I’d not heard of it before but thought the combination of Katie, Patrick and a load of pianos couldn’t go wrong. And yet it did! There just didn’t seem to be a lot of story to it, at the end no one really seemed to be further forward than they were at the beginning, and although there were some pretty visuals along the way, I was left feeling pretty empty about the whole thing.

I loved it. There’s heart to it but ultimately it’s just a buddy road trip comedy, with three boys escaping their parents to go in search of some long overdue gratification. They learn and grow and get what they wanted in more ways than expected, and it ends with a somehow desperately sad but ultimately uplifting resolution. Incredible.

I can’t believe Elastica only had two albums altogether, and only really this one has stood the test of time. It’s so good! Some really good pop rock punk combo, with unique elements and interesting riffs and beats that I’ve not really heard anywhere else.

My first listen through this was, I’ll admit, a bit disappointing. It has a slow, slow pace, with very few upbeat songs, and I thought it was a bit boring. As always, the first listen isn’t the one to fully judge an album on. Second time through, I could start picking out the good songs, and that gives me something to work with.

It turned out to be a really good film, funny and with interesting thoughts on gender, a little bit stereotypical in places, and a clear gaping hole in how she thought things were going to resolve themselves if it hadn’t all gone wrong like it did.

This is an interesting one. Obviously Vienna, the title track from this album, is an incredible, classic and long-lasting song that will stand the test of time. Amazing to know that Midge wasn’t that bothered about it and his refrains of ’this means nothing to me’ are more about the song than anything else.

Ooh, this was a good one. It felt like listening to Pretenders of old, but with all new stuff. Lovely Chrissie Hynde and her amazing voice belting out some real rock stuff, alongside some more moving moments. Crying in Public is a real beauty.

Genuinely, the first couple of minutes of this movie proved it was going to be a 5 out of 5. Beanie being brilliant, and also doing an incredible accent, some fab music kicking in, and just a wonderful sense of British nostalgia (the good kind).

Until Oprah picked an Elizabeth Strout book as part of her book club, I hadn’t heard of the author but now I have, I’m a little bit obsessed. This was a short and just intriguing stream of consciousness from the eponymous Lucy Barton. She uses the time she was laid up in hospital for several weeks to share stories about her family, her extended family, friends, neighbours and relative strangers.

It’s been a while since we saw a really good heist movie, and I had a vague recollection of seeing this before and liking it. I could only remember it having something to do with a briefcase though. I’d expected it to be more about the stealing of the painting in the first place, so that happening and them figuring out it was him in the first half hour left me wondering what else the movie was about?

It’s Michael Palin’s way to release an accompanying book to go with his travel adventures on TV, and his trip to North Korea was no different. Well, I suppose it was very different and the book is a great way to relive it. I watched the programme when it was on, which was a long while ago, so it was good to revisit things in another medium. The book takes the form of a diary with day by day thoughts and exploits, alongside lots of photos.

I don’t know that I would listen to a Christian album from anyone else but Cash has the vocals to make it work. And in all honesty, this wasn’t so different from his previous albums, just slightly weighted towards the topic of the heavenly father. Otherwise, it was good 50s/60s beats, that incredible voice and short, sharp songs.

It was a good album although I had problems with the first track, which was some kind of experimental nonsense. The underlying song was good but then it kept breaking off into what I can only describe as Ross moments. Friends fans will know the Ross music episode, wherein he basically has a keyboard of sound effects and presses them randomly - although at least in time with the beat.

This is a really great thriller, non-stop action from start to finish, and the type of book where I can imagine the movie adaptation as I’m reading through. It was a little bit exposition heavy in places, mostly where we were learning about our protagonist Flynn’s back-story. He has quite a lot of history to fill in so it makes sense, and he’s an interesting character. You often get lawyers with a past but this is one I hadn’t heard of before.

Another collection of Roald Dahl short stories. There are some real classics on here, although I think as a whole the collection in Kiss, Kiss is better. There are, of course, the stories that stay with you but there are also those that sort of passed me by and already I’ve pretty much forgotten them.

I was in two minds about reading this book because as much as I love Miranda Hart, I’m not so keen on people gushing about their pets. It’s fine if they have such a great relationship with their pooch, I’m just not sure I need to hear about it. But I picked up this audiobook in an Audible sale and decided to give it a whirl. I’m glad I did. Although there are some moments that non-pet owners like me will never understand, there’s still a lot to learn about life and love through this.

Once it found its feet, though, it was actually fun. It was a bit of a rollercoaster where at times I was like ‘what the hell am I watching’ but then they would pull out a really funny line that drew my back in.

Pretty good film, this one. Initially it’s hard to like Jack, because even though he clearly has demons, he’s not exactly doing much about it and is being a bit of a drain on the people around him. But then you learn more about why he is in the pit of depression that he finds himself and it becomes a more well rounded picture.

The very first Sugababes album and thus it is them in their first iteration - featuring Siobhan, Mutya and Keisha. A couple of these songs are stand out brilliant, I love Overload and Run For Cover, but all of them have stood the test of time.

I really loved this album. It’s so heartbreaking for someone to have music taken away from them, and that’s never more clear in this cut short album that only has a handful of songs on it. The crew never quite got to finish due to Huey’s hearing loss, but at least they can know they’ve gone out on a high.

Loved it. I actually only had a vague idea going into this what it was about - a Tom Hanks project, about the war. I didn’t realise it was written by him too, which is actually an impressive feat considering how much naval jargon is in there. It was so good. A great little story, told well, in a short space of time.

Wow, I really loved this book. Such a great idea, a sort of Sliding Doors but for gender. The book follows the lives of one person Lou Alder, but splits into two timelines where they are female and in the other male. Both stories are fascinating and would stand up in their own right, but the real joy is in seeing how they intersect. The similarities between the two are intricately plotted, and even the vast differences seem to come back to the same thing in the end.

I listened to an audiobook reading of this which was very good, although the reader trying to get through quite so many French words was a bit difficult. It’s a good story, though. I was surprised how close to the musical it is, and yet so far away. The book is formatted more like a memoir, pieced together from fragments of evidence and eye-witness accounts, but is still at heart a ghost story that you have to believe in.

This was a surprise, it was really good. I don’t know if I was expecting much as I’d never even heard of it before it popped up on Prime, but it delivered in spades. It starts off quiet and unassuming and gradually the tension rises until the hijackers leap into action and then the drama starts.

I really liked this one. The nice blend of traditional Irish vibes alongside general pop goodness is great, and Runaway is obviously a stand out that leads the way. I listened to the most recent Corrs album and it felt very middle-of-the-road, but back at this time, their debut album, it has that feel like they had the option of going down a unique and interesting route.

Been looking forward to this album for such a long time, and whizzed through it twice (and more!) very quickly. It’s classic HAIM, a unique kind of alternative pop that stands out from the crowd but also blends in nicely.

The music was brilliant and the staging really good, if a little bit busy at times. But I don’t know anything about history or politics and was too stupid to follow the story when it was being told so fast. So by the end, I still didn’t know who this Hamilton guy was, what he’d achieved, or why we should care about him. He didn’t seem like a particularly nice guy.

I saw a handful of bad reviews before watching this so I wasn’t really sure what to expect. I can sort of see why people don’t like it, it sets out to confuse and betray you from the start but I don’t think it’s a bad film particularly. It’s quite clever and the twists are good.

Third in the Famous Five series, and this time the gang are very much left to fend for themselves. When Aunt and Uncle have to go away for illness, the crew find themselves at the mercy of some very unscrupulous fill-in housekeepers. It does make me wonder how much screening Uncle Quentin does on his staff, with these guys and with the rogue tutor from the previous book.

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?

This film gets off to a really bad start. We try not to but find ourselves judging movies by their idents (bit like books and covers) and there were a lot. And then there was about five minutes of documentary footage which made me feel like I’d bought the wrong thing. When the movie part actually gets going, it’s good.

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.

I really liked this album, it’s probably their best one? I do think it suffers from that problem that some of the greatest albums do - where there are a few amazing tracks together… and then you have the rest of the album. You can’t kick off with Beuatiful Day, Stuck, and Elevation and expect it to go anywhere but down.

I really like Jason Mraz, he has an interesting style, a generally good outlook on life, and I’ve been listening to his music for years. The last album was a bit of a weird one as it was so loved up, it didn’t quite deliver what I’d hoped. I was worried this one might be more of the same, but it wasn’t. Instead, this one was more of hippy, optimistic, we can all do better vibe and, to be honest, it’s probably exactly what we need.

This was a free book given away by Apple, and I read through it pretty quickly. It tells the tale of a young headteacher who battles her own demons to try and stop her school from being closed down, whilst at the same time falling in love with her next door neighbour. Of course that means lots of misunderstandings, twist and turns along the way, romantic dates and blazing rows, and all that good stuff.

Yay for women crushing it in rock and roll. This was a great album right from the start, Suzi giving no inches as she grabs hold of the 70s rock and shakes it for all its worth. It always astounds me that people can multi-task playing bass and singing because I can barely do either of those things let alone both at the same time.

Oh, I loved this. I realised I don’t know a lot about Kodaline but once this started, I didn’t need to. It was the perfect pop album for the moment, upbeat and every song a good one. It reminded me quite a lot of Imagine Dragons.

The gang return for a second adventure, but this time the mystery comes right to their door. With everyone staying at George’s house, and a tutor coming in to give them additional lessons, there’s a plot afoot. I didn’t think this one was quite as good as the first, but mostly because I loved the island in the first one. This time, it’s about secret passageways and scientific espionage!

It is surely not normal for the third (and presumably final?) movie in a series to be the best one? This was a lot of fun right from the start - and any fears I had about these guys coming back older and trying to do the same things they did before were put to rest. Marcus retired, Mike got shot, and both were pretty much outplayed by the new generation.

This one is a prime example. It got off to a really slow start, the dude hanging out with his friends and smoking weed, and if we hadn’t paid slightly more for the rental due to it being an early release, we might have hit the twenty minute rule. But we persevered and I’m so glad we did because it really came into its own. Once he started having to pull his own weight, taking the kids to school, and particularly learning so much about himself and his father at the fire-station, it just got really good.

With the big artists, and those who have evolved over the years, I like to go back to the start and see how it all began. Cher’s first solo album was bang in the middle of the 60s, and it sounds just like its time.

I really didn’t know anything about Tim Burgess before listening to this, but if I’m honest, the choices have been slim pickings so far this year (unsurprisingly). But on the flip side, that introduces me to things that I might not otherwise have listened to, and this is probably one of them. I really liked it!

I loved it, which wasn’t a surprise. The story is your basic thriller - a killer fungus is on the loose and someone needs to stop it. You wouldn’t expect that someone to be two kids with part-time jobs at a self-storage facility, but hey, you never know who’s going to be a hero!

I quite liked the action adventure, young people running around causing havoc aspect of it, but a lot of the story raised more questions than it answered and I’m not sure it really stood up against close scrutiny. And I don’t think the criminal mastermind part of things really came across, not as much as they’re trying to sell it in all the descriptions anyway.

I listened to the audiobook of this, which was, of course, read by Steve Coogan, or by Alan Partridge himself, I suppose we should say. The Partridge humour is some that doesn’t always work for me, but when it does, it makes me laugh a lot. His overblown manner, desperate to be more interesting and important than he is, it grates but it is kinda amusing. His judgement of others is a bit of a let-down, but equally, when he ends up being the butt of the joke, then it’s all worked out in the end.

I don’t know if this was as light as I’d expected, given that it’s based on addiction and a cancer diagnosis, but it was fun anyway. The two have great chemistry and play off each other well, it was funny, and there’s a lot to like about it.

I should have known from the beginning, with the eye-bursting visual, but I spent a good portion of this movie shielding my eyes from the horrors on screen. It’s a good story, the premise is great, and I love that you don’t really know what to believe. Some really solid ideas but the execution was not to my tastes… I couldn’t hack it at all, especially the last ten minutes waiting for the atmosphere to clear.

I was worried going into this one because I remembered liking it but other films that I have fond memories of have not worked out so well on a rewatch. However, this stood up! Thank goodness. It was funny, it was cringey but not in a gross way, and he was actually a better guy than I remembered, because actually a lot of the things that were happening weren’t his fault.

I’ve not been having a very good time with these Star Trek films so far. The first was pretty dire, and I couldn’t get more than half an hour into this one. Part of me feels bad that I didn’t give it a good go, but the other part of me just doesn’t want to even think about worm things crawling into people’s ears.

I read this one through to the end but having come out the other side, I’m not sure I totally enjoyed it. The fundamental concept is an interesting one - compare and contrast the fortunes of someone who had money and lost it all, against someone who didn’t have much to her name and then won a fortune. But the execution didn’t quite work for me, mostly because our two heroines weren’t actually in each other’s stories until the very end.