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Slow Horses (season 4)

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The rejects in Slough House are back. The series continues to mix the two styles of British spy stories, Bond and le Carré, flashy and seedy. This time we have a classic trope of both genres: the long buried secret. This is nicely woven into the existing characters in a way that, in retrospect I should have seen coming but, as each twist was revealed, it felt at least surprising, sometimes shocking. It’s hard to really talk about without spoilers. It’s an adaptation of a spy novel where there’s a necessarily intricate plot to satisfy the spooks fans, but I will say that, as mentioned above, there’s some lovely character work here too. Part of that is because we have a larger cast. Even with some of the slow horses being functionally red coats, walking fatalities waiting to happen, albeit slightly more filled out than the classic Trek version - we know something about these characters rather than them being a non-speaking extra hired for the week - we have quite a number of characters
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Duolingo (for Welsh)

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I’m a qualified teacher but not a language teacher. Like most people my age I was taught languages at school, French and Latin in my case, and I’ve dabbled with other languages at various points since. I know a bit of Mandarin and some conversational Portuguese plus a smattering of Māori. Learning languages, or attempting to, is something I’ve done, on and off, over the years. Duolingo is the latest of those. In terms of my Duolingo experience I’m up to 100 days experience, so this review is based on that first three months or so. I’m aware that what it teaches changes somewhat as your experience in the language increases, but I haven’t got there yet. I’ve been learning Welsh, but as I understand it the general structure is the same for other languages. At this point, there is a very distinct approach to learning a language with Duolingo. It’s loosely conversational. You could describe it as “advanced phrase book” learning. You start off with introducing yourself, saying hi, talking
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Wynonna Earp: Vengeance (Tubi)

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Don’t worry, no spoilers! Wynonna Earp: Vengeance is a follow up movie to the TV show. It’s not a replacement for the Season 5 we were supposed to have but never got, rather it’s a sequel, stand-alone, five years later, kind of thing. I will admit, I had my doubts going into this. Wynonna Earp felt like our shit-show, but it also felt like it might be lightning in a bottle, and once it had escaped, you could never recapture it. Just putting the band back together again might not be enough. There were odd moments when I still felt that was true. Which in a 95 minute film is probably a reflection that, at some level, there were odd scenes that I thought needed a bit of work. Given I could say the same of almost any film, that’s not a bad thing to say about this one. There are many I’m far more critical of too. This one just registered a bit differently with me, because I had different expectations, and worries, compared to most films. But the things I expect from Wynonna Earp were
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Furies (Netflix)

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French TV and film, I guess like visual media from any country, has its own unique style. They tell stories in different ways, use visual metaphors differently and often have different outcomes to their stories too. If you think of big hit films like La Femme Nikita, The Fifth Element and Leon can you imagine any of them being made by an American director? It’s not just the French that do this of course, British TV is distinctly different to American TV, even when one nation remakes the other’s shows. Think of the two versions of The Office but even shows where there’s hardly any format change can have vastly different fortunes: College Bowl is an American quiz show you’ve possibly never heard of, it has run for six seasons across its initial run and two relaunches. University Challenge , the British version, is currently in its 54th season, although it has had a brief hiatus and a channel swap. Why all this preamble? Furies is similar to a number of shows and films I’ve seen bef
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July Internationals 2024, Week Two

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I’m going to return to a more normal review format this week. New Zealand v England Although this game remained close, probably uncomfortably close if you’re a Kiwi, the step up in most areas from the All Blacks was noticeable and it felt as if England were never really at the races. England scored two very nice tries, using the same shtick twice. Once the fullback and one wing were trapped in a ruck on one five metre line and there’s a dubious argument that DMac didn’t cover across for Perofeta fast enough, Telea was a bit narrow; whatever you think, England exploited that very quickly. (You can also argue Telea was properly staying connected to Ioane and DMac would have struggled to get across any faster.) Kudos to England for noticing and exploiting the situation but how often does it crop up? The second time, England kept the ball for enough phases that the defensive line contracted and again they exploited it. I don’t know whether the Kiwis just told their wingers to stay really
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Unfrosted

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I’ll be honest, normally I wouldn’t have watched Unfrosted . It had vaguely crossed my attention when it first dropped but failed to really register. But when the Discord mob said “shall we have a watch along, this is the movie?” I said yes; I’m not a complete misanthrope. Until we talked about what the film was about, I didn’t realise that I had heard of it, it made that much of an impression! The film is based around a largely true story of the battle between Kellog's and Post to bring Pop-Tarts to the marketplace. What we see is nothing like the true history, instead it’s a lightning fast comedy that very much throws everything at the wall hoping that enough jokes land for you to carry you over the ones that don’t. All of us laughed enough that we have no regrets about watching it. We tended to laugh at the same things so we could have had a better, more focused, film that would have kept us laughing more. That said, for all we’re discord friends and while most of us have never
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July Internationals 2024, Week 1

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Rather than writing a normal match by match review, I’m going to do something new. Because this is the first set of internationals for the Southern Hemisphere sides after the World Cup, while the Northern Hemisphere sides have played the Six Nations, it’s possible to frame this as the new versus the old, or at least the less new. Some of that framing doesn’t hold up to well: Wales are currently constantly new as the changes in the funding models work through and change the personnel, with four debutants in their lineup and a tight five that had fewer caps than just one Australian prop. France took a massively inexperienced side, with eight debutants starting. But the Irish and English had reasonably established sides and all the NH sides had established coaching teams at least. For the SH hemisphere sides there were changes in personnel, with retirements/players going overseas, changes in coaches, changes in tactics and the first time playing together in seven months. Most clear wit
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