Rooster (2026 Bill Lawrence / Mark Tarses)

New Steve Carrell comedy for HBO revolves around University. Carrell is a best selling pulp fiction author who drops in to look after recently separated daughter Charly Clive, finds himself sequestered (the wrong word I know) by college professor Danielle Deadwyler. Brit Phil Dunster is the ex, who's now with Lauren Tsai ("I'm funnier than everyone thinks"). Eccentric Dean is John C McGinley.

An entertaining and amiable show. Carell ends up being a much liked professor and wants to stay on, despite his constant tripping over of political correctness traps. Enjoyable relationship with student Maximo Salas. Amusing policeman who keeps losing his gun, Rory Scovel.

Filmed at the University of the Pacific, California, Stockton Campus. That library I liked was the Hoose Library of Philosophy at the USC (University of Southern California - I would link to their website but it's really boring). 

Would watch more. Despite Q's fraudulent claims it has nothing to do with Brett Goldstein. But Bill Lawrence is the showrunner - perhaps this is the link to Ted Lasso. Littered (for some reason) with eighties music.

Silent Witness (2026)

A downbeat episode about mental health, the homeless and drug addiction, well caught by Vivienne Harvey, Creekwood. And it all goes back to the barbaric practice of Lobotomy procedures, performed in the titular hospital. Some searing information contained here - you can't get a prescription without a fixed address, that one in four kids have been in care - quite staggering.

Good performances from Joe Barber, Lydia Wilson (who we've just seen in About Time), Yasmin Davies, Mark Stobbart, David Webber, Cat Simmons and Chris Gordon.

Simmons and Stobbart

Webber

Barber and Davies

The last moment - Davies now without partner, off her head, dancing the night away on a lonely rooftop - is poignant indeed.

The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe (2005 Andrew Adamson)

A generally faithful adaptation which Disney probably put into production in the wake of the huge global successes of the Harry Potter and Lord of the Rings series. (Though I should point out that tell-tale screenplay credit, written by Christopher Markus & Andrew McFeely and Anne Peacock & Andrew Adamson.)

I remember when I first watched it being excited to learn that Tilda Swinton was the White Witch, then being disappointed by her lack of menace; it's a good performance but I felt the same way. The big battle scene at the end is faintly ludicrous and frankly boring; we want Peter 'the magnificent' to despatch the Witch himself. Aslan's voice is all wrong - instead of Liam Neeson we needed James Earl Jones.

There are one or two nice moments of magic (the flames that become characters) but overall this is a little dull. They were right to keep it in period. What I do find exciting though is that The Magician's Nephew is in production, adapted and directed by Greta Gerwig!

Georgie Henley, Skandar Keynes, William Moseley, Anna Popplewell, James McEvoy, Jim Broadbent. Voices of Ray Winstone, Dawn French, Rupert Everett.

DP Donald McAlpine, composer Harry Gregson-Williams, editors Sim Evan-Jones (also the voice of the wolf) and Jim May.

The Best Silent Witnesses

Divided Loyalties. Niall Leonard. Dead woman and baby. Drugs. 'Stukie'.

The World Cruise. Tony McHale. Auschwitz resurfaces.

The Fall Out. Tony McHale. Multiple vehicle pile up. And a spare arm.

Closed Ranks. Tony McHale, Season 6. Leo's wife and daughter are visiting when a case similar to one of his old ones appears.

Answering Fire. Dusty Hughes. Fire in hotel. Dodgy politician.

Choices. Doug Milburn. Harry befriends kid who's involved in night club drive by shooting.

Cargo. Doug Milburn. Boat of illegals capsize. Infectious disease on board, and little missing girl who Nikki just will not give up on.

Body of Work. Rhidian Brook, Season 10. Harry and Nikki are starting to get it on when an old flame of Harry's turns up dead.

Schism. Christian Spurrier. A bit far-fetched, but Nikki is kidnapped.

Hippocratic Oath. Tony McHale. Two bodies in one coffin...

Shadows. Dudi Appleton and Jim Keeble. Killing spree at Uni. Season 13.

Bloodline. Dudi Appleton and Jim Keeble again. Harry in The Third Man. 

Death Has No Dominion. Ed Whitmore. 'The wraith'!

And Then I Fell In Love. Timothy Prager. Young girls being groomed. Season 15 finale - Harry's last appearance in one of the toughest to watch.

Then lost its edge a bit, Harry sorely missed.

Perks up from Season 20. Awakening. Dudi Appleton & Jim Keeble. Nikki buried alive in Mexico. 

One Day, Timothy Prager. Abuse in care home. 

Family. Michael Crompton. The Christmas Special! 

Lift Up Your Hearts. Tim Prager again - drug dealing to school kids. And his Seven Times - domestic abuse.

Vanishing Point. Jim and Dudi. Nightmare flight from Mumbai.

I Believe in Love... Tim Prager. After-effects of war.

Silent Witness - towards the end (2025-6)

Season 28 ends on another searing Tim Prager outcry I believe in Love... Multiple murders in a Syrian restaurant cue DI Karl Collins to be all stroppy. Jack's mate 'Chalky' can't be his Best Man because he's suffered brain damage from boxing... Yes, viewer - take note of that one. 

Then we pick up on clearly disturbed courier Joe Absolom (fabulous), and his mates (who we just know are all ex army, though this is never stated). His ex wife doesn't want her anywhere near her or her daughter. "You and me, Daddy, against the world." Their brain damage is due to repeated use of Howitzer artillery.

I'm not going to blow Tim's fabulous twist, but I will say we end up on a beautifully simple slendered down wedding.

Directed by Tracey Rooney.

Then we open the most recent series with another head-scratcher from Ed Whitmore. The team are relocated to Birmingham, where a random car crash ends in the murder of an innocent victim. How does this relate to a woman who five years ago claims she is being stalked? I didn't work it out but I was wondering about one of the characters... It's called the Disappearance of Alice Hill.

Zita Sattar is is the bull-headed DCI, Mollie Winnard her more rational DI. Jason Done was from Waterloo Road and Levi Brown we know from This Town.

Tea with Mussolini (1999 Franco Zeffirelli)

Based on Zeffirelli's autobiography written by he and John Mortimer; thus the 'Luca' who 'became a painter' is Zeffirelli himself.

The rescue of the betrayed American (Cher), who has been paying the hotels bills for all the ladies, is moving, as is the relief of San Gimignano. (Battle scenes around here are apparently lifted from A Bridge Too Far!)

Joan Plowright, Maggie Smith, Judi Dench, Charlie Lucas / Baird Wallace, Lily Tomlin, Massimo Ghini, Paolo Seganti (the bastard), Michael Williams (the consul, married to Judi Dench, died 2001).

The Balla depicted is 'Street Light' from 1909.

Ian Fleming and The Curse of James Bond (2026 Ian Low)

Was that really what it was about? If so that didn't come over very clearly to me. The film is about most aspects of Fleming's life and how it was filtered into his books, all illustrated by a variety of Bond film clips. (The relevance of these is questionable as many of them have no relationship to Fleming. However I admire the editor who went through and found them all. And it's fun to see them.)

Contributors are many, and include William Boyd (who's not in it enough), friends, relatives and various Jamaican dignitaries. Helena Bonham Carter reads extracts. Looks like there's extensive use of a Jamaica tourist information film from the 1960s. Considering they obviously had some Fleming interview footage I'm surprised they didn't make more use of it - perhaps he had nothing very interesting to say.

Really weirdly, there was no writer credited.

Silent Witness - Season 28 (2025)

Broken by Kathrine Smith in one of those ones when you know it isn't the obvious suspect and it turns out we haven't met the true criminal. And it's a shout out against the failings of the legal system, in particular the length of time it is now taking to get to trial.

Barrister Kerrie Hayes goes missing (we told her not to get out of the car) and bits of her body start turning up. Anneika Rose, Tamsin Outhwaite, Preslav Shipkaliev and various others are involved.

Then we're obviously excited to see the names of Dudi Appleton and Jim Keeble come up for Vanishing Point, which begins in Mumbai, and then follows Nikki's progress on a nightmare flight back to the UK. Gershwyn Eustache Jr is a helpful air steward, Nikkita Chadha also on deck. Paul Hilton is the dodgy businessman, Jo Hartley the nurse, Steve Oram the first victim and Sunetra Sarker a Home Office official. It's an exciting ride, though somewhat questionable (why did Hartley need to poison herself?)

I would have liked to see Nikki and the nice steward arriving back in London OK and her introducing him to Jack.

Jack's looking more and more like Mr. Incredible. Emilia Fox is an exec producer - and has been since 2020.

They All Laughed (1981 Peter Bogdanovich & scr)

 

"So long, Daddy!"

It's also a love letter to New York.

I know the music performances were all live takes, but I guess they had to dub all the street scenes.

Manchester by the Sea (2016 Kenneth Lonergan & scr)

Brilliantly written by Lonergan. Judicious use of flashbacks. The key sequence is amazing - the solicitor's office, where he learns he has to be the guardian of his nephew, cross cut against the awful accidental death of his children, all to the Albinoni - great editing here too by Jennifer Lame (she won the Oscar for Oppenheimer; also Baumbach films).

Why he doesn't want to go back there. The arseholes in the bar. The kids in the hockey team who know the truth. The way Lucas Hedges' mother has turned out - really weird. The shock when he's not being prosecuted. The blossoms you start seeing near the end. The photos we never see. Good subtle nuanced stuff.

Scene where Casey Affleck bumps into ex-wife Michelle Williams will have you in bits. Well, it did me, anyway. Good film. Photographed by (male) Jody Lee Lipes.

Last Woman on Earth (1960 Roger Corman)

A film Corman shot in Puerto Rico (for tax reasons) on the back of Battle for Blood Island, of note for being written by Robert Towne, who for reasons of economy also acts (under the name of Edward Wain!) Betsy Jones-Moreland and Antony Carbone are the other two last people alive, who all end up squabbling and trying to kill each other. It's only OK, and the very faded print combined with the 1960 decor make it strangely quaint.

Opens up at a live cock fight - only there's no cocks fighting. There are in the trailer so I'm assuming my print is cut, though I also read there are various versions as apparently Monte Hellman reworked the film for a longer TV screening.

It had quite a long shooting schedule for Corman - two weeks. He then had a week left and made the classic Creature from the Haunted Sea!

In Bruges (2008 Martin McDonagh & scr)

McDonagh's a bloody good writer. Cast is exemplary. Jon Gregory's editing notable.

About Time (2013 Richard Curtis & scr)

We accidentally did a Margot Robbie double bill. Richard Curtis has fun playing games with time, Bill Nighy has fun playing ping pong without a ball. Curtis's film is sweet.

Wuthering Heights (2026 Emerald Fennell & scr)

So, the controversial and audience-dividing Fennell Version. I can't really comment on how it relates to the book, except there's obviously more sex in the film; and also I doubt that Heathcliffe's treatment of Isabella is as brutal. But who cares anyway - the film's the film. And as such it is artistic and interesting. The slightly artificial looking sets give it a sort of fairy tale effect, like Cuaron's A Little Princess did. Linus Sandgren's photography is of course stunning and Vic Boydell's editing is amongst her best work (particularly liked that flash forward-back thing she does to take us into the wedding; also her montage of secret encounters between the couple; and the way she uses scarring to takes us into the later time period of the story.) The cast is capable - Margot Robbie, Jacob Elordi, Martin Clunes, Hong Chau, Shazad Latif and Alison Oliver.

I think my problem with it is the same as with 'Anna Karenina' - it's just not a very interesting story. Had it not been for the artistry involved, I think I would have been a little bit bored. (In fact to be honest, I think I was getting a little bit bored towards the end. It's 130 minutes.)

Linus shot on 35mm Kodak film, using VistaVision for the wide and landscape shots (for the detail). He tried to use natural fire and candlelight wherever possible. The production designer was Suzie Davies, Jacqueline Durran designed the costumes, music was by Anthony Willis, with songs by Charli XCX.

No Minor Vices (1948 Lewis Milestone)

A bizarre and trippy film. A vacuous artist Louis Jourdan falls for doctor Dana Andrews' wife Lilli Palmer. Reckons if he paints her the truth about their marriage being in a rut will reveal itself. If a vacuous artist played the piano till one in the morning in my flat, I'd kick him out and not invite him back. Anyway, it's quite tiresome in that respect, but is genuinely odd and creative in others:

With Norman Lloyd and Jane Wyatt in support. Photography: George Barnes, music Franz Waxman, production design by Nicolai Remisoff. Made by the short-lived Enterprise productions which had one big hit with Body and Soul but whose previous Milestone film Arch of Triumph had bombed. This put them out of business.

The Crowd (1928 King VIdor)

A timeless classic - the story of an 'ordinary' couple works just as well today as it must have done upon release almost a hundred years ago. Vidor worked on the script from early 1926, then shot the film unhurriedly until the end of 1927 - with a number of alternate endings. It was innovative in the use of hidden cameras on the streets of New York, giving it a very realistic feeling - and the acting's naturalistic as well - none of these grand gestures. In fact James Murray was an extra who Vidor happened to spot and Eleanor Boardman was Mrs Vidor - they're both terrific, e.g. in argument scene involving a cupboard door. It remains funny, well observed, tragic and moving.

John Weaver shared the screenplay credit and Joe Farnham wrote the good titles (in itself an art form - this is where the 'dialogue' takes place).

Wilder borrowed this for The Apartment

Remarkable scenes where the husband is trying to work but the superimposition of the crash that killed his child keeps playing itself over and over in his head. memorable scenes: Christmas Day, train, beach scene, man and son at end.

With Bert Roach, Estelle Clark, Daniel Tomlinson and Dell Henderson.

Photographed by Henry Sharp. I saw a TCM screening which presumably has the good Carl Davis score on  it. An MGM release which doubled its cost at the box office.

Silent Witness - Season 28 (2025)

So. Gabriel and Velvy are out. In comes brusque piano-playing Harriet, Maggie Steed (Fisherman's Friends, The Painted Veil). And (another) diminutive forensic analyst, Kit, Francesca Mills.

Exodus 20:17 is written by Tim Prager. And it's a disturbing story of thugs who bump off old people and take their properties. In this case pensioner David Hargreaves realises his friend has gone missing and starts disturbing the young couple who've moved into her house. Rather than investigating any of this the useless WPC does nothing (a good touch). Rather than lie down though the old man much to our surprise bumps off one of the thugs (a shame really because he'll be banged up) but the other is apprehended and cockily demands that they 'Prove it'. 'We will,' is Nikki's defiant last line.

It was dedicated to Helen Whitwell, who was the consultant pathologist on Season 1.

Sean Pertwee investigates.

In Homecoming, written by Ed Whitmore, two murders are linked to a local Government cover up... apparently. I'm afraid I can't really remember this one, but there are familiar faces in Zoe Telford, Ellie Haddington and Lorcan Cranitch.

Silent Witness (2024)

Death by a Thousand Hits. Ed Whitmore and Tracey Malone. Burmese man found dead on beach links to a massacre in Myanmar and how some social media channel has encouraged it to happen with deep fake video. How nice then that against this our Team can still rely on old-fashioned fingerprints and witness statements to get their man... but the head of the channel seems to get away unpunished.

Julie Graham, Sean Pertwee, Molly Harris, Cavan Clerkin (perhaps familiar from The Capture).

Then in Kings Cross, Ed Whitmore takes us back to one of those multiple body stories we haven't had for a long time, as eight corpses are found buried under that station. The plot's mainly concerned with identifying them all, and when we do find the killer he's not someone we particularly know, so it's all a bit nebulous.

Familiar faces include Hermione Norris and, er, that's all.

But... Jack proposes to Nikki! Nice way to end a series.

What's in the evidence bag?

The series theme is indeed Latin, In Silencium, by John Harle. 'Testator silens, Costestes e Spiritu, Silencium'. This article suggests that 'Costestes' doesn't exist and 'angeli' is the wrong case, but offers this as a possible interpretation:  “Silent witness, let the silence be called to witness from the spirit.” So that's sorted that out.

Scandal Sheet (1952 Phil Karlson)

Tough newspaper editor meets deserted ex wife after twenty years and accidentally kills her; his star reporter Jon Derek gets on the case and starts to track him down. Good plot, from a novel by ex-journalist Sam Fuller, 'The Dark Page', written for the screen by Ted Sherdeman, Eugene Ling and James Poe. 

With Donna Reed, Henry O'Neill, Harry Morgan. Photographed by Burnett Guffey, music by George Duning. Columbia.

Derek became a director of terribly bad films and famously married Bo Derek. 

Karlson should be quite familiar to us as he made Kansas City Confidential (1952) 99 River Street (1953), Tight Spot (1955) and The Brothers Rico (1957). Also known for: Walking Tall (1973), Kid Galahad (1962). The Young Doctors (1961), Hell to Eternity (1960).

This Life - Season 2 (1997 Amy Jenkins)

The style isn't sustainable: everything in close up, whip pans, sudden edits. It's exhausting.

The Pantomime Bitch Queen turns up. Rachel - Natasha Little - is so passively grasping and insinuating we want to shout at her and hurl rotten eggs and fruit at her.

Egg has started work in a café. Millie is so nice to everyone - it's about time she wasn't.

And Kira is trying to keep Joe at arm's length - will she push him away? Luisa Bradshaw-White was latterly in Eastenders for a mere 693 episodes. Steve John Shepherd was only in it for 314 episodes. We just saw him in the Silent Witness film Discovery - didn't even recognise him! And most recently in both seasons of Karen Pirie!

21 episodes.