We’re in to the fifth year of this album adventure and I’ve only just picked up an Elvis record to listen to. Incredible. This is his debut, twelve songs of lovely Elvis voice - some covers, some original stuff, some that are super famous. Imagine having Blue Suede Shoes on your debut!

I’ve been looking forward to this one, and it absolutely delivered. It probably hasn’t moved their sound forward very much, but you know what you’re getting with Paul & Jacqui - good tunes with excellent lyrics, and some honest and truthful subject matters.

This is a childhood favourite, an absolute classic, and one that it’s taken far too long to Film Watch. However, I had to wait until Mr C was ready for the brilliance of it and today was the day. There’s a lot to love, obviously, the music is incredible, the story fun, the performances hit and miss. There were more layers to it than I remembered though.

Okay, so let’s kick things off with the positive. We were looking for some mindless action and this delivered - it was entertaining in the moment, not too much of a thinking film, with some great visuals along the way. However, it really doesn’t stand up to much scrutiny.

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 picked this up after watching the TV series on Apple TV+, and was interested to see how the source material had been adapted. The TV show went down with mixed reviews in my household but overall it was enjoyable, so I was surprised at how completely different the book was! Rather than being the protagonist, Poppy the podcaster is really a hated figure that only pops up every now and again and is really, very mean.

My expectations going into this were relatively low - I like Jillian Bell and thought she would be funny but I just wasn’t sure. I ended up loving it! It’s not a straight up comedy, and actually hit a lot closer to home than I’d thought but that made it even better.

I was probably in the camp that didn’t think we needed another Zombieland movie but I’m glad they made it because it was almost as good as the first one, but more importantly, they didn’t ruin anything that was good about the first one. It was superb, enjoyable, funny in the right places and that joyous comedy of great references and plenty of banter.

I listened to the audiobook of this, read in turn by Emilia Fox and Jack Hawkins. The story is told from the two main protagonist’s point of view and it’s fascinating to see how the pair gradually develop and change as events overtake them. Ben was behind the wheel of the car that killed Alice’s husband and eventually worms his way into her life.

Really good film, this one. Of course I’m a Costner fan so that helped, but what a cast they’ve gathered here! It was funny and heartbreaking and a good action drama, based on the true story of bringing Al Capone to some kind of justice.

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.

Yay for J-Lo! I do love this lady, and seeing her in action at the Super Bowl made me realise I need to do a bit more J-Lo on the album adventure. And then we saw her in Hustlers and that was that, time for an album!

My first K-Pop album, after watching BTS doing a spot of Carpool Karaoke with James Corden. I’ve been aware of these guys, obviously, but they’ve never really sparked an interest until now. I really quite enjoyed this album, although it is far too long and took a while to get through the second time round.

I’ve gone a bit book club crazy at the moment, and there has to be a limit, but before I find it, I picked up this book on the recommendation of one Reese Witherspoon. Such a Fun Age starts with the story of Emira, who is cornered in a supermarket and accused of kidnapping the white child that she is babysitting.

I can’t start this review without addressing the elephant in the room, or should I say the tortoise in the room. That is, surely, the worst album cover ever? Two guys photoshopped on the back of a cartoon tortoise… for no apparent reason? Every time I look at it, it makes me shake my head.

I loved this! I wasn’t really familiar with Grimes at all beforehand, only really in passing and having heard whispers about her love life. But that wasn’t relevant at all in an album that I really enjoyed. If I’m honest, as I listened, it all started to blur into one so I couldn’t tell you if there were particular standout songs or not, but I really enjoyed the process of listening and quite looked forward to sitting through it a second time.

Another of Oprah’s Book Club picks, this was an incredible read. The story follows a mother and son from the moment of an horrific family tragedy in Mexico through their desperate attempts to flee the country and find their way into the United States. It provides a deep and moving portrayal of how quickly things can change for a seemingly settled and untroubled family and how horrifying the journey is when you are just trying to look for safety.

It took me a while to get used to listening to the Doctor rather than seeing him/her. Nicholas Briggs voices this first book and his version of the Doctor is a good one, it has that Northern goofiness so that you can immediately tell who it is but I did think it sometimes went a bit too far into the silly voice. Our Doctor can be serious too.

It’s clear that Zac Efron was the star of the show, he was given some of the best songs and sequences - I really loved his piece inside the school alone, and the bit with the friend in the scrapyard, also great. When he was with the others, it didn’t quite seem to gel so well, but hey, High School Musical has always been awkward-fest.

What a terrible film! And what an awful way to wrap up the trilogy. It goes downhill straight away when Estevez appears and just as quickly disappears for almost all the rest of the movie. How is he first billed when he’s barely in it? And without him, it’s sort of hard to care about the rest.

I don’t know what I was expecting of this but I really liked it! The Kinks, as a concept, confuse me because many of their songs are so timeless, you feel like they could be released today and still fit in perfectly. So it sort of boggles my mind that they’re of the sixties. But then you hear something like Cadillac and they slot right back into place again.

Good music! It’s quite nice to hear Green Day again, because whilst there wasn’t anything particularly outstanding or evolved about this album (they’re not going to be making a musical out of this one, I’m sure), I realised that not a lot of people are making this type of music anymore, so they do have a niche.

A great film this one. Takes a minute to get used to the masses of stilettos and the lack of clothing on display but once you’re in the right headspace, it’s really just a female version of The Wolf of Wall Street - hustlers using their skills to get the most out of the greedy, without feeling guilty about it.

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.

I’m not sure this sequel lives up to its predecessor but it was fun enough to watch. It seemed to be more of a kids film than the first, which maybe had a few more levels. Here, we had quite long sequences of kids skating down the road causing chaos, and far too much quacking - either via duck whistle or in the middle of chants.

I’ve had a few disappointments over the last couple of weeks, so I wanted to listen to something I knew I would like - good old-fashioned 90s boyband pop. I fell for the manufactured BSB vs NSync rivalry back in the day but older and wiser I can now listen to it all and enjoy.

This album took so long to come to fruition! It’s been on our upcoming list for a couple of years but the release date kept being put back and back. Eventually, at last, it’s out in the world and was it worth the wait? Well, it’s certainly a lot better than I was expecting.

I heard a lot of good things about this book but I had to go for the audiobook option, read by Taron Egerton. Elton introduces his memoir by reading the introduction (and he voices the epilogue as well), but soon we are into the heart of the story with Taron doing an incredible job guiding us through Elton’s difficult early years, exciting early success, troubled drug decades, and post-sobriety contentment.

This book is a quirky little thing, but totally enjoyable. It took a little while to grow on me because initially, whilst I was absolutely seeing a lot of myself in the lovely Nina, I couldn’t quite see what was happening. But then I was halfway through and realised I was invested in a lot of things: the new ready-made family, the relationship with the quizzer, and the fate of the bookshop. Plus all conversations with the cat, Phil.

I wasn’t expecting too much from this movie, but we wanted something completely different to the previous film and I knew this was relatively well-liked and culturally referenced work. Plus, I like Emilio. It was a nice, family-friendly, sports film - competition, drama, people working through their issues, and eventually doing the right thing. I enjoyed it.

OKAY. Well. This was an experience. It’s one of the few films that we’ve watched where it was alright and almost enjoyable whilst watching but genuinely the second it ended, we started discussing, questioning, realising how terrible it was and growing to hate it. Quite remarkable.

Welcome to my first ever unrated album. The rules of the game are that I should listen to each album twice to make sure I’m not just making a snap judgement, and that those that grow on you a little have a chance to start to bed in. Unfortunately, I couldn’t get through this one a second time. I didn’t even attempt to, if I’m honest.

This is a reliably good album from Blossoms, they have a sound and they stick to it, so there’s nothing outrageous or unexpected as you travel through the ten tracks. It’s quite short, in this current climate of longer and more self-indulgent records, but it’s good.

I mean, look, you know exactly what you’re getting when you put on a Johnny English film. The bumbling incompetence of the super-silly spy is the perfect fit for Rowan Atkinson, but it’s not exactly high-brow art. On a tired weekday when you just need to unwind with something ridiculous, it’s the perfect film though.

I suddenly remembered that I had bought this book a while back, probably when we were playing the game on the PS4. It was a very quick and easy read, starting just after the tsunami that sweeps through Cozumel at the start of Shadow of the Tomb Raider. Most of the action, though, takes place after Cozumel but before Lara’s plane crashes in Peru.

Overall, I thought this was a good album - you can rely on Keith to make a good guitar-focused country song, and there are some really top notch moments scattered throughout the album. However, I wasn’t a huge fan of the intro tracks, they didn’t really seem to add anything.

Mr C listened to this before I did and reported back that it was all about the 90s vibes, so that was me signed up almost immediately. It’s a good album, nothing particularly special, I don’t think, but a credible job considering the circumstances.

What a way to start, with Taylor Swift’s honest and revealing behind the scenes look at a tumultuous time in her life. It’s a really eye-opening piece and touches on lots of different areas: politics, music, feminism, eating disorders, family, loneliness, relationships, the media, everything!

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 was so what we needed for our first movie of 2020. It’s a fantastic teen movie that just celebrates those angst-filled times, where you’re feeling misunderstood and like the whole world is against you, but there’s still joy to be found if you look hard enough. It had echoes of Edge of Seventeen and Easy A, that kind of vibe.

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.

Firstly, I don’t quite understand why Apple have classed this as a dance album - it’s surefire pop through and through. Just because Abdul was a dancer doesn’t mean she’s making dance music.

This is a solid album from Halsey, some great songs mixed in with lyrical interludes and some surprising guests - I was happy to hear the dulcet tones of Alanis in there.

I’ve read a handful of Dirk Pitt books but not for a long while and I thought it made sense to go right back to the beginning of the adventure. This book wasn’t the first one published but it is the first in Pitt’s timeline, and therefore we see him right at the start of his journey.

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.

Another audiobook listen, this time Graham Norton reads the story of an Irish family across the years, dipping between now and then and unravelling a mystery that spans a generation. The book gets off to an excruciatingly slow start, really could have used some tightening in terms of editing. But gradually, as the characters start to be revealed, the mystery deepens, and the story unfolds, it does become quite riveting.

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.