scaryblog

Continuing my trip up Empire's  top 20 TV shows of 2025 #17 :     Film Club Sometimes life simply calls for the TV equivalent of a warm blanket draped over you on a Sunday evening. Well, look no further. Aimee Lou Wood and Ralph Davis’s sweet tale of two friends, Evie (Wood) and Noa (Nabhaan Rizwan), brought together by a love of cinema, is exactly that. In an on-screen relationship that is intelligent, empathetic, and full of yearning – note to creatives: bring back yearning! – the series serves as a love letter to everything from Alien to The Shawshank Redemption, and even Bridesmaids. From your dad showing you his favourite action film to that cheesy rom-com you watched on your first date, Film Club understands the connective – and ultimately empowering – comfort of sharing films with one another, and it wears that heart beautifully on its sleeve. I've heard this is good, but didn't watch it because I thought it might be a bit twee - but I like Aimee Lou Wood and Nabha...

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...

Continuing my trip up Empire's  top 20 TV shows of 2025 #19 :     A Thousand Blows Peaky Blinders creator Steven Knight’s one-man mission to construct a potted history of working class Britain continued apace this year in this true-story-inspired Victorian boxing drama. Set amid the cobbled streets of London’s East End, Knight’s series thrillingly imagines a world in which the lives of Jamaican immigrant Hezekiah Moscow (Malachi Kirby), bare-knuckle boxer Sugar Goodson (Stephen Graham), and Forty Elephants crime syndicate leader Mary Carr (Erin Doherty) — each fascinating, real historical figures of whom we truly know vanishingly little — all intersect with explosive consequences. Brilliantly acted, astonishingly well designed, and perfectly written just within the margins of historical plausibility, it’s a total knockout. Bring on Round 2! This was advertised a lot and got very good write-ups, but I had absolutely no interest in watching it - it falls into the Peaky Blin...

Continuing my trip down The Guardian's  Top 50 TV Shows of 2024 #16 : Fallout  The Last of Us took a big step forward in rehabilitating the maligned video game adaptation genre, and this year’s Fallout represented another. Set in a hellish, heightened post-apocalyptic world, this was a story of mutants and zombies and lost innocence that managed to be cheekily knowing and genuinely gripping in equal measure. Some of this was down to the performances – Walton Goggins and Ella Purnell were particularly good – but a lot of it was down to plain old self-belief. More than anything, this was a show with absolute faith in its source material. I'd heard this was good, watched the first episode, enjoyed it - and then never watched any more of it. I think this was because the first episode was very much a scene setter, which looked particularly impressive but didn't really give you any clues where it was going, so I didn't feel massively invested.  And, to some extent, that comme...

Starting my trip up Empire's  top 20 TV shows of 2025 #20 :     Foundation It’s important to have at leat one show in your life that’s an undemanding, easy watch. A show that you can lie back and sink into while letting your brain switch off. Foundation is not that show. The third tranche of this ambitious adaptation of the Isaac Asimov series might have seen showrunner David S. Goyer take a step back from the helm, but its quality remains undimmed. The Cleonic triumvirate begins to crumble (Lee Pace’s Brother Day going full Lebowski), Harry Seldon’s (Jared Harris) plan shows signs of fraying at the edges, and all-powerful antagonist The Mule (a delightfully maniacal Pilou Asbæk) takes centre stage. There’s even a pair of space Influencers (Cody Fern and Synnøve Karlsen) thrown in for the Gen Z crowd. This is cerebral television at its most ambitious and a mind-bogglingly complex (and compelling) work of sci-fi that deserves to be seen by everyone. Come for talk about fou...

Continuing my trip down The Guardian's  Top 50 TV Shows of 2024 #15 : Mr & Mrs Smith  Donald Glover and Maya Erskine’s fresh take on the movie that brought Brangelina together might not have been quite as sexy – but they certainly still brought the chemistry. Their coupled-up assassins, John and Jane, portrayed a real relationship (there’s even a first-fart-in-bed scene) set amid the constant paranoia, impressive gun-shooting and deadly glamour of the world they occupied. It was bags of fun, but <spoiler alert> I'd heard this was good, watched the first episode, enjoyed it, forgot what happened and never watched any more. And  I've never seen the original film so I can't compare it with Brad and Angelina, but it can't end any worse than that, can it? Donald Glover (who is probably best known as Childish Gambino, but has also appeared in Community and Atlanta) and Maya Erskine (who's been in quite a few things, but I didn't recognise many of them) p...

Continuing my trip down The Guardian's  Top 50 TV Shows of 2024 #14 : Lost Boys And Fairies  There wasn’t a dry eye in the house while watching this wondrous drama about a gay couple’s journey to adopting a child. It was a total pleasure to spend time with Gabriel (Sion Daniel Young) and Andy (Fra Fee) and their friends in the Cardiff drag community, and you rooted for them the whole time they navigated the turbulent adoption process. Then <spoiler alert>. It was beautiful, with the added bonus of fabulous drag performances in every episode. I'd never even heard of this, so I was surprised it was so high.  And - know what? This was really good. If you've not seen it, then I've massively improved things for you by removing text from the The Guardian's review because this goes places you wouldn't expect from the basic concept. Nominally it's about " a gay couple’s journey to adopting a child"  and,  I believe, does a good job of conveying what ...

Continuing my trip down The Guardian's  Top 50 TV Shows of 2024 #13 : Mr Bates Vs The Post Office  This year, the head of ITV said that Mr Bates vs the Post Office had such limited international appeal that it left the channel with a million pound loss. But finances be damned, because you’re unlikely to ever find a show able to leave such a large footprint. Despite diligent reporting, the Post Office scandal never managed to catch fire in the public eye. Mr Bates vs the Post Office changed that, taking an unmanageably complex issue and turning it into the David and Goliath story it always was. Nothing less than a testament to the power of television drama. Skipping over Ripley (#12 here, #11 in Empire's list) brings us to this which you might possibly have heard of. I was actually previously aware of the scandal (Private Eye did a good job of reporting it and I used to read it quite often back in the day) and it seemed like nothing was going to shift the needle on it - until ...

Continuing my trip down The Guardian's  Top 50 TV Shows of 2024 #11 : The Traitors  Try to recall 2024’s genuine nation-uniting moments of water cooler television, and chances are that at least one of them was down to this glee-inducing reality series. The nigh-on Shakespearean drama of Diane’s son reveal! Jazatha Christie! The poisoned chalice of rosé! The ludicrously gothic funeral! Given that we’re now at the point where all the contestants are wise to the show’s shtick, the attempts to stop traitors from ousting faithfuls from the cash prize really shouldn’t have been anywhere near as fun a piece of television as its first series. Somehow, against all odds, it was far more fun. Roll on season three! This is one that we watched as a family - and there weren't all that many things that was true for throughout the year. And I kinda think I don't really need to write anything about it, because if you've not seen either the OG Traitors or the new-kid-on-the-block Celebri...

Continuing my trip down The Guardian's  Top 50 TV Shows of 2024 #10 : Nobody Wants This  More than 20 years after he captured hearts as Seth Cohen in The OC, Adam Brody made his big TV comeback for millennials in this very modern romcom. Based on creator Erin Foster’s real experiences, it followed “Hot Rabbi” Noah (Brody) who falls in love with sex podcaster Joanne (Kristen Bell) – but they faced the problem of her not being Jewish. Could it work? Over the course of very funny episodes, scarily relatable dating scenarios (The Ick was a standout) and a top supporting cast including Succession’s Justine Lupe, we learned that, yes, love wins. And that is exactly what a great romcom should remind us. This has got such good write-ups (and for the second season as well) that I've been tempted to check it out - but it's never quite happened. Until now... Yes. Hmmm. It certainly has a lot going for it - it's well written (and, in places, relatively relatable), well acted (with ...

  Some final thoughts on Empire's  Top 50 TV Shows of 2021 . Well, this isn't going to take long because I only watched Loki and Midnight Mass - both of which were pretty enjoyable. I also have to mention Cobra Kai and Sex Education which weren't on The Guardian's list but I chose not to watch them - in the case of the former because I have absolutely no interest in doing so and for the latter because it was season three and I'm not convinced I care enough to invest all the time required. Of those, I was surprised that The Guardian didn't have Midnight Mass on their list, because it seemed up their street but they only gave it three stars. They weren't overly impressed with Loki either ( "tedious time-hopping" ), also giving it three stars - they liked season two more ( "the best Marvel TV show in years" ) so obviously they gave that three stars as well. The other two get three star reviews as well, so I guess they were being slightly c...

Continuing my trip down Empire's  Top 50 TV Shows of 2021 #5 : Midnight Mass If The Haunting Of Hill House didn't make it clear enough, Mike Flanagan getting stuck into an entire Netflix limited series means you're in for something special. And his long-gestating Midnight Mass (of which he directed every instalment, and co-wrote them all too) was pure, unfiltered Flanagan – a bloody-but-beautiful, spine-tinglingly spiritual seven-episode series that plays both as a rip-roaring horror story and as theological allegory. With its explorations of familial trauma, faith, guilt, alcoholism, and the ghosts of the past that refuse to die, Flanagan mulls over his key obsessions afresh – spinning them into a Stephen King-esque tale of an isolated island community, and the charismatic young preacher (an astonishing Hamish Linklater) who inspires renewed religious fervour in his flock when performing apparent miracles before their very eyes. To state the exact subgenre Midnight Mass pl...