One of the things I’ve really enjoyed about my various review sections on this site is how they evolve. The films started out as a weekly thing, just me and have rolled through watching loads of movies with Mr C, to a reduced load now supplemented by black and white films I watch by myself. I’ve added a Games section that didn’t exist before. I’m constantly debating what albums count for the Music section.

Just randomly browing around YouTube and this incredible Roxette video popped up, celebrating 40 years since the release of their first single Neverending Love. Featuring the iconic duo Marie Fredriksson and Per Gessle rendered as adorable puppets, the video is littered with Roxette references and easter eggs. I hadn’t realised on first viewing that this was a fan video, created by someone just for the love of the band and the art. It wasn’t until preparing to write this post that I noticed the ‘fan video’ tag, and that makes it even more incredible!

It was entirely invevitable that after being obsessed with Crocodile Shoes, I’d have to give Auf Wiedersehen, Pet a look. People have recommended this to me before and I’ve just never got round to it, but the first two series are available to watch on ITV streaming, so it was worth a look. I LOVED IT. This mismatched group of lads, away from home and just trying to scrape together a living, it’s a wonderful premise that delivers a lot. You’ve got the individual dramas, you’ve got the intensity of a group living under each other’s feet, and then you’ve got the various storylines on top as well. In the first series, there are romances and brushes with the law, drinking as much as possible of an evening, whilst trying hard to keep their jobs on the building site.

Another album celebrating an anniversary - twenty years since this one came out. Oof, it’s not great. I like Black Eyed Peas so this really shouldn’t be too far out my comfort zone but this style really doesn’t do it for me. London Bridge is a real mess, photos in front of the wrong bridge, the idea of it going up and down which it doesn’t. And what’s with the spelling of Duchess? The songs that are like proper songs on here are good - Glamorous, Big Girls Dont’ Cry, I like. But the rest of it I could happily avoid.

Whilst I’ve been aware of Gracie Abrams for a while, I feel like she’s shot up in popularity and success more than I’d realised. This is a great album, and I can see why she’s doing so well… but it’s just the Olivia Rodrigo sound in a different package, isn’t it? The vocals are less whispery, occasionally reminded me of Lorde, but as a whole, the sound is exactly what you’d expect from these great, modern, pop ingénues. Loved it.

At this point in the Jurassic Park/World franchise, you can’t help but being a bit nervous about a new movie release. This one is another reboot, no returning cast members, and Scarlett Johansson at the helm. It was alright, actually! There are definitely worse ones in the series. The characters were well drawn, the story made sense and although foolhardy, didn’t really have any major plotholes.

Roxette popped back to my attention with a 40th anniversary of their debut single. That’s not on this album but it made me want to listen to the band, so I quickly picked this one and got on with it. There are some real gems on here, and it all has that great Roxette sound - I love that their voices go together so well, but they also work well one or the other on their own. It’s a real, top notch, classic album and I’m glad to have listened to it.

There’s a period of Muse that I really enjoy (Time is Running Out, etc) but I’ve not listened to anything from them in a while. If the reviews are anything to go by, then this album is a return to that sort of space-age extraterrestrial form that I like. Thank goodness! I don’t know what I missed, but I’m glad to have listened to this album, it’s great. There are no major bangers on there that I’ll remember forever like Time is Running Out, but it’s a good listen with that signature Muse style.

Wimbledon 2026 is almost at its conclusion, and as I’m less interested in the men’s final than I should be, I’m happy to draw a line under it for this year before we have crowned both champions. It’s been brilliant, for me much better than last year and with plenty of intrigue throughout. I wrote in my first week roundup about how many seeds were falling by the wayside and that set us up for a fascinating second week.

It’s rare that you actually find a ‘read-in-one-sitting’ book, and even rarer to have the time to do that. But for this one, I absolutely did and what a thriller ride it was. The story starts as what seems like a straightforward investigation into a kidnapped child but as the details start to unravel, we get more twists and turns and potential suspects and it’s really well done. I was hooked from start to finish.

I really liked this romantic journey through time. It treads the well-worn path of two people trying to be friends even though they so obviously love each other, and the ups and downs of a relationship that lasts for many years. There’s a split narrative between now when they are reconnecting and then - before whatever it is happened, happened. It’s a pretty traditional structure these days, but it works well in this instance, and I really enjoyed the will-they-won’t-they-what-happened journey.

I loved this. As I mentioned on the Confessions II review, I had to listen to this first as that was considered something of a sequel to it. For the first time, I listened to the same artist for old and new album this week and it was an interesting experiment. This album was so brilliant, kicking off with that absolute classic of Hung Up - I remember such a furore around this at the time, that Abba had actually given rare permission for a sample. But the rest of the album lives up to that banger of an opening and becomes an instant classic. I really loved it.

You couldn’t ignore the release of this album with a lot of promotional activity by the legendary Madonna building up to it. I read that it was something of a sequel to the previous dance album Confessions on a Dance Floor, so I realised I would have to listen to that one first - I decided, for the first time ever, to listen to the same artist for both new and classic albums. The previous album is a banger, this one, not quite reaching it’s heady heights. It’s good, it’s great dance music, it does the job, but it’s all pretty much the same. There were no huge standouts in the same way that Hung Up or Sorry get stuck in your head. So it’s good stuff, but maybe would have been better not linking it to the prior record.

As I’ve said many times before, I love a good movie novelisation. This was not a good movie novelisation. It tells the story of the film, fine, but the extra insight that you get from reading a book of the screenplay was… well, disturbing. ET has a whole backstory about being a botanist, but also as we get to know his thoughts through the activities on Earth, I’d rather not know. When you watch the film, he’s a sweet lost alien. In the book, it’s a very different tone. Also we get to know more about Mary, the mother, and that’s worrying in itself too. It’s an interesting read but if you have any affection for the film at all, I’d recommend giving this a miss.

I honestly had no intention of reading any more of the Sweet Valley High books, but the last one ended on a cliffhanger, and this one was just sitting right next to it ready to go! So I read through it super quickly and got to the bottom of Enid’s secrets. Jessica continues to be a terrible and selfish human, but thankfully Elizabeth is there to put things right. Now, let that be it, no more SVH, right?

I chose to watch this movie mostly because of Glynis Johns who I obviously know from Mary Poppins. But it turns out to have been a really good choice, because I loved it. An interesting story about an engineer who has concerns about the planes he has worked on, ends up flying on one of those planes, and ultimately has to figure out if he’s right or wrong before anyone else gets hurt. I loved the characters in this, and how they all got fully invested in the story. I thought the bit on the plane was a little bit drawn out but it was needed to understand why these women would follow this guy around. There could have been more story around the kid, but maybe there wasn’t really time. Regardless, I enjoyed this a lot!

This was a great movie. It has a great balance between comedy and the seriousness of the impending world war situation. I love Rex Harrison in this, dashing and confident and easily switching between his characters within the movie. The story gets stuck in right from the beginning and the action barely pauses after that, which is rare and beautiful in an older movie. The comic duo of Caldicott & Charters are perfectly utilised. There’s a backstory here relating to the movie The Lady Vanishes, as apparently this duo appear in that too, so I will need to investigate. But overall, a brilliant film.

I could prattle on and on here about how I wrestled with this book - tried not to want to read it, reasoned between boycotting and separating the artist from their work, maybe I should read it and not review it, blah, blah, blah. Ultimately, I HAD to know what the next steps were in the relationship between Strike and Robin, and I did the best I could not to fund anything I don’t believe in by buying this second-hand. Thus, here we are. Actually, that was the only bit of the book that was interesting to me - the people that we already know. Our main detective duo, their respective partners, families and dramas, and the wider machinations of the detective agency (Pat and the fish!). I couldn’t follow the main mystery very well, it was so sprawling, and probably could only tell you one or two facts about it now that I’ve read the whole thing. But Robin and Strike remain absolutely captivating characters with a charismatic relationship, and that’s what will keep drawing me back in.

This sounded like an interesting concept, although the film was released a little before the current AI boom we’re experiencing. But it wasn’t. It was boring, and very hard to care about. We spent very little time with the main character before things started to go awry, so the stakes didn’t seem very high. I deployed the twenty minute rule here and quite firmly switched off.

This is a nice, pleasant movie, very twee and dated at this point but I can totally understand why it would be one of those that if you saw it as a child, you would remember it incredibly fondly. Watching as an adult, in this day and age, it just speaks of a completely different, kinder but more primitive time. Bernard Cribbins was the highlight for me, although I did think that moment shutting the curtain with his wife was a surprise in a children’s movie! I don’t remember the book very well, probably need to read it again, but I think there are quite a lot of changes but it all works so no complaints from me.

I don’t know why these books popped into my head but I suddenly had a desire to visit the Sweet Valley High world. I was aware of this series of books when I was younger, and of the TV adaptation, but none of it really crossed my path. I was surprised to see the books were being published until 1998! Anyway, I found a copy of this first book on the Internet Archive and devoured it. Oh, it’s so gloriously teenage and full of high school drama. I loved reading it but my biggest takeaway was how horrible a character Jessica was! I wasn’t expecting that!

McCurdy is a great writer, her memoir made that very clear, and this is a very readable debut novel. But there’s something odd about it. It’s meant to be disturbing and unsettling, that’s fine. It’s vulgar and obsessed with sex and occasionally worryingly relatable, that’s fine too. But it’s missing anything that brings you in to the story, makes you care about the characters, makes you invest in the outcome of this story. We don’t know why we’ve got into this situation, and we don’t really know where we are at the end either. I wanted to like this more than I did, but I also think there’s a lot more to tell here that we’re just not given access to.

As I do most years, I have taken some time off work over the Wimbledon fortnight to be able to absorb as much tennis as possible, and boy what a first week of grass court action we have had. I paid quite a lot more attention to Wimbledon Qualifying this year as well, so was going into this week with plenty of tennis activity already in my mind, and lots of names to look out for.

It’s Wimbledon fortnight so completely understandable that this popped back up on the iPlayer. It’s been on my list to watch for a while but I’m left a bit nonplussed by the whole thing. The story of Serena and Venus absolutely deserves a retelling but why is the focus of this on the dad? He played his part, sure, but they’re the ones doing the work and breaking down the fences. Not sure if it was the intention but the film definitely made me wonder how much more they could have achieved if he hadn’t been so obstructive. As a film, it’s fine, it’s well made, it tells the story, it does the job, but the subject matter just needed a lot more thought.

I love a good novelisation and as The Sting is one of my favourite films, it’s no surprise that this is right up there as a 5/5 for me. The story is just so good, the con is perfectly executed and has multiple layers that we know about. The characters are fascinating, there’s a bit more in here around Luther and some of their activities before the big con starts, and it’s just brilliant to revisit this story in a different medium.

A fun little film this. It’s a bit slow starting but I like that it doesn’t over-explain anything to start with, you just go on the journey with these characters. It’s also great to have a time travel movie that isn’t really about time travel, it’s there to serve as an opportunity for redemption, and a few fun jokes along the way… it’s a fun take on the genre. The trio/quartet of main characters have great chemistry together, and the twists and turns really took me by surprise. You were never quite sure what was going to happen and whether it was really true or not. The soundtrack was exceptional, nostalgic but not aged, and really fitting the action well. And there are deep cut references and areas where I need to do more homework, so plenty to revisit on future watches as well. Loved it.

Last year, I watched both series of The Gold and became instantly obsessed with the Brinks-Mat story. I wanted to read everything I possibly could on the subject and finally got my hands on this book by John Palmer’s wife. It was fascinating to revisit the subject again but I don’t think this book adds anything to what we already know. Most of the story is that she had no idea what was going on, and then flipping back and forth on whether Palmer was a good guy or not. I can’t imagine what it’s like to have to deal with this situation, and the book goes someway to describing it, but I think there’s a lot more to be told that hasn’t been.

It’s always nice when there’s a reason to pick a classic album, rather than just random selections. This one has just been remastered as a thirty year anniversary, and even though I refuse to admit the 90s was that long ago, I dived right into this. It’s brilliant. Tina’s exceptional vocals but evolving and keeping up with the times. Occasionally it’s a bit middle of the road, but then you have absolute bangers like Missing You and On Silent Wings. Plus a bit of Bond, what more do you need?

I don’t know if I had any specific expectations of this album, but it was exactly what you’d think an Embrace album should be like. It has that 2000s feel but doesn’t sound dated, it’s upbeat for the most part and it feels a bit more approachable than when bands had to be cool. It’s not gonna shake the music world at all, but I really liked it!

I followed this book from conception to production and funded it along the way, so I was well disposed to read it. It went down very quickly as theatre scripts do, and I could easily visualise all the action as it was happening on the page. There are quite lengthy descriptions of the magic acts, which are slightly less interesting to me, but otherwise it’s a good script and an interesting mystery. It was so lovely to have Jonathan and Maddy back together again.

I’m deep in watching Wimbledon at the moment, so TV has taken a back seat but before that I’d watched a few good things that are worth a mention. The Prime Video series The Girlfriend was an eye-opening experience. Reviews have been mixed for that show, but I really liked it.

I’ve got a bit of a backlog of blog posts to write but I didn’t want to forget to make a note of the UK tour of The Shawshank Redemption. The play is an adaptation of the Stephen King short story and/or the movie and is just as tense and oppressive as both of those other mediums.

These books are so easy to read, cosy little romance and historical dramas, particularly focusing on women’s stories from this very difficult period of life. What I have loved about the last couple of books I’ve read from Shirley Mann is introducing me to things I had no idea about - last time it was the work on the canals, this time the effective prison that was created on the Isle of Mann. So interesting, and a cosy read like this is a great way to get a taste of something I now want to know more about!

Since loving O’Leary’s debut book Flatshare, I was trying to keep an eye on releases from her but this one passed me by. Rectifying that as soon as I stumbled across it, I read this in super-quick time. It was really good. Although you think the premise is a bit out there for a romance novel, it’s entirely believable and soon sweeps you away just as the title promises. But it’s also fascinating once they get back to civilisation and have to deal with the real world, as well. A good read!

Three books in and we’re really starting to get to the bottom of the mystery of what happened on St Kilda in the last few months before it was abandoned for civilisation. This time, we revisit some more of the details from the time before, but also follow Flora as she embarks on a new, not-as-glitzy-as-she-hoped life in Paris. I enjoyed this book but for two things - the twist around the dead fiancé was relatively easy to guess, that never sat right with me. And because we’re covering the same ground as before but from a new angle, some of it was quite repetitive. I like learning the new stuff we didn’t know before, but there was dialogue that was exactly the same as before so it felt a bit unnecessary. But a good read and I want to move on to the final book asap.

This is a bit of a mess of a movie but it is wildly entertaining. Glen Powell is very watchable as the action hero, and you can tell he had some encouragement and mild training from Tom Cruise. The concepts are all good, the way it is entirely relatable and the messsages its trying to convey about current society all very obvious.

An absolutely incredible read, this one. I got the book from the library because the concept spoke to me - I love space travel and the moon, and reading an objective view about the first people to leave the boundary of the planet was a treat. I was nervous, it’s a big book, and non-fiction can sometimes be difficult to wade through, but this was so easy to read and absolutely captivating. It’s a story told really well, and you can tell the research is thorough and the author absolutely confident in the facts they are telling - even if we don’t always know all the facts because of the highly secretive nature of one half of the two-horse race. Absolutely recommend this book, I could barely put it down and it’s just whetted my appetite for more space books in future.

Having watched the TV show and loved it, I decided to listen to the album as well. Soundtracks don’t always work for this album game, but as this is clearly the work of one man as a project in and of itself, I figured it counted. It’s a great country album, that distinctive gravelly voice across some cowboy dreaming songs. I really liked it. There’s an album for the second series too but as I enjoyed that significantly less, I might wait a while before listening to that one.

My knowledge of Myles Smith has been severely lacking and it was only when both he and Niall popped up at Radio 1’s Big Weekend recently, that I started to know the name. But when I listened to the album, I did actually know quite a few of the songs, so had obviously been absorbing it all subconsciously. I’ll tell you what, this is an incredible album, definitely the best of the year so far. Absolute tunes from start to finish, great writing, great singing, upbeat for the most part and just a joy to listen to.

Every now and then I like to dip into a Danielle Steel book and follow those characters on their standalone adventures. This one was a bit of a tough start, a family dealing with the fallout of an ALS diagnosis, but then it becomes the more traditional relationship drama and an ultimately uplifting story about finding reason to go on, and really helping others as much as possible along the way.

I love The Shining, a book that I can re-read over and over, but I’ve never really been tempted to read the sequel until now. I’ve been getting into Stephen King books again, so was interested in this - one of those sequels that no one really expected or asked for. If I’m honest, I didn’t really like it. It’s very readable and the tale is told excellently, as you’d come to expect from King. But I wasn’t that bothered about this weird group and their steam, and although I liked how plucky Abra was, I felt a bit let down by Daniel… although he’s remarkably well adjusted for what he’s been through, really! The good news is, it’s quite different to The Shining, so that remains untouched in my mind.

At first, I wasn’t sure this book was going to grab me in the same way that the first one did but as it gradually retells the story from a completely different point of view, with a new romance to follow and a different approach to the eventual evacuation of the villagers to the mainland. It’s a really good read, and again it makes me want to read the next in the series to see things from yet another perspective.

I find Jimmy Nail fascinating. Not a traditional heartthrob, he did seem to have a legion of fans and get cast as the lead in rom-com style dramas in the 90s, whilst also having a music career as well. Crocodile Shoes is the point where these two elements combine, an old series about an unlikely pop star trying to break his way into the business.

I remember enjoying the first two films but I really couldn’t remember much else about them, and even a quick look at the trailers to recap didn’t help too much. Luckily, you don’t really need it for this film - it’s a new story with new and returning people, and you might miss some cute references but the rest of it stands alone. It’s a pretty good thriller, I didn’t guess the twist which is always a good sign. It’s corny though, and Rosamund Pike’s accent is not bad but definitely distracting. Plus Dave Franco has got hot, and that helps a lot.

The only song I knew on here going in was Your Song, which kicks off the album in style with that great song and terrible lyrics. The rest of it lives up to the high standard, but is probably not very catchy or long-lasting… although Take Me to the Pilot did strike a chord in my head. Very listenable but not gonna change my world.

This is a great album, it’s a step on from the two albums Olivia has released already, but it still retains everything good from them. Great lyrics, good themes and just the right amount of angst vs romance. This time we’re less punk pop and moving into more ballads and thoughtfulness but it’s still great. And so many references to The Cure, including a guest appearance from the man himself. She’s obsessed!

This is a pretty good Grace mystery story - not quite the heights of other books, but definitely an improvement on my least favourite ones. We start with a seemingly innocuous, if rather gruesome traffic accident, and that gradually becomes a sprawling investigation across two continents. Meanwhile, we have Grace’s personal life ratcheting up a notch, and the intriguing glimpses into what Sandy is doing now. Loving this series, and will definitely keep reading.

I had never heard of this film before but just stumbled across it on a collection of a classic movies. I love Doris Day so was intrigued in her being in a more serious role. It’s not a great movie, let’s be honest, but I like that it just gets on with it. From the start, we’re in the action and it’s all kicking off. It’s melodramatic throughout, but it takes domestic abuse quite seriously, which is refreshing. The ending is obviously out there, but Doris Day gets to land a plane, so who’s complaining?

We’re heading into another heatwave here in the UK, so that’s the perfect time to write about a knitted scarf, right? I’ve had this item finished for a while but it’s taken time to get the perfect photo. I had a lot of yarn leftover from knitting this blanket and remembered a scarf pattern I had stumbled across that featured five different colours alternating in different size stripes. I’m not that great at colour co-ordination, so having a set of five yarns that definitely went together meant this was the perfect opportunity to kick off this new pattern.