Eloise's Thoughts and Fancies

Warrior Nun doesn’t pick up where season one finished, but it’s relatively close, there’s a two month gap rather than the two years we’ve had to wait. This is just long enough for the plans of various factions to have started to develop. Adriel is using his powers to create new followers, human possessed by wraiths he is calling over of course. The nuns are on the run, hampered by the fact that Father Vincent is thoroughly on Adriel's side. Beatrice and Ava are trying to lie low in a bar in the Italian Alps, but Bea is super-organised and Ava is… well Ava so it doesn’t go too well. There’s a new, anti-Adriel group called The Samaritans, and Ava gets mixed up with one of them in the bar. Because this is television, this is obviously significant, but the ways it’s significant turn out to be complex and interesting. Lilith’s story keeps developing, as does Jillian Salvius' story and the new pope’s. Some of these story developments are in moderately predictable ways, some are fr

Because this year the autumn internationals ended in a bit of a mess, with two games played after the end of the official test window, I’m going to stop and quickly give my opinion of the state of the teams after the whole run of matches. Note that not everyone played the same number of games, so I’m going to give their record too. France. W3 L0 100%. A very rusty France relied on their winning habit to beat Australia, then relatively comfortably beat South Africa and finished at the canter with a nice victory over Japan at the latter's RWC base. France unbeaten this year, beaten all the other top ten sides since last year’s AIS and built some depth. Injuries could still rob them of lifting the cup, but they look like the favourites for next year. Georgia W1 L0 100%. Like a lot of tier two sides, Georgia only get one or two games but what a game. Wales looked clueless in the second half, Georgia pounced and a famous upset. Georgia have both Wales and Australia in their pool for th

Before we dive in, during the matches the sad news of the death of Dodie Weir from MND was announced. While we’ve known it’s coming, and he looked really frail a few weeks ago when he came onto the pitch before the Scotland v New Zealand match, he battled to the end, raising millions for research into MND and always with a smile. A great man and the world is diminished without him. On to the rugby. Only two matches both on 26/11 Wales v Australia If I’d written this report immediately, I would have had to have tagged this blog for adult content given the amount of swearing. I’m still wondering how Wales lost, even being down to 13 for basically the last 15 minutes, but we did. However, we still scored the most points ever against Australia, we were pretty good at converting our chances and until losing two players we were doing well at closing down the Australians in all aspects of the game. Although Wales didn’t have as many injuries as Australia, between injuries and players un

19/11 Wales v Georgia This match really lives up to a couple of sporting cliches. One is that you must take your chances, which Georgia did better than Wales. The other is that this really was a game of two halves. In the first half, Wales really created three, possibly four, depending on how you count them try scoring opportunities and scored two tries, plus one chalked off for a forward pass. (The fourth possibility was a chance that was created, Georgia turned the ball over and cleared, but not far, then Wales scored basically straight away - to my mind that was long continuous period of pressure and so one long chance.) They weren’t perfect but they were good and Georgia were doing a lot right for a few phases on both sides of the ball but Wales could extend it past that and Les Lolos lost their shape more and more. That was fine, and Wales should have kicked on after the break. What actually happened was that Wales created exactly one scoring opportunity and were again (absolu

In general British spy dramas, and have no doubt, Slow Horses is a thoroughly British spy drama, fall into two camps. You have the Bond Camp, everything is glitzy, high tech and high adrenaline, high paced. You have, whether in the book or film style of this, peaks and troughs of tension that are really well suited to the film but work well in a book too. The other is the Smiley Camp, quite slow paced, seedy and the most high-tech thing is usually the photocopier. Sifting through papers and bins is often the height of the action but the stress builds and builds inexorably. Interestingly, both of the authors behind the typonyms are former spies, but one was there during WWII and the other during the Cold War, so perhaps it reflects the way things changed from hot to cold espionage. I’m not aware of a spy novelist coming out of the social media iteration of spy craft, although I’m sure there will be one, if there isn’t one already. I wonder what they will look like? While you can argue

12/11 Italy v Australia What is there to say about this match? Australia seemed to take it for granted that they’d win and made a bucket full of changes that, in essence, put their B-team out. This seemed foolish in light of Italy having the tenacity to beat Wales at home in March and the nous and physicality to demolish Samoa last week. So it proved. Italy played with gusto, skill, flair but also an abrasive edge. On the other hand, with so many changes, Australia looked sloppier than normal, although many of the same errors were still there , suggesting they’re coached system errors. If the Italian kickers had their boots on - between them they missed 14 points, a lot of which were easy - this would have been comfortable. You also have to wonder what might have been if Garbisi had been fit. Apart from his kicking I don’t think Allan had a bad game, but Garbisi is just at another level in running the attack. Because Italy couldn’t pull away Australia pulled to within one point wit

Again in the order I saw them, rather than the order they were played. New Zealand v England This was an odd game. We very much had two contrasting styles, England played a power game while NZ played a speed and width game. While we don’t know for sure - the card came about because of a desperate attempt to close down a break out wide - once England lost a player to an absolutely clear RC then the two sides really couldn’t effectively stop their opponents. It meant mistakes in attack were the main thing that slowed down the Black Ferns's scoring, and there were enough to matter, but they spent enough time deep in England territory that England got few chances to score too - they only got a chance if NZ made a mistake soon after scoring and the restart. Sometimes when you have matches of two different styles they blend like eggs and oil, and you get a fine mayonnaise. This was more like oil and water, the two obviously interacted but the mix never quite came together into more tha

29/10 Scotland v Australia The final score shows an Australian victory but most of the Aussies I know don’t regard it that way, it’s more of a Scottish loss - an easy last minute penalty kick that went awry that meant they lost - rather than the Wallabies winning. Is that fair? Probably not entirely. However, when you stop and look, the list of things Australia did well is short - they largely kept Scotland to their own half, their own 22 even, especially in the first half. That’s it. In attack they looked ok for a couple of phases then, all too often, gave up a penalty or a more traditional turnover and the attack came to nothing. While their defence was strong enough to pin Scotland back, it was helped by the wind, and the fact that they were deep encouraging them to kick early in the phase count. The change of ends and the inability of the Wallabies to keep Scotland pinned back in the second half was telling. Scotland were not great either, but they were missing a bucket-load of

I’m writing about these in the order I saw them, not the order they were played. France v New Zealand There are games where, as a neutral, you don’t want it to end. Both sides are playing well and, despite the nerves of the fans, it’s close and that brings an extra tension to the game because any mistake could be the mistake the one that costs your side the victory and, in this case, a chance to play in the final. It would be easy to dismiss this as France’s defence mostly stifling NZ's attack and coming up just short. While that’s partly true, it ignores the 24 points that France scored. It would be easy to say Drouin blew it with bad kicking and while she did miss the final penalty kick and have several poor kicks from hand, the Black Ferns kickers were far from perfect with the boot, from the tee and out of hand too. In fact, as a unit they were probably worse overall, although like the score line it was marginal. This was two sides who play in different ways but we’re both

The Power of the Doctor marks the end of Jodie Whitaker’s tenure in the TASRDIS (boo) as well as Chris Chibnall’s (yay). She went out with a 90 minute spectacular timed to mark the centenary of the BBC, and spectacular it was. I have, pretty consistently, disliked what Chibnall did with the cannon of Who. I am not saying it’s a sacred cow, unable to be touched - the Matt Smith to Peter Capaldi regeneration broke one such long-held rule of the Whoniverse and while it’s not my favourite Eleven story it broke the rule in a way that worked and made sense of a dilemma that had to be addressed sometime and was neat within the general bounds of the series. That part, 10/10 in an otherwise maybe 7/10 episode. Then Chibnall rewrote The Doctor’s history so all of that particular history was superfluous and meh. He did that several times and, seemingly, without caring. It landed, as you might guess, like a damp squib. Not just with me, but certainly here. Fortunately in the last few specials he

There’s quite a lot to say about this film before we get into the film itself. It’s set in a real, historical African kingdom, Dahomey, at a time when it really was throwing off the shackles of being a tribute state of another African empire, the Oyo, and becoming a major power in its own right. A lot of the story follows a group of women warriors, the Agojie, who were real. However, the titular Woman King, Nanisca, is fiction. Although at this time the Dahomey were a tribute state, they went on to be a fierce raiding empire, capturing and selling others into slavery. At this point their struggle seems pretty heroic but, overall, their empire seems to be not one of the good guys. Does that mean we shouldn’t tell this story? I don’t think so. I learnt something about this empire and their wider history which is a good thing. But I’m not sure my voice matters in this, my ancestors weren’t enslaved by the Dahomey of a later period after all. I don’t know how important it is, but in additi