Flavours of the Month: March & April 2025...

A bit of the old bish-bash-bosh, retro in a half-shell, and a ruddy good flashback is just some of what's been setting the tone of my March and April 2025...

Click "READ MORE" below to see this month's looks, sounds, vibes & flavours...

LOOKS:

Dexter: Original Sin - created by Clyde Phillips, who was the showrunner for the first four seasons of Dexter's original run, and who returned to the franchise with 2021's rather good Dexter: New Blood. This prequel, set in 1991, takes place fifteen years before the first season of Dexter, and introduces us to a lot of familiar faces in their younger form, seeing how things all began to come together. The main focus is the birth of Dexter as a serial killer and developing his code in the real world, perfecting his techniques, while other stories - such as what happened with his birth mother - are explored in greater depth.

Patrick Gibson does a superb job inhabiting not only the title role but Michael C. Hall's portrayal through physical and verbal mannerisms. Molly Brown is similarly on-point as a high school senior version of Debra, while Christian Slater plays Harry Morgan when he was still alive and on the Miami Metro Police Department. Upon first hearing about this spin-off I wasn't sure if it was really needed, but it actually ended up being a properly enjoyable watch. Hopefully the follow-up to New Blood, titled Resurrection, as well as the prequel series planned for the Trinity Killer will also be similarly enjoyable.

Twisted Metal: Season 1 - post-apocalyptic action comedy series based on the videogame franchise, developed by Rhett Reese & Paul Wernick (Zombieland) and Michael Jonathan Smith. Ten half-hour episodes long, but it could've been done in eight, the show feels a bit padded-out at times, focusing routinely on pit stops and side quests while John Doe is on his main mission, which can sometimes prove frustrating, same too for some blindingly obvious plot 'twists'.

However, there's enough chaotic action and crazed fun to keep you entertained, especially when psycho killer clown Sweet Tooth is on-screen stealing the whole show. A budget boost wouldn't go amiss in order to inject more action and fewer blatant shots of CGI cars defying the basic laws of physics. Admittedly, I'm not super familiar with the games (but I do have fond memories of playing Twisted Metal 2 on my mate's PS1 back in the day), but references to the videogames do get the senses tingling, especially with the set-up for season two at the climax.

Reacher: Season 3 - more ballsy action and investigation from Amazon Prime's sensibly-budgeted show that has been a big hit with audiences, recently setting records for 'returning viewership' (i.e. people sticking with the show unlike, say, the eye-wateringly expensive flop that is Rings of Power, which saw viewers ditching it in droves). I'm not sure I'm particularly interested in seeing a Neagley spin-off, mind you, and I hope that doesn't delay the fourth season of Reacher, which I'm already eager to see! It's just such a damn satisfying show!

Drive To Survive: Season 7 - there was certainly plenty of stories from the 2024 F1 season, and some of the worst excesses that cropped up intermittently in previous DTS seasons have been expunged. Mind you, there's still some glaring errors - for instance, how did nobody catch the audio of downshifting several gears during the visual of a car screaming up through Eau Rouge/Raidillon at Spa? Still, it's good and solid stuff for F1 fans.

Small Town Big Story - Sky Studios comedy drama featuring Paddy Considine and Christina Hendricks created by Chris O'Dowd. An American TV production comes to a small rural town in Ireland as past events involving an alien abduction resurface. Good fun and I'd welcome a second series.

Gangs of London: Season 3 - created by Gareth Evans and Matt Flannery, season one proved to be a genuinely impressive slab of gangster drama blended with cinematic levels of big, meaty action set pieces. However, Evans and Flannery both seemed to take a step back from running the project come the second series, and so the tone shifted. The levels of action slid backward, although there were some highlights, with more focus being put onto the interpersonal dramatics, which is a bit of a problem as I never really became all that emotionally engaged with many (or even any) of the characters - The Sopranos this most certainly wasn't.

Now, with a somewhat superfluous-feeling third series, the balance of ballsy action to 'gangsters plotting in rooms' has shifted completely. Sadly, series 3 turned out to be mostly quite dull despite a brave (yet entirely sensible) story decision in episode two. However, even that choice was generally squandered with many characters feeling like they had little more to do that look dark and brooding in a range of grotty rooms. Action wise series three represents a major step down, even from series two (made even more stark by just how fantastic the action was in Gareth Evans' new film Havoc on Netflix). There are extremely few flashes, or any at all, of the sheer brilliance witnessed in series one when it comes to action, with the handful of set pieces we're given feeling a bit by-the-numbers.

Sure, it's more than you'd normally get from a British TV drama, but the USP of Gangs of London was that it was bringing Southeast Asian action cinema spectacle to the telly screens of Blighty - where has that all gone? Without it, Gangs of London feels much like any other gangland tale, and the anti-climactic close to series three threatens a fourth series. And the episode where one character evades gun-toting goons in the midst of giving birth was just eye-rollingly stupid, like a poor parody of someone's half-baked idea of what the show is based on someone's hazy description. If they are going to persist with a fourth season then the makers had better do their homework, employ some masters of action cinema, and return to the roots laid down in series one.

Green Room (Blu-Ray)

The Bondsman: Season 1 - created by Grainger David and starring Kevin Bacon, this comedy/action/horror series follows a country musician turned bounty hunter who gets killed on a job and is resurrected by the Devil to be his personal demon hunter. At times it feels like it could be a decent successor to the absolutely awesome Ash vs Evil Dead, but then it seems to lose confidence in exactly what it wants to be and how it wants to do it, while budgetary limitations on the action front rear their heads intermittently throughout. If it got a second season I'd likely give it a watch but, at the same time, if it wasn't renewed I wouldn't be particularly aggrieved either. A mixed bag with potential, if it gets the chance.

Black Mirror: Season 7 - Charlie Brooker's dark tech-based anthology sci-fi series is back! "Common People" has a great concept, but it's bleak as all get out. "Bete Noire" is a bit iffy in some ways, but generally good. "Hotel Reverie" is a bit of a mixed bag as the most interesting character isn't the lead, and the techno concept, while interesting, feels undercooked considering how its deployed in the story. "Plaything", with its gentle connection to the Bandersnatch special, was excellent, as was "Eulogy". Finally, there's "USS Callister: Into Infinity", sequelising a fan-favourite episode, which wraps things up very nicely.

Adolescence - created by Jack Thorne and Stephen Graham. It briefly became something of a political football in the UK, as Prime Minister Keir Starmer attempted to hop on the bandwagon and push for this four-part Netflix drama to be shown in schools. I'd encourage high schoolers to see it, and the show could certainly be discussed as part of, say, a PSHE lesson with clips used, but slapping some Netflix into schools seems like a lazy fix for a more esoteric problem. Indeed, it's even stranger that Starmer pushed for that considering how one of the cop characters bemoans the fact that the kids in the school are 'just sitting around watching videos' instead of being properly engaged in their classes!

All that palava aside, it's actually a very good show with only a couple of wobbly bits - the creepy guard in episode three, and the creepy employee in episode four both feel like clunky and very 'television land' types of characters who stick out like a sore thumb in what is an otherwise very realistic drama. The first episode is particularly impressive and tense with some fantastically good performances throughout. The 'one shot' approach to the storytelling works quite well for the most part, particularly in the first and third episodes, but it does also have its limitations that can box-in the storytelling. However, it was thoroughly good and I barged through the whole lot in a day.

The Last of Us: Season 2 - Craig Mazin's HBO adaptation of Naughty Dog's PlayStation videogame continues, but good gravy does episode one suck the fat one. Season one had been overall quite good (even if there was a relative lack of encounters with the infected beasties), but season two gets off to a rocky start. For one, Ellie has turned into an insufferable arsehole little brat, despite being five years older, who continually disobeys direct orders from her superiors who, for some inexplicable reason, allow her to behave with total recklessness and full-blown idiocy at times.

Joel, meanwhile, is now just a completely miserable bastard who just mopes around doing next to nothing in-between rounds of being shat upon. And let's not even get started on that training fight sequence with the pocket-sized Ellie and the muscular man-mountain! Episode two does, at least, have a genuinely impressive battle sequence, but then ... no spoilers (despite wide awareness of what happens in the second game) ... there's THAT scene which recreates a very particular choice. It's saying something when you actually like the supposed villain of the show more than the intended hero. We'll see where it goes from here, eh?

Knuckles - Sonic franchise spin-off series created by John Whittington and Toby Ascher. Six half-hour episodes of action comedy and you know what? It was jolly good fun throughout. It's not trying to be anything meaty, just pure fun from start to finish, and it's a damn sight better written than that second Sonic movie.

Andor: Season 2 - the return of Tony Gilroy's prequel series to Rogue One: A Star Wars Story. The first season was deliberately paced (let's be honest, twelve episodes was a bit over-long), but the opening three episodes of season two really do begin to take the proverbial. I don't want it to just be a load of bullshit running around twirling lightsabres all the friggin' time, but this first batch of episodes should've been retitled 'Mon Mothma Attends a Boring Wedding'. Indeed, that whole storyline was dragged out so long the meaningful stuff got lost in the shuffle - you could smell a juicy steak on offer, but weren't allowed to chow down. The title character does almost nothing, rendered entirely inert in episode two, and while I appreciate that they're taking the universe seriously by exploring the mechanics of how the Empire would have to function - and not just shitting out any old junk (now there's a novel idea!) - there was one particularly jarring sequence in episode three.

As a contingent of Empire auditors assess a farm planet, one of the grey-suited officials peels away and attempts to assault a female rebel-in-hiding. While the scene isn't graphic in the obvious ways (I Spit On Your Grave this most certainly is not), it nonetheless feels considerably out-of-place within the Star Wars franchise. Let's put it this way using King Kong as an example: is it conceivable that in that world there could be an unhappily married couple enduring a melodramatic fight over the husband's out-of-control alcholism in the face of post-1929 financial turmoil and mental depression that has wrought terrible real-world physical and emotional consequences? Yes. BUT - do I want or need such a scene in a giant monkey movie? No, I most certainly do not, and nor would it even fit.

Andor found himself imprisoned in season one, and it would be entirely plausible that some terrible perpetrations could be carried out against the prisoners by staff, but we didn't need to see that and such a scene was never included. It has been said that the scene is to show the power dynamic between the little people and the Empire, but that dynamic is abundantly clear from the best part of fifty years of Star Wars storytelling and, also, from season one of Andor. It has also been pointed out that season one of Andor has a particularly grim torture scene (against the same character - talk about ganging up!), and while it does have a more intense feel than expected of Star Wars, scenes of a good guy being tortured for whatever reason is not out-of-character for the franchise. Just look at the ecstasy/agony of Palpatine electrocuting Skywalker at the climax of Return of the Jedi. Breeding, in Star Wars, is handled almost like immaculate conception. Do we know how mummies and daddies make babies? Yes, but we didn't need to see Padme and Anakin bonking their socks off, did we? Some things just aren't necessary to show due to the wider context, tone, and style of the franchise, and the attempted assault scene in 2x03 of Andor feels unnecessary and pointedly jarring.

Three episodes of plodding set-up that doesn't feel like it really gets us anywhere further than we already were is not a great way to kick off the season. There are parts of it that I liked very much indeed, and the style and general tone of it is good, but I wasn't sold on why we needed to spend so much time on the wedding of Mon Mothma's daughter, or the severe woman and the nervy guy having his mum over to dinner, or on the squabbling idiots (in episode two). By the end of episode three I couldn't help but wonder - where's the pay-off to all this meandering? Fingers crossed the remaining episodes kick things into gear and balance it out (supposedly that is the case), because season one of Andor ultimately ended up being one of the best pieces of Star Wars 'content' (what a yucky term) from the extraordinarily mixed and ill-thought-out Disney era.


SOUNDS:

Marilyn Manson "Holy Wood" (album), "Mechanical Animals" (album), "High End of Low" (album), "One Assassination Under God", "Raise The Red Flag", "Sacrilegious"

Green Day "Smash It Like Belushi"

M83 "A Necessary Escape (Part 2)"

Alice Cooper "Black Mamba"


VIBES & FLAVOURS:

The Bells of Corpse Cross - I've had a story idea kicking around for a while, scribbled on a scrap of paper, and so I started exploring it a bit more and set about writing it in a looser fashion than I typically do (I usually like to have things quite planned out from start to finish). This time I just decided to explore it 'on the page' more than normal, albeit having key ideas laid out (including what happens at the end - you've gotta know where you're supposed to be heading, after all). To begin with I was writing in fits and starts, but the flow state hit (while simultaneously planning out later segments) and I've been hammering away at what is now a novel.

Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Shredder's Revenge (Xbox Series S) - a fun retro-style beat 'em up game. There's a few difficulty spikes here and there, and I found the levels where the background is rapidly moving to be slightly disorienting, but the controls felt smooth and responsive and it was packed full with so much enjoyment and energy that it's impossible to not like. I wasn't even much of a fan of the TMNT cartoon back in the day (The Real Ghostbusters was where it was at for me), but there was a nice little jolt of nostalgia nonetheless.

Wreck Fest (Xbox Series S) - it reminded me of playing Demolition Derby on CD-ROM back in the day. It gets quite repetitive in later championships, but what's not to like about crashing and smashing old bangers?

Control: Ultimate Edition (Xbox Series S) - a replay, with the comfort of 'Assist Mode' activated, and a chance to play the two DLC packs ("The Foundation" and "AWE") that I hadn't previously got into. A darn good game from Remedy with great style, design, story, and gameplay.

Edgar Allan Poe - a collection of short stories. Particular highlights for me included "The Tell-Tale Heart", "The Cask of Amontillado", "The Premature Burial", and "The Pit and The Pendulum". Meanwhile, "The Murders in the Rue Morgue" and "The Purloined Letter" both had good mysteries at their core, but were pretentiously over-written, and then, quite conversely, I just couldn't get into "Metzengerstein" at all.

Alan Wake II (Xbox Series S) - a replay, again with the comfort of 'Assist Mode' enabled (good on Remedy for doing that!). I'm a huge Alan Wake fan and this sequel, albeit a little over-long, displays a stunning sense of design and world building combined with an on-point mix of quirky humour and nail-biting tension.