WATCHED - Mr Nobody Against Putin

Pavel Talankin is a teacher in an ordinary school in Karabash, Russia. The widely renowned unhealthiest town in the world. Existing, as it does, cheek by jowl with a huge copper mine. To us this looks a truly grim place, grey and bleak, full of poorly kept Soviet era housing.  Pavel, however loves the town he grew up in, its people and his work. Apart from teaching, part of his job is to document on film the day to day events taking place in the school. His office becoming a hang out space for a particular type of arty bohemian student. Pavel is a nerd working within the school system, he doesn't ever quite fit the mold. But he has discovered a way that he can creatively contribute that works for everyone's benefit. He loves and cares about his students and their future. All is going fine, until Putin invades Ukraine.

What happens then, is that the state begins to interfere in the day to day running of the school curriculum. Teaching becomes a mere repeating of daily statements from the Kremlin, about the nature of the war, and the people's role and responsibility to support it. Daily he is forced to record on film the pseudo military assemblies, the absurd nationalistic propaganda statements being presented as education. There is one gruesome scene where a group of Wagner mercenaries come to the school to tell them about the war  and show off their military hardware and it's explosive capacity to kill and maim. At one point the Head states that the level of pupils educational attainments are falling. This is entirely a result of the additional burden of their teaching becoming a propaganda arm of the war effort. Pavel can't stand it, and hands in his resignation. 

Then, after someone from the West contacts him about the films he's made, he decides to stay. Simply in order to better document what is happening, and the decline of the school into a source of recruitment for the war effort. As his own students are drawn into being future cannon fodder for Putin's war. He makes small acts of rebellion, like broadcasting the Star Spangler Banner sung by Lady Gaga through the schools sound system. His taciturn librarian Mother, sits repairing books to make them last longer, and shakes her head at Pavel telling him 'to engage his brain, and eat more sweets' for she can sense where this is all leading. People start to be suspicious of him, and his filmmaking. His students becoming hesitant to hang out in his office or be filmed. Pavel knows it's only a matter of time before the authorities come for him, The most touching moment in this documentary is the speech he makes at the Graduation celebration he organises, the day before he leaves and escapes Putin's regime altogether. Everyone attending understanding what the sub text of it means.

This is a very humbling documentary film to watch, about one quite ordinary chap, who attempts in his own way to resist an oppressive regime. I don't think we understand, just how easily any country can fall into becoming an authoritarian state. Look how American democracy has rapidly declined in the space of just one year. Where it suddenly becomes dangerous to mock the leadership or hold certain opinions. How much people start conforming to whatever the regime demands them to be, in order to survive. i might like to think I'd fight back, but would I really?

CARROT REVIEW - 7/8

Oh, yeah, and this just won the Oscar for Best Documentary Feature 2026.
Can currently be streamed in the UK on I Player as part of its Storyville documentary series. 

FAVE RAVE - Small Prophets

Micheal Sleep (Pearce Quigley) is a man living a life half awake to the world outside it. Half working in a DIY store where he actively spreads misinformation about buckets having gone out of use. Half waiting, seven years after her unexplained disappearance, for his wife Claire to return. Everything in his home is left in a state of suspension. His Father ( Micheal Palin) who is in a care home, suggests to his son that he dig out an old folder about homunculi that he once grew in jars. These small prophetic emanations, maybe able to tell him whether Claire is still alive, let alone whether she still loves him. And so he starts cultivating them in his dilapidated garage.

Small Prophets is a beautifully conceived piece of eccentric whimsy written by Mackenzie Crook. Like in Detectorists, his previous cult hit, he manages to capture the essence and lonely obsessiveness of the modern single man. Who becomes consumed by one idea or activity to the point of loosing touch with ordinary reality.  Existing inside this sub-realm hermetically sealed off from other, apparently more sane, people.  Over its six episodes, Small Prophets slowly captures your imagination and your devotion.

It's filled with lovely details in its script. Michael's house and garden is a wildly unkempt mess, that his nosey parker neighbour's are simultaneously both intrigued and incensed by.  The teenage boy who is shown repeatedly cycling around and around the close. Michael's ineffectual manager at the DIY store, (Mackenzie Crook) constantly strokes his long pony tail behind his back, whilst having no real control over his workforce, and is obsessed with them 'taking their breaks'. The way Micheal adopts his Father's emphatic insistence that the beings in the jars are not little people ' they are homunculi '. The locked room in the house where Micheal has preserved a detailed recreation of a 1970's Christmas for his absent wife to come back to.

The premise sounds distinctly odd when written down, but this series has ooodles of charm and a lightly salted satirical humour, that does really grow on you. With these occasionally deeply touching moments that just pop out at you out of the blue. Like all Mackenzie Crook's writing Small Prophets has a warm gently beating heart at the centre of it, that we can all identify with.

CARROT REVIEW - 7/8

FAVE RAVE - Banjo & Ro's Grand Island Hotel

After two series of Banjo Beale, blagging his interior design wares across the Hebrides. Here he is, now together with his long suffering husband Ro, taking on rejuvenating an abandoned hotel on the Isle of Ulva. It's a hugely ambitious project, very carefully structured and edited here in a reality documentary format, with it's necessary peak dramas and crisis points. The weekly decorating of different rooms, ignores the primary necessity of stopping the roof leaking, getting the water, electric and heating to work, and replacing the windows. This only makes sense from the perspective of a makeover renovation programme. This is not how you would start a project of this scale. But that wouldn't make for such watchable television

What makes this programme essential viewing and so deeply lovable, is Banjo and Ro's relationship. Banjo the perpetually inspired designer, with an irrepressible urge to buy that rather too expensive piece of tat he sees some potential in, whilst Ro, yet again, points out the essential impracticality of his whole approach. As a period enamel bath appears over the horizon dramatically flown in under a helicopter. Ro has repeatedly to row back on his sensible doubts, when the room is finally and triumphantly finished. Undoubtedly this project will not have been straightforward, not just financially, but emotionally. But the cheque from the Beeb will help. This project is very far from finished, so there is at least another series in this. I certainly hope so, because this one was hugely enjoyable. The landscape of the islands is so ravishingly beautiful as a backdrop to their renovation shenanigans..

CARROT REVIEW - 7/8

WATCHED - The Traitors

I'm aware that what I'm about to say is not a viewpoint that is commonly held. None of us likes to believe we live in a bubble, but in one way or another we all do. Mine involves avoiding some modern TV reality game shows. This began with Big Brother in 2000, and my current must avoid at all costs are Squid Game and The Traitors. I do this largely because I distrust, or find distasteful, the essential unethical and crude exploitative underpinnings of them. So I've placed myself outside of all this charade, looking on from my very own semi distant bubble, and to be honest remain baffled and appalled. 

I'm not unaware of how huge popular The Traitors is. How can you avoid all of that? The answer is you bloody well can't. It's like someone drip feeding wine into the veins of a reformed alcoholic. You will watch this, because it's your duty to.  I have only viewed an episode or two when Hubby and I have been with his family at New Year. Whilst I have found this happenstance instructive as to how it actually operates as a game, it has not substantially changed my opinion. I still find the format makes me grimace, and suck through my teeth. Even as I sense its attempts to get its sticky tentacles around attaining my own active involvement in its machinations. I do have a clearer sense now for how the programme panders to the worst in us.

There are subtle methods by which it gently softens you up to receive it. This is largely achieved by having a popular presenter up front, like a sort of loveable mischievous Auntie.  Claudia Winkleman's magic is spread like homemade jam all over it, her charm and emollient presence renders whatever is to follow perfectly acceptable  This also allows the viewer to be drawn unquestioningly into engaging with the format. Set it in beautiful countryside, in a magnificent castle, it's all set to support the Scottish Tourist Board

Programmes such as The Traitors points you towards reflecting upon where our country might currently be at. To our straightened financial times, to just about surviving, to where making money is more important than how it's earned, to how our moral compass appears to have been misplaced, to living out a fantasy in the age of stupid.  People engage here with the execution of deceit. Who contestants say they are may be a total lie. The choice of contestants, the type of person they are, hasn't happened by accident. This is not just about being encouraged to fib and dissemble, contestants are chosen for how they fit into particular character types, to which they are then goaded to play up to. This 'game' is then played out so one of them to win a huge amount of life changing money. Your asked to be convincingly yourself, no, sorry fake a convincingly hyped up version of yourself. To use dissimulation to climb to the top for this pile of dosh. The game plays it's own small part in legitimising the social collapse of trust, and it's dependence upon the unfettered individual pursuit of greed, widely active in the world outside of it.  Nothing is metaphorically out of bounds on The Traitors. you have to be prepared to murder to get access to that pot of money, via the round table mockery of a jury, which is often nothing more than an apologetic lynch mob

This process is an absolute minefield sociologically on people's ability, or more often clumsy inability,  to judge the motivations of other people. What people will do in order to gain money. This is only a reality game show, I have to keep reminding myself. It is both serious and facile, and that is meant to throw you off the scent of any qualms you might have. Never forget Traitors is now a valuable format with huge international reach. Some contestants try knowingly to game and second guess the format, with not much success. No matter how confidently they expound their sleuthing abilities to be. There's a lot of puffed up braggadocio on show, which is all the more pitiful when this falls flat on its face. 

Unanalysed mistrust fills the airtime. Clichéd views about men, women or people of colour hover like a malevolent shadow beneath the surface all the time. An inability to examine their own motivations, let alone those of others, becomes jaw droppingly apparent. It's a parody, nay a veritable pantomime, of real life opinionatedness. To massively take out of all proportion a small oversight, a stumbled word, a moment of embarrassment, the wrong time to look away or consider their groin. Major tantrums are thrown entirely for televisual effect, to improve ratings.

I understand how this so easily becomes addictive light entertainment. That's why I'm so proactively resisting watching it. Indulging as it does in a comforting voyeurism, you self identify with particular contestants, laugh and sneer at the sheer stupidity on show. And feel moments of faux superiority because, after all, you've known all along who the traitors are. Meanwhile the contestants flounder around in stately comfort, swimming in an over heated pool of contrived deception and lies, trying to correctly ascertain what is really going on. 

It's a two dimensional puzzle game involving real people, cultivating their worst motivations, to create extremely good viewing figures. No one learns anything remotely useful from this entire process. Everything is as lightly glossed over as the staggering expense of Claudia Winkleman's wardrobe bill. Wherever you look, at whatever level you view this format from, you find a grubby commercial venality. The Traitors is perhaps then the perfect mirror for our time, it's like watching a ship sink in slow motion.

There, that's my Mary Whitehouse moment over with.

CARROT REVIEW - 2/8

WATCHED - Titanic Sinks Tonight

We might believe we know all we need to know about the sinking of the Titanic, through all the repeated films that have been made of this disaster at sea. A large luxury liner hits an iceberg, sinks to the bottom of the ocean with a huge loss of life, end of story. This BBC series of four programmes, Titanic Sinks Tonight, takes you through the two hours plus of its sinking in 'real time', showing you minute by minute how the disaster developed and it's aftermath. What gives this programme its power to grip you, even though you know what the outcome is, is the vividness with which it portrays what is happening through its dramatic reconstruction, and the verbatim accounts  from the surviving passengers and crews testimony.

It also makes great use of  historians, disaster, migrant and trauma survival experts, and most significantly here the writer Jeanette Winterson. Who is amazingly good at conveying the often curious logic behind human behaviour, when its put in the pressure cooker of a highly stressful situation. How we think and respond when we are in heightened panic mode. She is just so down to earth and humane, touchingly reminding you not to jump to moral judgements here. For no one knows how they would really respond in the midst of such a crisis. How we believe we would react, is just wishful thinking. When it comes to self preservation, to survival, something much more instinctual kicks in, and that might be far more selfish and ignoble than we'd like to imagine we would be.

As it takes you through the agonising process of sinking, the number of missed opportunities, and individual failings or mistakes start to pile up. You get a vivid picture of why this turned out so badly. How much the 'unsinkable' claim, made everyone complacent and slow in their responses. Early warnings about icebergs that were ignored because it wasn't flagged up via the correct terminology. The complete lack of a ship wide communication system, to convey information from the ships boiler room, eg - to the captain, or to inform passengers. The Captain who decided that in order to avoid panic,  he told hardly anyone, even in his own crew, that the ship was in the process of sinking. No one knew what to do. People had to decide for themselves what was happening and how best to respond. One officer misinterpreted the 'women and children first' ethos, as women and children only. Which made married couples reluctant to get on the boats, the boats that were inadequate in number anyway. The assumption that there would be a ship near by to come to the rescue, which there wasn't. The list goes painfully on.

Its a very tense and distressing watch, because you really feel for the wide range of people whose testimonies are being brilliantly portrayed here by actors,  The chilling fact that those who got in a boat could hear the screams and pleas of the hundreds of passengers floating in the ice cold water, and could also hear the slow descent of an eerie quiet as hypothermia silenced those sounds of distress. There is also a sense of the real injustice that the engineers who'd heroically and doggedly fought on to the last moment trying to keep the ship afloat, were the last to reach the upper boat deck, only to find there were no boats left to take them.

If you were a first class passenger you were far more likely to survive. If you were a woman or a child you were far more likely to survive. If you were a man, or a member of the crew, you'd be forced into a pose of stoicism and stiff upper lip about your prospects of surviving, which were incredibly small. The men who did survive, had to face public disapproval that their survival was a dispicable dishonourable stain upon their moral integrity. Of the nearly 1500 passengers who died, nearly 1100 of them were crew or third class passengers. There was a hierarchy of survival at work here based upon the implied greater value in being wealthier. Which is quite shocking when laid so factually bare like that.

I highly recommend watching, its quite compellingly told, one episode and you're hooked

CARROT REVIEW - 6/8  

Available to stream on BBC IPlayer.

FAVE RAVE - Leonard & Hungry Paul

 
Every now and then you find a programme comes along that somewhat defies catagorisation. Is it a drama, is it a light comedy or a light comedy drama or light dramatic comedy? The BBC appears to believe Leonard and Hungry Paul is primarily a light drama. Whereas other programmes which exuded a similar tone as Leonard & Hungry Paul, such as The Detectorists, were defined as comedy. Where ever we eventually decide to place it, it sits there somewhat winsomely smiling back at you looking mildly embarrassed and lightly shrugs its shoulders, putting its hands in its pockets and walks away.

The novel this series is based on, was written by Irish writer and blues-folk musician Ronan Hession and became a word of mouth bestseller. Its subjects are quite ordinary people, with relatively uneventful lives. Two men in their thirties Leonard and Hungry Paul are friends who meet regularly to play chess. Leonard lives alone in his Mothers house who died recently, and works as an underappreciated and underutilised editor for a children's encyclopedia publisher. He is attracted to Shelley who works in the same office, and wants to ask her out. Hungry Paul, has very low ambitions for himself, living at home with his parents, and his sister Grace, whose about to get married. He can't quite work out how to launch himself on the world, and whether indeed he should do so at all. He spends his time making hospital visits to hold patients hands and the occasional day postal delivering. 

Though that is pretty much the basic set up of the series, this cannot capture the subtle underplaying of its wit and perceptiveness of its dialogue, and how the voice over narrator ( voiced by Julie Roberts ) is an essential part of how the humour is delivered. Leonard, is played by Alex Lawther, who is having a bit of a career moment this year. having already had central parts in Andor and Alien Earth, all exploiting his geeky nervous style of acting. To which he can now add, the socially inadequate Leonard. Ably supported by Laurie Kynaston as Hungry Paul and Jamie-Lee O'Donnell as Shelley.

This series manages to create and hold its very pleasurable tone steady. Its not an easy thing to write about ordinary lives without that becoming at some point trite,tedious or vaguely patronising. And Leonard and Hungry Paul avoids falling into any such pitfalls. It is quite the most simple hearted and kind little light comedy drama. One that emits oodles of warmth for its characters, their foibles as well as their charms, as it takes you for a modest gently meandering walk through its world. I wasn't entirely sure about its tone for the first quarter of its running time, but by the end of twenty nine minutes I was won over by it, completely hooked. I am currently trying to resist guzzling down all its six episodes far far too rapidly.

CARROT REVIEW - 7/8

WATCHED - The English ( Series from 2022)

 

Another fine series from Writer & Director - Hugo Blick ( The Honourable Woman, Black Earth Rising, The Shadow Line ). This has all the usual gorgeous stylistic polish and uniqueness of his productions. Set in 1890's mid western America, with all the background of mythic pioneering and entrepreneurial ventures one finds in stories set in this era. The English, however, takes you on a very unusual journey through it.

Eli Whipp (Chaske Spencer) has ceased being a scout for the army. He hopes that he now can buy a homestead and land, to be left to live the rest of his life how he wishes. There is pain in his background, civil war atrocities, the loss of his wife and son. Realistically, no whiteman would ever let him own anything, nor leave him alone to live out his dream. But, still he has hope.

Cornelia Locke (Emily Blunt) is an Englishwoman, initially a bit out of her depth in the mid west. She is searching for her former boyfriend Thomas Trafford (Tom Hughes), who is out here running his own cattle ranch. She knows him to be in some danger from David Melmont (Timothy Spall) his former business partner. Cornelia, however, has her own pain that she carries with her, the locket of hair from her recently deceased son. A talisman that only gains in significance.

Cornelia and Eli hook up with each other, because each finds themselves without a home to go back to. But somehow this unlikely pairing of Indian Scout with an English Lady brings out the fighting spirit in both of them. As the series progresses the real reason why she is here in the free wheeling mid west looking for Melmont emerges, and the emotional bond with Eli grows ever deeper. As both their past histories converge on the same place and the same man.

This series holds it's hidden secrets tightly to its chest, that are then allowed to arise slowly into awareness. It is a compelling watch. I don't think I've seen Emily Blunt act better, as she gradually blossoms out of her inhibited crushing loss into this fully fledged vengeful vigilante. Chaske Spencer plays Eli with aloof mystery, amid this regret filled life history that weighs so heavily down upon him. The real delightful surprise was Timothy Spall, so often cast as the genial lightweight, here gives us a truly monstrous creation in Melmont, about whom nothing good could ever be said. Without giving anything away, the ending of The English, is just truly gut wrenchingly tragic.

CARROT REVIEW - 6/8

Available on BBC I Player & Amazon Prime.

WATCHED - Shardlake

 
Matthew Shardlake is sent by Thomas Cromwell to Scarnsea to an abbey where one of his commissioners for the Dissolution has been brutally murdered. Shardlake has to find the culprit, but also must discover a really good reason for why the abbey should be closed down. Cromwell insists he take one of his lackeys Barak with him, which makes Matthew think he is the one who is being watched. When he arrives he quickly discovers all is not well here, and there has been a hushed up murder and a young monk has had a suspicious accident. The murders are definitely an inside job, he needs to discover who that is pronto, before someone else is targeted, or Cromwell runs out of patience with him.

Even when reading C J Sampson's novels they do have a rich cinematic quality, so you knew these would be adapted into a TV series at some point. It was just a question of when. This series, now on Disney + is a pretty fair adaption of the first of his successful Shardlake series of novels - Dissolution. 

Casting wise, it does well in choosing Arthur Hughes for the central role of Matthew Shardlake, the shrewd and perceptive lawyer, who is forever finding himself on the wrong side of the intrigue he is investigating. I'm glad they found such a capable actor as Hughes. Hughes has scoliosis and radial dysplasia, which is a perfect fit for Samson's character. To have gone down the road of faking this disability on an actor, in this day and age, would have been more than a bit distracting. Hughes is a very skilled actor, who plays Matthew with the gentleness mixed with over asserted confidence and crippling self doubt of the book, The script does not tone down the significance of being constantly referred to as 'the crookback' by his superiors, as though he were an entirely different species of human. People cross themselves when they see him in the street. Whatever his current standing in society, he is constantly reminded he is almost there on sufferance, because he is good at his job, almost too good.

Anthony Boyle makes a very good Barak, performing him as alternating between cocky and reckless, with the need he has to hide who he really is behind this facade of status and success. He pulls this off well. I'm unsure about Sean Bean as Thomas Cromwell, he's a bit too northern to have been brought up in Putney. And his hyper masculine style of acting doesn't quite convey the slyness and subtle cunning of Cromwell. One of the qualities of Cromwell was that he was a superlative bureaucrat who managed to do all his machinations in the backrooms. Trying to keep his actual public profile as low as possible. His 'dark arts' were what made him so disliked.

The entire series was filmed in Hungary, Austria and Rumania. Though this produces some very dramatic grand landscapes and buildings, it just doesn't look English enough. In the book The abbey in Scarnsea, is a relatively small festering institution situated near a estuary marshland on the south coast of England. Its smallness in scale is what makes it ideal for Cromwell to start his process of Dissolution there, because its easy pickings. In the series it has become this huge semi- castle. Generally the interiors do seem a bit too plush and shiny shiny. I hope when the series moves to London locations they capture the grubby level of detail that Samson put into his novels, which is a large part of why they are such brilliant books to read. But that said, this is a good start, lets hope we get further and improving further series.

CARROT REVIEW - 5/8

EUROVISION 2025 - Best of Semi Final No 2

The second Eurovision Semi-Final had a better selection of songs than the first, but with no obviously killer song or performance to steal the show. There were some repeated themes. Songs that are really two types of song bunged together and will abruptly shift from one to the other style. With the best will in the world this is a hard bifurcation to pull off. You just end up surprised and not a little disappointed when the song looses consistency. After all you only have three minutes to sell your song in, keep it simple guys. The other thing was the dramatic costume change, which somewhat mirrored the song change tendency. You could tell in advance, at some point that cloak will have to be ripped off to a round of applause. It was done so often it became a cliche over night.

Our two hosts for the evening were trying too hard to be funny (failed) or did really peculiar behaviour that had you shaking your head, or turning it away cringing.. 'The so called 'comedian' was dressed like a mermaid with iridescent fertilised eggs all over her dress.  Thank god I wont be watching any more of them. So now to the three best songs.

The evening opened strongly with the Australian entry. This is a charmingly silly song that was an utterly entertaining joy to watch, which the staging and the not one, nor two, but three costume changes made all the more impactful. He gives it all the energy and sheer chutzpah he can, but it still didn't make it through to the Final unfortunately. Otherwise there would've been a serious clash of the silly song with Estonia. 

Its a tactic in Eurovision to often go for the eccentric, really out there song/performance to hit home with. What the Latvian entry does is give you a really unusual and interesting song, but on the right side of weird. The six singers are beautifully harmonised, dressed as they are in their wood nymph costumes. I think this is the most distinctive and original thing in this entire competition. For that reason alone, it is probably not going to win. But in the straight song competition, as opposed to the delightfully silly parody one, this wins hands down for me.

The Malta entry is the obvious gay crowd pleaser, sung with great conviction and gusto. Already controversial because when sung in Maltese it was very obviously playing with rude sexual derogatory words. Even adjusted to spare our blushes, the presentation is incredibly sassy and on it. This woman is happy to break those boundaries girl. A definite contender for winning, but who can say with Eurovision? 

EUROVISION 2025 - Best of Semi Final No 1

Often the best tunes in Eurovision never get beyond the Semi Finals. This year I think I'll review this and give the actual final a miss, as I usually find it, as an event, gives you an upset stomach. Its a bit like having something highly calorific and sugary thrust down your throat repeatedly.  Entertaining though some of it can be, its way too much.

This years first semi-final was poor overall, with very little that was outstanding, with quite a lot of indistinguishable songs and lame performances. So there really are only these three I think are worth catching, all of them have got through to the final.

The first is the Poland entry - Gaja The singer apparently performed in an earlier contest when she was much younger. Quite how long ago that was is kept under lock and key, so you have to gauge that from how old you think she is now. Lets just say she's giving me Demi Moore vibes. Dressed in a much lacerated leotard, the staging certainly goes for it. Suspending her like an avenging angel at one point. Look out for the male dancer to her right, who definitely wants you to notice him.

The second is the Estonia entry Espresso Macchiato. This song has understandably upset a few humourless Italians as its a send up of every cliche about Italy you can think of. Its actually a brilliantly written, delightfully silly and insanely catchy song. Written by the writing team that wrote Cha Cha Cha for Finland a few years back, It is everything you like about a Eurovision song. The performance contains a lot of stupid dancing, wit, parody, with a heavy tongue in cheek. I want this one to win!

The third is the Swiss entry. Its a very sweet song, quietly affective and delicately delivered, with a stripped back one take film shot, No flashy editing effects and graphics. Unlikely to win though.

Most of the others are barely worth a mention. The Swedish song attempts to do what Estonia does, but with less poise and self deprecation. The Slovenian guy who wrote a song about his wife recovering from cancer, was so inappropriate and emotionally exploitative I deeply hoped it wouldn't get through, which it didn't.....thankfully. The Azerbaijan entry sounds as though it were sung by a child trapped inside a chunky grown mans body dressed in PVC leggings, and it was. The Italian entry  well it was sung by this white face painted emaciated guy channeling 70's glam era songwriting, and it was truly dreadful.  As for all the rest, well its best to keep schtum about those. 

This years pair of contest hosts from Switzerland are really really bad, but not in a good way. Plus for some reason air violin playing  is popular this year.

FAVE RAVE - Virdee

I love a good police procedural thriller, but these days its quite a crowded competitive market and not many of them are quite as brilliantly conceived as Virdee. 

Harry Virdee (Staz Nair) is a police detective in Bradford, he's married to Selma (Aysha Kala), who is a Muslim. As a consequence Harry's Sikh father refuses to see of acknowledge him anymore. His brother in law Riaz Hyatt (Vikas Bahi) is one of two local drug lords who are near to being at war with each other. Riaz is an old friend from Harry's teenage years. He uses Riaz to sound out what is really happening in the gangs on the streets. No one in his police force appears to know of this connection. There are then a series of murders, which appear to follow a gruesome set pattern. On the surface it's made to look like as though the two drug gangs are the cause. But something about it doesn't quite add up to Harry, he suspects there is a third person independently involved. Slowly, he gets closer to finding out who that is. As members of his extended family start getting drawn in, Harry's past actions come back to haunt him. 

Written and adapted by AA Dhand from his original series of novels, Virdee is thematically and visually punchy, set within the South Asian community of Bradford. Plenty of unexpected twists and cliffhangers at the end of an episode. In many ways Virdee is your classic unconventional cop with a dodgy past and family conflicts. But it is the placing of him within second generation immigrant communities, with the secondary theme of a clash going on between those still clinging to old country mores, and those who have been born in Bradford. Its not afraid to deal with race riots, gangsters, interfaith marriages and the nature of drug gang cultures in modern British cities. This gives it all the vivacious colour and fizz you could wish for in a contemporary thriller. 

The three central actors of Staz Nair, Aysha Kala and Vikas Bahi, give this show a very fresh star quality. Brilliantly filmed and paced, with a theme tune to match it in drama and colour . I loved every minute of this series I didn't want to rush through it, so much so, I refused to binge watch. Instead I savoured it episode by episode, spacing them out across a few weeks. Virdee was fabulous, more please.

CARROT REVIEW  8/8 

WATCHED - The Listeners

Claire (Rebbeca Hall) is a teacher, she's married with a teenage daughter. Her life appears to be well organised, content and enjoyable. She starts to be aware of a background hum that is persistent and distracting. No one else she knows appears to hear it. She has a lot of tests to try to ascertain what is causing this, yet nothing appears to fit the bill. Believing there is something psychologically wrong with her, her previously stable life begins to start spiraling out of control. Then one of her pupils reveals to her that he hears it too, and has found a group of folk all having the same experience

The Listeners, manages to navigate some pretty tricky subject matter, like teacher pupil relationships, without you losing sympathy with its central characters. As the story progresses it cleverly wrong foots your expectations where its taking you. The way the group gathers together because they all hear 'the hum' moves from providing support, to counselling, to spiritual guidance, eventually forming into an independent self supporting 'Family', separated off from the outside world, was very credibly handled.  Providing an almost textbook example of how a 'cult' could form around a shared experience.

Over its four episodes it subtly cranks up the stakes. It did appear to lose its grasp on how to conclude the story, how open ended did they want it to be? Is Claire over it, or merely pretending she was? Was 'the hum' a spiritual thing or just a geophysical phenomena? The ending felt a bit fractured and wavering until finally it settled on a surprise twist.  All in all a very satisfying well written series.

CARROT REVIEW - 6/8

Currently available to stream on BBC I Player.

WATCHED - Until I Kill You

We binge watched the four episodes of Until I Kill You on ITVX in one evening. I don't necessarily recommend that, as it is a tough watch. But this is the sort of drama where once you're launched into it you really do have to see it through. So be prepared. That this is based on a true story is deeply shocking. What one woman is put through first by her psycopathic partner and then by the insensitivity and inept handling of the criminal justice system. Well, that beggars belief.

Delia Barmer is a self confessed ' free spirit'. Independently minded, who loves travelling. She lives her life how she wants, she speaks her mind plainly. She comes across as a bit of an odd ball, that others tend to ridicule or snigger at. But underneath it all she has kind caring instincts.

In a pub, after work one evening, she meets John Sweeney for the first time. For a while their relationship progresses well. She asks him to move in with her. Over the four years they are together, it becomes clear Sweeney is not entirely right in the head. And this only gets worse when, out of sheer exasperation, she asks him repeatedly to move out. I won't detail how he responds, just watch the first two episodes it's all there.

Delia Barmer, as played by Anna Maxwell Martin is a complex individual, not always likeable, but always relatable. It's a powerhouse of a performance, for which I would not be at all surprised if awards come her way. Ably supported by Shaun Evans as John Sweeney, the initially charming rogue, with a dark side. With few hints where his twisted pathology comes from. Something previously has fucked him up mentally, we know not what.

The second half of Until I Kill You takes you into the criminal justice system. One that Delia is forced to comply with, but repeatedly fails her. She does not want to play the victim, she just wants justice and then to be allowed to move on. Her endurance of how the system then treats her and catastrophically fails her, is if anything more painful to watch. A compelling gutsy piece of drama, that leaves you dwelling on it afterwards.

CARROT REVIEW  -8/8

WATCHED - Nightsleeper

As credulity stretching as Nightsleeper is, it is such a fast moving adventure it takes you along with it. And the speed is most welcome so the holes and the coincidences don't insult you too much. It's a well produced wheez.

Nightsleeper is constructed around the journey of a train and it's passengers, the night the whole rail networks computer system is hacked. The train travelling from Glasgow to London is left motoring at break neck speed southwards.Onboard the usual range of characters - the loud mouthed cynical businessman, the grumpy OAP,  the morally dubious social media reporter, the flawed police officer with a history etc.

But, it all kinda works, the mechanism mostly keeps ahead of you, and produces a number of fine surprises. By the fifth of the six episodes the formula began to wear thin, it starts to repeat itself. By the time you get to the final episode and the big reveal of who was behind the hack. It's someone so completely left field, You've never been given a hint he might be dodgy before. The reveal felt a bit unearned. 

The constantly cranked up tension in the last episode, rather than leaving you hanging on tenter hooks, left you feeling utterly exhausted. Maybe six episodes was overstretching it too much. A briefer four could've been a more satisfying length. But that said, I thoroughly enjoyed it, for all its ludicrousness. My goodness, they even had a nurse and a lawyer on hand just when they needed them, how amazing is that?

CARROT REVIEW  - 5/8

FILM CLUB - Swan Song

Pat (Udo Keir) lives in an old folks home. He's bored, under stimulated, and spends a lot of his time being mildly rebellious, smoking cigars with mute residents on landings, and endlessly refolding paper handkerchiefs. He appears to be slowly losing the will to live. Then a solicitor visits, he represents an old socialite customer of Pat's, Rita ( Linda Evans)  who has died, and requested he dress the hair of her corpse.

At first he refuses. She'd dumped him, for a rival hairdresser, Dee Dee Dale ( Jennifer Coolidge ) who used to work for him. There's a lot of troubled history, meaning he just couldn't fulfill the request. But gradually he changes his mind and sets off walking, on a journey ostensibly to buy hairdressing supplies. But this entails revisiting a lot of painful places, familiar situations, and inevitably his relationship with David, his partner who died of AIDS.

There are many ways in which this film is a 'swan song'. For Pat revisiting his former life as a high society hairdresser for one last time, the period when he was a part time drag artist, then a man in a loving queer relationship. The film is unexpectedly grim, particularly about late life care. Pat, throughout the film, you see visually rediscover himself as the flamboyant gay man of old. His journey causing him to reflect on the form of his past gay lifestyle, now that this too is passing. Represented by the local gay bar about to close down. Places that once provided gay safe spaces, collective culture and support, now reach their own 'swan song'. Even how you can be gay having changed beyond recognition. 

Udo Kier magnificently holds the whole film together, for most of its running time. A face like granite, eyes flashing with mischief and a mind filled with waspish banter. You do really feel for him, in his fight, late in life, to regain some independence and meaning in his life

Todd Stephens who wrote and directed it, does so with an unflinching honesty. Never taking the time honoured clichéd route, without throwing you a curve ball. This is at times a sombre movie, with a kernel of stern warm heartedness, that never gets schmaltzy.

CARROT REVIEW  - 5/8

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FAVE RAVE - Passenger

This ITV crime drama, has been billed as a cross between Happy Valley and Twin Peaks. And it does indeed pinch a few of its main tropes from these programmes. To which I would add, a dash of the supernatural from Stranger Things. But it wears this borrowed lineage very knowingly and lightheartedly. It casually references Broadchurch, that Andrew Burton, Passenger's writer acted in. Plus a passing witty reference to Vera, that Passenger's central star Wunmi Mosako, was on the cast of for a couple of years.

This playfulness with its humour, is one of Passenger's central charms. Set in the fictional town of Chadder Vale, somewhere in the Pennines, a short bus journey away from Manchester. But it might just as well be somewhere out in the wilds of Canada. When it opens, Chadder Vale is in the middle of an unseasonable heavy period of snow. A girl had gone missing, a dear stag is found disemboweled, something weird is going on in the forest, and a notoriously evil man has been released early from prison and is returning home. Five years ago Chadder was caught up in some sort of atrocity that no one can talk about, let alone come fully to terms with.

In the middle of this is Riya (Wunmi Mosako) a detective moved there from Manc Met. She believes something is disturbingly awry in the heart of Chadder Vale. Her boss constantly dismisses her ideas and undermines her, as her main aim is Chadder Vale winning The Best Kept Town award. Riya's sidekicks, Nish ( Arian Nik ) and Ali ( Ella Bruccoleri ) both are geeky and obsessed with meaningless questions of choice - sich as - 'which would you chose, to have completely white eyeballs or a crystal nose ?' All because they are being chronically under used. The main thing they are allowed to investigate is local bin thefts. A Swedish woman has apparently gone missing, yet oddly no one apart from Riya, appears at all concerned about it.

The story throws more than a few curve balls and bizzarely inexplicable occurances. Most of which never get adequately explained. The end of this first series makes it clear a second is most likely already in the can. It resolves a few strands, but leaves us with so much more left unanswered. I was for a change, not at all irritated by this unresolved state of affairs. I remain intregued and highly amused by this series, and hope its follow up comes soon.

CARROT REVIEW - 6/8

WATCHED - Three Salons At The Seaside

You'll find this little documentary gem in the I Player's Archive section. Originally made in 1994, this takes you into the arcane world of three women's hairdressing salons in Blackpool - Vanity Box, Mary's Way and Tricia"s. 

Though it's filmed on the 90's the world you are being shown here is several decades older, more 1950's - 60's. The decor looks straight out of the 1970's. One salon has fake laminate wood wall paneling that my Father once lined the walls of our front room with.

This period piece, captures a long vanished world of old fashioned hair salons. Hiding in the back streets of Blackpool. Places where you would meet socially, gossip and tell of your woes to the hapless trainee. Where most of your clientele are blunt speaking elderly ladies in orthopeadic shoes, legs in thick stockinette. One conversation between two eighty year old centres on one woman's fall, which she insists was not a fall, she 'were knocked over' by a car driven by another female pensioner.

The proprietor of Vanity Box seems the likely model for one of Caroline Aherns characters. She's obsessed with death. Keeps a list of customers, noting when they'd died, just so there's no confusion. Then there is the 'funeral handbag' with some mints and a bit of money in it, for customers to borrow to appropriately attend a service with. Then there is the tale of the customer who died on the upstairs toilet. Which doesn't bare thinking about.

It is, in short, a real hoot. Well worth half an hour of anyone's time. A bona-fide classic.

THINGS THAT CHEERED ME UP IN 2023

Goodness have we needed to find some solace somewhere, this year of all years. Here are a handful of music and accompanying videos, that have amused or provided joy to the soul, with ocassional dashes of hope and gleefilled optimism.

From its opening through to its ending this video is a gift, that just keeps on giving. Olya Polyakov, once the camera is placed upon her, as the stage fan starts wildly blowing her hair, is well and truly on. Preening at you, with 'come hither' alluring eye contact, and a shameless deploying of flirty stage charisma. Dressing like she's escaped from a low budget Sci Fi epic, she is heavily buttressed. When allowed full reign, her operatic timbre completely inhabits her. She looks for all the world like she's having an explosive orgasm right in front of you. 

The TV presenter grooving in the bright blue armchair can't help but oggle every morsel of her performance. As The Army of Lovers mouth Liberte, Egalite, Maternite without a hint of irony. Its a song that is sheer nonsense on stilts, built out of a sequence of words that rhyme yet mean nothing - But - I Love it - bliss, sheer bliss. I begin every day by watching this.

Now I was never much of a Spice Girls fan. In a sense they were not designed for me, but for pubescent teenage girls. As a social phenomena they signified much more than the music, which is fortunate because the music was pretty consistently dreck. Apart from this one beam of delight, taken by the Whoniverse and handed over to Neil Patrick Harris to camp up for a Dr Who special. One of the TV highlights of the year. Both sinister and scintillating - enjoy.

It has to be said this has been Kylie's year. The breakout summer hit of 2023, Padam Padam had classic dance floor filler written over its numerous song hooks. And once they get their highly polished red nails into you, well there is no rescuing you. Yet another career renaissance, how many more can this woman have?

This was the first warm up track for a soon to be released album, but way back in mid summer. The album, we are still waiting for, but one gets the sense from what they have released so far, that Yard Act and their record company know they've come up with a goodun. The Trenchcoat Museum is full of the usual Yard Act mischievous satire and broad range of characters, with a truly addictive groove going on for good measure. Worth eight minutes of anyone's time.

One might have been tempted to write James Blake off many times in his career. His recent albums having been patchy, with only a few great tracks amongst a lot of thin gruel. But with the album Playing Robots Into Heaven he produced one of his best. Loaded is just one highlight, a melancholic song that is yearning for some form of transcendent love but - where are my wings? They're loading. Beautifully wrought, with a ticking clock like rhythm beneath it, the fateful fall of a discordant descending glissando of synths, brings it all to a crashing end. Classic.

A HIGHLIGHT OF MY WEEK - Being Kae Tempest

If you haven't heard me extolling the quailty of their work before now, this programme on BBC I Player is well worth checking out as a primer into a very significant poet and artist. Uplifting and heartfelt whatever they do, their work holds this massive sense of a creative vision behind it. One that can't help but be inspiring. Kae Tempest gives you hope. Click on the link

https://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/m001sxfm/being-kae-tempest

A HIGHLIGHT OF MY WEEK - Strictly Come Dancing

There have been a lot of good dancers this year, a pretty high level has been achieved across the board. However, really top 'Oh My God' moments have been noticeably absent. Until this week. Layton Williams, though not a ballroom dancer, is basically a trained professional. Everything comes with such a degree of ease and stylishness. He is a fabulous performer, really talented. But even with all that polished show biz pazzazz he's failed to knock you side ways. Until this week. The week he and Nikita Kuzmin did an Argentine Tango, which was just so superb it literally blew my mind.