Browsing the news today and this post caught my eye describing the surge in purchases of physical cassette tapes. They make a point of saying that it’s still a tiny fraction of music sales that are happening on tape but my big question is WHY? I can understand the resurgence in vinyl even if I’m not on board with it personally. I get that some people prefer to have an actual physical object and I can see the romance in the vinyl and record player, the sleeve notes, the great artwork, all of that. What is there to like about a cassette tape?

As we’re still unable to go to theatres at the moment, the Mischief crew have decided to bring the theatre into our homes - hooray! Their improvised show Mischief Movie Night has gone online, starting yesterday and streaming every day until New Year’s Eve. I was lucky enough to see this show in person a few year’s ago and although I’ve never been entirely comfortable with improv, you know you’re in safe hands with this crew.

Not everyone loves Christmas, obviously, and even more so when the festive season is taken out of context and moved to a different season than you’re used to. Peter Kay’s YouTube channel popped this video of Car Share clips up recently, highlighting when Kayleigh brought her Christmas CD into the car during the height of summer. John wasn’t impressed, to say the least! My favourite quotes:

One thing that’s become clear over the past year or so of chaos is that it’s helpful to focus on the things that you can control. With that in mind, I focused in on achieving my Apple activity badges each month - the personalised ones, not the all-three-rings-every-single-day one. At first it was just a bit of fun, and then, despite my best intentions, it became a complete the full year of badges project.

In a festive season where everyone’s plans have gone awry, we instead focus on the Christmas content we know and love. There are so many TV Christmas specials out there, but only a few that I revisit on a regular basis. Here’s a countdown of five of them… Vicar of Dibley - The Christmas Lunch Incident Just a joy from start to finish - Geraldine trying to do the best for her parishioners at the expense of her own sanity, as usual! The brussel sprout competition, the giant portions, the incredible conversations at Alice’s house. It’s lovely.

Now that I’ve finished watching the second season of The Mandalorian, I’ve been catching up with some of the news surrounding it. Whilst the show is on, I try and avoid articles because of spoilers, even if we were all watching at the same weekly pace. A story I read recently made me think about how great this second series has been for women - strong characters, great actors, and all those behind the scenes as well. Here are three things that have stood out to me:

I’ve listened to more audiobooks this year and delving into the world more has opened up a few surprises. I was hugely looking forward to the audiobook of Troubled Blood, the fifth book in the Cormoran Strike series. I’ve exclusively listened to the first four books via Audible because Robert Glenister’s narration is so good, and the content is so detailed and dense that having it read to me helps me not to miss anything. Hooray!

The good thing about the first series of The Mandalorian taking so long to come to the UK is that we didn’t have that long to wait after watching it for the second series to begin. The bad thing is, now we’re going to have to wait ages for the next installment. However, series two did come to an impressive conclusion this past week, with a guest appearance that seems almost impossible to have kept secret this whole time. And yet, they managed it! I won’t dig into the details too much here because I’m still toying with writing more in depth episodic reviews, but overall, what an incredible show.

It feels like Apple Fitness+ was announced so long ago - time moves slowly these days, right? But finally, mid-December, the new service launched and I was very keen to try it out. It’s a subscription service that you can either purchase separately or as part of a bundle of Apple services (my option), but it’s squarely aimed at people who have an Apple Watch as well. Once you’re on board, the integration with the watch is incredible and makes it all worthwhile - without a Watch, I’m not 100% sure it stacks up against the vast array of fitness alternatives.

It’s taken a while for me to get to the end of Tehran, the Apple TV espionage thriller based in the Iranian city. Initially, I was watching it week on week as it was released, but I’m no fool. I knew the penultimate episode would have one heck of a cliffhanger, so I opted to save it a week and watch two episodes together. But then, a week became two and other things got in the way and oop, finally it’s nearly Christmas and I need to finish watching Tehran before the jingle bells start.

This week the 2021 Grammy nominations were announced and immediately two things stood out to me: firstly, I get very confused by the categories at awards shows and secondly, by far the more important fact, women are having a really good showing this year! For the first time ever, all the nominees for best rock performance are women, and the same can be said for the best country album (sort of - if you see Little Big Town as being fronted by the two women, which I do. To be honest, I see Little Big Town as being fronted by just the dark-haired one, so yea, to me it counts.)

I don’t normally care for nature programmes. I mean, let’s be clear, I think they’re incredible. The time, effort and production values always blow me away and whenever I see an episode of a nature show, I’m usually entranced. But they don’t really grab me and I don’t seek them out. However, I couldn’t really ignore the enticing idea of Paul Rudd narrating a half hour show that focuses in on the smaller elements of this planet of ours - the new Apple TV nature show Tiny World.

The latest iPhone software update introduced the concept of widgets - an ability for apps to take up a bit more space on the home screen and display more useful information than just a link to the individual app. The software was rolled out quickly and at the expense of time for developers to do what they do best, so it’s taking a while for apps to be updated, but the few that I’ve seen so far have been really good.

I, like many many people, thought that the Ted Lasso series wasn’t going to be anything special. I was vaguely aware of the character, designed for a one-off sketch, and yea, that fish-out-of-water trope can be funny. But to bring the Southern American football coach to the UK to manage a Premier League team seemed ripe for sub-par comedy. I was expecting there to be a lot of jokes at the expense of the British way of life, lots of men bouncing off each other in the locker room, and a bit of a boorish ten episodes.

Our progress on the South West Coast Path this year has been slow, or more precisely, non-existant, given everything that has been going on in the world. And because I am the kind of person who doesn’t focus on finishing one thing but quite quickly flits off to another project, I’ve found another path! This time, the England Coast Path! Why do 630 miles when you can do 2,795?

Recently, I’ve really struggled to find a TV show that grabs me and keeps me interested and also sits outside of the Apple TV+ catalogue. I’ve talked at length about how great their shows are and for whatever reason, despite there being so much (too much?) choice out there, I’ve barely been able to get past the first episode of anything. I was starting to wonder if the quality of Apple’s shows hadn’t ruined other TV for me!

If you’re any kind of space nut you’ll have heard of this podcast already - it’s been around for two series now and is an outstanding piece of production that drags you right into the heart of space missions and doesn’t let you go until they’re over. 13 Minutes to the Moon is a BBC podcast that started with the story of Apollo 11, and specifically centred on that descent from the Apollo craft to the lunar surface.

New software became available this week for Apple devices - phones, iPads, TV, and watches - and brought lots of new and intriguing functionality. I can’t wait to get best use out of widgets to organise the phone home screens, tracking sleep on the watch, and scribbling various things on iPad with the pencil. But one of the things I didn’t think I would be so interested in has totally grabbed my attention, and that is sharing Apple Watch faces. Putting together the ideal watch face is something I wish I was better at but just can’t get interested in. I’ve settled on two main faces for my watch, one focusing more on activity, the other on weather and calendar info. I flip between those two and that’s about it.

When the first episodes of Ted Lasso were released on Apple TV+, I tweeted this: “Genuinely hoping for Apple TV+ to deliver a stinker at some point and I thought Ted Lasso would be it. But my word, those first three episodes made me laugh and cry. Gorgeous.” I have a lot, A LOT, more to say about Ted Lasso but I’m waiting for the series to end before I formulate some thoughts. However, in the meantime, I have managed to find a show on Apple TV+ that I haven’t liked! At last! Now I can sleep.

I’ve been reading a lot recently, and trying to broaden my range of subject matters too - fiction and non-fiction, short and long books, as well as catching up on some books I’ve read before but for some reason not reviewed on here. One of the things I’ve always thought slightly cumbersome is keeping track of series that you read, where you are in them, which books you own but haven’t read yet, etc. I used to use FictFact a long time ago but have learned that has since shut down, so that’s not an option anymore. However, in the last few days, I’ve been wondering more about the fundamental decisions behind reading a book series, ie. whether you should or not and when’s the best time to start.

I feel like I coped/am coping quite well with lockdown, it’s not a huge chore for me to stay tucked up inside and working from home has been an absolute winner. I’m very lucky. What I have struggled with is the never-ending bombardment of bad, frustrating, idiotic news. After a few weeks of it, I gave up with the outside world and instead threw myself into the aforementioned work, and of course, into culture. It hasn’t escaped my attention that my so-called blog has actually been nothing but a collection of film and music reviews for the past couple of months.

When Disney Plus first launched, my only focus was on watching episodes of The Simpsons and devouring The Mandalorian as quickly as possible. Hearing of a TV show based on the High School Musical franchise, though, my interest was piqued. And when I heard that it was a docu-drama style show about teenagers who go to the actual school where the movies were filmed and then decide to put on a production of the musical based off said movies and all of this called High School Musical: The Musical: The Series? Well it would be rude not to see what on earth that was all about, wouldn’t it?

Theatre is one of the biggest things I’m missing in this lockdown, and although the country is (rightly or wrongly) easing out of lockdown status, theatres aren’t looking set to open anytime soon. And if they did, would we be comfortable enough to go to them? In the meantime, and because there is zero support from the government, theatres and artists are having to find their own ways to keep busy and hopefully make a little money to keep going a bit longer. The National Theatre’s weekly streams of their plays have been incredible, although are coming to an end soon.

The ongoing lockdown continues to evolve and I have found it fascinating to see how the creative types have been trying to keep themselves entertained. Plenty are trying to keep doing what they usually do just in a different way. Some are providing distraction for others, and there’s another subset who are using their time to try and impart wisdom to others. I missed this at the time, but Radio 1 have been getting artists to give music lessons, sharing an insight into how to play one of their songs. A few people have participated so far - Niall Horan gives a good go on the guitar, Sigrid gets to grips with Strangers on the piano, but my personal favourite is Danielle Haim showing us a deceptively simple riff for The Steps.

I’ve seen a couple more Mastermind editions that have caught my attention but this one came via a slightly different route. I wasn’t expecting to see a James Bond quiz on the BBC Sport site but there it was. Darren Bent, footballer, chose the super spy as his specialist subject but didn’t do as well as he might have hoped. The poor guy only managed to get one of his questions right, but having seen them, I’m not sure I would have done much better. The BBC have put an interactive quiz version of the questions up and have made it multiple choice - that meant I could actually answer quite a few - but faced with just the questions, like below, I would have done very poorly.

I’ve talked before about loving the Fleabag TV show, I came to it late and binge-watched both series in as small amount as time as possible. I hadn’t seen the original stage play, obviously, and missed out on the brief return to the stage that the lovely Phoebe Waller-Bridge completed earlier in the year. (Was it this year? I’ve lost all sense of time.) Anyway, that meant I was first in line to rent the play when it became available on Amazon Prime. National Theatre have been doing incredible work in keeping us all entertained during lockdown, and keeping theatre in the heart and minds of everyone. Their weekly theatre releases are something I’m definitely planning on talking about separately, but their video of Fleabag took a slightly different route.

It’s felt like a really long time since there was a new Star Wars thing coming out that people were really excited about and then when it came out, they actually liked it. Usually all you seem to get is moans from the hardcore fanbase about how it doesn’t work or doesn’t fit the canon. I feel like that’s not the case with The Mandolorian, and all I have heard about it is good. I can totally see why. I was gutted we had to wait such a long time to be able to watch this in the UK, particularly as it was impossible to avoid the Baby Yoda memes and I could only see from a distance the cuteness that was in store for us.

I’m officially obsessed with Mischief Theatre and their unique brand of comedy that is essentially messing things up on purpose. I’ve talked about them a couple of times before, but the joy of their Goes Wrong shows is how meticulously crafted it is to make it look so bad. The TV series that aired earlier in the year was a real highlight over Christmas and January, every episode had me in stitches. So I was happy to see the Goes Wrong Along rewatch that’s been happening over the past few weeks with everyone involved sharing their insights. It wasn’t just people tweeting about the show while they’re watching, but the cast actually filmed themselves sharing behind the scenes snippets and insider information.

Going into this lockdown, I wasn’t particularly worried about staying entertained as there’s enough content out there to last a lifetime. I am super impressed with some of the things people are coming up with though, to help bring a bit of joy into everyone’s life, and if we’re honest, also to keep themselves busy as well. I wanted to give a shout out to Jimmy Carr’s Little Tiny Quiz of the Lockdown - a daily ten question quiz that is a lot of fun and a significant highlight of the day. Part of it is the set up of the quiz - five general knowledge, five on a usually more visual theme, at 6pm every day with answers coming at 8pm. Part of it is Jimmy Carr’s deadpan style, and I’m loving the consistency of it. Every day, you can rely on getting some questions to answer.

One of the things keeping everyone going during lockdown is bonus quizzing from a variety of sources, and that has reminded me that I have been meaning to do a Mastermind update. I rarely pay attention to the quiz show, as good as it is, but just occasionally they pop up with a subject I love and then I can’t help but share the questions. Previously celebrities have taken on Back to the Future, Friends and The Archers. This time, it was a non-celebrity edition and once again everyone’s favourite time travel trilogy was the specialist subject.

When it was announced that we should all lock ourselves away and keep ourselves entertained within the four walls of our house, I didn’t get too carried away thinking of all the things I could achieve. It’s not like that. But I did think I might be able to blog a bit more than I have so far (read: no blogging at all). Unfortunately, marshalling the mind towards cohesive paragraphs isn’t that easy when there’s a global apocalypse happening outside the window. What I have been managing to do is distract myself with music, movies and books, and then write about those. So that’s something.

The enforced hibernation that the world is undergoing right now means I’ve managed to whip through the second season of Star Trek: The Original Series is super quick time. After highlighting five of my favourite episodes from the first series, it seems only right to do the same for the second. I enjoyed this season more, mostly because the characters seemed more settled in themselves. The trio of Kirk, Spock and McCoy had more meaningful conversations alongside some fun banter and what appeared to be real, genuine friendships. There were some episodes that didn’t quite live up to my high expectations but mostly, I thought it was a great season, and here are five reasons why:

The most recent series of Doctor Who came to an end a week or so ago, the second full series to feature the Thirteenth Doctor, Jodie Whittaker. But is she really the Thirteenth Doctor? Such revelations in this series! Spoilers and stuff follow, so do be careful if you read on. I’m talking to myself again. That’s a good sign. Firstly, Jodie continued to be wonderful. Her Doctor had a bit more emotional fallout to deal with this time round, and it was interesting to see her isolating from the group a little bit towards the beginning of the series. It just showed off Jodie’s range though, and the one moment that stands out for me is when she was talking to herself in that final episode. So good and so difficult to do without looking weird.

Everyone has been raving about Picard, the new show on Prime, and I desperately want to watch it. But I realised, although I love Star Trek, my knowledge of the TV shows really isn’t that great. Of course I know the characters and the general idea but I can’t remember ever really watching it. Movies, sure, but TV shows? I don’t recall. So, seeing as it’s all available on Netflix at the moment, I decided to go back to the very start and watch The Original Series. I wasn’t expecting to like it particularly, and thought I’d quite quickly move on to Next Generation. But I love it! I didn’t quite realise how much the show is about ethics and morals and decision-making, rather than just travelling around and looking at aliens. Boldly going where no man has gone before means addressing issues that no one had really addressed before, and that’s fascinating.

I’m well aware that this blog has basically become an Apple TV+ review site, but everything I’ve watched on there so far has been really good quality. Okay, sometimes it doesn’t completely hit the spot (Truth Be Told) and some things just don’t look that interesting to me to even start (Servant) but what I’ve seen, I’ve liked. This time, it’s the turn of MythicQuest: Raven’s Banquet – a workplace sitcom based in a games company that have made a hugely successful MMORPG. There are your traditional office-type situations that create their own humour but where the series really shines is its focus and attention to detail on gaming.

Little America, the anthology series on Apple TV+, came at the perfect time in our household, as we’d just finished indulging in Modern Love and were in the right head-space for the ‘different story every episode’ style. Little America takes the formula and applies it to immigrant stories across a broad range of ages and lifestyles and all walks of life in the US. There were eight episodes and it was wonderful how the same theme shone through them all – people don’t necessarily want hand outs, to take up too much space, or even necessarily to fit in. So much nonsense is spewed about them but at the end of the day they just want the same chances as everyone else.

The background: I love Peter Kay’s Car Share, I truly believe it to be one of the best TV shows of the decade. When I shared the show with Mr C, he was also on board - comedy and music aren’t too hard to argue with. On the flip side, one thing we argue about more than we probably should is the guilt of the protagonist of Richard Marx’s song Hazard. We’ve been talking about it for more than ten years and no doubt will continue for the rest of time.

This week, I got to see The Bodyguard musical on the final stop of its UK tour. Based on the film of the same name, Alexandra Burke heads the cast with her phenomenal vocal powers bringing to life those infamous Whitney Houston classics. She was joined by Ben Lewis in the role of Frank Farmer (portrayed by Kevin Costner in the movie). And therein lies the problem. I was forever comparing it to the movie, which is an absolute favourite of mine.

You’ll know by now, I’m sure, that I’m obsessed with Oprah’s Book Club. The interactivity between online books, the show, the guidance, the discussion with the author, all of it appeals to me. We recently saw the latest episode of the TV show, where Oprah talked to Elizabeth Strout about her latest work, and it was another good show - another, in fact, that Mr C enjoyed despite not having read the book. And a few days later, the next book choice has been announced, and I’m looking forward to reading it.

I’ve long since been a fan of the Red Arrows, those crazy pilots that take to the skies for close formation flying and manoeuvres that quite frankly boggle the mind. The TV show that aired on Channel 5 this time last year was a great insight into the highs and lows of the group trying to get their display ready to perform. Injured pilots, new leaders and commentators, and a significant amount of delays due to bad weather, that’s most of the story that surrounds the Red Arrows.

I picked up tickets for the Strictly Come Dancing live tour back in November, when Strictly fever was at its height - in my household anyway. We were heading rapidly towards the finale with a good few names still left with a chance of winning (even though we all knew it would be Kelvin). Fast-forward to the post-Christmas slump and the tickets didn’t really make sense anymore. The Strictly mood was long-since gone, we’re in the middle of January, a traditionally low month, and the glitter ball trophy and all those sequins couldn’t seem further away.

James Corden’s latest riff off sees him take on Camila Cabello in a slightly fake debate about which is better for music - 1999 or 2019. You can see the results below but I’m pretty sure they came to the wrong conclusion. Even within the video itself, the older songs are so much better! Camila is a far superior singer to James, I’m sure he’d agree, but even she can’t make Old Town Road sound better than Smooth. As discussed recently, I am obsessed with that song, and you won’t convince me that Shawn Mendes can hold a candle to it.

Having loved both For All Mankind and The Morning Show, I was expecting big things from the next AppleTV+ adventure – this time, a crime mystery with a podcast host at the helm. Unfortunately, it didn’t quite stand up to the competition even within its own broadcaster, let alone looking further afield. Let’s start with the good, though, the cast were great and they did the best they could with the scripts they had. (I really think Aaron Paul was massively under-used, only able to show his emotion in that final episode.) I also went along with the underlying mystery – it seemed to be a pretty good one. The twists and turns were fun, and I hadn’t really guessed the murderer although had a bit of an inkling in the final couple of episodes.

Stumbling across the TV show Modern Love was a weird experience – it was promoted on the Apple TV homepage and warranted further investigation. When we saw it was created by John Carney, who was also behind some of our favourite Dublin-based films, then it was a given we were going to watch this one. Anthology series’ aren’t always my favourite, but when they’re done well, like Black Mirror and now like Modern Love, they are a gem.

When Apple Arcade launched, I was very excited and blogged about it a couple of times. I intended to try ALLLLL the games, even though there were over 100 at launch and the collection was only going to grow. If I’m honest, I tried out a handful, mostly the ones mentioned in those prior blog posts and realised the rest didn’t really appeal. And now, for the moment, I’ve cancelled my Arcade subscription. The weird thing I found was that having the subscription meant I felt pressure not to try out any other apps until I had exhausted those that I was definitely paying for. And I didn’t want to play all of those apps. In fact, of the twenty or so that I tried, only two stuck with me, and only one of those had long-term playability.

This week, the BBC aired a celebration of Miranda Hart’s self-titled sitcom that has been in our lives for ten years already. That seems like a bizarre amount of time to have passed but what would we have done without it? I remember bidding the show a fond farewell at the time it left our screens and it was so nice to revisit our beloved characters just a few years later.

Everyone has their own unique way of dealing with the apps on their phone. Some are very organised, keep everything in folders, download an app, try it, store it or immediately delete it. Others, like me, are a bit more haphazard about things: lots of apps that have been downloaded to try, lots of things taking up space that don’t need to, half-hearted folders and a bit of a mish-mash of everything going on.

This seems to be a bit of a tradition now, making a handful of resolutions on this blog for the coming year. I try not to put too much pressure on myself to achieve these things, because twelve months is a long time and who knows where we’ll all be at the end of it? But sometimes it’s nice to have some guidance, so I’ve got some more for 2020.

The flagship offering of Apple TV+’s launch was The Morning Show, a complicated drama set in a network television morning show and featuring Reese Witherspoon and Jennifer Aniston as sparring and unwilling co-anchors. The show came in for a lot of early criticism, being a bit corny, full of tropes and stereotypes and generally not telling the story well. I didn’t get any of that. There were a few cliches, sure, and it did take a while to fully warm to some of the characters, but as with the other Apple TV shows, a couple of episodes in and I was hooked.

So I did this round up last year, quickly running through other posts that had already collected upcoming releases and pulling out films that I thought I’d be interested in. Turns out, I picked twelve films and only managed to watch half of them. Oh well! Let’s see how well I do this year. For reference, I’ve looked at the BBC, a selection from Total Film and a pretty long list on IGN.