Flavours of the Month: July & August 2025...

In space no one can hear you being stupid, hunting drug lords, and post-apocalyptic gear-crunching is just some of what's been setting the tone of my July and August 2025...

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

LOOKS:

Narcos: Season 1, 2, & 3 - created by Chris Brancato, Carlo Bernard, and Doug Miro. Originally released in 2015-2017, this Netflix crime drama detailed the Colombian cocaine cartels during the 1980s and 1990s, with the first two seasons focusing on Pablo Escobar. The third season shifts gears, playing out almost as an epilogue on the Colombian side of things (before the show splintered off into Narcos: Mexico for a further three seasons), and as such it feels a little awkward in proceedings. The show was good, but at no point did I ever feel that 'just one more!' sense of momentum that I've had from the likes of Mindhunter, Stranger Things, or Reacher. Indeed, ten episodes per season felt like two-too-many, but there were flashes of sweaty-palmed tension and explosive consequences. Will I watch the follow-up series? To be honest, I think I've had my fill.

Creature Commandos: Season 1 - animated DC superhero black comedy action series created by James Gunn and showrun by Dean Lorey, which acts as a follow-up to The Suicide Squad. Seven episodes of whip-smart, bloody, sexy, action-packed chaos and humour with an appropriate sprinkling of deeper emotional beats, which successfully bring you closer to the wild array of characters. While the UK has been late in receiving it, we got it all in one-go, so I slammed through the season in twenty-four hours and enjoyed every bullet-riddled, gore-soaked, darkly hilarious minute of it. Thankfully a second season has been given the go-ahead.

Bob's Burgers: Season 14

Dexter: Resurrection - picking up where 'New Blood' left off, Dexter follows his son to New York City and gets wrapped up in a sort of 'group meeting' for serial killers put on by a billionaire. It sounds wacky, but Clyde Phillips' continuation of this new era of Dexter has thus far been a lot of fun. I'm eager to see the second season of the prequel series, too!

Mandy: Series 4 - Dianne Morgan's hilarious comedy, back for another six quarter-hour episodes on BBC2. The first three episodes are particularly entertaining, as Mandy blunders from one failed job or misguided adventure to another. This show kind of flies under the radar and it deserves more recognition. Very much worth checking out!

South Park: Season 27

Conversations With A Killer: The Son of Sam Tapes - Joe Berlinger's latest serial killer documentary series, this time focusing on New York's '.44 Caliber Killer' David Berkowitz. As with Berlinger's previous outings in this expanding franchise (which has covered the likes of Ted Bundy, Jeffrey Dahmer, and John Wayne Gacy), the atmosphere is palpable and the sense of the time and place in which the crimes happened is contextualised with a gritty sense of clarity, while the story is told from multiple perspectives of those who found themselves wrapped-up in this period of madness.

Twisted Metal: Season 2 - I generally quite enjoyed the first season, even if it felt a bit overlong for what it was (not helped by its habitual focus on side quests to play for time). Season two is twelve episodes long (two more than before) and, unfortunately, it gets off to a dull and disappointing start with some pointedly poor writing. Again, there is plenty of playing-for-time as the season one promise of a grand metal-crunching competition gets delayed, and the insistence on almost every character having snarky dialogue can become grating - the Doll Face gang, in particular, elicit more groans than chuckles (but are, mercifully, ditched).

The introduction of Axel in episode three adds a bit more spice, but the attempts at digging deeper into the characters delivers only intermittently. When everyone is constantly teasing or putting each other down, it's hard to get invested. The quite entertaining fourth episode sees a visit to Diesel City and the beginning of more consistent screentime for the show-stealing Sweet Tooth, and then episode five finally gets the tournament underway - and what's not to love about post-apocalyptic cars shooting at each other while Rob Zombie blasts on the soundtrack? Still, as the season continues, the scent of having to play-for-time occasionally rears its ugly head - much like the first season, this one feels like it's two episodes too long. For instance, despite the emotional developments and some humorous moments, was it really necessary to have an entire episode dedicated to a high school prom scenario to even further space-out the tournament action?

The Red Riding Trilogy (1974 / 1980 / 1983) - written by Tony Grisoni and based on David Peace's book "Red Riding". This three-part Channel 4 dark crime drama set in Yorkshire came out in 2009 and features a veritable who's-who of British acting talent.

King of the Hill: Season 14 - we're awash with reboots and remakes and requels, as studio bosses and bean counters (who don't seem to have a creative bone in their bodies, let alone an understanding of the creative industries) lurch from surprise hit (which they'll inevitably drive into the ground) to thunderous disaster (look at how Disney Marvel's fortunes have changed in the last few years!). While the continual plumbing of old properties can be tiresome, there have been numerous good ones (at least they're digging up previous successes, albeit without learning how to parlay their quality and audience engagement into brand new IPs). So what of King of the Hill's return after several years away from screens? Implementing a time jump into the story (animated shows almost never do such a thing, ensnaring their protagonists in perpetual stasis) allows KOTH to play with new ideas and trends that have occurred since it previously went off the air, and the resulting batch of ten episodes proves to be truly superb. Roll on season 15!

Alien: Earth - Noah Hawley, who was behind the mostly superb Fargo series (although season 4 was off-the-boil and season 5 was hugely disappointing), now dives into the world of Alien. The aesthetic of the world is excellent, although the deployment of so many familiar aspects from the first movie in particular falls into masturbatory recreation some of the time. There are some quite interesting characters, but the show is unfortunately plagued by some silly elements - some of which are incredibly stupid and suggest a shocking lack of critical thinking over the internal logic of the story.

A scientific research vessel holding multiple alien specimens inevitably gets into trouble and, because its convenient for the plot, the navigation computer is knocked out. As a result it crashes on Earth - without any prior warnings being flagged up on our home planet. We can currently track meteors that are many, many years away from our orbit, and yet here nobody seemed to be tracking a rogue spacecraft, and one that has sent out a distress signal?! Come on now.

This very large ship crashes into an apartment building, which miraculously remains standing. Containment of the vessel is non-existent (because, again, the plot needs to happen) once its cargo becomes evident, meanwhile - despite a spaceship slamming into their building - a bunch of drunk fools having a costume party (during the daytime, no less) haven't even noticed and don't care.

Further abdications of basic common sense occur when cutting edge (and very expensive) human/synthetic hybrids - with the minds of pre-pubescent children, and without any kind of specialist training (least of all in biohazardous situations), despite episode three confirming such 'uploads' of comprehensive information (a la "I know Kung-Fu!" in The Matrix) are available - are flippantly sent to deal with the crash and thereby steal away the alien lifeforms on board from mega corporation Weyland-Yutani. Typically, their first encounter with something squishy from another planet plays out like children trying to deal with a bug. They may be inside adult synth bodies that are quite resilient (not that it did much for Bishop in Aliens, but let's forget about that, eh?), but again, their untrained minds are those of children. That plot thread alone just becomes increasingly frustrating and even downright insulting to the viewer's intelligence.

There are parts of this show that work really well, but there's a disappointing absence of sensible grown-up thinking that has gone into some machinations of the plot and even many of the adult characters. Why ... why ... why? You can't just play around in a pre-established sandbox and behave like a child, and countless memberberries won't make up for the bad parts. Alien Romulus had a lot going for it, but it was similarly plagued with relentless references and some downright sloppy fanboyish storytelling. Is it really so difficult to take the material seriously and have the characters on-screen be similarly serious in how they occupy the world they're living in?

Upload: Season 4 - being that Prime have inexplicably removed their 'coming soon' section (far from comprehensive as it already was), the arrival of the final (truncated) season of their tech-comedy-drama came as a welcome surprise; I hadn't even seen a trailer or any news of it coming, such is the overwhelming amount of material out there. The final episodes do feel a smidge rushed at times, as certain plot strands have to get dispensed with quickly (e.g. the whole David Choak and corporate intrigue stuff), but the emotional through-line of the whole show remains the primary focus and wraps things up in a genuinely affecting way.

The Terminal List: Dark Wolf - created by Jack Carr and David DiGilio, a prequel series to Amazon's military/black ops thriller The Terminal List. Shows like this are the bread and butter of Prime's television output and score well with viewers, further underscoring just how ill-considered, over-priced, and underwhelming the whole Rings of Power endeavour has been.


SOUNDS:

Brian Eno "Force Marker"

AC/DC "Heatseeker", "PWR/UP" (album), "Ballbreaker" (album), "Are You Ready", "Money Talks", "Who Made Who", "Black Ice" (album), "Blow Up Your Video" (album), "Back In Black" (album), "Rock Or Bust" (album)

Nine Inch Nails "As Alive As You Need Me To Be"

Alice Cooper "The Revenge of Alice Cooper" (album)

John Carpenter "Christine (Original Soundtrack)" (album)


VIBES & FLAVOURS:

Cyberpunk 2077: Phantom Liberty (Xbox Series S) - for some reason I experienced a slew of crashes to the dashboard, but when I removed the only other active game in the 'quick resume' list the crashes seemed to almost entirely stop. Alan Wake 2 seemed to have an issue with the 'quick resume' function, too (it was better to always load that game fresh, even if less-frequent crashes still occurred from time to time). The section surrounding the giant mech killing machine dubbed 'Chimera' was very well implemented, presenting the player with a tomb of cutting edge tech that had been abandoned and then showing a large tarp covering something very large indeed inspires dread. When it eventually comes alive and turns its sights on you, the sense of scrambling to survive is palpable. A later mission (dependent on player choices) called Somewhat Damaged is less successful over all, being that the player's choice of combat is removed entirely and you are forced to hide (a la Alien: Isolation) from an arachnid-like killing machine, called Cerberus, that stalks the halls and labs of a secret military research bunker, but the tension is still on-point and the horrifying robot is suitably imposing.

Again, the sense of design in the world of the Dogtown district is a fantastic explosion of neon-soaked sci-fi decay and dirt-encrusted glamour. Memorable characters and storytelling linger in the memory long after playing, and the intoxicating world of Night City still burrows into your mind and takes up permanent residence. Despite its problematic launch, Cyberpunk 2077 will go down as one of the highest points in gaming history.

"The Enchanters" by James Ellroy - good, but not great. It feels as if these last few books from the Demon Dog of Crime Fiction have been tumultuous affairs. Perfidia was old school Ellroy brutality and desperate love, but was needlessly overlong, while This Storm just felt like it was losing its way in the 'Second L.A. Quartet' mission, and even though it was a bit shorter than its predecessor it nonetheless felt longer.

Widespread Panic broke off into a trio of tales revolving around Fred Otash and rediscovered a sense of playful vigour, but was hampered by the relentless tongue-twisting of the prose, which made it a literally difficult read at times. The Enchanters continues the adventures of Otash in a 'true life/faux crime' fantasy involving the death of Marilyn Monroe, the Kennedy brothers, and twisted intrigue at 20th Century Fox during the troubled production of Cleopatra. It works in fits and starts, but the prose occasionally feels bogged-down in police 'shit work' drudgery or drawing-out a point with too many words (despite the typically clipped Ellroy style), making narrative progression feel too slow as a whirlwind of intersecting characters muddle the mind. However, there is a great deal of searing humour, especially when Ellroy's version of Roddy McDowall shows up.

Alan Wake II: 'Night Springs' and 'The Lake House' DLC (Xbox Series S) - the recycling of existing locations in the "Night Springs" episodes proves a little patchy. 'Number One Fan' is hands-down the most enjoyable, realising the world inside Rose the waitress' head beautifully as she shotguns her way through a rescue fantasy. 'North Star' features Jesse Fayden from Control, but without her unique gun she feels a bit hemmed-in while the backtracking to figure out a door code feels like playing for time. 'Time Breaker' has a frustrating door puzzle that doesn't make an awful lot of sense, but beyond that it has a fun sense of breaking the fourth wall and playing with styles (at one point it becomes a text-based game).

'The Lake House' brings us a new location (which was fenced-off in the main game), one of the brutalist and secretive research facilities plonked down near Cauldron Lake by the FBC. Taking those first steps into the building, from it's architecturally impressive and forboding entrance and into the seemingly abandoned mess of the building gets the spine tingling. The new enemy type (tall, lumbering humanoid beasts that melt out from paintings) packs chills and frights, while taking a bit more time to unfurl the story draws you in more, and there are some genuinely creepy world-building moments, such as walking into a large, gloomy room filled with automatic typewriters hammering out algorithmic pages of Wake-like prose.

Mortal Kombat 11: Ultimate Edition (Xbox Series S) - it's a long time since the days of the original three games on the Sega Mega Drive, that's for sure. I was never good at combos and rapid inputs, but I'm woeful now, and the button combinations are too fiddly-faffy for me (and I can never time them properly, let alone remember them!). There needs to be a 'button mashing mode for idiots', and while there are 'easy Fatalities' they are locked behind needing to have some kind of spendable token regardless of your difficulty setting. However, with a little more time playing in the simplest and old school way (pick two fighters and an arena and mash some buttons), I was able to pick up some moves and get to enjoying myself. It's funny, too, thinking back to inputting the 'blood mode' code into the Sega Mega Drive version and how that incarnation was controversial at the time, because the bone-crunching and crimson-gushing carnage of the newer games goes far, far, far beyond anything in those original games from way-back-when.