If we rewind six months of so, and ask my former self if the upcoming Hawkeye TV show would have been my most anticipated of the new MCU TV outings, I would have laughed long and hard. But then they signed up Hailee Steinfeld, then they set it at Christmas, and then they made all the artwork and superhero uniforms purple. Tick, tick, tick. The season finale was released yesterday, bringing to a close a six-episode arc that introduced a new character to Hawkeye’s life, as well as bringing in some returning faces both friend and foe. And you know what? I loved it. Every episode was well crafted, the banter between first Clint and Kate, and then Kate and Yelena, was top notch, it had a good mystery at the heart, solved a lot but also left plenty of questions open, and it was a heartwarming journey into living with grief as well.

I read through this book in almost no time it all, it’s an absolutely capitvating read from a survivor of Auschwitz with an incredible outlook and zest for life that can only be admired. Eddie tells his story simply, with that ongoing confusion over why such atrocities happened, how people could turn on each other so badly. There are no answers, of course, but Eddie seems to have found peace and tells us, who can never imagine what it was like to live through such things, how to find it also. A lovely, if harrowing, book.

I read this because we watched the film, and it was exactly what I expected - a really good children’s book with some excellent illustrations. It reminded me very much of Roald Dahl in the best possible ways. The film stuck very closely to the book to start with, just a few tweaks here and there, but the ending was quite different. In the book, Nikolas well and truly becomes Father Christmas with the big beard and belly and laugh and older. In the film, he’s still a kid when he has his big idea. The book makes more sense on that front, but I say it’s worth enjoying both!

This is the second book in a row I’ve read where the central idea is great, and the characters are interesting, but there just seems to be a big lull in the middle. Once the big crime occurred, it was really just a book of following these characters around as they walked through a nature reserve in the dark, either acting suspiciously or thinking about their suspicions. In the end, the mystery reveal and the twist were good, it just felt like it took ages to get there.

I, like many other people, found myself crying for the full two hours of the Strictly final - for the second year in a row. But this year did feel different. The 2020 final was a celebration of joy and glitter and sparkles and fun after a dreadful year. We needed that release. This time, although we still need that in our lives, it was more about the couples taking part. If AJ had been able to participate, then all three would have been representing in their own way - powerful, talented black woman; inspirational and groundbreaking deaf woman, moving and strong same-sex couple.

Right. Where to start? The good: Michael Sheen is obviously amazing. The aesthetic of each carriage was incredible. The time travelling story pretty well stacked up, and I liked it. I wanted to know what would happen in each successive carriage.

I only know a couple of Eagles songs, with Hotel California obviously being a stand out classic. And it’s at the forefront of my brain, as well, for being featured as a distraction technique in Shang-Chi. I wasn’t sure what to expect from this album - you never really know what you’re going to get with 70s rock - but I really loved it! Soft rock from start to finish, with some great songs and a bit of variety to keep it interesting. A great way to finish the year.

Alicia Keys is legendary already, and every album she comes out with only adds to that status. This one was a bit odd as it’s a double album of originals and then remixes, so I just stuck with the first half - the originals. There are some good songs throughout, although none of them are stand out anthems. You want a bit of Girl on Fire, don’t you? But Keys’s talent shines from start to finish, and even when things get a little bit jazzy, I’m totally on board. Good times.

I’ll be honest, I was enjoying the movie okay, it seemed like a sweet story within a story and it was going places. But then Stephen Merchant piped up as a talking mouse and it really hit a new level of fun. It gathered speed, and actually became really moving and quite insightful. Maggie Smith is also brilliant, and quite under-used really, only popping up every now and then to ground the story in a certain amount of reality. But it’s all lovely and very Christmassy and now I want to zip through the book as well. Good times.

Four years ago (!) I published a Christmas playlist, having taken offence at some of the collections various streaming services had pulled together. Their festive mixes included party songs that really had no business being on a Christmas-related playlist, other than being good for the office get-together. They got you in an uplifted spirit but were they really true to the name? No. Since then, it seems like Christmas has been a growing trend for everyone, more films, more TV, and definitely more songs, as I’ve had to put together a second volume of the playlist, cleverly titled: How a Christmas playlist should be done Vol. 2.

This was a good set up for a story, people heading out of their comfort zone for a final Christmas together as a family, and I really felt the atmosphere nicely. I didn’t feel like there was a lot of plot to unravel, though - from the very beginning it was clear that the parents didn’t actually want to split, we knew straight away that there had been a miscommunication over the sexuality of our main couple, and all the other ones needed was a minute to relax. It was mostly just like spending time in the company of these characters, rather than actually getting a super-duper story. But still, very Christmassy!

I really loved this book, very well written, in depth and with some lovely characters that developed as the book wound its way towards Christmas. At first I thought we were never going to get there, we started so far out from the big day and there was so much evolving, but we made it, and everyone got a happy ending of sorts. I just want to know what happens next… how on earth is Merry going to manage all those orders in the new year!

Semi-finals!! Somehow it feels like it’s come round really quickly but at the same time, when you watch the opening credits featuring all the participants of 2021, some of them seem like such a long time ago! I really think this is one of the closest competitions we’ve had in a long time, every one of the semi finalists has topped the leaderboard, so how can we possibly predict? Anything can happen.

I’m not a huge stoner movie fan, it’s just not something I have reference to, and you know that’s exactly what you’re getting when Seth Rogan teams up with some buddies for one final night out. It was better than I thought it was going to be, although still a bit of a hot mess. The supernatural angle was only slightly there which made it more irritating than insightful, and I really feel like he could have said that Miley 90% forced him to propose which might have calmed her down a bit.

I really loved this film, it was so good in that it totally embraced the cliches but then didn’t always stick to them. I thought it was going to be another one of those ’let’s go home and pretend we’re a couple’ movies, but it didn’t do that. It threw in a blind date curveball. I loved the quirky family, although they interfere way too much, and I love that there was an underlying friendship, always, and it was just about taking that risk. Lovely. Plus, there was a dance routine to Britney. SOLD.

Mildy better than the third installment of The Princess Switch, but probably not a great film. It was entertaining and cosy, the argument at the end felt a bit over-the-top and really just there to give the conflict that needs to be resolved for a happy ending. The characters were cute though and the village adorable, and I liked that he wasn’t your traditional heroic lead. A medium level entry in the Netflix Christmas Universe.

I love the paint marbling effect in the water.

I know Martika for two reasons - Toy Soldiers, obviously, and then being discussed in the first episode of Peter Kay’s Car Share. This album is very much of its time - strongly 80s pop with a couple of covers in there. In fact, it might almost be missing the peak of the 80s, given that it was released in 88/89. Toy Soldiers stands out as a great track, it also doesn’t quite fit with the rest of the album, where it has such a deep meaning and resonance to it. But overall, a good fun album.

I always have high expectations of a Bleachers album because of how prolific their lead singer is in other circles. This was another good one, and what a great thing to have Bruce Springsteen featured on one of the tracks. I don’t know that is was hugely memorable, none of the songs specifically stood out, but it was very listenable and made good background music (in the best possible way).

This… is a weird film. It’s not particularly well made, and it does that thing where it thinks it’s a cartoon - someone pops their head up and a weird sound effect happens, or creeping through a door to creeping sound effects. Annoying. Despite the quite impressive cast, the chemistry and acting isn’t great.

It feels like we’ve been waiting for this short Doctor Who series for a long time but somehow, even though I was keen to see what happened, I didn’t feel the normal hype that I usually would. I can’t put my finger on why, although I’m wondering if at this point I just want to get on to the second Russell T Davies era and see what that brings.

This was a freebie book of the week on Apple Books but as it was a Christmas story, I figured now’s the time to read it! It was actually quite good, a lovely cheesy romance story with characters dealing with their baggage and working their way through misunderstandings. My only complaint is there were a few spelling and grammar mistakes - the kind that a spellcheck wouldn’t pick up but were still quite jarring. Looking aside from that, though, it was a cosy Christmas book with a happy ending.

It may just be the corners of the internet I dwell in, but Acapulco feels like a recent Apple TV+ offering that’s been slightly overlooked by the more high profile Foundation, Invasion and films with Tom Hanks. I’m here to say, if you haven’t watched it already, you absolutely should. It follows the story of a Mexican family and how their lives intertwine with a celebrity resort in Acapulco… in the 1980s.

We were greeted with two group dances by the professional this week, one at the start of each day’s show, but I much preferred the first one. Oti and Graziano portrayed a great story, I love it when the dance is completely mesmorising and even more so when the leads hug at the end. Good to see all the judges back in action, a full house of our favourites, but just five couples to take to the floor!

When I first heard about this book, I knew I had to read it straight away - I actually opted for the audiobook, so Josh Widdicombe talked me through the whole thing. As a concept, this is right up my street. I, too, watched a lot of TV in the nineties, although I didn’t know all of the shows that were mentioned. The ones that I did know, though, I love. Neighbours, Gladiators, Funhouse, etc, etc.

I’ve been a fan of Miranda since her sitcom first came out (2009, can you believe that?) and her unwavering dedication to joy and acceptance has been wonderful to follow. Recently, the lovely lady tweeted about some Christmas items for sale on her shop, with an element of the price going to charity, so it seemed rude not to snap up some of the goodies. I’ve long been searching for some comfortable jogging bottoms and should have known that if anyone knows comfort for a taller person, it would be Miranda. These are incredible.

Ah man, I really wanted to like this because I know M People from the more inspiring, proud, Miranda-style feel-good anthems. I know most of the main tracks, so the album started quite well, but it really disappeared into a dance album where the tracks are all many minutes of beats. Not really my thing for a full album. I don’t mind the odd dance track but it doesn’t sustain my interest this long. It doesn’t stop me wanting to listen to M People in future though, so it can’t be all bad.

This is a really good album, I was quite surprised. Not because you’d expect anything less from Sting, but sometimes the more modern albums of long-time artists loses a bit of its punch. I liked this one though. It grabs you from the start, sounds like Sting, takes you on that journey, and then leaves you at the other end feeling kinda chill and happy. Nothing to complain about really. Except the one song that is trying too hard to be Shape of My Heart.

Yea, this just wasn’t very good at all. No one’s going to say that the previous two were works of art, but they were Christmassy and fun and why not. This was the weakest of the lot by a long way. The fact that it was Christmas was tangential to the entire story, and two of the three Vanessa Hudgens characters took a back seat… presumably because they are both happily married and that’s the end of their story. They are no longer interesting people. Rage.

I’ve been a Les Mills subscriber for a good few years now, and love their output, but I’ve always had a niggling feeling in my head that I needed to write a post about representation. They have super-fit, fabulous presenters and do a great job at having that global feel with international trainers alongside the cosy consistency of a family business. My fitness journey is at the ambitious but rubbish stage and I sometimes got the feeling Les Mills is leaving me behind. Recently, I think I’ve seen a bit of a shift, though, and I don’t know whether it’s because of competition, because of a different lockdown demographic, or just the natural evolvement of a fitness company.

I’m really getting into David Baldacci books, the more of them that I read, but I have to admit that Will Robie has a bit of a special place in my heart because he’s the first of DB’s many series’ that I got into. This book, then, is a treat, because it gives us so much more information about Robie’s backstory, stuff that has never been revealed before. Our hero has to return to his hometown when his estranged father is arrested for murder, and of course nothing is quite what it seems and there’s a much bigger plot at work. The twist at the end was good too, I should have seen it coming but didn’t, and that made it so much more irritating/brilliant.

It’s the time of year where everyone, including me, starts posting top ten this and top five that, highlights and lowlights of the year gone by. The Guardian have kicked things off with the first part of their top 50s, specifically top books, albums, films and TV shows. Reading this list made me wonder if I need to think about what TV shows would make an end-of-year list. Pulling together my top albums of each year is a wrench, so I can only imagine TV would be far worse.

I have previously enjoyed Jon Ronson’s works, and his recent podcasts have been really interesting. I think the first time I stumbled across his investigations was the Men Who Stare at Goats, but this one pre-dates that. This time, we’re looking at… well, that’s the problem. I don’t really get what this book was about? Some conspiracy theorists, some racists, and some crusty old men playing golf. And…?

Having previously tried a bit of gardening this year and not done very well, I’m more interested in the successes and failures of other people than I might have expected. Combine this interest with an enjoyment of gorgeous time lapse videos and you get Boxlapse - a YouTube channel that focuses on growing various veggies and showing how they evolve over time. I discovered these videos via Kottke, who recommended the red bell pepper video, but I personally adore this side on view of potatoes growing under the soil.

I’m always keen to try an indoor hobby, and usually around the time of the Apple live events and keynotes, I suddenly have a craving to make maximum use of my iPad. I’ve previously been dipping into coding, making apps, learning Swift, etc, which I love, but the last few weeks I’ve been looking for something a bit more relaxing, a bit less taxing. Step forward then - drawing and art. I’m a terrible artist, I can see things in my head how I want them to be but something always gets lost in translation on its way to the medium. The iPad is great for that because it’s so easy to delete the evidence. I was scouting around for a good tutorial app and stumbled across the highly-rated ShadowDraw.

I’ll be honest with you here: yes, there were a couple of things I wanted to point towards on the subject of the recent Marvel movie Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings. But the real reason for this post is an excuse to talk about Simu Liu, who I have become somewhat obsessed with ever since watching the film first time round. That’s the good thing about having a blog, no matter how much or little you post, you can spend lots and lots of time researching things that you’re interested in!

The show was only just over an hour this week, and it was really clear how few people are left when they were all waiting at the bottom of the stairs for the action to begin. Just six couples left and three spots in the final. Things are getting tough! Poor Motsi had to miss this show so we had the wonderful Cynthia Erivo back again, and it was very clear that she’d stepped right into Motsi’s shoes when it came to not putting up with any of Craig’s nonsense. The booing was a bit much this week though, even if he is sometimes overly grumpy, he’s usually got a point.

An interesting thriller that starts with a woman waking up in her car, in the middle of a field, in the early hours of the morning. She doesn’t know what happened or why she’s there or why her car has blood on it. A great premise and things kick off well. After a few days of suspecting everyone of everything, we wind up to a satisfying conclusion as we learn more about our protagonist’s history and how her friends and extended family fit into the picture.

I wanted to watch this the moment it came out but had to wait for it to be Christmas o’clock. It was worth the wait, a really good, mushy, rom-com for Christmas. The title’s a bit weird, and some of the character decisions don’t make perfect sense, but if you go with it, it’s a lot of fun and comes to a really heart-warming ending.

It’s been a while since I’ve listened to any MJ but it takes only a moment to be plunged right back into the heart of his genius. This album is stacked full of little tweaks and accents and MJ vocals and 90s sounds and it’s just great from start to finish. I thought the album would suffer for having Black or White on it, which is arguably his greatest song, and really an incredible number. But because it is towards the middle, you’ve got plenty of time to get invested before the greatness happens.

I have to hold my hands up and admit, I don’t get why everyone is so crazy about Adele? She is undeniably talented and one of those artists that wears her heart on her sleeve, so to be applauded, for sure. But people go crazy for her and I don’t totally get it. But I couldn’t ignore the new album, being raved about as it was.

The biggest challenge with these movies is making the situation plausible - getting left behind is a pretty big deal so it needs to be believable. This one did a pretty good job, split flights, one parent thinking the child is with the other. I also liked that they weren’t just a big bad pair of burglars, there was another side to the story too.

I didn’t know this story but once I saw it had Tom Hanks and Julia Roberts in it, I was on board. It’s a dense film, as you might expect from Aaron Sorkin, with a lot of politics and moving parts to keep track of. But it does a really good job, and even a fool like me could follow what was actually an emotional story.

I don’t usually delve too deeply into true crime books, because let’s be honest, if you want to see how awful human beings can be to each other, you just need to turn on the news. But this seemed like a well respected book written about a truly awful but very high profile pair of serial killers. The book very factually, concisely and neatly sets out the known facts and unknown guesswork that tell the story of Fred & Rose West, their extended family, and their many victims. It’s a sad tale of damaged people but also highlights how many different elements came together to overlook what was happening and allow the murder spree to continue for such a long time. Awful, but a good book.

It feels like you can’t move for seeing good press about The Outlaws, the recent comedy from Stephen Merchant. I finished watched it a week or so ago, and it was so good, I just wanted to add to the celebration of such a good show. Here are five things to love about it: The cast. From relative unknowns to the supremely famous Christopher Walken (how on earth did that happen?), the cast are a real odd mix of people… which is kind of the point! The show centres on a group that are forced to do community service together and it is how the different viewpoints clash and interact that make for some of the funniest and most interesting moments of the series. The lorry. In doing the rounds for promoting the show, Merchant was constantly having to explain that picture of the wardrobe lorry in the river. Awkward. But also somehow a great piece of promo for the show, as it’s about people not quite sticking to the rules, either on purpose or just because that’s how life goes. The Banksy. In the final moments of the final episode, Christopher Walken paints over a genuine Banksy artwork. That is all. The parents. The core cast are great but there were a few exceptional pop up characters too, particularly the parents - Nina Wadia as an overprotective mother and Richard E. Grant as an aloof and distant father. Amazing. The fact that we know there’s a second series. The two series were filmed back to back, so it’s great to know before you’ve even finished that there’s more joy where this comes from!

You pretty much know what you’re getting with this, a truly British film where four friends go travelling in memory of their sadly deceased friend/mum. They all have their own issues and there are some interesting relationship dynamics between them as well, so there’s plenty of adventure along the way. I hadn’t expected it to have such an emotional punch, what with Judi Dench making an appearance as a grieving mother, and the fact that this was Kelly Preston’s last film before she died.

A really good book diving deep into the modern culture of social media outrage - endlessly picking on the next topic and tweet-shouting rage about it, achieving nothing except a half-hearted apology, and then moving on to the next thing. The book dives into the cause and effect of this phenomena, catching up with some people who have first hand experience of being the drivers of outrage or the unfortunates who have to live with the fallout. Most of all, it’s a treatise for actually using outrage for good, getting motivated to do something, rather than sticking with the easier route of keyboard warrior.

Musicals week has arrived, and it’s one of those that all the couples say they were desperate to participate in… but we’re getting to the sharp end now and the good have to be even greater to get through. Also, this is the first week in Strictly history that Craig Revel Horwood wasn’t on the judging panel, replaced by Cynthia Erivo. It was fitting, as she’s a superb theatre star with plenty to add on the couples performances. It was also fun for the women to outnumber the men on the judging panel, too - first time ever?

Ah, loved this. It’s a frothy fun heist movie and nothing more. The plotting isn’t intricate, other than the inevitable twists and turns and double-crossing along the way, but it grabs you and sweeps you along on a wave of the three fabulous leads and quite a lot of comedy. I wasn’t expecting to laugh as much as I did. I’ve seen some snippy reviews and critics opinions to this, but it’s supposedly the highest movie draw Netflix have seen, and I believe they’re going to make two sequels going forward, so it can’t be all that bad! I really enjoyed it, and to be honest, was sad when it was over!