March was a rough month, drawing to a sad but somewhat merciful close to a very difficult three years that was only going to get even worse, which is obviously why these 'flavours of the month' are later than usual.
So ... an apocalyptic adaptation, globetrotting with Agent 47, and Mando on the skids are some of what's been flavouring my February, March, and April 2023...
Click "READ MORE" below to see this month's looks, sounds, vibes & flavours...
LOOKS:
The Last Of Us: Season 1 - going deeper into the series and I've warmed up much more to certain characters and their portrayals. Not every episode is gold, but the depth and complexity of the writing, combined with an excellent production, has made this an enjoyable watch leaving you eager for the next episode going week-by-week. The flashback in episode seven feels too long overall, sapping some momentum from the main story, and can arguably feel a little bit 'out of place'. While episode three had the same issue with feeling 'out of place' structurally, it was nevertheless a wonderfully written and performed excursion and, by comparison to episode seven, a much more involving endeavour. The one main complaint with this otherwise excellent series, however, is the conspicuous lack (overall) of infected. One mere infected in the final episode feels rather weak, especially when there's been so few infected in most episodes (aside from that epic action sequence in episode five). Considering they wiped out most of mankind, and that they're a real threat, you'd have thought we'd have encountered more of them during Joel and Ellie's journey. Hopefully this can be rectified in the inevitable second season.
Clarkson's Farm: Series 2 - the welcome return of Jeremy Clarkson's docu-series about his attempts to run his own Diddly Squat Farm. Much like the previous set of episodes, it makes for simultaneously entertaining and eye-opening viewing. At times it's laugh-out-loud funny, while at other times the exposed plight facing farmers and the farming industry is nothing short of shocking, shining a light on utterly incompetent government policy (or total lack thereof), tied-in to the catastrophic consequences of Brexit on the UK farming industry. Layer in petty, small-minded local council matters, and the show really does become a champion of the beleaguered farmer. Looking forward to season three!
Thunderbirds: The 50th Anniversary Episodes - these were made several years ago, but I stumbled across them on the ITVX streaming platform. I was a huge fan of the Gerry Anderson 1960s 'supermarionation' shows during their 1990s repeat heyday, so this was an intriguing watch. They're only half the length of the original episodes and are clearly limited by both budget and available voice cast. There's a huge amount of recycled footage and audio from the original shows, while the first of the three episodes is a surprisingly dull and pointless affair. The other two are better, but again the limitations show, but nostalgia helps paper over the cracks. Obviously, they're not a patch on the original episodes by any stretch of the imagination, but they're worth a curiosity watch for fans of the original show.
Captain Scarlet and The Mysterons - ITVX has a whole bunch of the Gerry Anderson 'supermarionation' TV shows on it, so I was re-living a bit of my earlier years from the 1990s 'heyday of rediscovery' that these shows experienced for a whole new audience. Certain episodes have seared themselves into my memory, while others not so much, and it's fair to say that Captain Scarlet doesn't quite have the appeal or 'memory worm' nature of Thunderbirds. It's also a darker kind of show, amplified by the more realistic dimensions of the marionettes, but it's still a classic.
Formula 1 Drive To Survive: Season 5 - the previous season made the mistake of focusing too much on the on-track action (of which there was a great deal as the 2021 season was an absolute stonker), raking over all-too-familiar territory and sidelining the less-seen behind-the-scenes stuff that helped make the show so special. Fortunately, this latest season realigns the sights with its coverage of the 2022 season, and I hungrily devoured all ten episodes over two days. There's still some eyebrow-raising editing and 'narrative' choices made by the programme makers, although they appear less egregious than in previous seasons (blatantly invented rivalries, some shockingly bad audio edits etc). Perhaps vocal reaction to said things by not only fans but the drivers themselves have reined-in Netflix on that front?
The Mandalorian: Season 3 - the return of Jon Favreau and Dave Filoni's Star Wars show. After the sloppy mixed bag of The Book Of Boba Fett (the best episodes of which ignored the titular character and were dedicated to The Mandalorian instead!) and the insulting arse-up that was Obi-Wan Kenobi, it wasn't looking good for Andor. However, that show (despite being at least two episodes too long) bucked the declining trend with a fascinating invention called "good writing", which seems to be as foreign to the Disney corporation of late as their fascination with doing inferior 'live action reboots' of animated classics is their favourite go-to move. Anyway, tongue-tangling and wordy aside out of the way, season three of Mando gets off to a surprisingly middling start.
The episode was okay, but it didn't have 'season premiere' written all over it by any means. It felt more like a middle-of-the-season episode (and not a particularly good one at that), no doubt because the Mandalorian-related material covered in The Book Of Boba Fett should have been covered here instead. No wonder folks who hadn't watched that spin-off show were left baffled by certain developments.
The third episode wobbles slightly, on a structural level, as the bulk of it takes the focus away from our leads to examine obscure side characters (one of whom I can't even remember), when it might have been better served telling a version of that story in portions over multiple episodes, rather than one big unweildy dump - you know, in the way how episodic television has traditionally succeeded. The feeling of a lack of direction ramps up as episode four forgets the previous episode's chunky diversion entirely and is a bit of a mixed bag with a very silly ending to cap off an episode that really epitomised a decided lack of internal logic. Indeed, that very silly ending and its consequences are completely forgotten about for the rest of the season, which illustrates the shocking drop in the quality of the writing on this season. Episode five is just some stuff happening with some cartoonish 'space pirate' gubbins, and episode six thinks in-your-face stunt casting is a good idea (Jack Black, Lizzo), and is woefully disappointing to put it mildly; it was a meme of the cringiest heights.
Episode seven is generally an improvement (no hard feat after the utter tosh that preceded it), with a rousing climactic sequence to get the juices flowing, but still had some issues and, most importantly, made it abundantly clear that The Mandalorian is now just 'Various Star Wars Stuff: The TV Show', cementing yet again the lack of direction and storytelling rigour. I started the season eager to see Mando and Grogu's return, but now I'm left utterly baffled as to how it could go, for the most part, so wrong. The final episode at least gives plenty of action spectacle with a decent final battle (even with botched logic and lazy 'memberberry' styling), and leaves things on a nice note - a merely okay conclusion to what has been, quite surprisingly, an extraordinarily patchy third season. Disney's repeated issues handling major properties once again rears its ugly head.
Waco: American Apocalypse - three-part Netflix doc about the notorious 1993 siege between the Branch Davidians and the FBI, which resulted in catastrophe and left a very dark stain on the psyche of the USA. I had previously seen another documentary from the 1990s about this case, which very much skewed towards obliterating the government and the FBI while sweeping away certain concerns about the Davidians, but this one is generally a bit more balanced by comparison. It helps that its main points of focus are generally those who were caught up in the failings of other people, and that it also doesn't fail to bring up the darker side of Koresh's activities. The combination of archive footage and CGI recreation paints a vivid picture, while certain interviews prove to be shockingly illuminating. Perhaps a smidge too brisk to cover all the bases sufficiently, but quite solid stuff nonetheless.
The Cleaner: Series 2 - a few episodes aren't as sharp as the first series, but there's still a lot of quality going on here in these six episodes as we continue to follow crime scene cleaner 'Wicky' from one curious blood-spattered story to the next. For anyone of a squeamish disposition, though, it's all pretty tame on that front and focuses more on characters and humour.
The Vietnam War - ten-part documentary series from Ken Burns. Thoroughly informative, extensively detailed, and placed well into the socio-political and 'psyche of the nation' context of the time.
Beef: Season 1 - ten-part Netflix crime dramedy created by Lee Sung Jin and starring Steven Yeun and Ali Wong. The former is a struggling working class building contractor while the latter is an upper-middle-class business woman on the verge of a hugely profitable deal. These characters, simultaneously very different and very similar to each other, get into an altercation in a parking lot that leads to escalating tit-for-tat acts of revenge that gradually unpicks their own lives in the process. Excellent writing, acting, direction and more make this a very worthwhile watch.
It's also interesting to note, in this day and age where 'Identity Politics' is obsessed over to such a degree, that Beef actually manages to 'be diverse' without making a hash of it - something which Hollywood and global corporatations have often failed to achieve, especially in recent years with its black and white weaponised outlook. The main characters in Beef are, for the most part, descended from South East Asian nations, but they aren't defined by their 'historical racial background' (although that does provide unique qualities to each of them). Instead, they are primarily defined by their actions, their personalities, their faults and more - you know, like real people, because guess what: people are people are people. The worst failings of too many TV shows and movies in recent years is that they deploy the spectrum of 'identity politics' in the most gross and poorly written manner, reducing so many 'diverse' characters to literally nothing more than their sexual orientation or skin colour or whatever else. That approach to characterisation makes them not fully-rounded people, but instead mere tokens, and isn't that what one would call horrifically offensive?
A show like Beef, however, does what should always be done - well-crafted and complicated characters in a compelling story. It's a simple concept, isn't it? It works and always has done, because it's not through skin colour or sex or gender or nationality etc, but through storytelling and characterisation that we are compelled to invest in characters and their story. That's all you need, but considering how much utter crap is shat out by the current Hollywood system it's evidently far beyond so many in the industry. Lee Sung Jin and his team of gifted creatives, on the other hand, have shown the flailing system exactly how it's done with depth, deftness, and thundering success.
In Search Of Darkness III - the third and final gargantuan part in the 1980s horror doc series. By this point it's a mixture of barrel-scraping and perusing lesser-known curiosities. There's a few ham-fisted comments littered about the place, and some of it seems like unused footage from the previous entry, but if you've come this far why wouldn't you check out the final tome?
SOUNDS:
Green Day "Nimrod" (album), "Insomniac" (album)
Rob Zombie "The Lunar Injection Kool Aid Eclipse Conspiracy" (album), "The Electric Warlock Acid Witch Satanic Orgy Celebration Dispenser" (album)
DIIV "Under The Sun"
Mental As Anything "Live It Up"
The Angelas "Trioxin Theme" & "The Shining Theme"
The Linda Lindas "Oh!"
CKY "The Phoenix" (album)
Fabio Frizzi "Virus" (from the Zombie Flesh Eaters soundtrack)
Stefano Mainetti "Sequence 1", "Sequence 5", "Sequence 8" (from the Zombie Flesh Eaters 2 soundtrack)
Public Image Ltd "Rise"
VIBES & FLAVOURS:
Far Cry 6 (Xbox Series S) - in the past couple of months I've paid far less attention to this game, but finally got around to polishing off the story missions to complete it. All said and done, it's clear that Ubisoft and the developers were just going through the motions with this one. Changes to certain mechanics have had an almost unanimously negative impact on the game, while doing away with experience-based progression in favour of dull-as-ditchwater 'go here, pick up number twenty-seven-thousand of twelve bajillion collectibles/crates/whatever' has been a massively idiotic choice. Even the look of the game was disappointing, as previous titles had thrown up some genuinely awe-inspiring sights, but Far Cry 6 barely ever managed to elicit such a reaction, while the towns and city of Yara look absurdly drab and, frankly, unfinished, as if many textures were low quality placeholders.
The basic mechanics of running around shooting bad guys is always going to have its fun, but the more I've played Far Cry 6 the more surprised I've been by just how disappointing the whole thing has been. On top of this, it's also stunning to see so many instances of piss poor quality control, glitches and bugs, poorly designed missions, a hugely inconsistent tone, dull storytelling, and woeful characterisation (cliches, stereotypes, as well as annoying idiots abound). Ubisoft are going to have to do some serious work to turn this franchise around ... perhaps, for one thing, a refreshed development team would help matters? Far Cry 6 unavoidably feels like the results of franchise fatigue.
Hitman 3 (Xbox Series S) - the final entry in IO Interactive's "World of Assassination" trilogy, which has shown a fantastic rejuvenation of the franchise, focusing on its core purpose and gameplay, after the interesting but generally ill-advised detour that was Hitman: Absolution. The first game in this new trilogy brought everything back to its sandbox roots, combining 'mission stories' with vast player freedom. The second game maintained and solidified the core mechanics while introducing a more impressive and diverse range of locations. This third game, though, possibly features the best selection of locations. In the first three missions alone you go from a gleaming skyscraper towering over Dubai to a moody country manor in Dartmoor before heading to a neon-drenched concrete bunker nightclub in Berlin. Clarity of execution, crisp storytelling, and spot-on gameplay makes this an absolute blast. Now, if only we could get a game like this for the Friday the 13th franchise!
Forza Horizon 5: Hot Wheels & Rally Adventure Add-Ons (Xbox Series S) - the Hot Wheels expansion is fun and crazy, but can sometimes get frustrating due to silly little things, such as dodgy bits of track sending your car into a tizzy, or insanely aggressive drivatars smashing into you for no reason (and why do I lose all my skill points when someone else smashes into me?!). When it's working as intended, though, it's good fun. I've so far had comparatively more enjoyment out of Rally Adventure and its compliment of arcadey rough-n-ready rallying, even if it plays things a bit safe. It's certainly a lot of fun to nail a hairpin turn with flair and launch your snarling, turbo-popping rally monster over big jumps as a helicopter chases after you, lighting the way through the night.
"Get Shorty" by Elmore Leonard
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