Blue Lights - Season 4 (2026)

It is probably fair to say that the cops depicted here are in truth a nicer lot than exist in a real police station. But also that we've had so many shows about flawed / conflicted law enforcement types (The Cops springs to mind particularly) that this comes over as a welcome change. It's also very pro police in that they are human beings who have a laugh and are hard working, reasonable people at times under severe pressure.

An exciting beginning (one of the Angela Bassett episodes) puts us in the thick of an anti-migrant protest and introduces a social media activist who causes a lot of problems for Grace (Sian Brooke). Aisling (Dearbhaile McKinney) can't face being in a relationship with Tommy (Nathan Braniff). Shane (Frank Blake) is keen to make an impression with Michael Smiley's unit as he has spotted a gangster suspiciously driving a coach laden with soldier-types. Sandra (Andi Osho) is in court but the case against the killer of her husband is quashed by MI5 pressure thanks to gangster Abigail McGibbon, whose son Michael Shea is a nasty mess. The station is under threat of being closed.

After flashback episode 4, featuring Richard Dormer, Sandra now realises she has the evidence to expose the whole corrupt mess and so bringing the overarching four series story to a conclusion - they could leave it there. (Probably won't.)

Bring back deep focus!

 

Forbidden Planet (1955 Fred M Wilcox)

A somewhat kitsch and trippy experience particularly as the weird sound effects run through the whole film instead of music. The story seems preposterous. Whether it’s intentionally referencing The Tempest I couldn’t say. Robbie the Robot is clearly a man in a robot suit. The production design is pretty wacky. 

This looks like it belongs in that Diane Keaton book of weird photos

Watch out for those monsters of the Id!

Louis and Bebe Barron were the 'beatniks' responsible for the electronic score. Unknown to them MGM had made a deal with the unions that it was a one-off and they'd never be hired again.

With: Walter Pidgeon, Anne Francis (Bad Day at Black Rock, Blackboard Jungle, then just about every TV show you can think of), Leslie Nielsen, Warren Stevens, Jack Kelly, Earl Holliman (cook). Photographed by George Folsey, editor Ferris Webster.

Yeah, I don't think I will be watching this next Halloween.

The Haunting (1963 Robert Wise)

An incisively directed and edited film, with good performances and design, and yet it doesn't quite work.

Why not? Because the Julie Harris character has just spent years suffering looking after her mother, and also feels guilty for not being there when she died. She wants something to happen to her. She thinks the house is either after her or for her. (How can she have any experience of psychic phenomena when she's been housebound for so long?) Nothing is resolved. And we feel the ending is somewhat fluffed.

But it's still an absorbing watch, largely because Robert Wise is so good as creating scenes. (He learned first from Orson Welles, then Val Lewton, let's not forget.)

The editor is Ernest Walter (The Mercenaries, The Private Life of Sherlock Holmes, Nicholas and Alexandra, Children of the Damned). Davis Boulton shot it (also Children of the Damned).

Of the cast, Claire Bloom is the most watchable. With Richard Johnson and Russ Tamblyn.

Amazing production design. We especially liked the door that bends in.

Nicholas Nickleby (2002 Douglas McGrath & scr)

Successful, star-studded interpretation led by Charlie Hunnam (The Gentleman). Jamie Bell is probably the stand-out as Smike. With Jim Broadbent, Juliet Stevenson, Christopher Plummer, Romola Garai, Tom Courtenay, Anne Hathaway, Kevin McKidd, Edward Fox, Nicholas Rowe, Nathan Lane, Barry Humphries, Alan Cumming, Phil Davis, Sophie Thompson, Timothy Spall, Gerard Horan, David Bradley.

Photographed by Dick Pope, edited by Lesley Walker (Mona Lisa, Shirley Valentine, All Or Nothing, The Fisher King).

We loved the line "Your day is done. Night is coming fast for you."

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 War - season 2. Not bollocks, just boring.

Trigger Point. As insane as the last one. A series of bomb defusal scenes with a meaningless and far-fetched plot wrapped around it. Who writes this bollocks? If not for Vicky McClure it's unlikely we would have persevered.

An Antique Christmas. Woman helps her parents sell their antique shop. Actually worse than it sounds.

Dead of Night (1945 Cavalcanti, Hamer, Crichton, Dearden)

Premiered on September 9. (To put that into perspective, VE Day was 8 May and VJ Day was celebrated here 15 August.) I was thirteen when I first saw it on 19 May 1977. In his massively unhelpful book 'Forever Ealing', George Perry not only tells the stories in the wrong order, but completely fails to report how the film was received by the public.

John Baines wrote The Haunted Mirror - it was his first screen credit. He went on to help write the 1949 Blue Lagoon adaptation.

Halloween (1978 John Carpenter)

What of the kid, Tommy? (Brian Andrews.) Not so much the actor, the character. He must have been deeply traumatized by that night. Surely his later story would be worth telling?

I'd watch Forbidden Plant again. We should really have watched this first, along with The Thing From Another World. Maybe next year.

Tony (2026 Matt Johnson)

Who? Dominic Sessa plays Anthony Bourdain... Oh... The Holdovers. Duh.

To his immense credit, he tells the girl (Emilia Jones, from Coda - duh) the truth before sleeping with her. In fact now I come to think of it, that's probably the turning point. He goes from bullshitting his first interview to actually underselling himself in the last.

Has that rather prickly screenplay credit of Todd Bartels & Lou Howe, Matt Johnson & Matthew Miller. Look, here it is, along with that girl who hasn't noticed him:

Antonio Banderas plays the chef. With Leo Woodall, from Bridget Jones: Mad About the Boy, One Day and The White Lotus. Plus Stavros Halkias, Monica Raymund, Rich Sommer (Mad Men), Dagmara Domynczyk.

Michael Bauman photographed it, Curt Lobb and Robert Upchurch edited.

I mean, yeah.

Vigil - Season 3 (2026 Tom Edge)

Ur, we're in the Arctic Circle, on Norwegian territory, where British and Russian militaries are not allowed to engage. But they have. And this time Rose Leslie is sent into the thick of it whilst Suranne Jones ferrets around in London.

It's like one of my dull midweek rice dishes - it fills you up, but you have the feeling you'd rather have eaten something else.

It is entirely lacking in humour. And you don't really care about anyone in it. Also not sure I'm a Suranne Jones fan any more.

The landscapes look great, but are they real or was the whole thing made in Scotland with CGI pretties added on? This gives the inside info (a six day shoot in Svalbard to catch the 'plates' on which everything else was then placed), and includes such great insider language as 'we could stabilize and rework things without ever running out of pixels'.

Also I kept getting the feeling that all these people from different nations were all Scottish. (They're not.) Gary Lewis, Dominic Mafham, Jeppe Beck Laursen, Naomi Yang, Tornike Gogrichiani, Eric Godon (craggy Russian, In Bruges).

We've seen Steven Miller before, in Dept Q. and Shetland and Silent Witness. He has that same sad look at Timothy Bottoms.

Thank you.

The Blame (2026 Megan Gallagher)

The novel was written by the Telegraph's Money editor Charlotte Gifford and was published under the name Charlotte Langley. It was optioned for TV before it had even been published. It was at first a thriller; the misogyny angle was secondary. Then when it was adapted for TV, Megan Gallagher heightened it by adding the real text messages that had been found on (now fired) police officers' phones. Accordingly, and unlike The Morning Show, the issues don't overbalance the storyline.

Good cast all round: Michelle Keegan, Douglas Booth, Ian Hart, Nathan Mensah (his first appearance - one to watch), Nigel Boyle (the IT guy), Joe Armstrong, Matilda Freeman as the murdered girl. Gavin Spokes and Josh Bolt are the vile detectives and Ceallach Spellman has to watch out if he's not going the same way. It was directed by Bex Rycroft and Claire Tailyour (three each).

6 x 45 for Quay Productions on ITV. It was Wendy's birthday and we were going to watch 'something sweet'. We tried various unsatisfactory things, then landed on this and were hooked - watched it all in one go.

Break Clause (2024 Jess Bray)

Samuel Bottomley (The Teacher) and Lara Ricote have just graduated and moved from Leeds to London when he confesses he's had a one night fling; and as they can't afford to move out must remain locked together, as it were.

Enter John Thompson, Charly Clive, Assa Kinoute, Michael Workeye, Jack Shep and Nathan Foad.

6 x 25 minutes for Channel 4.

Ends very openly - some might say, annoyingly so.

Tomorrow Never Dies (1997 Roger Spottiswoode)

Begins well at an International Arms Bazaar, which sounds more fun than it looks. Bond has to steal a jet fighter to stop a nuclear explosion. Then in a rather chilling scene, a British destroyer is attacked and sunk and the survivors executed. This is all the work of evil media tycoon Jonathan Pryce.

Then we're introduced to Bond's remote control BMW and all credibility flies out of the window. There's a scene with this in a car park which is just interminable, with all these bad guys popping out of the woodwork everywhere, and that's the hallmark of the film as it goes along. There's a later chase scene involving a motorbike and pursuing Range Rovers which just never seem to stop coming. The last twenty minutes are endless shoot-outs and explosions that go on and on and are just so boring.

I'm not quite sure what the media tycoon has to gain in bringing about an Anglo-Chinese war, either. Bruce Feirstein is the writer.

Notable for its gallery of great British supporting actors including Judi Dench, Colin Salmon and Samantha Bond, but also encompassing Geoffrey Palmer, Julian Fellowes, Julian Rhind-Tutt (what?? where??), Michael Byrne, Pip Torrens, Hugh Bonneville, and Jason Watkins!

Bond's birds are Michelle Yeoh and Teri Hatcher (Desperate Housewives), with Ricky Jay and Gotz Otto as bad guys. Bond is Pierce Brosnan.

Photographed by Robert Elswit, edited by Michel Arcand and Dominique Fortin, music by David Arnold. Cheryl Crowe wrote and sang the theme tune, which is one of the best things about it.

Richard Gere double bill: Internal Affairs (1990 Mike Figgis) / Pretty Woman (1990 Garry Marshall)

The first was released in the US in January, the second in March.  In Mike Figgis's film he plays a unredeemable corrupt cop who is happy to stoop to murder. I'm not quite sure what he thought he was doing at the end, which loses the plot finally. Andy Garcia though turns almost as psycho as he. Laurie Melcalfe helps investigate. Features a number of big haired women including Nancy Travis (Garcia's wife) and Annabella Sciorra.

It was written by Henry Bean. John A Alonzo shot it and Robert Estrin edited. Had me thinking of the much superior LA Confidential.

Pretty Woman is always a delight, particularly the smallest reactions of the smallest actors: the elevator boy, the shop girls, the waiter who catches the snail, the offended woman at the races.

Julia's 'Holy shit!' moment made us both think of Wendy:

Halloween (2018 David Gordon Green & co-scr)

Over-edited to the point of madness. And so lacking in the original's slow and brilliant build-up.

Some nice touches, e.g. where she's fallen out of the window and he's at the window - a flip of the ending of the original.

But really... no.

Did I know there was also a 2007 version by someone called Rob Zombie, that apparently gives Michael Myers more back story? It has reviews.

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! (Despite presence of Laura Haddock.)

Tracey Ullman is a crazy sponsor.

I loved the All the President's Men episode (who's buying up the club shares?) And Roy's 'speech' and he and Keeley. And Rebecca having to instantly improvise being an American secretary.

The twins' Irish duet is surely a highlight.

The Split Up (2026 Ursula Rani Sarma)

Meet the Indian lawyer firm family: dad Sanjeev Bhaskar, high achieving daughter Ritu Arya and her soon-to-be Danny Ashok, gay brother Arian Nik, eldest daughter and mum Aysha Kala and her husband Tom Forbes. Mix in one night stand and new associate partner Dimitri Leonidas and mysterious rival lawyer Shalini Peris. Debbie Rush good as super-efficient PA; Mawaan Rizwan as Nik's 'friend'.

Yes, it's all quite entertaining. Arya sure does blow hot and cold with Dimitri. (He's a model of restraint.) Shalini is somewhat hostile when you consider her part in it all.  Sanjeev is annoyingly Machiavellian and controlling.

Some good sub-stories include marriage guidance celebs Lenny Henry and Jane Horrocks, whose planned divorce is going to blow up their brand, or a weasel who wants to steal his fiancée's business and internet profile. (She's Jameela Jamil, from The Good Place.)

I must say, in the final of the six episodes, there's an awful lot of nothing going on in the wedding scene... until the last bombshells that Q tells me is going to set Season 2 going.

Forever Home (2026 Clara Salaman)

Graham Norton's novel is about a father with dementia (Douglas Henshall) whose wife has left him, and her name must never be mentioned again by his two kids, who grow up to be Jenny Walser and Lewis Cope. The father has a partner (Amy Nuttall) who discovers a grisly secret in his freezer, then involving her mum Denise Welch. Meanwhile the son's partner, who's a copper (Shane Zaza) is trying to manage a surrogate birth. Of course experienced watchers suspect that it's too obvious for the freezer-body to be the wife... it must be more complex than that. And as usual it then gets into "Is it him?" "Is it her?"

As usual with these things, it's riven with plot holes and implausibilities. For example, why didn't the wife just leave home for six months (rather than twenty years), then come back and say "It didn't work out with the brother-in-law"? And how does she suddenly have enough money to buy the family home? And how come the copper knows all about the surrogate mother's boyfriend but his other half doesn't? And when the latter does reveal it, why didn't the copper say "Yeah, I know - it's all fine"? Maybe these things have only arisen because of the TV adaptation and weren't problems in Graham's novel.

It was quite entertaining and watchable, though in a way the dark underlying story of child abuse didn't really work with the rest of it. Also with Kevin Whately, James Baxter (Walser's very married boyfriend), Nancy Sadsad.

Marble Hall Murders (2026 Anthony Horowitz)

Another playful Atticus Pund murder mystery with most of the cast giving two performances (one in the novel being told, one in the present) - some of which are better than others. Lesley Manville and Tim McMullan are the editor / fiction detective. With Harry Lloyd, Rupert Penry-Jones, Mark Bonnar (somewhat overacting as American), Phoenix Laroche, Zubin Varla, Amelia Bullmore, Claire Rushbrook, Danny Sapani (DI), Anneika Rose (frustratingly hostile DS). Actually filmed in Corfu, and in Dublin and London.

Some of it is a bit tiring to watch with it jumping all over the place, but those jumps are very artfully pulled off.

Crash Dive (1943 Archie Mayo)

How come they were allowed to make a film in colour in 1943? Because this is a massive ad for the US Navy. 

Somewhat reluctantly, Tyrone Power gets posted to submarine command under experienced Dana Andrews. Of course they are soon buddies. But unfortunately Power has met-cute and fallen for Anne Baxter, not knowing she's Andrews' girlfriend.

An exciting and colourful action scene shot by Leon Shamroy winds things up.

It was written by Jo Swerling from a W.R. Burnett story and made by Fox.

Supporting cast: James Gleason, Dame Mae Whitty, Harry Morgan, and Ben Carter, who sadly died in 1946 from diphtheria, having been a successful talent agent for African-American actors.

Steve Carrell double bill: Dan in Real Life (2007 Peter Hedges) / The Battle of the Sexes (2017 Jonathan Dayton, Valerie Faris)

Dan in Real Life is a real sweet film as widower Carrell meet-cutes Juliette Binoche in a bookshop and falls head over heels immediately... but she's his brother's girlfriend. It's expertly cut by Sarah Flack, who also did many films for Sophia Coppola including  Lost In Translation and more recently Priscilla, as well as The Limey.

Hedges catches family interactions well - note how when Carrell first arrives at the parents' home he encounters all the various other members of the family in one continuous take.

Also when he tells Binoche about his wife a single droplet of water drips down the window pane, like a tear. I don't know if that was deliberate or a lucky mistake but it's fabulous.

Photographed by Laurence Sher.

Hedges made The Same Storm in lockdown, a to-camera piece made using everyday technology. It's on YouTube.

Carrell is funny as a gambling addict who bets Billie Jean King $100k he can beat her at tennis. In the meantime she embarks on an affair with her hairdresser. Emma Stone, Andrea Riseborough, Alan Cumming. Bill Pullman (Sleepless in Seattle, Igby Goes Down), Natalie Morales,  Austin Stowell (husband).

This is also expertly edited by an invisible woman, Pamela Martin, who cut Little Miss Sunshine and Ruby Sparks for Dayton and Faris, as well as Youth in Revolt, Hitchcock, Seberg and King Richard. It was photographed by Linus Sandgren and designed by Judy Becker.

Made me think I'd love to see the Men's and Women's England football teams play against each other.