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She'd like to see you both

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Continuing my trip up Empire's  top 20 TV shows of 2025 #18 :     The Bear After the extended table-setting of Season 3, people started to wonder if The Bear had gone off the boil (insert other tortured food metaphors here). Thankfully in Season 4, the unwavering quality of writing, performance and filmmaker was bolstered by slightly more propulsive storytelling, and some more upbeat moments this time around; Carmy, at long last, is no longer trapped in the fridge (literally or metaphorically). There are some masterful episodes here – the Ayo Edebiri-penned ‘Worms’, in which her Sydney leaves the kitchen to look after a friend’s daughter, is a beautiful little slice of life; and ‘Bears’, the near-feature-length wedding episode, threatens to be another piece of near-unbearably tense familial arguing, until it blossoms into a great big warm hug. Hopefully this return to form continues into Season 5, with Carmy seemingly <spoiler alert>. After The Bear took the top spo...
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What's your name? Is it Mary or Sue?

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Continuing my trip back through the 1963 album charts. 14/04/63 : A Bobby Vee Recording Session - Bobby Vee Our second visit with young Bobby this year (and he's not finished with us yet) - last time I liked it, but that was a best-of so, it will be interesting to see what we have here. Yeah, it's pretty similar to last time except that I don't know any of the tracks. It's all very Buddy Holly-ish, so was already sounding a bit dated compared to some of the stuff we've heard from the year but it's done well enough. And at twelve songs in 25 minutes, he's really not hanging about - he looks super young on the album cover though! We're at #15 in the charts this week with a re-entry on a single week's visit, but he managed a nine week run earlier in the year, peaking at #10. The top five this week were  Cliff Richard ,  Buddy Holly,  The Beatles ,  West Side Story  and  Elvis Presley  with the highest new entry being one Bobby Vee (#20). Wikipedia tel...
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It's over - let it go

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Continuing my trip back through the 1963 album charts. 21/04/63 : That Was The Week That Was - Various Artists Some comedy for a change - it will be interesting to see how dated this has become. Well, a lot of it is political and quite a bit of it is class based, so those aspects have certainly dated - but my overall feeling was one of confusion because there was so much of it I just didn't understand how it was supposed to be funny. The general vibe is one of clever wittyness, but there was almost a complete absence of laughs on my part - it wasn't so much that the jokes weren't landing, but that I just didn't recognise where the jokes were supposed to be. So, all in all, this was a most peculiar experience - it was nice to recognise Roy Kinnear and Willie Rushton's voices though.  We're at #17 in the chart this week on the last week of a nine week run, with it having peaked at #11 in its third week. The top five this week were  Cliff Richard ,  The Beatles , B...
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Three stars will shine tonight

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Continuing my trip back through the 1963 album charts. 28/04/63 : Richard Chamberlain Sings -  Richard Chamberlain I can't say I was expecting to see him - this is going to be super cheesy, isn't it? Yeah, this was definitely one bought by the grannies - it's very much looking backwards in time rather than attempting to do anything radical. He's got a decent voice though so it's all perfectly listenable, even if a whole album of it is a bit too much. We are also served up yet another Everly Brothers cover - I really should have been counting them because we've seen quite a few this year. We're at #16 in the charts this week on the last week of an eight week run, with it having peaked at #8 in its third week. The top five this week were  Cliff  (just finishing a mere fourteen week run at the top),  The Beatles ,  Buddy Holly,  Frank Ifield  and the All Star Festival album (how refreshing to see something different in the top five for a change!) and the...
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Clap 'ands, stamp yer feet, bangin' on the big bass drum

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Continuing my trip back through the 1963 album charts. 26/05/63 : Half A Sixpence - Tommy Steele Skipping over another week (and once again you absolutely know who was #1) brings us to a pretty highly regarded musical which gets revived on a reasonably regular basis - but I've never seen it, so I'm interested to see what we've got here. Yeah - it's alright without, I think, ever quite being great. It give strong vibes of  wanting to be "My Fair Lady" - it doesn't quite make it, but it certainly gives it a good go. It has s trong "big musical" numbers which work well on the album, so I imagine they're doubly impressive on stage - "Flash Bang Wallop" is the stand-out, but there were quite a few others that I imagine got rousing rounds of applause. It's also v ery much a star vehicle for Tommy - it's surprisingly hard to find out any of the other people on the album. However, there are definitely some women on there and Wikiped...
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Picking up boxes with our teeth

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Continuing my trip forward in time through the album charts 12/06/26 : Dinner Party - Niall Horan  Somewhat surprisingly, this is our fourth visit with Niall - he's building quite a solid solo career out there. I'm expecting this to be a solid offering if not exactly something I need. Yeah, that's fair enough, although I think I'd generously describe this as better than solid - there are some pretty decent songs on here with a bit more variety than I was expecting. It's interesting to compare this to Harry's latest offering , which was a bit of a letdown (for me, at least) - this feels like it might fill a void for people who had a similar reaction. No, I'm never going to listen to it again but I've experienced plenty worse offerings in my time - I quite like the album cover too, it has a nice 70s feel to it. We're at #1 with a new entry this week - his third #1 solo album (which puts him level with Harry). The rest of the top five are Michael Jackso...
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Am I fool number one or am I fool number two?

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Continuing my trip back through the 1963 album charts. 05/05/63 : Brenda, That's All - Brenda Lee Skipping over another week (yes, they were still #1) brings us to our second visit with Brenda for the year - giving her 40% of all the albums featuring women this year. And I've no reason to expect that she won't do just as good a job as she did last time . Yeah, there's nothing wrong with this - although it's not exactly spectacular. It's a solid offering though with decent enough songs and she's got a nice voice - and I think that's pretty much all I have to say about it - that is one fine 60s album cover though! We're at #15 in the charts this week on the last week of a seven week run with it having peaked at #13. The top five this week were  The Beatles (starting a THIRTY week run at the top (yes, that means that next week we're actually going to see someone else at #1 for the first time this year!),  Cliff , Buddy,  Frank Ifield  and  West Sid...
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