Film and TV watching - September 2025

The Hack - A highly accessible, if far too long, account of the hacking scandal illustrating the web of back scratching, corruption and illegal activity held in place with fear over many years.  It’s a depressing story, and unfortunately a complicated one due to the web of connections and cover-ups that needed to be exposed.  But it’s told with verve, using the same approach as The Big Short, simplifying with explanations direct to camera by our narrator and guide, David Tennant as the journalist Nick Davies who over many years doggedly hunted this story down for The Guardian. I fear nothing much has changed, and in fact it may well have accelerated the mistrust of all journalism, including the good and honourable ones, and the turning to online ‘experts’ instead.  The text at the end explaining what happened next was both damning and depressing  But even so, it is worth a watch to remind ourselves of what happened and is maybe still happening. (Series, ITV and streaming on itvX)

The Piper Alpha Disaster - A three part documentary about how the awful accident on a North Sea oil rig came about, causing the death of 167 people.  With brilliant storytelling and using archive evidence, interviews and reconstructions, this takes us through what happened, the human impact and the inquiry and aftermath. What it shows is that appalling complacency and greed caused the horrible deaths of people just doing their jobs.   It’s a tragic tale and it is almost inconceivable to understand this was all caused by human, management and administrative failings, one piled on top of another.  Made me both angry and terribly sad. Of small comfort, but the resulting Cullen Inquiry report and recommendations triggered major changes in H&S management practices in the oil industry and more generally in the UK and across the world. Highly recommended. (Series,streaming, iplayer)

The Hostage - pretty standard but enjoyable action thriller.  Sadly still a bit notable that the people with power are women but it gives it a bit of a different flavour at least.  I enjoyed the correction of ‘migrants’ to 'refugees' in the first episode. The music was a bit one note - with a rumbling baddie soundtrack, tragic strings etc which got a bit annoying.  But I did enjoy the way that the plot had two main rollercoaster loops. Although I always wonder where close protection officers are in these things - always in the loo or something so that the politicians have to deal with baddies by themselves? (Series, streaming on Netflix)

Bonding - this was recommended to me as a bit of fun and it was.  Silly, rude and explicit in a cheeky way, and with very short episodes. I really enjoyed the first series of this sitcom about a guy who becomes an assistant to his dominatrix best friend. The relationship between the two characters develops nicely. It’s both sweet and a bit shocking, sometimes in the same moment, and that juxtaposition made me laugh out loud a couple of times. I wasn’t as engaged with the second series though which started taking itself a bit too seriously, so I’ve parked it for now (Series, streaming on Netflix)

The Paper - spin off from The Office (US version) which picks up on the style and just carries it on with almost all new characters.  Probably a bit too familiar and nothing so far that makes it feel very original, but entertaining enough. I haven’t got very far yet so will see how it goes (Series, streaming on Sky/Now) 

This is the start of the new season for telly, so on Appletv+ there are also new series of The Morning Show (a bit of a slow start, wonder if this is over the best now?)  and Slow Horses (still fun, funny and another gripping plot to unravel).  Let’s see how they go in October.  In the meantime I did watch a few films too… 

The Roses -  this was such good fun.  Coleman and Cumberbatch are on properly funny and sweary form as the couple who can't work out how to live together or apart.  I didn’t even mind about it being a remake.  That ending though - there was an actual gasp in the cinema as the screen turned to the end titles! (Film, at the cinema)

Adventures of Priscilla Queen of the Desert. - I rewatched in honour of Terence Stamp and I had forgotten how good this was.  All three of the leads are excellent but both Stamp and Weaving find an emotional centre which raises the whole film.  An odd bunch road movie, silly, camp and funny and with a warm heart despite the bigotry and hostility that they rise above as they travel through Australia in their eponymous van stuffed full of their feathers and frocks.   Stamp brings the heart in this as Bernadette, but I also love Bill Hunter as Bob her bashful admirer. (Film, streaming on iplayer) 

Fish Tank - I loved this.  Mia is a stroppy teenager at odds with her equally stroppy mum and a little sister as feisty as both of them, living in a flat on a big estate.  Mia is thrown out of school for breaking another girl’s nose.  She is quick to temper, but vulnerable too, trying to be an urban dancer and work out where she fits in the world, hanging out with a horse and guys living in an impromptu caravan park.   Her mum gets a new boyfriend, Connor (Michael Fassbender), who is a bit more upmarket (with both a car and a job) and upsets all of the relationships. Mia is played by Katie Jarvis (a Dagenham girl like me) with subtlety and vulnerability mixed in with the angry bravado, whilst Fassbender as Connor is charming and safe and dangerous, deceitful and more.. Is he a father figure or something else?   Filmed around Dagenham,  the A13, the old Mardyke estate and Tilbury too with lots of handheld camera work around the industrial grottiness but managing to find beauty amongst the marshes and with the big Essex skies.  Raw, gritty and sweary but tender, tense in places but also capturing that teenage sense of nothing much happening too.   Terrible subtitles on the BFI Player though which are just a really rough approximation of what’s being said almost as if going through a couple of translations first.  I usually leave subtitles on, but they were so so bad I turned them off. (Film, streaming on BFI Player/Prime)

Flora and Son - set in Dublin this is about a feisty mother and teenage son who clash about pretty much anything but find common ground in music. A sort of romcom with Joseph Gordon-Levitt as the love interest, and Eve Hewson as the eponymous Flora, it was a strange mix of sweet and cheesy, undercut with some rough realities. I wasn’t convinced by some of the musical choices (far too cheesy for a teen aspiring to be cool) but this was a nice easy feel good watch. (Film, streaming AppleTV)

Hard Truths - a hard watch anyway… Billed as a tragicomedy written and directed by Mike Leigh, it certainly wasn't much of a comedy that I could detect and it felt plain miserable to me.  A family is grieving, all in their own ways after the death of the matriarch a couple of years previously.  Marianne Jean Baptiste is excellent as Pansy who is depressed and angry and has shut everyone out as the family tries to find a way through.  No traditional happy endings here, although Moses, Pansy’s adult son, gets a glimpse of a happy ending at least. (Film, streaming on Netflix)

Handsome Devil - Sweet and funny coming of age story, entertaining for a young Nicholas Galitzine and pre-megafame 'hot priest' Andrew Scott.  Just right for a Sunday evening but it must be quite forgettable because I got a fair way through it before I realised I had seen it before. (Film, streaming on Prime) 

Student Services - French film about a student who turns to sex work to have enough money to continue her studies.  It starts well but it isn’t a pleasant experience, with rape and other non-consensual acts. A note at the end of the film points out that hundreds of thousands of students use sex work to make ends meet which is a pretty depressing thought. (Film, Streaming on BFI Player)

Pornomelancholia - offered to me by the algorithm, this is a graphic docudrama about a man who works in the porn industry. I’m not the target market for gay porn but it was both revealing and sad as it juxtaposes the fantasy being filmed on set with their real lives. (Film, streaming on BFI player)