The final Wolf Hall

There must be an end to milking Hilary Mantel's Wolf Hall trilogy for blog posts. Even if I finally actually read The Mirror and the Light, instead of just listening to it as an audiobook, I can't possibly have more to say about Mantel's version of Thomas Cromwell after having blogged about Wolf Hall the novel – twice; Bring Up the Bodies – twice; the first series of the TV adaptation of the trilogy; the aforementioned audiobook version of The Mirror and the Light and now, finally, the second series of the TV adaptation. I guess it goes to show that in spite of my gripes – and I've had plenty – I do find this story fascinating.

The second series of Wolf Hall leaves me with two questions I can't quite answer. One, can I recommend this series or not? And two, why don't I like this version of Thomas Cromwell more?

To start with question one, Wolf Hall the TV series has a sharp script, is often mesmerising and contains stellar acting, especially from Mark Rylance as Cromwell and Damian Lewis as Henry VIII but also from just about everyone else. This time around I was especially taken with Harry Melling's Wriothesley. In the novels, Wriothesley was so fox-like his treachery seemed like a foregone conclusion, especially as Cromwell and co. kept jokingly referring to him as "Call Me Risley" or just "Call Me", even to his face. (My theory is that his name is actually pronounced Risley, and he simply tried to convey it in a polite manner.) Melling's Wriothesley, by contrast, suffers pure agony over his own betrayal. That's just one example of the acting quality on offer. I was properly hooked during both the first and last episode of the series, and even got a bit teary as Cromwell in his final speech apologised to his "master", meaning not Henry, as the crowd thought, but the late Cardinal Wolsey.

However, there were other times when the show's sedate pace got me restless. One Swedish journalist wondered, entertainingly, why she had spent twelve hours of her life (counting both series and all twelve episodes of Wolf Hall) watching Cromwell walking from one room to another between dialogues and thoughtful musings. "What's so magnetic about this?" she asked, and I know what she means. I felt the magnetism too, often enough – but not all the time. Sometimes, I just felt impatient with the high-brow-ness of it all. I have principal objections to TV drama that gives itself airs, and this series does. It reminds me most of all of a gigantic filmed play (though it doesn't come off quite as dusty as filmed plays tend to do).

In the end, though, I think I have to recommend the series, with reservations. It does tell an intriguing story with the help of first-class actors. What it doesn't manage to do, even with the help of Rylance's expressive face, is help me understand what Cromwell – the historical or the fictional version – is all about.   

Which leads me to question number two. Why don't I like Mantel's Cromwell more? The answer appears simple enough on the surface: because he's not a charismatic villain in this story. How can a Cromwell who always claims to do the right thing, and often believes it too, hope to compare in my villain-loving eyes to the charms of Danny Webb's weaselly courtier, or James Frain's Catholic-hating powerbroker? It's true that the smugness of Rylance's Cromwell riles me. Smugness is usually the fault of the other guys – the self-righteous ones, the heroes. A great villain can get away with anything, but you have to be a truly A-grade villain (better than Cromwell, certainly) to get away with self-righteousness.

But I think it goes deeper than that. After all three books and two series of television, I'm still not sure I know what makes Mantel's Cromwell tick. Mantel makes much of his devotion to Wolsey, but his actions don't always bear this supposed loyalty out. Yes, he punishes the Cardinal's lesser enemies, but he becomes quite pally with Suffolk, who filched some of Wolsey's land, and keeps serving Henry, who caused Wolsey's fall in the first place. There's even a scene in The Mirror and the Light where Cromwell is suddenly stricken with doubt as to whether he let his Cardinal down at the end. Whoa, buddy. Firstly, you should know whether you were false or not. Secondly, in this version of events, you killed people for being nasty to your beloved Cardinal. If there was any kind of doubt in your mind as to your own actions towards Wolsey, you should maybe have shown more generosity towards others.   

It doesn't help that I feel a certain disconnect between Mantel's Cromwell and the historical Cromwell who, I can't help suspecting, was probably a lot more straightforward. Did the real Cromwell ever give a monkey's about Wolsey? I'm not entirely convinced. 

Maybe, though, this ambiguousness is actually partly why the Wolf Hall trilogy fascinates me. On two levels, it's about achieving great things, but not what you set out to do. Cromwell (as Mantel describes him) wants to be a good servant to Wolsey and to facilitate religious reform; he achieves neither. Mantel, presumably, wanted to get under Thomas Cromwell's skin, but doesn't quite get there. However, it can be gripping to see them try.

The (too) many possibilities of the Multiverse

One of the first multiversal stories I encountered was a Donald Duck comic. The duck protagonist slid into a parallel world somehow, and had some trouble finding his way back home. I remember next to nothing about this adventure – I'm not even sure if its hero was Scrooge or Donald (I think it was Scrooge) – but I remember the "Ooooh, right" moment when he finally figured out what was going on, and how satisfying it was.

Scrooge (or Donald) suddenly remembered the name of the street where he was when everything started to get weird. It had a different name than it usually did. From this memory came the realisation that he was in a parallel universe, similar to his own but just that little bit off. A classic "what's wrong with this picture" tale, for which I'm always an absolute sucker.

This is the kind of multiversal shenanigans I enjoy the most. I like my Multiverse the way I like my time travel: with plenty of illustrations of how small decisions can change everything (no closed "it always happened" time loop, thank you). Or even a small change in circumstances, that works too. The classic romcom Sliding Doors, which is often brought up when discussing stories with what-if scenarios, hinges not on a momentous decision that the heroine makes, but whether she catches a particular train or not. When it comes to multiversal stories, I tend to get extra-nerdy or cod-philosophical: I don't just want to see a different reality, I want to know how it came to be different.

One of the reasons this kind of plot – the "if it hadn't been for if" story, to translate a Swedish (ungrammatical) phrase – appeals to me is that it's so easy to imagine how small changes could have had large consequences in my own life.  Surely it must the same for others too. What if I hadn't got that job? What if I'd chosen another major when studying, or even another university (maybe that's too wild a speculation)? What if I hadn't bonded with one of my besties in primary school? So many important things that happen to you in life seem to happen quite by chance, and could easily have gone another way altogether.

Or could they? Once they're down the rabbit hole of alternative realities, multiversal stories, like time travel stories, can explore "destiny or chance" questions too. It can be just as fascinating to see reality adjust itself in all sorts of improbable ways in order to turn out as it always was (in accordance with the "time as a rubber band" theory) as to see it go completely haywire because someone took another way home from work than usual. The Adjustment Bureau (the film, at least, I haven't read the story) plays with that feeling I think we've all had: that some things were just meant to happen somehow.

But hey, that's just the kind of multiverse stories I like. There are plenty of other kinds. And that, I think, is partly why projects like Marvel's Multiverse Saga have a struggle on their hands. Take the animated Marvel series What If. I happen to enjoy all its three seasons, but the YouTube discussions about the last season that I've seen have tended to be negative. 

Apart from the general consensus that season three wasn't as good as the two others, however, views differed wildly. The post-apocalyptic episode was the best one. The post-apocalyptic episode was the worst one. Seeing a megalomaniac version of Mysterio in it was cool. Seeing Mysterio in it made no sense whatsoever. The episode showing Howard the Duck and Darcy (Jane Foster's sidekick, very human) as a couple was fun and frothy. Or no, it was frankly disturbing. The Watcher intervening in events was no big deal. The Watcher intervening ruined his character. And so on. If the creators of What If watched the same vids as I did, they must have felt confused about where exactly they went wrong.

Quite simply, we tend to want different things from our multiverse stories. Some don't want the nerdy small-events-that-change-everything setup. They'd rather see the Multiverse used as a device for crossovers, mash-ups and different team-ups than we're accustomed to. Deadpool and Wolverine used the Multiverse like that: as an excuse for making meta-jokes about the "dying" Fox universe and its characters (Fox having been bought up by Disney). It had little to say about the importance of choices, but it was a blast. 

I enjoy crossovers too – when it comes to fictional worlds I'm really invested in, I can become obsessed with them. But much as I've come to appreciate the MCU, I'm not quite there yet. As it is, I'll have good time with a multiversal MCU crossover, but I will feel some regret over opportunities lost. When it comes to blending different characters in "what if X had the powers of Y" scenarios, I have no interest in that at all.

Finally, there are multiverse stories where the other worlds the protagonists encounter are completely different, in a "what if the world was ruled by bees?" or "what if we were all potatoes?" kind of way. That could be fun to watch, but it's not what I primarily want from the Multiverse. That, to my mind, is fantasy, which is a different genre. I'm sure there are plenty who'd disagree, however. The Multiverse can be multiple things to multiple potential fans – and that is exactly its problem.

Long John Silver in space

The post-Christmas-holiday blog post is always a hard one. Even writing about something as straightforward and enjoyable as Skeleton Crew is going to be a challenge. And yet it really shouldn't be difficult, because this was the perfect example of a show that decided, early on, what it wanted to be and then stuck with it, without over-complicating things. It wanted to be a coming-of-age story with adventures and pirates thrown in, and it succeeded. That the series was set in the Star Wars universe was a bonus, but didn't distract from the story it wanted to tell.

The finale, which streamed yesterday (at least here in Sweden), stuck the landing, although it was a safe landing rather than a spectacular one. Mysteries that had been hinted at throughout the show were not really resolved or resolved in an off-hand kind of way that far from blew your mind. In the end, though, it didn't matter that much. What Skeleton Crew focused on – its child protagonists, their experiences in an often hostile universe, and their relationship to one another and the enigmatic Jod – it did really well.

The premise is simple enough. A bunch of kids – hero-worshipping dreamer Wim, the timorous but loyal Neel, bossy would-be rebel Fern and her introvert tech-savvy friend KB – live a sheltered but stiflingly regulated life on the peaceful planet At Attin. One day they come across a hidden star ship and accidentally take off to the skies. There are all sorts of complications to coming home. The children learn that their supposedly boring planet is the stuff of legends and hidden away from the rest of the galaxy. The only help they get is from a rusty old pirate droid and a ragged Force-sensitive man called Jod Na Nawood. Wim thinks he's a Jedi. It turns out he's a pirate, but the question is just how hard-bitten he is.

Though the child actors are all excellent – a feat in itself – the favourite part of the series for me was, unsurprisingly, Jod, as played by Jude Law who once again excels in a pirate role. Skeleton Crew unashamedly borrows from a number of pirate yarns (the droid is called SM 33 as a nod to Captain Hook's sidekick Smee), and Jod is clearly closely modelled on Long John Silver in Treasure Island. 

This is good news, not only because Silver is a classy high-prestige villain. One of Silver's many fascinating traits is that you never find out whether he really cares a button for Jim Hawkins. Sentimentalist as I am, I would like to think that he does, and I have a fondness for adaptations where Silver is allowed to have a soft spot for the boy. Nevertheless, in the original novel, there's always an ulterior motive that can explain why Silver is being nice to Jim. You're left guessing if there is any true feeling behind it all, or if he's just being his manipulative self.

The same ambivalence is found in the character of Jod. Sometimes he seems to bond with the children, sometimes he's only looking out for number one. Almost everyone the children come across who also knows Jod warns them not to trust him. So, as with Silver, you're kept guessing. Even when you think you've figured him out, there's a trace of ambiguity left until the very end.

My second favourite thing in the series was SM 33, voiced with salty gusto by Nick Frost. At the beginning I thought he would turn against the kids at some point – starting a conversation with any kind of Smee with the line "I killed your Captain" didn't seem like a great idea – but the story takes another turn, and I didn't mind being wrong one bit. SM 33 has his dark moments, but they tend to be connected to his programming, while when he can get around it and do what he most wants to do, he's on the children's side. He probably never believed Fern was a captain-killer anyway.

I've heard the viewing figures for Skeleton Crew have not been great, which is a shame. Let's hope they improve in the coming weeks through word of mouth. This is fun and charming family viewing, and the palate cleanser the Star Wars franchise needs after the Acolyte misfire. Though I do realise that Star Wars can't always play it as safe as this. 

Things to look forward to (or at least check out) in 2025

In many ways, cultural-consumption-wise, 2025 promises to be the same procedure as last year. That is, there will be continuations of series and franchises I enjoy, but I've yet to see something new slated for 2025 where I think "wow, I've got to watch this". As for books, I'm as likely to make a discovery in my own bookshelves as among the latest book arrivals (though I wouldn't mind a new Sarah Waters novel, for instance). 

YouTube nerds often talk about their "latest obsession". It's been a while since I've had a new obsession, and I'm not a hundred per cent sure I want one. If I find one – whether in the world of TV, film or books – it will probably be by chance rather than through purposeful searching. The items on this list, however, I will at least check out and probably enjoy.

Downton Abbey 3:  No need to go into detail: I've already blogged about the upcoming Downton film at some length. Am I surprised that Downton is coming back a third time at the cinema? Yep. Would I rather have seen a new story as compelling as Downton, which already has a satisfying ending, unfold? Maybe. Am I complaining? No, siree, as long as they don't mess up Thomas's love life. According to IMDB, Dominic West is returning as Guy Dexter, so it looks hopeful.

The Gilded Age season three: As far as I know, The Gilded Age will return next year, though I've yet to see a trailer for it. When it's out, it will be time for me to make the usual hit-and-miss predictions. As of now, I've no idea where this series might be heading, other than that a romance between Marian and Larry is definitely on the cards. Let's hope that they both acquire a little more personality in the process. Also, I want more servant plotlines.

Andor OK. So. I know that Andor is good. I'm grateful to it for adding a little cred to the Star Wars brand at a time when fans are disgruntled with it and apt to blame Disney for absolutely everything (though Disney seldom gets any credit when something Star Wars-related that the fans do like is released). And of course I'll watch it and admire the deft dialogue and storytelling, as well as the complex characters. 

To be frank, though, I'm not exactly excited for it. I find the premise that it's all right for the rebels to behave like swine if it's for the greater good of toppling the Evil Empire hard to swallow. Meanwhile, we have Skeleton Crew, which is much more light-hearted fare but which I confess is more my cup of tea (so far) than the somewhat disturbing politics of Andor. The galaxy far, far away is not yet on its last legs – I hope.

The Fantastic Four: First Steps and Thunderbolts* (yes, the asterisk is part of the title): Talking about struggling franchises, Marvel has had some tough years, but found favour with its fanbase this year with Deadpool and Wolverine. After an epic amount of homework – the X-men films and the previous two Deadpool films – I also watched it and really liked it. What's more, I've heard novices that have not done any homework to speak of praise it, which is, as Palps would say, a surprise to be sure but a welcome one. I may yet blog about how the film got away with a multiverse story where other films have failed (the answer is, basically: nothing clever, just two very charismatic leads).

What about this year, then? The upcoming TV projects seem all right, but not wildly thrilling. I had some hopes for the animated Spider-Man series, but judging from the trailer it seems awfully down with the kids (or rather teenagers). On the film front, Thunderbolts* seems promising, as the Thunderbolts team contains some interesting and/or funny antiheroes from previous films. But Fantastic Four is the studio's biggest swing, as it will introduce us comic-book ignoramuses to a new quartet of heroes in a completely new setting.

Now, of course I know that in the comic world, the Fantastic Four have been around since the year dot. There have been other film adaptations of their adventures as well, so they're not new from that perspective. But they're new in the MCU, and aren't tied to the previous complicated web of MCU stories. We are, in a sense, entering a new Enchanted Forest (I'm not one to forgo a Once Upon A Time reference). let's just hope it is enchanted. The casting is great: I'm particularly pleased to see that Joseph Quinn will be joining the MCU team. Others know him from Stranger Things (which I haven't seen); I know him as the actor who made the viewer sympathise with Arthur Havisham and Catherine the Great's useless son.

The Night Manager seasons two and three: I was somewhat sarcastic about the original The Night Manager series and, predictably enough, I think Tom Hiddleston would be better employed playing brainy, possibly redeemable villains rather than a strong, silent bore like Jonathan Pine. All the same, I'm curious. Where can the story possibly go after the first season? We didn't actually see Richard Roper get killed: will he escape his captors and return, out for blood? Will there be justice for Corky?

Why is the Moana/Vaiana sequel a box-office hit?

So, I watched Moana 2 (or Vaiana 2, as it's inexplicably called in Europe) at the cinema this week. And it was OK. It didn't irritate me as Ralph Breaks the Internet did and was mercifully free from the Wise Natives vs Civilisation rhetoric of Frozen 2. The story, although there wasn't a lot of it, followed naturally from what happened in the first film, and it didn't detract from it. It didn't, for instance, separate close friends or sisters because "they need to let go" or some such rubbish. According to one YouTube review, the animation for this project was outsourced as it was originally supposed to be a Disney Plus series, but I still thought said animation looked really good.

Having said all that, the film felt underwhelming – "mid" as the kids may or may not say. The origin as a Disney Plus series really shows. Ironically, I think I would have appreciated it much more as a series, as the characters would then have had to be fleshed out. As it is, although Moana (yeah, I'm calling her that, so sue me) and Maui are as charming as ever, the secondary characters don't have a lot to do. Moana brings a crew with her on her new adventure with different skill sets, but these skills don't really come into play that much. Why did she have to bring the reluctant old farmer again? 

Villain pickings are slim. The antagonistic-seeming Matangi who holds Maui captive is a fun addition, but she's painfully underused. Instead, the main villain is a thunder god named Nalo, who only shows up as an angry face in the clouds and as a disgruntled, not very menacing guy in a mid-credit scene. Nalo has cursed the peoples of the ocean by sinking a particular island, which somehow means they can't find one another. Why? Because he thought splitting people up would give him more power. Why would it do that? No idea. As thunder gods go, Nalo is singularly personality-less. In a series, they could have explained things a bit better with a mythological flashback, but as it is...

It's not the only time the storytelling is a let-down, either. Moana and Co. make a deal with her old foe the Kakamora to defeat a giant clam in return for their help. But the clam-defeating is a dismal failure, and were it not for one of the Kakamora's own warriors they would have been worse off than before. This is not how deal-based storylines work! Since the Kakamora have no debt to pay to Moana and her crew, as they failed to deliver on their part of the bargain, this plot thread is simply cut short.

I could go on whining about how Moana 2 feels it has to hit the very same storybeats as the first film, which slows the whole thing up – does Moana really need a new "How Far I'll Go"-style song, or wouldn't it maybe have been better if her big ballad had a new topic this time? – but it's time to come to the question I posed in the title, to which I have no answer. In spite of everything, I had a good time watching Moana 2 (and there were some enthusiastic kids in the cinema audience). But I've no idea why it's such a smash hit.

It seems I'm as lousy at predictions in show business as in any other kind of business. Were I a studio boss, I would have no idea where to invest money in order to get a good return. It could be that cinemagoers aren't that fussed about creativity and originality, which is fair enough – I myself can feel that film snobs go on about these virtues a little too much. But in that case, why does entertaining and lightweight fare like Dungeons and Dragons: Honor among Thieves and Red One bomb at the cinema? In both cases, you can argue "yeah, they seem fun but not unmissable: I'll wait until they hit the streaming services". But you can make exactly the same argument about Moana 2.

Maybe Disney's Bob Iger is right, and nostalgia is such a strong factor with filmgoers that they're prepared to show up at the cinema for a mid product as long as it's tied to a franchise they know and love. That would explain why Dreamwork's Kung Fu Panda 4 did well in cinemas, in spite of being an even more tired sequel than Moana 2. Apparently, it's much harder getting people so excited about a new potential franchise they're willing to leave their TV sofa in favour of the cinema. A film that's simply entertaining but little else isn't enough.

In the long run, as I've discussed before, this poses a problem. Disney and other studios can't rest on their laurels and churn out sequels forever. I suppose I should take my responsibility as a consumer and go to the cinema more often, if a film sounds promising enough, instead of lazily waiting for the streaming release. But for now, I'll snuggle down in my TV sofa and just be glad I'm not a studio boss.

The mysterious appeal of Netflix Christmas films

I have a shameful confession. Not only have I watched both the A Christmas Prince trilogy and The Princess Switch trilogy on Netflix; since they came out, I've also had the time and the inclination to rewatch them. The appeal of the soupy Netflix Christmas film is hard to explain. Never mind high-brow stuff: there's plenty of light-hearted TV and film fare which is of way higher quality than this. 

And yet, there's something deeply satisfying with a Christmas romance with just the right amount of hokeyness thrown in. I enjoy picking the tropes apart – sleigh rides, snow fights, handing out Christmas presents to orphans – while admiring the efforts of the leading lady (it's more or less down to her) to carry the whole show on her back. Rose McIver (Tinkerbell in Once Upon A Time – I knew there was a reason I liked her) and Vanessa Hutchens are both seasoned pros, and they have to be. 

I guess this is what people mean by enjoying something "ironically", though I suspect in my case there's some unironic enjoyment thrown in as well. Watching Netflix Christmas films is a little like watching old Barbara Cartland adaptations, except the casting's more wobbly – you don't get Oliver Reed purring "I can see you are going to be very interesting". True, you can find the odd trouper (Alice Krige is the Queen in the A Christmas Prince films), and the kid actors tend to be solid too, but as for some of the supporting cast, you're amazed that there was no better talent on offer. Surely, good character actors can always be had for a decent pay check. Nevertheless, the prince-themed trilogies somehow manage to get the mixture of groan-worthy clichés and slick execution just right.

That's not true of all Netflix Christmas films, though – far from it. I've watched a fair number of misfires over the years: a heroine with a suitably Christmas-film-friendly job (wedding-planner, caterer, candystore owner) and pretty, snowy surroundings aren't enough to compensate for the amateurishness of it all. The unfunny script, the awkward pauses, the non-existent chemistry between the leads: it's just painful to watch, and more than once I've simply given up. But I'm not put off the genre altogether. Being the new A Christmas Prince or The Princess Switch should, after all, not be that high a bar for a film.

I've been comparatively lucky this year. Meet Me Next Christmas, about a girl called Layla who has to get a ticket for a sold-out concert in order to reunite with a potential Mr Right, is actually cute and funny. True, there are some absurdities thrown in. At one time Layla (Christina Milian) selflessly abstains from a designer handbag she would have needed to barter for her ticket, so it can go to a father and son who want to give it to their wife/mother who's been ill. But if they can afford an exclusive designer handbag (which isn't even that pretty), they can find a better present for the convalescent mum. We're not talking about food rations here. However, it wouldn't be a real Netflix Christmas film without a good helping of cheese.

Meet Me Next Christmas may not be Love Actually, but it's several notches above Hot Frosty, one of the most marketed Christmas films this year (at least on streaming). Nevertheless, Hot Frosty is worth a watch if you want to see an absolutely bonkers premise (even for a Christmas film) carried out with some panache. It scores high on the "what did I just watch?" scale. So, get this: young widow Kathy, played by former Mean Girls actress Lacey Chabert, puts a scarf with vague magical properties around a snowman. The snowman comes alive. He looks like a handsome bloke, but is still sensitive to heat. Will he help Kathy find love and joy, perhaps by judicious matchmaking, before melting away as is the custom in bittersweet tales involving live snowmen? No, silly. The snowman is the love interest, so the film has to find a way to do a Pinocchio on him.

Chabert and the rest of the cast do their game best to keep this surreal love story on the road. But the mind does boggle. Also, I wondered if the live snowman (called Jack, not Frosty, which is something) really, truly is the male ideal nowadays. Is this what other women want? A man full of childlike wonder, who has to learn everything from scratch (though he is a fast learner)? Who may have emotional intelligence, but not much of the other kind? A guy who's sweet, ripped and clueless? I never thought I'd say this, but could we have Mr Darcy back, please?

If you want a nice, frothy romcom that does not insult your intelligence all of the time, Meet Me Next Christmas is your best bet. If you want a jaw-dropping festival of hokeyness to enjoy ironically, you could put Hot Frosty on (perhaps while wrapping your Christmas presents, so you feel you've done something sensible with your time). Or why not watch both? It's almost Christmas, after all.

Anticipation list follow-up: expectations met, mostly

Back in January, I did one of my almost-yearly "things to look forward to" posts (restricted to the area of pop-cultural consumption). As it's sadly a bit too early to start the 2025 lists, but I feel in the mood for a list post, what if I followed up on the projects I thought sounded at least vaguely promising? I mean, I know I've already blogged about some of them, but as a summing-up? No, I'm not dodging an in-depth analysis of the problems of making the multiverse work (in film/TV) at all...

I'll change the order around a bit, though; I'll start with the items I haven't discussed in blog posts yet and save the item that was the biggest disappointment to last.

Moonflower Murders: Thankfully, Swedish Television didn't let me down. They both aired the latest adaptation of an Anthony Horowitz crime novel and made it available on their streaming service, and I was well pleased with it. It had the same virtues as Magpie Murders: Lesley Manville's Sue Ryeland and Tim McMullan's Atticus Pünd make for a likeable sleuthing duo with their meetings on the border between fiction and reality (there's a multiversal incursion for you), and the way some of the actors played two roles in parallel plot threads was cleverly done. As with Magpie Murders, I felt less cheated by the way the two interlocking crime mysteries were laid out than when I read the novel. Moonflower Murders the novel ended with a firm goodbye to this particular fictional universe, but the TV adaptation (also done by Horowitz) leaves the door a little more open for a sequel. I would not say no.

The Bad Batch season three: Is it just me, or have the animated projects from the Star Wars and Marvel franchises been consistently great of late, while the live-action projects are a bit more hit and miss? It may very well be just me with my soft spot for animation. Be that as it may, this Clone Wars spin-off, which perhaps didn't seem that promising on paper, outdid expectations with an engaging, well-knit overarching story about a band of brothers and a sister trying to carve out an existence during the Imperial era of the Star Wars galaxy. Crosshair remained my favourite throughout, but as he kept himself on the path of redemption he hesitantly started on previous season, new entertaining if unsubtle villains were introduced. Doctor Hemlock (I warned you!) with his pleasing design, satisfactorily high level of competence and purring voice (American-accented, which makes a nice change in this context as Star Wars baddies are so often played by Brits) caused my villain-loving heart to flutter, and disgraced Vice Admiral Rampart was a hoot.

Inside Out 2: Yeah, as I've previously mentioned, this was pretty darn good. Even though I prefer the original, which is more rewatchable, the way Anxiety is portrayed in this film is almost too relatable. Roll on Inside Out 3 – next time, I want to see Riley fall in love.

Belgravia: The Next Chapter: OK, I can't pretend it wasn't a let-down that Julian Fellowes didn't pen this supposed sequel to Belgravia, which at the end of the day had very little to do with the original. I had other reservations as well, especially at the start of the series, but taken all in all it was a solid period drama that felt a little closer to being set in a recognisable past than many costume dramas of late (which are often knowingly anachronistic). It particularly seemed to find its stride in the final episode. Poor Oliver Trenchard was hard done by, though.

Doctor Who series fourteen/season one: As you may already be aware, this was a big let-down for me. When will I stop hoping for Doctor Who to return to its former glory? It's hard to let go of hope when the very same duo that were show-runners back in those glory days are still running and/or writing for the series. But by now, Doctor Who has become so heavily politicised that it has a harder time getting away with things that weren't such a big deal in the olden days. 

When the main thrust of Doctor Who stories was about something bigger (love, friendship, the wonders of the universe, the problems of near immortality, the strengths and weaknesses of mankind) or something smaller (oooh, look, Daleks and Cybermen are fighting!) than politics, I could shrug off the odd bout of clumsy messaging. Now, it seems, clumsy messaging is practically all the show does. I had hopes that the Steven Moffat-scripted Christmas special would be a suitably light-hearted palate cleanser, but the sneak peek we've been given does not look promising. "Evil must logo"? Really? Also, the main villain being a Big Bad Arms Manufacturer isn't only clichéd, it's not quite as obvious a choice of common enemy as it might once have been. Yes, of course there are all sorts of ethical implications when a company's products are expressly made to maim and kill people. But at the end of the day, what are we supposed to defend ourselves with if we are attacked? Bananas?

I've not yet reached the point where I will stop watching Doctor Who, and most likely I never will. But for now, it's no longer my favourite sci-fi franchise. For all its faults, Star Wars has eclipsed it. It gave me the most memorable Doctor to watch this year.