I love the book, I’ve read it a couple of times and the film picks out the best of the tension and the most important of the plot developments to generate a tension-filled two hours. From the very start, there’s a general feeling of inevitable dread that doesn’t let up until that explosion at the end.

This time last year, I had seen zero music concerts. Basically my entire life. Plenty of theatre and musicals and stuff, but no musicians up on stage giving it their all. Fast forward twelve months and I’ve wrapped up my fifth visit of the year with a similar number already scheduled for next year. Turns out I was missing out on quite a lot and I have a lot of ground to make up.

So… the first of December rolled around and immediately I re-subscribed for Netflix, and got watching their latest Christmas movie offerings. This one, it was fun in the moment with a glass of wine and getting that early festive spirit on but oh no, it wasn’t a good movie. You sort of know it’s not going to be groundbreaking with the concept - a knight time travels and something about Christmas? Oh-kay.

When Mischief Theatre announced a year-long residency at the Vaudeville in London, I was intrigued and determined to see as much of the output as possible. I’ve previously seen their plays and pantos and bank robberies that go wrong, and consider myself officially obsessed with this comedy troupe. The first of three shows wraps up this weekend, and I just managed to catch Groan Ups “before term ended”. Unlike The Play That Goes Wrong and the other shows, which are basically non-stop slapstick comedy, Groan Ups is character-driven, with a story that tracks the lives of five friends from about 6 years old, to 14, and then to adulthood.

I’m a big Garry Marshall fan at this point, but I have to admit this a) wasn’t the film I thought it was going to be and b) wasn’t as good as I hoped it might be. I did like that neither of the characters was a particularly good person - hard reporter saying horrible things about people he doesn’t know versus woman who really does leave a trail of destruction in her wake.

You have to love The Cardigans, great 90s music that just makes time goes faster. Erase and Rewind is great, obviously, but the whole thing stands up. Back then, this album was a way of the band changing their image a little - darker than what had gone before.

I didn’t really know anything about FKA twigs before listening to this album and I suspect I should have done a bit more research before diving headfirst into it. This is Bjork-style quirky music, creative and arty but in all honesty, not that great to actually listen to.

Okay, people, things are getting serious. Partly because Saturday night was some of the first wine I’d had after being ill for a bit, and also because we’re edging closer to the part of the competition where all the episodes end in -final. Whoever gets through this is into the quarter-finals, Musicals week. Let’s go! Actually, before we start, just gotta say… Bruno sings?? AJ and Saffron up first and wow, the song is so slow. It drags the whole thing down, feels heavy. Samba is so hard but somehow she was making it look hard too. Good effort but not quite perfect.

I love script books and I, like many others, absolutely adored Fleabag so snapping this up was a no-brainer. I thought there were going to be more notes and asides from the author but as I was reading through it, I kind of realised I was happy with just the scripts. Fleabag is such a wonderful love story, not about Harry or the Priest but about Fleabag finding and loving herself.

Right. Well. Here’s the thing. I used to love this film. Genuinely thought it was one of my favourites and I have been waiting for SO LONG for it to be available anywhere on demand, but it has been stubbornly absent. Suddenly, out of nowhere, it popped up on the iPlayer and I was ready to watch straight away.

Went into this one slightly concerned it wouldn’t have aged well, and knowing John Cleese is verging on a bad reputation. But this is what he does best, running around furious at everything. The haircuts didn’t age well and the cars definitely didn’t, but the rest of it stood up.

I’ve seen this before once, I think, a while back and I was nervous about watching it again because I thought it was going to be problematic. You know, teacher/student relationship, age differences, etc, etc. Actually, they handled that better than I’d expected, and it’s a good movie. It’s got funny moments, a good cast, and Drew is just wonderful in it.

This debut album from Eternal plunges you straight into the 90s and it’s wonderful. There are a few stand out tracks on there, particularly Just a Step from Heaven, alongside a couple of well-done covers, but mostly it’s just those great pre-millennium pop beats.

Oof, I wanted to like this one, because I love the band and some of their previous songs. But it was just really dull. None of the songs stood out and as a body of work, it just sort of lulls you along with sweeping love songs and huge emotions.

This was an Apple Books offer and I fancied reading something quite frothy and light. This was the perfect choice. A mother and her two daughters guide us through the story of a hastily organised wedding in Aspen at Christmas. All three women have secrets they are hiding from each other, and have quite a lot of soul-searching to do if the festive nuptials are to go ahead without a hitch.

Weirdly, it was somehow better than expected and also worse than expected. I was not a fan of the cyborg Idris, nor his Transformers motorbike. This isn’t a sci-fi series, and I know they sometimes push the boundaries of physics but at least it’s for the most part based in reality. This was just rubbish.

I can totally see why this movie, released in the same summer as Armageddon, was overshadowed by its competitor. Somehow, despite a stellar cast, you don’t really latch on to any of the characters, except the president because, you know, Morgan Freeman. It feels a little darker than Armageddon too, because of the decisions made around who gets saved, who isn’t, conflicts created by such things.

When I told people I was going to see Charles Esten, I was usually met with a confused “who?” which, unless you are a fan of the TV show Nashville, is totally fair enough. Esten featured on that show as Deacon, one of the main guitar-playing country-singing characters through the entire run. And so, even though I didn’t really know much of him outside of this show, seeing him pop up in Bristol during a small tour of the UK meant instant ticket purchase. The pre-concert research included finding out that he doesn’t have an album because he was focused on releasing 54 singles, one a week, to break a Guinness World Record. He called it Every Single Friday, which is a bit of genius.

I am intensely aware that my recent posts have been all Apple this and Apple that. With Arcade and Books and Oprah and Swift and more, it’s like everything has come out all at the same time. I’m loving the content on Apple TV+ but some of it has been harder work than others. Dickinson was a surefire hit, but For All Mankind took some perseverance. The first episode didn’t grab me at all. This show is an alternative take on the history of the moon landings, whereby instead of the US getting their feet on the lunar surface first, the Russians won the space race.

Oprah’s latest book pick is the sequel to this, the original adventures of one Olive Kitteridge. I’m always one to start at the beginning so I dived headfirst into this and I loved it. It’s a series of stories from a small coastal town in Maine, that are standalone but intertwine and gradually tell the story of Olive and those who interact with her.

Blackpool! That’s all we need to say about that. In other news, at this point, all the dancers left are really good and have earned their spot on the big ballroom floor, so I was looking forward to this show being of really high dance quality… and I wasn’t disappointed! Great opening number with all the professionals, celebrities, and the bonus Blackpool dancers. It was quite weird to see our contestants dancing with each other, ie. at one point I spotted Karim and Alex having a boogie. Very odd.

I knew I was going to love Dickinson because, from the trailer, it was a modern take on the early life of this infamous poet. I’ll be honest and admit to knowing little about Emily other than her name, but as soon as I knew Hailee Steinfeld was in it, I was on board. And it was SO GOOD. Ten half-hour episodes of Hailee and her friends reinventing what a good period piece is. Here are five things to love about this new and exciting show, that thankfully has been renewed for a second series already:

Sure, the last thing the world needs is another television streaming service and yes, there is a question mark about where Britbox sits in the current market but you know what? I kinda like it. Britbox is a long-in-coming platform initiated by ITV and the BBC, with Channel 4 and Channel 5 on board, to offer UK-based programming to mostly a UK-based audience. It sounds like a good thing, bringing together the main terrestrial channels from the big four, but it does get a bit wobbly when you start to look at what’s available.

Having seen Little Mix live, it was only natural to catch up on their back catalogue, although I’m only missing one album after this one. DNA was their first effort and it’s stacked with great songs, it’s no wonder the girls took off like they did.

The previous album from The Script had to grow on me a little, took some time to really get to grips with it. This one was back to The Script at their best - great songs that grab you first time. The only one that didn’t quite work for me was Underdog and not because it wasn’t great, but because it felt like it was trying too hard to be Hall of Fame.

This is the time of year when people start talking about the C word - that festive period where you will either be wondering how much cash you might receive as a gift, or pondering how much it might be wise to spend on eggnog, or maybe even thinking about how you can revamp your finances for the new year. I’ve thought about money and finances a lot this year and it’s been an interesting, frustrating and sometimes rewarding process. One of the key finds was Monzo. Monzo have been around for about four years now and already have racked up over 3 million users, which is supremely impressive.

Is it Blackpool time?? Not quite yet but it is Blackpool drinking time. DRINK. I actually didn’t think the number of B word mentions was as high as it has been in the past, but maybe I was just mellow with a glass of wine in hand. It’s that point in the competition, unfortunately helped by Will’s early exit, that when the dancers gather on the floor at the beginning, it’s starting to look quite empty. They still know how to put on a good show though.

At the start of this year, I made good progress with learning Swift but of course two things got in the way - real life, and then SwiftUI. When SwiftUI was announced in June, it sounded too good to be true (anything to not have to use interface builder anymore) but I figured I’d be better off waiting to see what it had to offer before continuing my journey.

I surprised myself with this one, I thought I was going to love it and when it first kicked in I was enjoying but gradually as the album wore on, I just started to really dislike it.

I loved this album. It felt like a really compact work but bursting at the seams with thoughts, ideas, and honest reflections - about the world, about love, about family, everything under the sun.

Having been focused on my personal finances for a while now, it was interesting to read this book about how to keep tabs on your pennies in the modern world. Banking and finance is undergoing a bit of a digital revolution so it’s important to stay on top of it and Anne Boden is here to help.

My obsession with Taskmaster meant I was always going to eventually read this book, but it wasn’t until creator Alex Horne was tweeting about the picnic meet-up that I was properly invested. So backing up a little - the book is really just a list of tasks that you can take part in yourself, either as a solo project or as a group endeavour. They’re fun tasks but of course the real comedy and enjoyment comes from how you interpret them.

This short book about how the play came together was, of course, right up my street. It’s a fascinating look from the producers at every corner of bringing the two-part production to life. From the early days of meeting JK Rowling and coming up with an idea, through the writing and rewriting process, through first rehearsals to tech run-throughs, make-up, costume, illusions, and finally the opening nights across the world.

Well this was a tough one, wasn’t it? The halfway point, hooray, the dancers are really starting to get it all together. But we had to wave goodbye to Will, which was very sad. And poor Neil also had to sit out another week and hand over the dance to a thankfully slightly more prepared Kevin. Here are some thoughts as the whole thing unfolded. Karim and Amy. “Not bad if you did the right steps,” she says in training. Encouraging! A great dance, I feel like he lost definition a couple of times but a really amazing job - energetic as always but seemed more in control this time. Epic scoring.

Apple TV+ launched on Friday and yes, you can expect plenty of future updates on the content that came with it. Dickinson was mega! But this isn’t about that. This is about the first episode of Oprah’s Book Club distributed by Apple. I’ve already discussed how I dived right in and started reading the book as Apple quite cleverly coincided the book club with their new reading goals in the Books app.

This past week, the BBC aired their behind the scenes documentary about how their latest Children In Need initiative came together. A handful of actors got together to record an album of covers, solo songs that are personal to them for a variety of reasons and a group track to finish it all off. The 90 minute programme followed their journey from selecting the songs through perfecting their vocals and then the nerves of recording. I thought it was fascinating to see how the various people took to the challenge - Helena Bonham Carter went traditionally a bit off piste, Olivia Colman was insanely nervous about the whole thing, Luke Evans just rocked up and did it no problem, Suranne Jones took her song to the kids, and Adrian Lester showed off some remarkable beat-boxing skills.

Yay, I loved this album. I don’t know why it’s taken my so long to listen to any Keith Urban, as his is the kind of country music I like. Somewhere In My Car is an absolute banger that I loved when it was over-played on the radio. And the rest of the album stacks up too, it’s great work from someone who isn’t a native Nashville.

I love the inventiveness, there are some great songs on the album and it’s not really anything I’ve heard too much of before. But having said that, by the end, I was a bit fatigued by the whole thing. Rex doesn’t have the strongest of vocals which is fine for one or two songs but sustained over the full 35 minutes is quite a lot to take.

It took me a while to get into the flow of the book, it has a dream-like quality and one where no extraneous explanations are given. The facts, the dialogue, they’re all there if you choose to find them, and I’m confident plenty of it went over my head. That took nothing away from it though, the story grabs you and, for want of a better word, conducts you through the various adventures.

The US version of The Office has been off air for over six years, but it is barely out of the public consciousness and rarely a day goes by that I don’t see an Office gif fly by on my Twitter stream. The success of the Office didn’t diminish the brilliance of the original UK version but it certainly dwarfed it in popularity – spreading its wings to be much more of an ensemble piece, and covering far more ground than the original two series ever could.

Oh, Halloween week. And this time someone is dancing to the Backstreet Boys. Hooray! I’m surprised that we haven’t started hearing all about Blackpool yet, but perhaps that is the next milestone? Who will get there? Read on! Hope Will gets better soon, oof! And Neil! Although I have to say, Kevin, of course, fits Ghostbusters very well. Loving that the name patch clearly has space for four letters but has squeezed in Kev instead.

So many muddled thoughts after this one. Firstly, it felt too soon after Avengers. I needed more time to process what had happened, and I don’t get why this movie is the end of the current phase rather than the huge epic that Avengers was. And then, I’ve been so in love with Tom Holland’s Spider-Man, he’s been the best thing in the Avengers for a while, but this one didn’t quite hit the same mark. I guess he’s changed since the events of the previous Marvel movies.

You know that Lennox can produce good songs and the Eurythmics have some classics, but kicking off your debut solo album with Why and Walking On Broken Glass is stamping your own mark on music for sure. They are two such epic songs, you sort of wonder if the rest of the album can live up to it, but it does.

First time I listened to this album, I thought it was really boring and I wasn’t sure I can get through another listen. I don’t know why I was so harsh on it, because second time round, it was actually really good. Of course, Keane has that downbeat air around them, that’s what they do but the songs were quite good in the end. I didn’t like the Stupid Things one, coming so quickly after a song where he’s professing his love, but other than that, it was a perfectly good Keane album.

I recently discovered the podcast Robot or Not which is an audio show where: “Jason Snell asks John Siracusa to rule on the meaning of various words and concepts. It’s not just about robots anymore.” I have been listening to the entire back catalogue, partly because the episodes are so short but also because they’re so fascinating. As the title suggests, the concept started out solely about robots but has branched out to food, ethics, religion and actually quite a lot about food. One of the older episodes I listened to was all about how to distinguish between movies and television these days.

This week, guest judge Alfonso Ribeiro sat in for Bruno Tonioli. He did the same thing last year, but I wasn’t watching then, so it was the first time I’ve seen him in action. Such fun! It was actually quite nice to have a bit of a different line up, I wouldn’t want there to be guest judges every week, but it’s no bad thing to hear from different voices. Anyway, on with the notes as it happened:

This film was so bad! The only good thing about it existing is that it made us watch the first one but that’s it. In no particular order: bad acting, bad storyline, weirdest dialogue ever, more cop movie than fire movie, dodgy special effects and plot holes galore.

I can’t commit to listening to Beats 1 on a regular basis, as much as I love what they’re doing on the Apple Music platform – but there’s one thing I try very hard not to miss, and that’s Julie Adenuga’s Friday show. It’s Fridaaaaaaaaay. I love Julie, and her weekday show is excellent, crammed with music and interviews that sometimes veer slightly too grime for my tastes but otherwise are eminently enjoyable and listenable. However, when you get to the Friday show, things really shift into gear.

I loved this album. It was very familiar to me, even though I’m pretty sure I didn’t own it when I was younger. I did have the single Say What You Want, the remix version, which I slightly prefer to the album version but even so, it’s one of the best songs on the record.

I’ve been following Kelleigh Bannen for the last few years, ever since she launched the excellent podcast This Nashville Life which delved behind the scenes of trying to make a career out of country music in its homeland. She’s been working her socks off for a long time, and finally the debut album has arrived and it’s a good one. There were a few songs I was less keen on but overall, I think it’s a really strong debut.