. Black Mirror: White Christmas
8. Black Mirror: USS Callister
9. Black Mirror: The National Anthem
10. Black Mirror: Bandersnatch

...plus 23 more. View the full list on Letterboxd.

1. Doctor Who: Kinda
2. Doctor Who: Earthshock
3. Doctor Who: The Visitation
4. Doctor Who: Black Orchid
5. Doctor Who: Four to Doomsday
6. Doctor Who: Castrovalva
7. Doctor Who: Time-Flight

I've written film appreciations/essays for several Arrow Video and Arrow Academy titles, so I thought I'd create a list of them.

The latest, The Taking of Pelham One Two Three, is released in June 2025.

• Stormy Monday
• The Day of the Jackal
• Jake Speed
• Children of Men
• The Prisoner
• Bloodstone
• Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves
• The Great Escape
• The Taking of Pelham One Two Three

1. Doctor Who: The Dæmons
2. Doctor Who: The Mind of Evil
3. Doctor Who: Terror of the Autons
4. Doctor Who: The Claws of Axos
5. Doctor Who: Colony in Space

As of 2024, The Alexei Sayle Podcast has incorporated a regular film club feature, in which Alexei, Talal and the listeners watch and discuss a movie. This is an ongoing list which will be updated with each new film that appears in the film club.

• Edge of Tomorrow
• Withnail & I
• Broadcast News
• if....
• Quick Change
• Saturday Night
• Mephisto

1. Doctor Who: The Curse of Fenric
2. Doctor Who: Ghost Light
3. Doctor Who: Survival
4. Doctor Who: Battlefield

1. Doctor Who: Remembrance of the Daleks
2. Doctor Who: The Greatest Show in the Galaxy
3. Doctor Who: The Happiness Patrol
4. Doctor Who: Silver Nemesis

1. Doctor Who: Dragonfire
2. Doctor Who: Delta and the Bannermen
3. Doctor Who: Paradise Towers
4. Doctor Who: Time and the Rani

1. Doctor Who: Revelation of the Daleks
2. Doctor Who: Vengeance on Varos
3. Doctor Who: The Two Doctors
4. Doctor Who: Attack of the Cybermen
5. Doctor Who: The Mark of the Rani
6. Doctor Who: Timelash

1. Doctor Who: The Five Doctors
2. Doctor Who: Enlightenment
3. Doctor Who: Snakedance
4. Doctor Who: Mawdryn Undead
5. Doctor Who: Terminus
6. Doctor Who: The King's Demons
7. Doctor Who: Arc of Infinity

1. Doctor Who: Spearhead from Space
2. Doctor Who: Inferno
3. Doctor Who and the Silurians
4. Doctor Who: The Ambassadors of Death

1. Doctor Who: Day of the Daleks
2. Doctor Who: The Sea Devils
3. Doctor Who: The Curse of Peladon
4. Doctor Who: The Mutants
5. Doctor Who: The Time Monster

Flagshagging film posters sure to appeal to the Tories, the centrist tossers in Labour and the Farage mob!

• Spice World
• Their Finest
• A Very English Scandal
• Zombies Have Fallen
• London Has Fallen
• We Are the Freaks
• Hidden Agenda
• Big Fat Gypsy Gangster
• Green Street Hooligans 2
• Arrivederci Millwall

...plus 202 more. View the full list on Letterboxd.

Cloned from Peter Stanley's epic list (kudos for his hard work over the years), Play for Today remains the daddy of the BBC's single drama output. Often imitated, but never bettered.

Please note, the last three plays here are Brimstone and Treacle, Scum, and Pillion. Whilst Brimstone and Treacle was finally broadcast in 1987, and Scum in 1991, Pillion has never been broadcast to this day. Whilst the latter two were banned for their content, there's no clear evidence as to why Pillion suffered this fate.

Several plays, such as The Long March, and Brigadista, were produced for PfT but never broadcast under the strand. As such I've not included them here. Other productions, such as Fearless Frank, and The Vanishing Army, were originally produced for BBC2's Play of the Week and repeated as part of PfT on BBC1, to capture a wider audience. These plays are included here.

See also: BBC2 Playhouse / Performance / ScreenPlay / Second City Firsts / Premiere / Stages / ScreenPlay Firsts / Screen One / Screen Two / Sense of Place / Play of the Week / Play for Tomorrow / Centre Play / Scene

1. The Long Distance Piano Player
2. The Right Prospectus
3. The Lie
4. Angels Are So Few
5. The Write-Off
6. I Can't See My Little Willie
7. A Distant Thunder
8. Hearts and Flowers
9. Robin Redbreast
10. The Hallelujah Handshake

...plus 307 more. View the full list on Letterboxd.

Running for sixty-eight episodes across six seasons from 1973 to 1977, Centre Play was an anthology series of half hour plays produced in BBC's Television Centre's studios.

Like its contemporaries, Play for Today, Play of the Week, and BBC2 Playhouse, Centre Play showcased an eclectic range of new plays and adaptations, including a couple of Edgar Allan Poe adaptations. Unlike its contemporaries, it is now seldom ed and information online is pretty scant, beyond its IMDB entry. It also afforded woman directors more opportunities, with Mary Ridge and Jane Howell routinely helming plays across its run. Occasionally, each series had a theme; for example, series four in 1976, went out under the title Commonwealth Season, with plays set in New Zealand, Australia, Nigeria, Trinidad, India and Canada. This was followed up by series five's Showcase Season featuring writers new to television. Brian Phelan's 1975 play Article Five was banned by the BBC and never broadcast.

Compiled here are 52 editions from Centre Play, which is every play produced for the strand currently listed on LB/TMDB. I'm guessing, like a lot of BBC programming from this period, several of the plays not listed here have been wiped, or are missing, from the archives.

See also: The Play on One / Second City Firsts / Performance / ScreenPlay Firsts / Premiere / Stages / Screen One / Screen Two / Play for Today / Play for Tomorrow / Sense of Place / Play of the Week / Scene

• The Museum Attendant
• The Cornet Lesson
• Over
• Dummy Run
• Is It Something I Said?
• Mutinies
• Initiation
• The Saliva Milkshake
• Snooker
• The House on the Hill

...plus 42 more. View the full list on Letterboxd.

I've currently got my hands on several editions of Scene and am working my way though them, so this will be an ongoing list.

For those who don't know, Scene was a BBC anthology drama/documentary series made for for schools broadcast as part of the English, Humanities and Citizenship curriculum. It ran from 1968 to 2002 and dealt with topical, controversial issues designed to spark debate and thought in the classroom. Famously, one play, Leslie Stewart's The Two of Us, was considered too controversial in the wake of Thatcher's Section 28 policy and was broadcast at 11.30 at night. Writers who contributed to the series included Colin Welland, Willy Russell, Peter Terson, Fay Weldon, William Trevor, Tom Stoppard, Peter McDougall and Alan Plater.

Though they were originally broadcast to a school audience as part of the BBC Schools strand, some dramas from the series were also regularly broadcast for a wider adult audience, notably Peter Cattaneo's 1995 Ecstasy drama Loved Up. Alternatively, dramas previously broadcast for adults, such as Willy Russell's Play for Today, Our Day Out, were subsequently serialised for broadcast in schools.

Please note, across Scene's thirty-four year history, there were hundreds of plays broadcast. At this present time I have only created entries for the ones that I have in my possession, know can be found on YouTube, or are already listed on here or particularly memorable. I will no doubt have seen many other editions of Scene throughout the 80s and 90s than the ones listed here.

See also: BBC2 Playhouse / Performance / ScreenPlay / Second City Firsts / Premiere / Stages / ScreenPlay Firsts / Screen One / Screen Two / Sense of Place / Play for Today / Play of the Week / Centre Play

• Two of Us
• Loved Up
• Bank Holiday
• Buddy
• My Brother David
• Good Neighbours
• Wide Games
• Ties
• And Mum Came Too
• Simulation Exercise

...plus 49 more. View the full list on Letterboxd.

Broadcast on BBC2 for two seasons between 1977 and 1979, Play of the Week was the stablemate of the long-running Play of the Month anthology strand (1965-1983) and, like BBC2 Playhouse, served as a companion to Play for Today on the main channel. Indeed, several productions originally shown here (Fearless Frank, The Vanishing Army and On Giant's Shoulders) were later shown as part of subsequent Play for Today series to reach a wider audience.

As was often the case in these anthologies, Play of the Week produced a mixture of original writing from playwrights including Tom Stoppard, Alan Bennett, Alan Plater, and Harold Pinter, and adaptations. The remit for the latter, included a new version of Arnold Wesker's celebrated play The Kitchen and works by Russian authors such as Irvan Turgenev, plus adaptations of Dornford Yates' turnof the century mystery thriller She Fell Among Thieves,Jean Renoir's biography of his father, Auguste, Renoir, My Father, and Michael Robson and Marjorie Wallace's book On Giant's Shoulders about the real life story of Terry Wiles, a youth born with no limbs in 1962 as a result of his mother having been prescribed thalidomide during her pregnancy.

A plethora of stars including Michael York, Malcolm McDowell, Eileen Atkins, Judi Dench, Jeremy Irons, Edward Fox, Denholm Elliott, Ian Holm, Leonard Rossiter, and Bernard Hill were assembled for the productions.

Three episodes in the second seasin were given over to the Lost Boys, a drama detailing the life of Peter Pan authour J.M. Barrie, played by Ian Holm.

See also: The Play on One / Second City Firsts / Performance / ScreenPlay Firsts / Premiere / Stages / Screen One / Screen Two / Play for Today / Play for Tomorrow / Sense of Place / BBC2 Playhouse / Centre Play / Scene

• Professional Foul
• Exiles
• Able's Will
• The Sinking of the HMS Victoria
• True Patriot
• Shooting the Chandelier
• The Kitchen
• Arnhem: The Story of an Escape
• Forgotten Love Songs
• A Visit from Miss Prothero

...plus 26 more. View the full list on Letterboxd.

Running for two series between 1978 and 1981, Sense of Place was a series of thirty minute TV plays made by BBC North West and filmed across the region, each with the aim of making location as integral to the drama as character. Some of the places featured included Liverpool, Manchester, Prestwich, Macclesfield, and Formby.

A regional production, each instalment of Sense of Place was transmitted locally to audiences in the North West as part of the BBC's regional programming remit, before being broadcast nationwide at a later date. Writers for the series included North West born writers such as Alan Bleasdale, Shelagh Delaney, Beryl Bainbridge and Alan Garner. Several later productions were produced in partnership with Liverpool's Everyman Theatre.

See also: BBC2 Playhouse / The Play on One / ScreenPlay / Second City Firsts / Performance / ScreenPlay Firsts / Premiere / Screen One / Play for Today / Play for Tomorrow / Play of the Week / Centre Play / Scene

• Penine Man
• The Day Dumbfounded Got His Pylon
• From the Roots Came the Rapper
• Seawrack
• Kasper's Last Stand
• Dangerous Ambition
• In Memoriam, or The Ballad of Reading Gaol
• Lamaload
• Joggers
• Find Me First

...plus 2 more. View the full list on Letterboxd.

The success of Jeremy Paul and Alan Gibson's 1980 Play for Today, The Flipside of Dominick Hide, became evident in 1982 in more ways than one. Not only did PfT produce a sequel in that year, Another Flip For Dominick, but the BBC signed off on a companion single drama anthology series to PfT, dealing specifically with science-fiction. Entitled Play for Tomorrow, the series lasted for just one season of six episodes, each depicting a vision of life in the future for audiences to consider, from writers including Caryl Churchill, Peter Prince, and Graham Reid.

See also: BBC2 Playhouse / Performance / ScreenPlay / Second City Firsts / Premiere / Stages / ScreenPlay Firsts / Screen One / Screen Two / Sense of Place / Play for Today / Play of the Week / Centre Play / Scene

• Crimes
• Bright Eyes
• Cricket
• The Nuclear Family
• Shades
• Easter 2016

Running for fifteen seasons between 1985 and 1998, Screen Two was the BBC's immediate successor to its anthology series Play for Today, which had concluded after fourteen years in 1984. Unlike Play for Today, Screen Two was intentionally cinematic, with each production shot entirely on film. The BBC saw the series as a rival to the growing success that the newly launched Channel 4 had been having with television films, something which would ultimately lead to Film 4. As a result, several films were released commercially, most notably Truly Madly Deeply, The Snapper, Edward II, The Hour of the Pig, Captives, ID, Butterfly Kiss and Small Faces.

See also: BBC2 Playhouse / The Play on One / ScreenPlay / Second City Firsts / Performance / ScreenPlay Firsts / Premiere / Screen One / Play for Today / Play for Tomorrow / Sense of Place / Play of the Week / Centre Play / Scene

• Poppyland
• Unfair Exchanges
• Knockback: 1
• Knockback: 2
• Lent
• The Unknown Soldier
• The Burston Rebellion
• Space Station Milton Keynes
• In the Secret State

...plus 158 more. View the full list on Letterboxd.

Running from 1989 to 1998, Screen One was BBC1's main (and sadly last) single-drama series, the successor to Play for Today and a more mainstream companion to Screen Two on the sister channel, which had launched four years earlier in 1985.

Like Screen Two, Screen One was purposefully cinematic, a move which differed from Play for Today's mostly theatrical approach to television. These series formed the corporation's concerted effort to rival Channel 4's increasingly successful cinematic arm, Film 4. Though individual films were successful in the series - The ant, News Hounds and A Question of Attribution all won BAFTA's for Best Single Drama, whilst productions such as Dancin' Thru the Dark, Pat and Margaret, Down Among the Big Boys, A Foreign Field and Ghost Watch achieved some significant 'after life' - it's a fair appraisal that these films did not break out cinematically in ways that the BBC might have hoped and, by the end of the 90s, the corporation all but dropped their commitment to single drama in favour of series and serials.

See also: BBC2 Playhouse / The Play on One / Second City Firsts / Performance / ScreenPlay Firsts / Premiere / Stages / Screen Two / Play for Today / Play for Tomorrow / Sense of Place/ Play of the Week / Centre Play / Scene

• One Way Out
• Nineteen96
• The ant
• Home Run
• She's Been Away
• The Mountain and the Molehill
• Blore M.P.
• First and Last
• Ball-Trap On The Cote Sauvage
• News Hounds

...plus 51 more. View the full list on Letterboxd.

Seemingly a combined and concerted effort by the BBC's drama and production design departments to show audiences and the corporation's heads what was still possible from studio filming, Stages was a 1994 series of six unrelated TV plays shot totally within the confines of the TV studio. As a result, it followed in the long traditions established by similar productions like The Wednesday Play, Play for Today and Second City Firsts, and was arguably just as much of a concerted effort to show that there was room in the schedules for the TV play too. Unfortunately, it was the last commissioned series of that nature.

See also: BBC2 Playhouse / The Play on One / ScreenPlay / Second City Firsts / Performance / ScreenPlay Firsts / Premiere / Screen One / Screen Two / Play for Today / Play for Tomorrow / Sense of Place / Play of the Week / Centre Play / Scene

• Speaking In Tongues
• Suffer The Little Children
• A Few Short Journeys of the Heart
• Paradise
• Low Level Panic
• Two Oranges and a Mango

Running for four series from 1977 to 1980, Premiere was a BBC Two anthology series that gave directors the opportunity to make their television drama debut.

Directors including the likes of Colin Bucksey, Roger Bamford, Giles Foster, Malcolm Mowbray, Rob Walker, and Graham Baker made their debuts here, whilst creative from other fields also took the opportunity to dip their toes into directing, most notably cinematographers such as Brian Tufano and Terry Bedford, the fomer Monkees star Micky Dolenz, and the writer Frederic Raphael, who directed his own play, Something's Wrong. Often, these new talents were paired with established screenwriters including Alan Bennet, Richard O'Brien, Ian Kennedy Martin, Alan Sillitoe, Stan Barstow and Alan Plater. Adaptations of works by EM Forster and Vercors were also produced during the series run.

Famously, Pulstar by Vangelis was the series theme tune, played over credits featuring stills photography of the director in various stages of the production, culminating in a snapping clapperboard graphic.

See also: BBC2 Playhouse / The Play on One / ScreenPlay / Second City Firsts / Performance / ScreenPlay Firsts / Stages / Screen One / Screen Two / Play for Today / Play for Tomorrow / Sense of Place / Play of the Week / Centre Play / Scene

• Pit Strike
• A Hymn from Jim
• There's No Place...
• The Obelisk
• A Little Outing
• Give Us a Kiss, Christabel
• Crest of a Wave
• Something's Wrong
• Hanging Around
• Travellers

...plus 12 more. View the full list on Letterboxd.

ScreenPlay Firsts was a sister series to the BBC2's single drama strand of the 80s and 90s ScreenPlay.

Often broadcast immediately after ScreenPlay films, these were short form films from new voices and had a somewhat nebulous remit. As it progressed, it seemed to cater for graduate films from film schools around the globe, specifically the UK, Ireland, the US and , but often its programming (especially its British films) were indistinguishable from ScreenPlay itself (especially in its early days) with productions such as Roach Motel, Arrivederci Millwall etc still being mistaken for ScreenPlay to this day. Matters are further muddied by the 1991 ScreenPlay Came Out, It Rained, Went Back in Again (broadcast as the ScreenPlay anthology City Shorts) being repeated as a ScreenPlay Firsts in its seventh and final season in 1993, and 1991's Clubland, which IMDB lists as ScreenPlay Firsts, but the original BBC Genome listing states as ScreenPlay (and which I'm inclined to believe).

Frustratingly, there's so little information surrounding many of these productions. IMDB has no cast or crew credits for the majority of the titles and BBC Genome has only the scantest of details as befits its original Radio Times listings.

See also: BBC2 Playhouse / ScreenPlay / The Play on One / Second City Firsts / Performance / Premiere / Stages / Screen One / Screen Two / Play for Today / Play for Tomorrow / Sense of Place / Play of the Week / Centre Play / Scene

• Careless Talk
• The Act
• See You at Wembley, Frankie Walsh
• Roach Motel
• A View from a Window
• The Riveter
• Queen Sacrifice
• Edvard
• Borderland
• Substance of Dreams

...plus 36 more. View the full list on Letterboxd.

Performance was a 1990s BBC2 drama strand which adapted classic and contemporary theatre for the small screen. Plays by the likes of Chekhov, Chayefsky, Rattigan, Shakespeare, Pinter, Miller and Sondheim were dramatised, with directors including Simon Curtis, Richard Eyre, Karel Reisz and Sam Mendes to name but a few. The adaptations attracted starry, high profile casts featuring such names as Judi Dench, Anne Bancroft, John Gielgud, Kenneth Branagh, Imelda Staunton, Lesley Manville, Alec Guinness, Michael Gambon, Billie Whitelaw, Jane Horrocks, Alfred Molina, Hugh Grant, Colin Firth, Brian Cox, Eileen Atkins, Bob Hoskins, Bill Nighy and Jeremy Irons.

See also: BBC2 Playhouse / The Play on One / ScreenPlay / Second City Firsts / Premiere / Stages / ScreenPlay Firsts / Screen One / Screen Two / Play for Today / Play for Tomorrow / Sense of Place / Play of the Week / Centre Play / Scene

• Absolute Hell
• Uncle Vanya
• Nona
• Old Times
• Top Girls
• The Trials of Oz
• Tales from Hollywood
• A Doll's House
• Roots
• After the Dance

...plus 22 more. View the full list on Letterboxd.

This is, I believe, a comprehensive list of all existing films that formed Second City Firsts.

Second City Firsts was an anthology series of half-hour plays produced by BBC English Regions Drama at Pebble Mill in Birmingham from 1973-78. The name of the series derived from the fact that Birmingham was considered the UK's 'second city' and the series favoured first time writers, hence 'firsts'. Nowadays, the anthology is best ed for the notorious, first on-screen lesbian kiss of 1974's Girl, Mike Leigh's the Permissive Society a year later, and the launchpads of writers such as Willy Russell and Ian McEwan, as well as significant early roles for Alison Stean, Julie Walters, Pete Postlethwaite and even Toyah Willcox to name but a few. At thirty minutes per film, they serve as a smaller-scale kid brother or sister to the BBC's then flagship Play for Today.

Of the 53 films broadcast as part of Second City Firsts between 1973 and 1978, 21 films are missing, presumed wiped, from the BBC archives. These include the following; Mrs Pool's Preserves / The Movers / King of the Castle / Patrons / Humbug, Finger or Thumb? / Lunch Duty / Sunday Tea / Silence / Too Hot to Handle / The Festive Poacher / Swallows / Released / The Writing on the Wall / How It Is / On The Good Ship Yacki-Hicki-Doola / The Visitor (just a few scenes recorded survive) / Black Bird Shout (just a few scenes recorded survive) / Knock for Knock / Percy and Kenneth / Postcards from Southsea / Fattening Frogs for Snakes.

All these losses are especially saddening but, as a huge Mike Leigh fan, it's especially galling that his second film for the series Knock for Knock is missing/wiped.

Both Thwum and The Actual Woman were for many years believed missing but have resurfaced recently and been screened at festivals and events. I do not have access to either of these, nor do I have Pig Bin or The Fight For Shelton Bar, both of which I believe are still in existence.

See also: BBC2 Playhouse / ScreenPlay / The Play on One / Performance / Premiere / Stages / ScreenPlay Firsts / Screen One / Screen Two / Play for Today / Play for Tomorrow / Sense of Place / Play of the Week / Centre Play / Scene

• The Medium
• If a Man Answers
• Girl
• The Actual Woman
• Match of the Day
• Bold Face: Condensed
• Waiting at the Field Gate
• The Permissive Society
• The Frank Crank Story
• Pig Bin

...plus 22 more. View the full list on Letterboxd.

Alongside Screen One, Screen Two, ScreenPlay and Stages, the BBC's single drama output in the 80s and 90s also found a home in The Play on One, a strand which ran for four series from 1988 to 1991.

The Play On One were productions from BBC Scotland that firmly celebrated the writer - indeed almost each instalment would open with a black and white photo of its writer, complete with a graphic of their signature. It's an impressive commitment to consider now, at a time when at least 90% of TV writers are anonymous, unsung individuals, but especially so when you consider that many of these writers were being given their first chance here, with some examples being Jimmy McGovern and Rona Munro, taking their place alongside old hands such as Peter McDougall, John Byrne and Alan Plater. Several of the productions were adaptations of stage plays, including The Shawl by David Mamet and The Party by Trevor Griffiths. Some were adaptations of books, including the novel Unexplained Laughter and the memoir Escape from Idi Amin’s Slaughterhouse which became Escape from Kampala.

The tone of The Play on One was versatile, with productions sometimes shot on film and on location, whilst at other times shot on VT and completely within the studio. There is a rep company and jack of all trades feel to many of the productions that arguably reflect the parochial nature of regional BBC. Actors such as Kenneth Cranham and Phyllis Logan routinely pop up throughout the course of the series and their talents could often be diversified; Gawn Grainger appears in The Party in season one and contributes the script for Clowns the following year, whilst Richard Wilson stars in Normal Service, and goes on to direct A Wholly Healthy Glasgow and Changing Step.

Directors on the series were often seasoned hands at TV plays, including Barry Davis, Moira Armstrong, Pedr James, Kevin Billington and, returning to the BBC after his political blacklist, Roy Battersby.

See also: BBC2 Playhouse / Performance / ScreenPlay / Second City Firsts / Premiere / Stages / ScreenPlay Firsts / Screen One / Screen Two / Screen Two / Play for Today / Sense of Place / Play of the Week / Centre Play / Scene

• Down Where the Buffalo Go
• The Dark Room
• Normal Service
• The Dunroamin' Rising
• A Wholly Healthy Glasgow
• Unreported Incident
• Airbase
• The Party
• Heartland
• These Foolish Things

...plus 20 more. View the full list on Letterboxd.

These are the editions of The Geek Show's Pop Screen podcast I appear on with host Graham Williamson. Some are free, some are Patreon.

You can find Pop Screen here.

• That'll Be The Day
• Stardust
• Geri
• Jubilee
• Catch Us If You Can
• Face
• Straight to Hell
• Crock of Gold: A Few Rounds with Shane MacGowan
• Privilege
• Baal

...plus 17 more. View the full list on Letterboxd.

This is little more than a list created so I can have an instant go-to for all my Mike Leigh reviews. Don't expect a ranked list, the list is purely chronological; in order from Leigh's first film, Bleak Moments, to Hard Truths, his most recent.

• Bleak Moments
• A Mug's Game?
• Hard Labour
• The Permissive Society
• Nuts in May
• The Kiss of Death
• Abigail's Party
• Who's Who
• Grown-Ups
• Home Sweet Home

...plus 23 more. View the full list on Letterboxd.