Fargo - Season 3 (2017 Noah Hawley)

You may recall that in Season 2 there are references to Sisyphean tasks involving pushing a rock up a hill which always rolls back down again - Patrick Wilson uses it in reference to daily life being married. It's funny then that the priceless stamp that Ewan McGregor wants back from brother Ewan McGregor is that design.

It's 2010. To get the stamp, probation officer McGregor sends an idiot to retrieve it who gets totally the wrong house and kills an old man, who happens to be the step-father of local cop Carrie Coon. And that old man is also a former sci-fi writer - leading to an unexpected and delightful cartoon of an android.

Meanwhile very bad guy David Thewlis moves in on business of the more prosperous McGregor and his partner Michael Stuhlbarg.

One again a small family unit is at the heart of the story.

Loved the box that turns itself off!

Who is Noah Hawley anyhow? He's also a novelist and singer (frequently teaming with Jeff Russo). screenwriter and producer, starting with Bones (2005-8) on which he was story editor.

Dolly Parton double bill: Unlikely Angel (1996 Michael Switzer) / 9 to 5 (1980 Colin Higgins & co-scr)

Dolly Rebecca Parton died yesterday aged 80, creating a tsunami of fan worship and a frenzy of media recaps. It sounds like she was a beautiful person with a particular interest in child literacy.

We celebrated her life with a TV movie made by God's own PR company. In order to get her wings in heaven, Dolly must reunite a dysfunctional family, which she of course does, with the occasional help of angel Roddy McDowall. It may not be the best film ever but the ending, in which now winged Dolly flies off to heaven, couldn't be more fitting.

I was wondering what the cartoon was.

The earlier film is much more fun, from its title song, written of course and performed by Dolly. She's one of three alienated women who join forces against evil boss Dabney Coleman. Actually the plot's rather silly. Lily Tomlin thinks she's poisoned him by accident; with the help of Dolly and Jane Fonda they steal the wrong body. He's alive and going to get the police on them so they have to kidnap him and hold him prisoner in his own house. Higgins wrote it with original author Patricia Resnick.

Sterling Hayden, Henry Jones and Elizabeth Wilson co-star. Edited by Groundhog Day's Pembroke J Herring. (Yes, Mr. Herring - we do notice when you speed things up.)

Fargo - Season 2 (2015 Noah Hawley)

Starts out with youngest brother Kieran Culkin keen to get into the electric typewriter business. Goes to a diner to put pressure on a judge and ends up killing her and two others. Then he's run over by Kirsten Dunst (obsessed in becoming 'self-actualized') and rather then stop and tell the police, she takes him home, where later butcher Jesse Plemons finds him and has to kill him. It's 1979, by the way. Native American Indians, UFOs and Ronald Reagan all play a part.

Investigating are Patrick Wilson and father-in-law Ted Danson; Cristin Milioti the latter's daughter. (We know her from Modern Love, Death to 2020 / 2021 and Palm Springs.) And from out of town, Keir O'Donnell.

Culkin is part of crime family headed by Jean Smart; with volatile sons Jeffrey Donovan (Changeling, Sicario) and unruly daughter Rachel Keller,  Angus Sampson and his son Allan Dobrescu. Zahn McClarnon as the Native Indian.

And after them, Kansas City mafia unit headed by a rather cool Bokeem Woodbine, with Adam Arkin negotiating.

Elizabeth Marvel is the familiar face at the hair salon. Nick Offerman the pissed lawyer.

Stand-out scenes: Kansas City gang attacked in the woods. The finger of the corpse that has dropped on the butcher's floor. Dunst managing to better three killers in her magazine-piled garage. A tense John Ford-like stand-off at the gaol. Plemons attacked in the butcher's. Dunst getting lost in WW2 film while Donovan escapes, then hangs Plemons, then McClarnon's intervention.

And leading us to Season 1 is an inspirational leap.

It's a dizzy delight. And once again, the quotation of the original music in the last episode is a lovely tribute.

Creative though it is, I don't think the split screen adds anything.

Great production design by Warren A Young. 

Fargo - Season 1 (2014 Noah Hawley)

A beautiful riff on the original set in the same snowy environs of North Dakota and Minnesota.

Martin Freeman you feel works really hard at getting his accents just right. He and Billy Bob Thornton really stand out, acting-wise, but all the other parts are played well too - Allison Tolman, Colin Hanks, Bob Odenkirk, Keith Carradine, Adam Goldberg and Russell Harvard (the muscle), Oliver Platt.

It's 2006. In Platt's flashback, we think he finds the bag of cash that was hidden and never found from the original film - quite a stroke of genius. Then in delirious plotting, he returns, in some bargain with God, to rebury the money, only to have his son die in a car crash, the result of frozen fish dropping from the skies!

Standout scenes include the shoot out in the blizzard, and Thornton's visit to the Organisation in Fargo, where the camera tracks his progress from the outside of the building and we hear the audio of the chaos he brings; meanwhile the two FBI surveillance guys miss the whole thing!

Then that audacious single track from Hanks' in speed trap car through the woods to a road and another vehicle also driven by Hanks the mailman, and it's a year later. And things have somewhat moved on in the romance department as Tolman is now heavily pregnant and Hanks' daughter Joey King has a lovely new grandfather. Freeman is the cocky Salesman of the Year and when he confronts Thornton in a Vegas hotel he stupidly won't leave it alone and drops himself and his unfortunate new wife Susan Park into danger. Perhaps the only slightly unsatisfying moment is where Hanks finally traps Thornton and just executes him - it would have been more satisfying if the bad guy had been armed, for example.

But overall it was a thoroughly enjoyable and creative experience.

Jordan Peele, FBI Agent Budge, later directed Get Out.

In that final family scene, composer James Russo does, I think, reference Carter Burwell's original score in a lovely tribute.

Ted Lasso - Season 4 (2026 Sudeikis / Hunt / Kelly)

Of course Ted will go back to Richmond to train the girls' team. Of course he will take his son with him.

The way he gets his young supermarket colleague to stop stealing cigarettes is inspired indeed.

Will Tanya Reynolds stay on as assistant coach? Of course she will! (We know her from Sex Ed, Emma., Fanny Lye Deliver'd, The Other Bennet Sister). Will Roy and Keeley get back together? Of course they fucking will!

Bollocks of 2026

It's sadly early to start this list (5 January) but unfortunately we have a contender already, Hunting Wives, some crap about a woman who finds herself in the gun packing heart of Texas Republicanism. The title indicates how crap it will be.

Can You Keep a Secret? Dawn French, Mark Heap 'comedy'.

The Lady. True story of Fergie's dresser-turned-murderer. Just wasn't engaging.

The Fortune. Terribly written crap with Eleanor Tomlinson, set in Hartlepool. She inherits from someone she doesn't know and behaves implausibly from the off. Channel 5 bollocks.

Benidorm is Murder. Retired detective John Hannah solves murders. More Channel 5 bollocks. Embarrassing.

Little Disasters. Was put off by the opening seconds, Diane Kruger's look to camera and the portentous voiceover.

Death Valley. Timothy Spall actor turned detective thing. Not exactly bollocks, but life's too short for unfunny guff.

My Brilliant Career. When annoying Australian lead actress goes into a weird dance to modern pop music in 1900 we just through 'eeoo'.

The Undeclared Wat - season 2. Not bollocks, just boring.

The Murder Line (2025 Graeme Stewart)

Despite its low 5.6 IMDB rating we enjoyed The Murder Line much more than The Undeclared War. For one thing it moves along at a brisk pace with a sort-of Coenish tone, beginning when two crooks manage to get through the US-Canada border despite having a conscious body in their boot; when they open it he shoots and kills both of them then escapes. He is Hamza Haq (good). Then introduce a cop, Stephen Amell and a border patrol cop Tamara Podemski - who dislike each other from the get-go. One of the victims is, like the escaper. an old college buddy of Amell. The plot (with flashbacks) begins to thicken, like a good marmalade.

In tandem a naughty scamp Katia Edith Wood finds her BF has overdosed on drugs and needs someone to complete a drugs deal; enlists the help of innocent comic dealer Jeremy Watson. They end up pushing a man out of a window, which is funny (you had to be there), and are then forced together.

This is writing characters as chess pieces. And how they all move around each other on the board. Because then we also meet Minnie Driver, who's clearly into some very dodgy activity, and I would guess enjoying her performance, and her refreshingly British cohort Thomas Craig. I like the way she single-handedly manages to bump off all the rival drug gang in the show's blood-soaked finale.

I was very amused to see Amell's wife Anna Douglas fight off Craig by firing a nail gun at him four times. I found that hilarious. But was then a bit disappointed he only had one nail in him, in his face. It looked like she'd shot him in the bum. So that was a bit disappointing.

It could be open for a second series.. I'd be tempted to leave it there.

It's also known as 'The Border Line', same as the title tune. I think that's the better title. It was filmed in and around the 1000 islands of Gananoque, Ontario.

Also with Christopher Heyerdahl (police chief) and Kate Corbett ('Blondie').

The Green Man (1956 Robert Day)

Written and produced by Frank Launder and Sidney Gilliat based on their play 'Meet a Body'... actually, I've nothing to add to this.

The Undeclared War - Season 2 (2026 Peter Kosminski, Colin Callender)

Ir's a tricky one, this, as it centres on people moodily walking around offices, followed by a Steadicam, scowling at computer terminals and talking in acronyms and about things like 'sandboxes' and 'mac addresses', and being bickery towards one another.

A somewhat haggard Simon Pegg, Sian Brooke (Blue Lights), Alex Jennings, Hannah Khalique-Brown, Jason Tobin, Ed Stoppard, German Segal, Danny Sapani (in charge of security), Chloe Pirrie (Dept. Q, The Queen's Gambit, Emma.; unpleasant military person).

Gave up early into episode 2. Gloomy, humorless and boring ( OK there was a joke - ''We're behind the Great Firewall of China".)

Project Hail Mary (2026 Christopher Miller and Phil Lord)

Drew Goddard adapted Andy Weir's book (he also wrote 'The Martian'). It certainly has been a somewhat crazy weekend for films.

A school teacher Ryan Gosling finds himself alone on a spaceship with little memory. A larger spaceship appears and from it comes a rock-like thing and they become friends while saving the galaxy. Nuts, huh?

It's ET, basically.

Rocky is operated and voiced by James Ortiz, known on Broadway for his giant and eccentric puppets.

This is territory that Gravity first claimed as its own. Ryan Gosling is the main reason for being here - he's fabulous. The photography and design are stunning. I particularly liked the millions of stripy patterns that the bigger spacecraft makes on the smaller one.

And it's pretty funny.

Sandra Huller from Anatomy of a Fall and The Zone of Interest is the slightly chilly head of programme.

A sensible move to recruit the Oscar winning DP of Dune Greig Fraser. Also of note: sound and visual effects people, obviously, as well as composer Daniel Pemberton and editor Joel Negron, and production designer Charles Wood.

Out of the Past (1947 Jacques Tourneur)

 I've said quite enough about this film already.

Similar shots can be seen in Dark Passage and Lady from Shanghai. And, no doubt, Criss Cross.

Features Teresa Harris from IWWAZ, pictured here with (apparently, and extremely hard to track down) Caleb Peterson:

Actually, it's not hard to track down. He's clearly listed on IMDB as 'Man with Eunice'. Not only that, I had already identified him in my jottings of September 2024! So that was a half hour of my life wasted.

Punch-Drunk Love (2002 Paul Thomas Anderson & scr)

A really weird film. It's funny. And bizarre. What sort of damaged man is Adam Sandler? And by extension, what kind of nut is Emily Watson?

Must mention Jon Brion's crazy score, and Robert Elswit's camera operator David Crone.

Telephone shouting match between Sandler and Philip Seymour Hoffman is hilarious.

Albert Einstein double bill: Oppenheimer (2003 Christopher Nolan) / I.Q. (1992 Fred Schepisi)

I was watching this long film and thinking 'this is too long, it could do with some cutting' but actually most of it is in there for a reason and for the ending. Perhaps the story involving the Florence Pugh character (I didn't even recognise her) is redundant, doesn't really add anything.

There are a lot of characters. Cillian Murphy is the Oscar-winning lead and Robert Downey almost unrecognisable as his seeming friend but adversary. Emily Blunt was nominated. (Loved her scene where she's up against the prosecutor).

With Matt Damon, David Krumholtz (unrecognisable as the Jewish physicist) Josh Hartnett, Kenneth Branagh, Rami Malek, Nenny Safdie, Alden Ehrenreich, Tom Conti (as Einstein), Gary Oldman, Casey Affleck, Jason Clarke (the prosecutor), Matthew Modine.

I was surprised the scientists didn't discuss the radiation fall-out; and that the film shied away from the radiation victims. Also, what the fuck was that about the poisoned apple?

Technically Jennifer Lame does a wonderful job of keeping the bits all in play together and won her first Oscar; Hoyte van Hoytema won his first. The two I thought would definitely win were for make-up and sound, but both were only nominated: Luisa Abel and Burton / King / Rizzo / O'Connell respectively. (Poor Things and The Zone of Interest won those categories). The other three were for Nolan as director, Ludwig Goransson for music, and Best Film.

Lame normally is very negative about every film she works on , thinks it's going to turn out terribly; but on this one she actually thought it was good while in progress. Having edited Manchester by the Sea she became very excited in the Affleck-Murphy scene, relishing the performances: the more scary Affleck becomes the more Murphy flounders.

The stand out moments are when the test bomb goes off but we don't hear the sound of the explosion; then when Oppenheimer congratulates the team but experiences blinding light and bodies disintegrating. The sound is very creative too: the repeated use of feet stamping on the podium, or the welter of questions the prosecutor throws at Oppenheimer.

The last sequence by the lake is great. Fortunately, Oppenheimer isn't a really BIG film, you know, like The Red Shoes or something, and so it doesn't wipe you out, which is how we stumbled into our second accidental Einstein movie, in which Walter Matthau is perfectly cast as the scientist. I have to be honest though about the screenplay from Monk's creator Andy Breckman and Michael Leeson: really only the first third works really well; then all the stuff about the cold fusion engine is a bit of nonsense. Enjoyable professors, though!

Michelle Pfeiffer double bill: Frankie and Johnnie (1991 Gary Marshall) / One Fine Day (1996 Michael Hoffman)

A romdram and a romcon. Frankie and Johnny is a well-written film: you wouldn't know it was a play. It honestly looks at a relationship, the budding moments - particularly a woman who is too scared to get into a serious relationship - and the woman across the way who's being abused. See here. I was going to put in exactly the same screen shot as last time - this one.

The restaurant's on 23rd and 9th, the West side - Chelsea - above the Village. Her apartment's all the way up in Hell's Kitchen - not quite as high up as The Apartment.

The girl on the till who Hector Elizondo nicknames 'Pookie' is Ele Keats. Considering she's important in the hiring scene it's weird how she drops out of the picture.

Who's Dante Spinotti? I hear you ask. His credits include Heat, LA Confidential, The Insider, The Voyage of the Dawn Treader, Wonder Boys, The Mirror Has Two Faces, Beaches, Illegally Yours.

Terrence McNally adapted his own play.

One Fine Day, was written by Terrel Seltzer and Ellen Simon, neither of whom are known for anything else of note. The idea of a couple who can't stand each other at the outset is of course as old as them thar hills, but the idea to compress that relationship into one day was a good one. Good support from Charles Durning, Amanda Peet, Holland Taylor and the like. The kids are Mae Whitman and the accident-prone Alex Linz.

I'm becoming obsessed by wall art in movies. This one looks Futurist but I couldn't track it down:

Good continuity, I noticed.

They're both difficult things to write well, see here. I particularly liked both endings: in the first, a couple clean their teeth and listen to NYC wake up; in the second, they fall asleep, while now best friend kids look on.

Red Eye (2005 Wes Craven)

A very young Cillian Murphy befriends Rachel McAdams as they board the flight, but it turns out he has a sinister interest in her, and her father Brian Cox may be at risk if she doesn't do what he wants.

Certain characters on the flight - stewardesses, a lady who she lends a book to, an eleven year old and a cartoonist are all set into play like chess pieces. From that point of view it's like every airplane movie since The High and the Mighty.

It's a refreshingly straightforward 75 minute ride.

Secret Service (2026 Tom Bradby)

Tom adapted his own thriller novel with Jemma Kennedy. It's directed by James Marsh (1-3, who also directed Tom's 2012 adaptation Shadow Dancer) and Farren Blackburn (4 & 5). Why you would take off an Oscar-winning film director for the last two episodes I cannot understand (the DP changed too, from Ole Birkeland to the less good Nick Remy Matthews).

Gemma Arterton is running a surveillance operation in Malta on Russians; learns there's the possibility of a Russian operative in the senior cabinet. Could it be Home Secretary Mark Stanley or Amaka Okafor? Gemma's husband Rafe Spall is on her PR team.

Good tense scenes - the plant in the Russian house, and later her escape. And the daughter being followed into a spookily empty corner shop.

Big cast: Avi Nash her No. 2, Khalid Abdalla (Gemma's superior), Roger Allam, Alex Kingston, Aoife Hinds, various Russians... Galaxie Clear (the daughter), Alexander Mercury (Russian spy).

Has a funny meta feeling when Tom himself appears reading the news; and one character complains "Fucking ITV!" But still suffers from showing us text messages that aren't legible.

Overall, I'm not really sure what I thought of it.

As I suspected not much of it was filmed on location. Malta was real but nowhere else; Moscow as Battersea Park, for example. Helsinki could have been anywhere.

Ann Droid (2026 Diane Morgan)

Engagingly daft Diane Morgan creation in which she plays a robot (not one of the latest or brightest models) who attempts to look after aging Sue Johnstone (as good as ever) who's coping with living on her own. They form their own unique bond, which is sweet.

This has been done, more seriously, in Humans, but I was thinking it goes all the way back to Lubitsch's 1919 silent comedy Die Puppe / The Doll (sort of).

Somewhat less successful in the sub-story of Sue's useless son Paul Ready and his disastrous relationship with Andrea Valls. With Kathryn Hunter.

Die Puppe / The Doll (1919 Ernst Lubitsch)

Thanks to the 4K Vintage Movie Archive there's a great, restored version of this on YouTube.

And it's very funny and very interesting cinematically. Lubitsch had learned a lot about staging, timing and design from the legendary theatre director Max Reinhardt which contributes to his blocking of scenes with multiple charters - the chase of Hermann Thimig by forty maidens, the dance of the dolls. In fact that chase may have been an influence on Keaton's Seven Chances - must watch that next - and itself would have prompted the topless women chase in The Meaning of Life. But Lubitsch is also doing interesting things cinematically like the multiple exposures and semi-transparent dream scene, and the dollmaker's hair changing colour.

But the centre of the film is the joyous Ossi Oswalda (a nickname which Lubitsch gave her) who gives a gleeful and very funny performance pretending to be her own mechanical doll. Lubitsch slyly digs into the male-female relationship through this setup.

The set designs by frequent collaborator Kurt Richter (you can tell I'm reading a book on Lubitsch) are really sweet - beautifully set up when Lubitsch himself in the film's opening, builds a mini set and populates it with dolls which then turn into live action -  as are the pantomime horses.

It's also quite cheeky, particularly in behaviour of apprentice Gerhard Ritterband, for example kissing the 'doll' then kissing her mother as well 'just to keep things even'.

Written by Lubitsch and another frequent collaborator Hans Kräly, photographed by Theodor Sparkul and Kurt Waschneck. With Max Kronert, Victor Janson (doll maker), Jakob Tiedker (the abbot, whose dance with Ossi is hilarious).

The Rapture (2026 Bryony Kimmings)

She adapted Liz Jensen's novel for the BBC in five hour long parts.

Ruth Madeley is a wheelchair-using psychologist whose teenaged patient India Amarteifio is in prison for the murder of her mum. But we start to believe the kid has the power of prophecy.

Her Dad Sam Hazeldine is running an anti-doom religious movement. But there's also a global warming protest group at work, run by Siena Kelly.

And Madeley is getting romanced by a man who works at a wind farm, played by Jack Farthing (Towards Zero, Chloe, Poldark, Spencer).

We are impressed with India's gutsy performance.

With Ruth Jones, Richard Elis (good as head of hospital), Iwan Rheon (disgraced journalist), Naby Dakhli, Stephen Campbell Moore, Robert Rhodes (teenaged patient 'Sonic')

Appropriate timing as broadcast in our fifth heatwave of the summer with no rain now for two months. And it's other theme of media manipulation is sadly as current as ever.

Margam Country Park

The Dept. Q debacle!

We'd realised we'd seen it before - had we started it but forgotten? - and were enjoying it, particularly that great twist when what we think is the parallel story of the persecuted lawyer actually becomes the case they are solving four years later... but then we saw the woman in the industrial tank and it was 'Oh noooo, not that one!' and we stopped. Scott Frank and Chandi Lakhani wrote it.

I had realised it was based on a Swedish novel but not not that they'd made a film series of it all before ten years ago... and now I say that I've got a weird feeling that we actually might have seen this, or some of it, when Swedish noir was all the rage... It was called (in English) The Keeper of Lost Causes from 2013.

There is another series coming. Hopefully it will be less bonkers.