Chatterbox - still talking nonsense

The summer is always weird for telly as there’s a lot more to do outside.  But I did watch a couple of things. Ride or Die: Another women led action adventure, with cast, production and writing all covered, and I’m here for it..  With the magnificent Hannah Waddingham as an assassin and Octavia Spencer as her best friend, this is a lot of fun as the duo run rings around the Albanian mob with the support of a couple of green flag men in secondary roles.  I love the middle aged female friendship being displayed here, but it’s also great that women can be proper baddies and not just in a girlie way.  Some of the plot and dialogue is a bit iffy, but this is funny and engaging, and generally a cut above the majority of action adventures so I definitely recommend. (TV series streaming on Prime) Silo: series 3 of this sci-fi dystopian book adaptation has been drip fed over the past few weeks.  Rebecca Ferguson is still fab, and it is still largely sticking to the boo...

As it's been Pride month I have been rewatching a few old favourites - so starting this month’s roundup with some suggestions:   Heated Rivalry -  award winning, classy, complex romance set in a toxic environment. Crafted as if it was a 6 hour movie, with fabulous writing, cinematography, soundtrack and performances which absolutely deliver on its carefully structured story arc. It chucks the traditional male gaze out the window in the beautifully shot intimate scenes, and if episode 5 doesn't have you standing on your sofa cheering, there is something wrong with you*.  You do need to put your phone away though, trust that the first few episodes are worth the later payoff, and properly watch, otherwise you will miss so many of the subtle layers (s eries, streaming on Sky/NowTV)   All of Us Strangers - A reworking of a Japanese novel, this atmospheric thriller/ghost story/romance explores grief and loneliness alongside all sorts of love between families and love...

I caught up with an old friend to go to a comedy podcast recording of @TonsilHockey with Olga Koch and Catherine Bohart. It was lovely to see my friend again, and the show, which was a watch-a-long for an episode of Heated Rivalry, was a lot of fun.  There’s something great about being in a room full of people who are locked into the same thing, whether that’s a tv show, a theatre production, comedy show, gig, or even (I imagine, though I have no direct experience of this) for sport. The shared highs and lows, laughter, cheers and groans are so much more fun when shared, and it’s a good reminder of what pack animals we still are any time we get an opportunity.   Anyway, I laughed a lot, with Phil Wang as the novice tribute being inducted into the cult, having not seen the show, with the rest of the room the experts on every scene.  So far so good... but I'd like to know what is it about me that means I am the person that always gets picked on to talk?  Particula...

Heated Rivalry - This is a highly enjoyable slow-burn romance between ice hockey players, developing over a 10 year period. Is it any good? ‘I mean, yes, I think so, probably’. There's a lot of snobbery about the romance genre, but this is interesting, not just because of the work itself,  but also the way it has captured the zeitgeist* and pulled together lots of live debates into one place. So, this is a slightly longer essay than usual, feel free to skip past. Firstly, what is this about? This is a Canadian word of mouth success that blew up in the US and Canada before Christmas and left networks around the world  scrambling to get in on the action, arriving in the UK in January. Most of the early noise was about the spicy sex scenes but it settles down into a proper old school yearning romance.  In addition to the character development and recognition of self, which is always central to a solid romance, there are the external pressures of being rival sports personalit...