scaryblog

So, what did I think of  Empire's   top 20 TV shows of 2024 ? Considering first the overlap between Empire and The Guardian (which I haven't looked at all yet, but I'll get round to skimming it next), there are thirteen shows that appear on both lists (exactly the same as last year). Of these, I liked most of them (although I've not got around to watching Industry from the start yet) - my only raised eyebrows would be at X Men '97 (it really wasn't that great) and Ripley (it looks gorgeous but it was sooooo slow). Of the ones The Guardian chose to ignore, House Of The Dragon is the only one I think The Guardian should have found space for (they gave it four stars, but said it started too slowly), although I can also accept that Interview With The Vampire is good, but just not for me (and The Guardian didn't review it). The Guardian also liked Black Doves (four stars) which was very entertaining, but not "great" telly. Shows on They Guardian list...

Completing my trip up Empire's   top 20 TV shows of 2024 #1 :     Shōgun While the elevator pitch for this adaptation of James Clavell’s 1975 novel might have been ‘Game Of Thrones in 17th century Japan’, the reality of this transportational 10-part series is nowhere near as cynical. A sonnet to Japan’s rich culture and deep beauty (despite being filmed entirely on location in Canada), Rachel Kondo and Justin Marks’ sweeping epic perfectly captures the clash of two vastly different worlds as English sailor John Blackthorne (Cosmo Jarvis) is shipwrecked in Edo period Osaka and taken into the service of warlord Torunaga (a magnificent Hiroyuki Sanada). It may be a historical epic, but set against customs and culture so alien to modern eyes (<spoiler>) that it almost feels like a fantasy. This got excellent write-ups and did very well at the Emmys (winning EIGHTEEN awards) but I don't think I'd have bothered watching it unless forced to do so and it's not related to ...

Continuing my trip up Empire's   top 20 TV shows of 2024 #14 :    Sherwood Contrary to some corners of social media’s aspersions, James Graham’s BBC drama Sherwood is not a gender-bending contemporary take on Robin Hood (though we’d quite happily watch that show too!) Rather, it’s a compulsive, intricately plotted, and incredibly timely Northern yarn inspired by the brutal July 2004 murders of trade unionist Keith Frogson and hairdresser Chanel Taylor in the pit mining village of Annesley Woodhouse, Nottinghamshire. Every bit as dark, destructive, and yet wholly in thrall to the dramatic potential and dirt-beneath-the-nails reality of domestic life as, say, Happy Valley, the first season of Graham’s show was a masterclass in complex characterwork and world-building that shone a light on long-festering community tensions arising from the 80s’ mining strikes through the prism of an unspeakable atrocity. Its second season, boasting a fistful of episodes helmed by the brillia...

Continuing my trip up Empire's   top 20 TV shows of 2024 #2 :     Supacell With the MCU taking off into the multiverse in recent years and DC Studios preparing to relaunch with a phase dedicated to Gods and monsters, Blue Story writer-director Rapman’s brilliantly original Netflix joint Supacell brings superheroes back down to Earth. Set on the streets of Peckham, Lewisham, Brixton, and Camberwell, Rapman’s show — inspired by the likes of Heroes and Misfits — follows five Black South Londoners who inexplicably develop superpowers. Far from aspiring Avengers however, what makes Michael (Tosin Cole), Sabrina (Nadine Mills), Andre (Eric Kofi Abrefa), Rodney (Calvin Demba), and Tazer (Josh Tedeku) such compelling leads — and the show so unique — is that they really are just ordinary people trying to get by in modern London. Seamlessly blending familiar genre features — Superspeed! Superstrength! PORTALS! — with character driven, street-level drama, Supacell has given its genr...

Continuing my trip up Empire's   top 20 TV shows of 2024 #4 :     The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power Like the fledgling fellowship at the start of The Lord Of The Rings, the first season of The Rings Of Power — Amazon’s risky, billion-dollar, high-fantasy gamble on taking the marginalia of J.R.R. Tolkien’s legendarium and turning it into the next Game Of Thrones — took some time to find its footing. With its spectacular second season, however, the series experienced its Council of Elrond moment as its individually great parts cohered into a barnstorming whole. From Sauron’s seduction and torture of Celebrimbor, to the grand reveal of Daniel Weyman’s Grand-Elf identity, to the arrival of Rory Kinnear’s Tom Bombadil, the introduction of heavy metal into Middle-earth, and that extraordinary three-episode spanning Siege of Eregion, Rings Of Power raised the bar on every level with its sophomore outing. And as the fall of Númenor looms, Sauron’s influence grows, and Gal...

Continuing my trip up Empire's   top 20 TV shows of 2024 #5 :    3 Body Problem The sci-fi book series Remembrance Of Earth’s Past by computer engineer-turned-fiction author Liu Cixin was once claimed to be “unadaptable”. Given there will soon be multiple adaptations (including a Zhang Yimou-directed film and an animated series), that word is increasingly and hilariously wrong. But it does not take away the considerable achievement from Game Of Thrones showrunners David Benioff and D. B. Weiss and True Blood’s Alexander Woo with this big-budget English-language take on the book. The eight-episode show streamlines and simplifies some of Liu’s hardest concepts but retains its sense of ambition and its wilder moments (Dehydrated aliens! Nuclear bombs in space! The entire universe winking!). It is not without its flaws, and there are some who prefer the original Chinese adaptation (now on Prime Video), but there is more than enough to whet the appetite for the — now-confirmed...

Continuing my trip up Empire's   top 20 TV shows of 2024 #6 :    The Day Of The Jackal A story of 'analogue spycraft' based on Frederick Forsyth's 1971 novel (a book which previously inspired Fred Zinnemann’s same-named 1973 genre classic film), Ronan Bennett’s extraordinarily tense and taut ten-part thriller The Day Of The Jackal sees Eddie Redmayne on mercurial form as The Jackal, an elite assassin who — having just pulled off a spectacular kill in Munich — finds himself contracted to kill a tech billionaire with a God complex (Khalid Abdalla). At the same time, MI6 agent Bianca Pullman (Lashana Lynch) tails the hitman every step of the way, dangerously spinning the plates of her spiralling family life and increasingly desperate attempts to catch the Jackal. Reminiscent of David Fincher's The Killer in places, yet indelibly infused with Bennett's keen eye for exploring criminals existing on society's margins, this contemporary take on a genre classic brill...

Continuing my trip up Empire's   top 20 TV shows of 2024 #7 :    Rivals Star-studded as it is, with a cast including David Tennant, Danny Dyer, Aiden Turner, Katherine Parkinson and many more, the series adaptation of Jilly Cooper’s much-loved novel was one of the most pleasant televisual surprises of the year. Yes, there’s lots of sex, and garish 80s fashion, and soapy melodramatic conflict about winning the rights to a regional TV franchise that we still don’t really understand the mechanics of. But Rivals also delivered sharp writing, skin-tingling romantic tension, surprisingly hard-hitting moments, and one helluva cliffhanger. Not to mention the gentle chemistry and slow-burn start of an affair between <X> and <Y> (spoilers removed), which catches you completely off-guard in the best, sweetest of ways. It’s brash, a bit silly, and riddled with bare arses – but it’s also an incredibly entertaining ride. We’re crossing our fingers for Season 2. Before we ge...

  So, what did I think of Empire's  top 20 films of 2024 ? I've prioritised Empire's list over The Guardian's this year (I have actually managed to watch #50 on that one, but that's as far as I've got) and it's definitely the right choice. I can't say I loved all of Empire's choices but they were all interesting and there were one or two very pleasant surprises.  Looking first at the films that make both lists, we have ten films (up from seven in 2023) and they were all interesting and some of them were considerably weirder than I was expecting. We have to start with All Of Us Strangers because it topped both lists (the second year in a row that's happened after Past Lives in 2023) - I thought this was a very interesting film and can quite understand why the critics put it top. And then I guess we should talk about The Zone Of Interest (#2 here, #3 in The Guardian) - this was another obviously critic friendly film, but it didn't quite hit ...

Finishing my trip up Empire's   top 20 films of 2024 #1 :    All Of Us Strangers Whether All Of Us Strangers is a ghost story, a romance, a fantasy spawned from the mind of its grief-stricken protagonist, or all of the above, remains very much up for debate. The great beauty of Andrew Haigh’s supernaturally-inflected piece, though, lies in the way its raw emotion more than sustains any interpretation. Andrew Scott is on career-best form as forty-something gay writer Adam, who — in between cathartic visits to his childhood home, where his dead parents (Jamie Bell and Claire Foy) somehow live on — finds himself falling for Harry (Paul Mescal), seemingly the only other soul in his purgatorial London high-rise. On the one hand an achingly romantic tale of queer longing and self-discovery, and on the other a searing exploration of the blood-deep ties that bind parents and their children, Strangers offers a love story for the ages on multiple levels. And that ending? Oh boy… Wh...

Continuing my trip up Empire's   top 20 TV shows of 2024 #10 :    True Detective: Night Country HBO’s anthology crime series returned in spectacular fashion with Night Country, which transported us to the cold, endless night of Ennis, Alaska, in a new season created by Mexican writer-director Issa López. Jodie Foster is as brilliant as ever as Liz Danvers, a grouchy, stubborn, somewhat chaotic police chief, tasked with finding out what happened to a whole team of researchers that were discovered dead, frozen in the icy wasteland, with hints at a somewhat supernatural cause. Kali Reis is an excellent foil-slash-teammate as Trooper Evangeline Navarro, who has a personal stake in the case, and confronts her own issues and past as they solve it. With a totally immersive sense of time and place, fascinating central mystery, prescient story threads on Indigenous issues and an ending you won’t see coming, Night Country is True Detective at its very best. This is another one I've...