Reflecting on 2021 - films and TV

I saw three films in the cinema this year. They were, in order, In the Heights (which was fantastic - I blogged about it shortly after we saw it), Scoob! and Dune. I was going to write an extended review of the latter, but didn't get round to it in the recent busy weeks. 

Broadly speaking, I thought Dune was an excellent capture of the essence of the book. I realise if someone hadn't read the book then it might be hard to follow. But, you know what, the book was published over 50 years ago so people have had plenty of time to read it. For once it was nice to watch an adaptation that didn't dumb it down for the non-reading masses. My only criticism was that it had a score by Hans Zimmer, whose one trick is big, blaring atonal noises to signify vastness. It could have done with more subtlety, because everything is vast in the Duneiverse so there were lots of atonal blarts throughout the film.

Similarly, Scoob! played to the fans. I especially liked the cameo appearance by Captain Caveman. The little kids who were with us watching the film seemed to like it too. So, all in all, that was a decent film as well. 

We have also seen some new films via the streaming services as well. We watched the new Disney animations Raya and the Last Dragon, Luca, and, on Christmas Eve, Encanto. All of them felt like tick the box Disney stories. None really had anything particularly that stood out. I did laugh at Luca's creepy uncle who lived in the ocean deep and therefore was see-through. 

I think the best new release I saw on a streaming service was Free Guy. There was one scene in particular that really moved me. I blogged about it back in October. 

We also watched the two new Marvel releases, Black Widow and Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings. They were OK. I don't feel they added much to the Marvel Cinematic Universe (MCU), and in the case of Shang-Chi, I was mainly left wondering how many other mythologies being real and hidden worlds within worlds there can be in the Marvel canon.

Turning to TV, though, and there have been four series set in the MCU. I would rank them in order of quality as Loki, WandaVision, Hawkeye, The Falcon and the Winter Soldier. All the series are trying to move characters on into the story arc that is taking over from the Avengers story arc of the last 10 years. WandaVision was a tease for the first few episodes, which Cathy found annoying. In a later episode it included a memorable comment about the nature of grief, which prompted me to blog.

Loki was similarly focused and introduced the idea of parallel universes and divergences in timelines. It was quite clever and I enjoyed the other versions of Loki that cropped up. (Aligator Loki being my favourite.) Hawkeye was released in the run up to Christmas and was suitably seasonal. It introduced some new characters, including a villain who may become relevant in the rest of the MCU.

The Falcon series couldn't decide what it wanted to be. Was it a series addressing race issues, or addressing fascist responses to displaced peoples? Were the terrorists the bad guys, or the good guys? Unfortunately I found the terrorist leader to be completely unbelievable as a character and the show itself veered between the peril that the Falcon's family might lose the family fishing boat and shadowy figures manipulating events on a global scale. 

Two series on Netflix that we really liked, Kim's Convenience and Atypical, came to an end this year. Both opted for sweet endings with unresolved storylines left hanging. In Atypical almost all the characters got a happy ending that meant they would be embarking on an adventure somewhere. It was both satisfying but sad that in a way the characters were going off and doing something else and we wouldn't see what would happen to them. That is how life works though, with people moving on and living a life invisible to us. 

We also rewatched a lot of TV. We watched the entire run of Frasier, most of which was still very good, years after it first aired. We watched most of Cheers, which hasn't aged as well. We watched all 8 seasons of Castle, which got a bit wrapped up in its story arcs and then bodged the ending of the final season with a tacked on scene that didn't work. 

Towards the end of the year we started rewatching Futurama. One or two episodes have been uncomfortable to watch, showing how much things have changed in the last 20 years. However, most of the jokes have made me laugh.. for the umpteenth time. And the episode with Fry's dog, well, I knew it was coming, but dammit, I still choked up at the end! 

That's the mark of good telly - that it can still hit you in the feels even though you know it's gonna hit you in the feels. 

I may have jumped the gun on this review as the first episode of The Book of Boba Fett is about to drop on Disney Plus. But I will save that for a future review post.

This is the Way to my 2020 TV review

Here's a review of the telly I watched in 2020. (The picture is relevant!)

The only 'reality TV' series I watched was The Great British Bake Off. Kudos to the team for being able to film it during a pandemic, but really it followed the same format as it ever does. It was nice escapism to watch something where the only dreadful crisis is if someone has burned their biscuits or dropped their doughnuts on the floor. My main criticism is that Sandi Toksvig was a big loss on the presenting front. 

Back in the summer we started paying for BT Sport so that I could watch baseball on ESPN. I ended up getting up in the middle of the night on a couple of occasions to watch my team, the Padres. That included the post-season play-off games, all of which were shown across BT Sport. I've since taken up a special offer and we now have Sky Sports as well. So I've been watching a lot of football. 

Cathy and I have been having lunch together almost every day in lockdown. We tend to watch an episode of a comedy with lunch and have worked through all 11 seasons of Frasier, starting from season 1, and other American comedies, Man With a Plan, Superstore, and Single Parents.

Man With a Plan stars Matt LeBlanc as Adam and his on-screen wife, Linda, is played by Liza Snyder, who we used to watch years ago in a sitcom called Jesse where she was the sparky best friend of Christina Applegate's titular character. Given the twenty or so year gap between watching her in Jesse, it's quite funny to imagine that Joey from Friends married Linda from Jesse, and they both changed their names and moved to Pittsburgh. We watch a lot of American comedies and the connections via actors is quite funny. For example, Swoosie Kurtz plays Adam's mom. But she was also in Mike and Molly, playing Molly's mom. Again, it would be quite feasible for Adam and Molly to be estranged siblings with the same mom.

Superstore is set in a Walmart-style big box store populated by a mix of eccentric staff-members. What I like about it as a show is that none of the characters are just out-and-out stupid. Some are naive, and others are weird, but unlike in many British sitcoms where you tend to have one smart character surrounded by idiots, all these characters have depth. Single Parents is about a group of single parents whose children are all in the same school, and who have grouped together for mutual support. The cast is lifted by Brad Garrett, who I rate as one of the most overlooked comic actors at work today, and some really cool kid actors. The twin girls to whom Brad is a single dad, are perfectly cast as malevolent evil geniuses in waiting and yet manage to be adorable at the same time.

It was weird going back to Frasier after so long. It was well worth second look and it has held up much better than Friends, some 20-25 years on. Some plotlines jar, particularly around discussions of homosexuality, which were probably quite progressive when the show was written in the 90s, but feel a little bit old-fashioned now. One episode where Frasier is erroneously outed as gay doesn't have the same edge to it as it may have done originally, because who would really care now about that sort of thing?

One British sitcom we have discovered and quickly watched through on iPlayer is Upstart Crow, written by Ben Elton and starring David Mitchell as Will Shakespeare. There are a lot of laughs in this as it shows Will as a shameless plagiarist who is also adept at turning everyday life into scenes for his plays. There are running gags about terrible coach journeys between Stratford and London, and knowing nods to issues like immigration, European unity, and a country run by rich posh boys. There are a few rude bits, but they are placed in mock-Shakespearean language, and are quite funny. There are some jokes where it helps to have a bit of knowledge of Shakespeare and some of the controversial conspiracy theories about his writing, but overall I don't think you absolutely need to know what's going on to enjoy it.

And so on to my absolute TV highlight of the year - The Mandalorian on Disney Plus. This show was the reason we bought a year's subscription to the streaming service, and it was worth it. I reviewed the first season back on Star Wars Day. The second season was even better.

#####SPOILERS FOLLOW#####

The second season follows the Mandalorian as he embarks on a quest given to him by his cult leader to deliver The Child (aka Baby Yoda) safely to the Jedi, who can train The Child to use the Force. It's a straight 'quest' narrative. Along the way the Mandalorian has to fight monsters like the Krayt Dragon and giant ice spiders, deal with treachery, strike up new alliances, and keep The Child out of the hands of the sinister Moff Gideon who wants to exploit The Child's abilities to help relaunch the Galactic Empire. 

I would quite like to know what people who aren't steeped in Star Wars make of The Mandalorian, because this series really felt like it was aimed squarely at fans. We see some characters return from the first series, but also live action debuts from two characters who were well-established in the Star Wars cartoon series. These are Bo-Katan Kryze (played by Katie Sackhoff), the exiled ruler of Mandalore, and the apostate Jedi, Ahsoka Tano (played by Rosario Dawson). Both these characters featured in The Clone Wars cartoon series and Star Wars Rebels. 

The episode with Ahsoka seemed to lay the groundwork for a future series about her, as she is seeking the whereabouts of Grand Admiral Thrawn. The last episode of Star Wars Rebels shows Ahsoka setting off on a quest to find Ezra Bridger, another Jedi survivor, who has disappeared along with Thrawn and Thrawn's fleet into hyperspace as part of a plan to liberate the planet Lothal. But I don't think you would need to know any of that to appreciate the episode.

This is something that the Mandalorian does very well. It throws in all these references to Star Wars lore, like the Krayt Dragon, or Operation Cinder, but in a way that doesn't bog down the storytelling or rely on you knowing what any of these things are before watching it. 

And then there were two big characters from the movies that returned - Boba Fett, and Luke Skywalker (three if you count R2-D2, which we probably should). It is now Star Wars canon that Boba Fett survived his encounter with the Sarlacc in Return of the Jedi and lives on to hunt bounties for another day. Meanwhile, we got to see Luke Skywalker in the early days of the New Republic when he was trying to create a new Jedi Academy. We know how that panned out from the events relayed in Star Wars Episode VIII - The Last Jedi. 

That leads on to a source of real concern for fans of the show. We now know The Child's name is Grogu, and he was entrusted to the care of Luke Skywalker. But we also know from The Last Jedi that Ben Solo went beserk and massacred the other Academy students. Grogu was once apparently in the Jedi Temple on Coruscant, where the child Jedi were massacred by Anakin Skywalker.Will Grogu survive a second massacre of Force-attuned children? Let's hope so. 

There is going to be a third series of The Mandalorian, which I think will focus on the Mandalorian helping Bo-Katan's efforts to liberate the planet Mandalore. Given that this series ends with the Mandalorian fulfilling his quest, aided by Bo-Katan, it makes sense for the next series to pick up from there. Katie Sackhoff played the part of Bo-Katan very well, and I would be happy to watch a series where she had a main role. 

The big reveal at the end of Season 2, however, was that there is going to be a Boba Fett series called The Book of Boba Fett. As a fan of Boba Fett, this is excellent news and I am beyond excited about it.

I think the future for Star Wars is probably going to be these short-form series. Both series of The Mandalorian are only eight episodes long and yet they have been much more satisfying than some of the recent movies, which haven't performed as well as hoped at the box office. At one point Disney were planning to release a movie a year, but I think they have backtracked on that now.

And why would they invest in movies that might not work when TV shows like The Mandalorian can generate as much interest. The merchandise available for the show seems to have been very popular. It is also going to drive subscriptions for Disney Plus, and they don't have to split their costs with distribution companies or cinemas. And overall the shows are cheaper to make. They are filmed almost entirely on virtual sets with a small cast. The return on investment must be incredible. The executives must be thinking this is the way forward.

So that's my review of TV in 2020. In a year when I needed some escapism I got to travel to a galaxy far, far away, and thoroughly enjoyed it.

Brooklyn Nine Nine - Series 3 and it's getting relationshippy, hmmm....

I'm a huge fan of Brooklyn Nine Nine. I think it's true to say I laughed out loud at least once during every episode of the first two series. Andy Samberg as Jake Peralta is brilliant at delivering witty lines and the cast around him are equally good at playing comedy straight.

But season 3 has just started and I fear it is heading into the same kind of trouble that has plagued other good sitcoms before it. It's getting relationshippy.

I love these guys

Jake and Amy are now an item. Season 2 ended with them kissing and then a cliff-hanger. They are now trying to work out the relationship. The problem is that in sitcom-world, unrequited love, or relationships being thwarted is always more interesting than when the mismatched, oft-thwarted lovers finally get together.

For evidence: even though everyone wanted Ross and Rachel to get together, the relationship was not the opportunity for comedy that the preamble had been, with Ross dreamy-eyed over an oblivious Rachel and hating her boyfriend, whoever that was in any given episode. Similarly, while how Monica and Chandler got together was funny, their being together was less funny. Friends went from being slick and smart to being schmaltzy and almost unwatchable when it got relationshippy.

Just about everyone who loved Frasier will agree that it went rapidly downhill once Niles and Daphne's unrequited romance was requited. Again, the trick to that comedic genius was Niles being in love with Daphne and her not knowing about it, even though everyone else did. Putting them together would have been the perfect way to end the show, because, realistically, it's not worth watching it after they got together.

The same dynamic of lovesick dolt and oblivious girl is what made Leonard and Penny so enjoyable on-screen in the early years of The Big Bang Theory. That show has gradually married or paired off its four main male characters now. Hopefully they will learn from Frasier and make Sheldon and Amy's inevitable wedding the finale.

We've even seen a similar problem in the otherwise epic Parks & Recreation. They effectively had to bin off Ann and Chris as quickly as possible after they got hitched because they were no longer interesting. And it's a wonder that Leslie and Ben's nuptials didn't sour the whole thing too. Except the real dynamic there was always Leslie and Ron rather than her romantic relationship, so maybe that was the thing that saved it.

The thing is that relationships themselves are inherently settled, while the best comedy comes from unpredictability. That's why Joey was the only character from Friends for whom a spin-off series could possibly work. Comedy is also rooted in pathos. We feel for the love-struck Niles or Ross more than the loved-up versions of themselves, because we feel their pain and share their hope.

I've said before how brave the writers and cast of Seinfeld were to quit at the top of their game, when they were still the number one comedy in America (and possibly the planet). Season 9 is still one of the best seasons of Seinfeld. But it's telling that none of the main characters are anywhere near a serious relationship, except for Elaine - although her relationship with Puddy could only be described as disastrous. If Jerry or George had genuinely settled down the comedy would have slowly dissipated away. (Of course, George had a near miss, but that doomed relationship became a hilarious millstone around his neck in later years.)

So, will Brooklyn Nine Nine buck the trend? A lot of the humour in the first two series came from Jack and Amy sparking off each other and bickering. Now they profess feelings for each other. Can this still be funny? (It's the same issue Modern Family will face now that Hayley and Andy are officially together - we will have to wait and see there too.) I hope the writers can avoid the relationship pitfall, because Brooklyn Nine Nine is arguably the best thing on TV right now (at least until Elementary comes back) and I really hope they can pull off a third amazing series.