Pretentious TV entertainment

It's a sad truth (all right, I don't find it that sad) that it's easier to trash something than to gush over it. And so, once more following the path of least resistance, I forgo the chance to praise the unexpected enjoyability of the film Dungeons and Dragons: Honor Among Thieves in favour of sinking my teeth into the Netflix mini-series The Perfect Couple.

Reviews of this whodunnit story, set in and around the idyllic coastal residence of an ultra-rich family, have good-naturedly described it as entertaining trash. If I remember correctly, one review even called it the modern equivalent of Lace. For my part, I didn't think it can hold a candle to the giddy slice of escapism that is Lace. Lace and Lace II knew what they were and didn't give themselves airs. 

The Perfect Couple, in contrast, is tiresomely pretentious. If it's just supposed to be light entertainment, why is the pace so languid? Why are there so many extreme close-ups? Why is the background music whoo-whoo-ing in the background in an abstract, non-hummable way? It feels like the series wants to be Big Little Lies very badly. I'm not saying Big Little Lies was a masterpiece, but it offered something unexpected which gave it some substance: far from always being at each other's throats, the yummy mummies did offer one another real friendship. The Perfect Couple is devoid of any such nuance. The wealthy suspects are horrible, the investigating police charmingly down-to-earth, the "normal" girl about to marry one of the sons of the super-rich family Sees Through The Façade etc. These aren't even entertaining clichés (though I liked the cops), and they're served up in a po-faced manner which makes you suspect that the series has ideas above its station.

I'm usually indulgent towards pronouncements like "TV series are the new novels". They're not: novels are the new novels. But it does television no harm to try to emulate the dramatic storytelling and vivid characterisation of, say, a Victorian page-turner. Except, the rising status of TV in the last few decades comes at a cost. The same artsy types who've made novel-reading an endurance sport have muscled in and suddenly want to tell us what is "quality" television and what is not. Anything too upbeat or watchable is sneered at, when entertainment (and perhaps some light instruction) was once TV's prime function. 

In that way, you really could say that TV series are "the new novel". Novels were once written mainly for entertainment too, then they became Something Fancier. Now TV has become Something Fancier, and along with the TV equivalent of Victorian ripping yarns have come the less welcome TV equivalent of those high-brow novels all the critics praise to the skies, but few of us ordinary mortals have actually read, because frankly they sound awful. That's exactly why the critics love them, I suspect. If they were too appealing, then there wouldn't be much cachet in having read them – or, in the case of TV series, having seen them.

What's this got to do with The Perfect Couple, you may ask? It may be a bit pretentious, but it's hardly trying to be a TV version of Ulysses. Well, my (largely unsubstantiated) theory is that some conceptions of "quality" television have trickled down to what could be called "middle-brow" programmes, and have had a detrimental effect on them. Pacy storytelling? Way too cheap. Witty dialogue? Good heavens, no, this isn't an ordinary cop show. Sexual tension? Problematic. Romance? Well and truly dead, darling.

You can still find pacy stories, snappy lines and romance on the telly, but you increasingly have to move to the cheerfully low-brow spectrum of TV in order to get your fix. So be it, then. Maybe it's about time I rewatched Lace?     

Novels that passed the travel test

I tend to underestimate how much time and effort goes into travel, though it's definitely worth it in the end. It's not only the time spent travelling: the week before you go is full of preparations, and the week after you return full of tasks you've put off while you were away, plus you have to readjust to everyday life. All of which is a roundabout excuse for me not having blogged for nearly a month.

Not feeling very analytical, I've decided to simply do a book version of the handy "films I saw in-flight" blogs one and two I resorted to in 2018. My travels didn't take me very far this time, so there were no in-flight films, but I did get some reading done. These novels passed the travel test of providing entertainment on airports, planes, trains, hotel rooms and even one or two buses – though some with more distinction than others.

Oxford Blood by Antonia Fraser I got this classic whodunnit from the Eighties for my birthday as 1) it takes place in the atmospheric surroundings of Oxford colleges 2) it's written by Fraser, a popular historian and thus a tried-and-tested author. As it turns out, it's more concerned with the English upper-crust than academic Oxford, but I didn't mind this, as I'm always up for stately-home-based intrigues. 

Fraser writes elegantly if a little distantly; I never felt I got under the skin of her glamorous TV journalist sleuth Jemima Shore. However, the remoteness had its advantages. Fraser keeping her distance to her heroine meant that Jemima didn't come across as too annoyingly opinionated, which could otherwise easily have been the case. It is sometimes hard to know the level of irony in the narrative's statements, though, or how much Jemima really cares for people close to her.

The Last Word by Elly Griffiths Griffiths is an example of an author who can sometimes make her opinions a little too plain through her characters – always allowing for the possibility that the opinions in question might just be the character's and not the author's. Having said that, I've found all the Griffiths novels I've read to be absolute page turners. I gobbled up this one, which features a likeable group of amateur sleuths last seen in the equally good The Post-Script Murders and, to a lesser extent, Detective Harbinder Kaur. 

Kaur has been the police presence in all the novels I've read so far by Griffiths, and I find her a little too chippy, though her very crankiness does make her less of a box-ticking exercise (she's a Sikh and a lesbian). As other characters apart from Kaur were also quite chippy in her latest outing Bleeding Heart Yard, I enjoyed that novel the least of the ones in the Kaur series. Therefore, I was happy with the amateur sleuth trio once again taking centre stage. Old-age pensioner Edwin, Amazonian Ukrainian carer and entrepreneur Natalka and her ex-monk boyfriend Benedict tend to be less judgemental than Kaur, if also a little more gullible. I also very much enjoy the theme of writers and writing which runs through most of the Kaur mysteries; this one takes place partly at a suitably creepy writers' retreat.

Last Tango in Aberystwyth by Malcolm Pryce I bought this one locally because I was in Wales and had dim recollections of quite liking the first instalment in the series. Of the novels I read, this was the one that didn't quite live up to my expectations, though it saw me through a two-hour train journey and an equally long flight quite nicely. 

As a pastiche of quip-filled PI yarns à la Raymond Chandler, set in an outlandish alternative-reality version of Wales where loose women wear stovepipe hats and gangster druids are in a turf war with Meals-on-Wheels matrons, Last Tango sounds like a comic read in the same inventive vein as Jasper Fforde's Thursday Next novels. But though there were many neat conceits in Last Tango and a few quips, it wasn't as funny as I'd thought it would be. Sometimes I didn't know if it was going for all-out seriousness or merely parodying philosophical passages in Chandler and others, but I believe it was mostly the former. The novel had a slightly melancholy air in spite of the absurdities going on which, if you're a true Chandler fan, you may see as a plus. I was expecting more high-jinks, though.

Jazzy Paris and not so jazzy married life

Sometimes, when you don't get a hundred percent into a novel, it's only fair to proclaim: "It's not you, it's me". Why on earth would someone without a solid interest in the home life of Ernest Hemingway (in this case me) read a book on Hemingway's first wife?

My excuse is a weak one: I was drawn to the title. I found Paula McLain's novel The Paris Wife, published as far back as 2011, in a well-stocked bookstore, remembered vaguely that it was well thought of, and bought it. The blurb promised that the setting would be "glamorous Jazz Age Paris", and that sounded exciting. It would also, I reasoned, be a way to learn a little more about an author I haven't read, though I really should have done. Although there's no language barrier to speak of, I'm scandalously ignorant about American classics. It will be remedied at some point, at least in Hemingway's case (and when it happens I'll be able to get at least one Nobel Prize-winner blog post out of it).

Is it a disadvantage to be pig-ignorant about Hemingway when you read this novel? At first I thought so, and felt slightly guilty for attempting it. It's not that I don't get why it was favourably received. McLain fights the corner of her protagonist, Hadley Richardson, very commendably and is good at showing, not telling. 

We're shown, not told, that Hadley is no victim but quite tough. She survives a bleak upbringing with some self-worth still intact; she can knock back liquor with the best (and worst) of them; she enjoys the bullfights her husband's obsessed with and isn't the least bit squeamish; she's physically strong and can even cross the Alps wearing the wrong kind of shoes. We're shown, not told, of Hemingway's faults, which aren't very endearing (but then he's very young at this time): he's spectacularly ungrateful to his benefactors and feels easily threatened, as when he scowls over a less-macho friend's fleeting success at amateur bull-fighting. Lastly, we're shown, not told, how the ménages-à-trois Hadley and Hemingway are surrounded with – which aren't very happy if scrutinised, especially not for the women – warp Hemingway's perception of what he can get away with while still hanging on to the wife he loves.

So why didn't I get fully into the first half and a bit of this novel? I think it was because it sometimes felt like a corrective narrative of something, and I didn't know anything about the story it was correcting. Also, though we do get to meet well-known Jazz-Age Paris dwellers, the focus – as I should have predicted – was on Hadley's and her Ernest's married life. It's convincingly described, but sometimes made me think about Goofy's novel about a man "who went around looking ordinary all day". Not because Hadley herself seems ordinary compared to her famous husband – another pitfall avoided by McLain – but because their domestic life feels rather mundane a large part of the time. This is, of course, less of a problem if you go into the story with a keen interest in all things Hemingway.

Once we finally get to the love triangle foreshadowed at the beginning of the novel, however, my pig-ignorance turned out to be a boon. Although Hadley warns the reader in the prologue: "This isn't a detective story – not hardly", I enjoyed trying to predict which Paris siren would be the one to make a serious play for Hemingway and threaten what appears to be a rock-solid marriage. If you already know a lot about Hemingway's life, then this part of the story doesn't become a mystery, which would have taken a lot of the fun out of it for me.

If you're a Hemingway fan, I think you'd like this novel in its entirety, not least because it throws some light on a wife who actually seems to have been the perfect match for him. If, like me, you know next to nothing about him, it's still a good read. Just don't expect too much razzle dazzle out of Paris.

What's new, Mickey Mouse? (As it turns out, not a lot)

After the announcements of the last weeks, from San Diego Comic-Con and Disney's very own D23 event, it's not an exaggeration to say that Disney is playing it safe. Extremely safe. Leaving aside the re-introduction of Robert Downey Jnr into the MCU – this time as high-profile villain Dr Doom (it could work) – we have a perfect avalanche of films in some way based on previous hits coming up from Disney and Pixar. We are getting prequels, sequels, and worst of all, live-action remakes of animated classics. Like many a commentator, I've been shaking my head and muttering about the death of creativity and the lack of original content.

Except –  maybe some of us, including me, are being just a little bit hypocritical? The other week, I saw a youtuber scoffing about the supposed "sequel fatigue" and pointing out how well sequels overall were doing at the box office. As he was talking about DreamWork's upcoming Shrek 5, I couldn't relate a hundred per cent (I have little interest in Shrek 5 unless Shrek and Fiona are made to face the consequences of callous pet-killing). Nevertheless, the youtuber was on to something. Because as much as I may groan over upcoming titles like Frozen III and Toy Story 5, I'm still going to watch them, aren't I?

Disney has had a rough couple of years, so I can see why they want to refill their coffers with safe bets. They may be well aware that people aren't over-enthusiastic about their upcoming animated projects. But we, the potential audience, don't have to be over-enthusiastic. We only have to be interested enough to buy a cinema ticket. I would guess – it's only a guess, mind – that this is what Disney's banking on. We can complain all we want about unoriginality, as long as we pay up.

There are some flaws in the reasoning, however. One is that Disney has created its own worst rival in Disney Plus. If people are only lukewarm about a film project, but nevertheless want to see it, they could simply wait until the film is available for streaming. Let's face it, if they're mouseheads (I don't know if it's a word, but I'm coining it) like me, they probably have Disney Plus anyway. All they need to do is wait. The studio has been lengthening the time it takes for their movies to reach Disney Plus, which is probably wise from a cinema point of view, but could hurt their streaming service in the long run. It's a bit of a bind.

Another purely commercial reason to keep experimenting with new stuff, instead of merely relying on tried-and-true franchises, is that both Disney and Pixar need to establish new franchises which they can milk in the future. Inside Out 2 has been a huge hit for Pixar, not least because it's seriously good (I'll come back to that). But there wouldn't be an Inside Out 2 if Pixar hadn't taken a chance on the first Inside Out many years back instead of simply churning out Toy Story sequels.

So I'm still a little worried about where the Mouse is heading long-term, even if they manage to consolidate their finances in the immediate future. A successful company always has to ask itself "what's next?" in order to stay in business. Even the most popular franchise reaches its sell-by date (I think Toy Story's already there, to be frank), and if Disney spends too little time developing new projects, they may find themselves in trouble again in a few years' time.

All the same, just because something is a sequel or a prequel doesn't mean it's bad. Look at Inside Out 2, a perfect delight of a film which managed to explain something I'd wondered since the first trailer: why Anxiety is its own emotion separate from Fear. I still think Inside Out 2 dodges the question of what puberty is really about; for all its faults, Turning Red was more honest about this. But hey, Riley is only thirteen in Inside Out 2. Maybe we'll get Love or Desire in Inside Out 3, which will surely be coming along at some point. And if overly cute Envy in Inside Out 2 grows up along with Riley to be less aspirational ("I want her hair") and more destructive ("I'll destroy her for being better than me"), then I'll not complain.

At the end of the day, for the audience, the big divide isn't between old franchises and new projects, but between high-quality and lower-quality films. Even easy-to-please customers like me cut up rough if we sense that we're being taken for granted. If the upcoming Disney and Pixar sequels and prequels seem tired and stale, they'll most likely underperform at the box office. If on the other hand the studios keep putting the effort into them that went into Inside Out 2, the Mouse should be fine. For now.

Is The Acolyte unfair to the Jedi?

OK. Star Wars time. Sort of.

The latest Disney + show in the Star Wars franchise, The Acolyte, has sparked a lot of controversy. For my part, I was lukewarm towards it. That in itself is not a good sign, given that I'm usually very easy to please when it comes to Star Wars content (I loved The Bad Batch earlier this year, for instance, but then that was genuinely good, wasn't it?). If I were to rank the live action Star Wars Disney + shows, The Acolyte would come in last, though it's a tough call – The Book of Boba Fett only just wins out because it has a Cad Bane cameo and some Mando. 

But that doesn't mean I hate The Acolyte. It had some muddled storytelling, and the characterisation was somewhat lacking; the series failed to make us care about the new characters it introduced, which is a pity, as we could do with some new blood in Star Wars stories. However, there were some good acting performances including a fetching villain. Though the writing didn't blow me away, I didn't find it groanworthy either. Also, for those who like lightsabre battles, the ones in The Acolyte were nicely choreographed. 

The Force witches (or "Thread" witches, I suppose, as it's what they call the Force) were irritating, though. Can someone tell me why witches and covens are such a thing nowadays in popular entertainment? I would have thought female magic wielders who want to be girl bosses would do well to stay away from covens, which tend to be about surrendering your power to someone else (or, in this case, to "the power of maaany").

But I digress. The main reason so many Star Wars fans took against this series, some before it even aired, was that they got the impression that it would tarnish the Jedi. Defenders of the series haven't helped its cause by highlighting the way it shows "the weaknesses of the Jedi" as one of its good points. For myself, I'm not fond of the Jedi, but I understand if long-term Star Wars fans don't care to see their childhood heroes trashed, and I acknowledge that there are unfair ways to criticise these famous lightsabre-wielding light-side users.

So, bearing in mind that I'm a bit of a Jedi sceptic, did I think The Acolyte was too hard on them? Well, yes and no. To start with, I wouldn't say that Jedi-bashing plays such a large part in the story as all that. 

The series takes place about 100 years before the Star Wars prequels and tells the tale of two sisters, twins (kinda-it's complicated) Osha and Mae. Hidden away on a faraway planet, they're about to be taken up in the coven of the aforementioned space witches when a group of Jedi enter the scene. Mae wants to become a witch, Osha wants to become a Jedi. Complications and conflicts ensue, which the two girls see different parts of, and it ends with the whole coven dead and their hideout burnt down. Osha, who blames Mae, is taken in by the Jedi. Mae, left behind and believed dead, blames the Jedi.

Sixteen years later, Mae resurfaces, trained by a mysterious (though not very) dark-side Force user, and starts to take out the Jedi she encountered all those years ago. Osha – who never managed to become a Jedi and has left the order – is first accused, but it quickly becomes clear (thankfully) that she's not the culprit, and she's roped in by her old master Sol to track down her long-lost sister and bring her to task. The identity of Mae's master is revealed soon enough, but the question remains what really happened sixteen years ago.

When we finally get the whole story, I for one could very well understand why the Jedi acted the way they did. Certainly, some of the group behaved badly, but you could argue that their more questionable decisions were motivated by non-Jedi-like emotions such as selfishness, fear and blind attachments. There's nothing in the telling of the Jedi vs witches conflict that directly contradicts the Jedi creed – in fact, it could be used as a cautionary tale on how dangerous it is for Jedi to give in to their emotions. Plus, the witches were certainly no blameless victims either. 

Where the series is unfair to the Jedi, in my view, is when it shows how the whole thing is covered up by cool and responsible-seeming members of the Order. Throughout the series, Jedi bigwig Vernestra seems surprisingly anxious about bad PR, as the Jedi Council is facing some opposition by the Senate, and is eager to gloss over as many past and present Jedi mistakes as she can. Now, my beef with the Jedi has to do with their forbidding personal attachments and generally being a bunch of self-righteous killjoys. But I have never seen them as shady or power hungry – isn't that more of a Sith thing? It was hard to believe in Jedi as responsibility-dodging politicos. Surely, owning up to your faults and taking the rap for it (which would probably be harsh and disproportionate) would be the true Jedi way?

Vernestra has a quarrel with a senator at the end of the series where the senator starts to address my own problems with the Jedi. He points out that they claim to be able to control an ungovernable force – by which he doesn't mean the Force itself but their own emotions – and predicts that one day one of these repressed warriors will snap and will be hard to stop. I'm with him on that one: all that emotion-repressing surely can't be healthy, and one would have thought that the hate and fear of the Dark Side could more easily be overcome by positive emotions such as love and friendship rather than sterile serenity. But as for the Jedi being a dangerous "cult", you could say the same about those annoying witches.

The perfect beach read (or very nearly)

After being so harsh on Doctor Who last time, I'm in the mood to "say something nice", as Missy would put it. Perhaps confirming that an acclaimed romance author is, indeed, very good (in my view, that is) would be a good idea, even if it doesn't make for a startlingly original post?

Finding the ideal summer holiday read is always tricky. A summer or so ago, I read and very much enjoyed Emily Henry's Book Lovers. Nevertheless, I didn't immediately follow it up with Beach Read from the same author, which I bought upon finishing Book Lovers. If there was something I minded in Book Lovers, it was that quite a lot of time was spent on the heroine's coming to terms with the death of her mother, and the effect this had on the relationship between her and her sister. It was by no means badly done, but it's not the kind of storyline you expect to feature prominently in a feel-good romance. 

When Beach Read started with the heroine, January, remembering the day her mother got her cancer diagnosis, I thought "here we go again". The mum makes it, but when the book starts January's father has died of a stroke. At his funeral, his former mistress showed up and handed January the key to a beach house which her dad has left her. Now, several months later, January – a romance author with writer's block and a cash-flow problem – is forced to visit the beach house and clear it out for a sale while she tries to regain some inspiration.

It's not the most cheery start to a light-hearted read, but this summer I persevered through the first depressing pages, and the novel soon goes into the feel-good mode one is led to expect from the way it's marketed. January's neighbour turns out to be Gus, her old crush from college and a literary author who she always thought despised her writing. Soon the old enemies-to-friends, friends-to-lovers plot is on its way. I really enjoyed the central conceit that the two authors agree to switch genres – January will try to write something more literary, while Gus tries a romance – and the book-related plotting and discussions that ensue.

It made me reflect on how subjective appreciation of a novel's plot lines can be. I imagine an editor with romance as her speciality would encourage an author like Henry to concentrate on the romance, by no means stint on the length of sex scenes, and play down the bookish parts. An editor would also probably not have any problems with the dead dad storyline as it places January where she needs to be and provides a motive for her sudden doubts of romance and happy endings (her parents' marriage has always seemed like the ur-romance for her).

For my part I loved the bookish parts, found the sex scenes (there are only two of them, but they do go on for a while) tedious, and could have done without the dead dad plot altogether. Though, yes, the pay-off is touching (I'm glad I wasn't actually at the beach when I read it as I snivelled quite a lot), it is something of a foregone conclusion. So there you go. Much depends on personal preferences. What I can say is that Henry's prose style is enjoyable, funny and – unlike that of many authors of up-beat romances – it doesn't make you feel as if your brain is shrinking while you read it.

I found it interesting how January and Gus choose to interpret what a "literary novel" and a "romance" is. It mostly seems to be a question of subject matter for them, and a pessimistic vs optimistic outlook. To me, the difference between a literary and popular work is mostly a question of the importance of language. Ideally, a good literary novel should have an excellent style and a strong plot and characters. However, for a literary author, literary style tends to come before plot (if character is neglected as well, I for one will give up). It should be more difficult for Gus than for January to churn out text, as every sentence has to sing. 

January's "literary" novel sounds interesting and like something I would like to read, but it's more what I'd call middle-brow than high-brow. As for Gus, in not changing the setting of his novel, I'd argue that he misses the brief completely. The setting for a romance is important, and a potentially suicidal cult is... well... not it. Surprisingly, though, the scenes where Gus and January research the cult plot line are fascinating.

So, yes, as you've gathered, I'm really into the "book plot". It was the same in Book Lovers where the heroine – with the help of her love interest – ended up having to edit a novel where the hard-as-nails protagonist clearly seemed based on herself (a plot line that could have been give more space in my view). I've started Henry's Happy Place now and am liking it, though I miss the bookishness. But hey, that's just me.

The bumpy ride of New New Doctor Who

I'm late with my blogging, partly because last week (the week before my summer vacation) was intense, partly because this is not an easy topic. So let's get it over with.

The latest series of Doctor Who, now airing on Disney Plus, has been labelled "season one", so as not to scare off new viewers. We are, then, officially, in a new Doctor Who era. I'll call it New New Who for now, in honour of New New York which featured in episodes like "New Earth" and "Deadlock" back in the good old days of Russell T Davies's first stint as show runner.

Up until now, I've agreed with the commonly held opinion that Davies aka RTD was the show's best show runner, while Steven Moffat was the best script writer. These high expectations make my disappointment in RTD's return all the greater. If Chibnall had still been in charge, I would probably be kinder to the season. There were still episodes I enjoyed, and flashes of the old magic showed even in the episodes I didn't particularly like. But this is RTD. Under his captaincy, Who should be better than just OK.

Who's to blame, then, for the decline of Doctor Who? Disney? Is it likely that I'd say that? No, I've got another scapegoat in mind. I've made it clear more than once, the first time after the overall underwhelming 60th Anniversary Specials, that my enjoyment of Doctor Who would depend on in what degree Davies steered clear of his own irritating brand of political and social commentary. And... well... he didn't.

It started merely as an annoyance. The first episode "Space Babies" (or second if you count the Christmas special "The Church on Ruby Road" which I still think is great) had some political commentary smuggled in, but it was puzzling rather than anything else. The issue with "Space Babies" was rather its over-childish plot, where nappies and a "bogey man" literally made out of bogeys played important parts. Not a good jumping-on point for the uninitiated, in spite of all the crammed-in exposition.

Then came "The Devil's Chord", which, again, wasn't overtly political, but seemed rather too pleased with itself for starring the drag artist Jinkx Monsoon as the villain Maestro. I thought the concept and look of Maestro weren't bad, and I didn't mind the pronoun quibbling this time around as it fitted the story – when Maestro wearily explained "I'm 'them'" to a suitably non-plussed gent of the 1920's, it had echoes of "I am legion". But you must have pace when serving up an OTT villain, and this episode lingered far too long on Monsoon's scenery-chewing. The pace was off throughout, and in spite of the Beatles playing a part, we didn't get to hear a single Beatles song. 

The third episode was "Boom", penned by the great Steven Moffat himself. Surely now things would start to look up? Well, yes and no. There was much witty quick-fire dialogue, but we also got sanctimonious shots fired at the military, the church, AI and, of course, every Who writer's favourite target, Big Bad Capitalism. 

This is one of two episodes where the commentary crossed the line for me from merely irritating to downright offensive, when the Doctor spluttered to one of the "anglican marines": "Faith! The magic word that keeps you never having to think for yourself." Firstly, no, that's not what faith is. Secondly, how does a Doctor Who writer have the gall to put this on paper, when Who writers are the most notorious bunch of group-thinkers you can find? Script-writers with the wrong opinions are put in the dog house, and steps are taken to actively scare away viewers with the wrong opinions. "Thinking for yourself" is not encouraged.

I was as good as done with Who at this point, and then "73 Yards" came along, which I thought was an  excellent supernatural chiller. I'm not without notes, and the impact could lessen with time. I assumed, for instance, that the Welsh populist politican Roger ap Gwilliam who becomes "the most dangerous Prime Minister in history" (and this in a field which includes Harry Saxon aka the Master) either was or was possessed by the spirit of "Mad Jack", let out when the Doctor tramples on a fairy circle, and was thus a supernatural threat. But when Ruby finally manages to undo the whole fairy-circle-trampling timeline, Gwilliam is still a factor, so what gives? If he turns out to be just an ordinary bloke who wants to nuke the world for some reason, then I'll be mad myself. Nevertheless, this episode had plenty of atmosphere and is probably my favourite of the season.

So my hopes were raised again, and then "Dot and Bubble" came along, an amazingly unsubtle "social media bad" episode – the consciously unlikeable protagonist Lindy can't even walk without her bubble of media content around her where arrows tell her where to go. But this wasn't even the worst of it. People have gushed over the episode as a "masterclass of messaging" for tackling racism. Lindy and her all-white pals turn down the Doctor's help at the end, because he isn't "one of them" – that is, it's heavily implied, because he's black. What commentators have overlooked is that this supposedly brave bit of denunciation of prejudice is heavily prejudiced itself. The episode's lesson seems to be that rich, social-media-obsessed youngsters are horrible, that if AI turned sentient it would rise up against them, and that they deserve to die. 

Oh, but it's all right to savagely attack "rich kids", isn't it, especially if they're white? They're so privileged, they can take it. I'm sure that kind of thinking never led to anything bad.

The last three episodes of the season I liked. I had my issues with "Rogue", such as the fact that the writers clearly hadn't done any research about the Regency whatsoever except watch Bridgerton (which is more a fantasy drama than a historical one). But Rogue was a charming character, a bit of a Captain Jack clone, but I like Captain Jack. His romance with this Doctor was believable enough to me; I'm  ready to roll with the concept that romantic/sexual preferences can change with each Time Lord regeneration, and besides, judging by the Master (which perhaps one shouldn't), Time Lords are up for just about anything.

Many reviews I've seen were disappointed by the finale, but this was good old RTD Who for me – complete with the problems of RTD Who or indeed any Doctor Who in the form of an all-to-easily-defeated Big Bad and giant plot holes. I don't mind. Give me powerful confrontations; emotional beats that work; what others may call gobbledegook but what I call Whovian poetry, such as the harbinger character rattling off the members of the Pantheon of Discord with all their promising villainous attributes; and finally new mysteries which may not have a satisfying payoff but are fun while they last, and I'll not complain.

All I ask is that I'm spared political posturing which aims neither to convince the doubtful, nor bolster those who think as the writers do, but only to provoke those who don't share Davies's supposedly enlightened outlook. It's not so much agenda pushing as agenda shoving, not so much messaging (as no reasoned argument is made) as a parading of views. Doctor Who is supposed to have a broader appeal than, say, Davies's It's a Sin, and it's a problem when viewers are more or less told they're not good enough to watch a show they may have grown up with.

"I don't care what you think", the Doctor says in "Dot and Bubble", "And you can say whatever you want. You can think absolutely anything. I will do anything, if you just allow me to save your lives." Oh, Doctor. If only that were true.