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Continuing my trip down The Guardian's  Top 50 TV Shows of 2022 .   #49 : Freddie Flintoff's Field Of Dreams Cricket is still so dominated by the wealthy and privately educated. In this affecting three-parter, the famed cricket player wanted to lift the lid on classism in the game – so he went back to his hometown of Preston to introduce a group of initially suspicious local teens to the closed-off sport. By the end, it was perhaps the most life-affirming documentary of the year. I was looking forward to this, but unfortunately it doesn't appear to be available anywhere.  I suspect that might be related to his "troubles" relating to Top Gear because there was supposed to be a second series of this, but shit happened and we are where we are. If it pops back up, I'll make an effort to check it out because he's a very personable fellow - not without his demons, but honest enough to admit they exist. #48  - Not for me #50 - Surprisingly enjoyable

Continuing my trip back through the 1990 album charts. 01/04/90 : The Road To Hell - Chris Rea Chris Rea's an odd one - he's very well known but (for most people) for just for the two songs and I've got no real idea what I'm going to get here.  Slightly bluesy-pop-rock?!?  Whatever it is, I've certainly never owned it (7/40). It starts off with the title track, but "Part 1" and hence not the one that everyone knows and that starts with three minutes of random snippets from traffic reports, which wasn't really what I was expecting and isn't a great album opener, if I'm being honest.  But then we get the one that everyone knows and it's a way better track than I remembered - it went straight on my general playlist.  And yeah, slightly bluesy-pop-rock is pretty accurate - it's not going to set the world alight but it's well done, all very listenable without getting too samey and there's some very decent guitar work on there.  It...

Continuing my trip down The Guardian's  Top 50 TV Shows of 2022 .   #48 : Ellie And Natasia Just when the sketch show seemed to be on its way out, Natasia Demetriou and Ellie White delivered a tremendous comedy treat. Despite some sketches being unwaveringly niche, the duo’s writing and committed performances kept us hooked – and the neverending Saturday Kitchen applause skit had us on the floor. This is another one I actually watched - I love Natasia on What We Do In The Shadows, which we'll catch up with if I ever make it back to The Guardian best of 2019 list (spoiler alert - I won't!).  She is also excellent value when she appears on the Adam Buxton podcast, but it was when he was chatting with Ellie White (who was also most amusing) that I learned of the existence of this, so thought I'd check it out. Well, one episode anyway - let's just say that for me The Guardian was much closer with "unwaveringly niche" than they were  "tremendous comedy tre...

Continuing my trip back through the 1990 album charts. 08/04/90 : Missing...Presumed Having A Good Time - The Notting Hillbillies The name rings a bell, but I'm drawing a blank otherwise - I'm assuming something country-ish and it probably won't surprise you to hear I've never owned it (7/39). Yeah, it's slow country/blues - pretty well done, but completely not the sort of thing we'd be expecting to visit in the '90 charts.  Except that I recognised Mark Knopfler's voice in there, so I suspect that might have helped it on its way a bit.  It's not my sort of thing, but it's a pleasant enough listen with some decent musicianship, but really just a bit smooth to hold my interest.  I'd also have to say that, somewhat ironically, it really doesn't sound like they're having a particularly good time. We're all the way down at #14 in the charts this week on their fifth week of a fourteen week run with it having debuted at an astonishingl...

Continuing my trip down The Guardian's  Top 50 TV Shows of 2022 .   #47 : The Dropout This real-life tale about the Silicon Valley fraudster Elizabeth Holmes – who was the youngest self-made female billionaire in the US, until the rumours started – was anchored by such a remarkable lead performance by Amanda Seyfried that it made Jennifer Lawrence drop out of playing the founder of Theranos in a planned film. As she told the New York Times, “we don’t need to redo that. She did it.” I've heard this is good so am looking forward to watching it - I'm aware of the story so I already know it ends badly, so I'm intrigued as to how much suspense there's going to be. Hmmm - well there's some suspense, but not in the way that I was looking for, if I'm being honest.  I stuck with it for three episodes and by that point things were already going very, very wrong for Elizabeth so I found the whole thing really rather stressful - the suspense was more "why did no-on...

Continuing my trip back through the 1990 album charts. 15/04/90 : Brigade - Heart I know Heart have a long successful history, particularly in the US, but I only  know them from "Alone" so without  anything else to go on that's what I'm expecting here (and no, we never owned it - 7/38). Yeah, that's pretty much what it's like.  Fine if you like that sort of thing, but it all gets very samey for me pretty quickly.  They've got nice voices and there's some decent enough guitar work on there but I don't think I've got anything more to say on it than that.  It's a very 80s album cover though, isn't it? We're at a surprisingly high #5 in the charts this week on their second week of a twenty week run with it having debuted at #3.  The top five this week were Fleetwood Mac (a new entry), The Carpenters best-of, a Bowie best-of and  Phil Collins  and we have two more new entries in the top ten for ABC (#7 - another best-of) and Iron Maiden...

Starting my trip up Empire's top 20 films of 2022 #20 :    Bergman Island While it would be tempting to reimagine Mia Hansen-Love’s Bergman Island as an arthouse Jurassic Park — a group of happy-go-lucky visitors are terrorised by a pack of genetically engineered Swedish depressives — the actual film itself is a mini marvel of a movie <loads of filler text> Two great films for the price of one, Hansen-Love’s wistful delicate filmmaking and a great set-piece set to ABBA’s ‘The Winner Take It All’. What more could you want? (Apart from velociraptors wrestling with the existence of God.) This is one I would never have watched because of the title - I've no interest in watching any Bergman films and I'm afraid this one just gets tarred with the same brush.  However, now I know it's got some ABBA in it, I'm approaching it with slightly more enthusiasm.  But not loads... The film follows Tony (Tim Roth) and Chris (Vicky Krieps) as they decamp to  Fårö (which is,...

Continuing my trip back through the 1990 album charts. 22/04/90 : Days Of Open Hand :  Suzanne Vega Well, this is a pleasant (and fortuitous) surprise!  I love a bit of Suzanne but for some reason I've never heard this album (or owned it - 7/37) so I'm very much looking forward to catching up with it. Yeah - no idea why I never caught up with this and it's pretty similar to Solitude Standing, her previous album which I own and really like.  However, I would say this is all a bit more shimmery-synthy and my main gripe is that her voice is very low in the mix throughout the album - just a little bit more of her really wouldn't have hurt.  And maybe that's why it didn't entirely grab me on first listen - it feels "fine" but no more than that. This week we're at #7 with a new entry on the start of a seven week run - unsurprisingly this was as high as it got.  The top five this week were The Carpenters (about to start a five week run at the top), Fleetw...

Continuing my trip forward in time through the album charts 24/11/23 :  Theatre Of The Absurd Presents C'est La Vie - Madness Well, I wasn't expecting this lot to knock Taylor off the top!  I've no real idea what to expect from it - I'm kinda expecting it to be like the Madness I know from back in the day, but just less so. Yeah, it is "less so" in terms of being less frenetic and less amusing (at first listen anyway) but it's also a lot stranger than I was expecting - it's presented along the lines of a cabaret evening with spoken word sections introducing some of the tracks.  It's quite ambitious (much more so than I was expecting) - I'm not sure it entirely works, but I'm also not sure it doesn't.  I didn't particularly like it, but a big part of that was the uncertainty as to what exactly I was supposed to do with it - all in all, I think we can safely say I'm not sure about any of it.  Does that help?  I think Ian Dury is p...

  So, what did I think of The Guardian's Top 50 Films of 2022 ? The top ten were all well made films (with some being more to my liking than others) but there quite a few further down the list that I struggled to see the point to on any level - there were some gems hidden in there all the way down though.  I was however, extremely pleased that I managed to track down all the films on the list this year. All in all, 19 countries were clearly represented across 47 films on this list (compared with 20 last year) with the other three films being complete mongrels which bring a further nine countries into the mix (Memoria gets a special mention for having ten countries involved in its production).   The US and the UK unsurprisingly provide the highest contribution - but not as much as you'd expect giving us eleven and eight films respectively with France putting in a strong showing with five films and Germany, Ireland, Iran, India, Norway and Spain all giving us multiple entri...

Continuing my trip back through the 1990 album charts. 29/04/90 : Life :  Inspiral Carpets This is more like it - I'm sure it'll sound pretty dated but at least it will be an interesting dated.  I never owned it, so we dip below the 20% mark (7/36) - even after the year started so well! It does indeed sound dated - from about 1968 in places!  It's quite a nice dated though and is certainly different from most of the stuff we've been fed this year.  And everyone likes "This Is How It Feels" don't they - although the album versions isn't quite as polished as the single.  I also particularly liked "She Comes In The Fall" - I won't be rushing back to the album, but it felt nicely reminiscent of the sort of stuff I was listening to at the time.  I would say the extended version at 75 minutes long was a chore way before the end though - sometimes more is most definitely less! We're at a surprisingly high #2 in the chart with a new entry thi...

Continuing my trip up the list of the most streamed songs for each year.   1999 : No Scrubs  - TLC I like this track but I'm somewhat surprised it's (allegedly) the most streamed track of the year - I'm not expecting too many cover versions though.  The video is a lot more spaceshippy than I remembered and features a giant swing for no obvious reason and some pretty dodgy costumes - it all looks impressive, but there's surprisingly little content. Wikipedia tells me the song was written by Kandi Burruss and Tameka "Tiny" Cottle (two former members of Xscape, who were big in the US but did nothing here) and TLC member Lisa "Left Eye" Lopes (wow, she died 21 years ago now).  Kandi and Tiny thought they might record it themselves but Dallas Austin (no idea who he is but his parents were obviously fans of Texas) had other ideas and gave it to TLC. The critics were big fans with NME declaring it to be "the best song ever about not wanting to sleep w...

Continuing my trip back through the 1990 album charts. 06/05/90 : Behind The Mask :  Fleetwood Mac This is quite an interesting one because whilst at uni you couldn't go anywhere without bumping into someone playing Tango In The Night (their '87 album), I don't think I've ever heard this (and I've certainly never owned it - 7/35).  Which I can't say has exactly caused my expectations to sky-rocket, but let's see, shall we? Hmmm - it's like someone asked them to make a Fleetwood Mac album but to focus on the US mass market and to make sure that all the bits that make them any good are dialled up just enough to be annoying.  It all feels a bit too "try hard" - and they're trying for someone other than me.   "In The Back Of My Mind" is surprisingly Pink Floyd-ish though - I've no clue what they thought they were doing there. Once again, we're at #6 in the charts on their fourth week of a sixteen week run - it shows how badly ...