Review: Married At First Sight Australia, Season 10

I generally don’t watch “reality TV”. I remember when British television launched Big Brother. It was baffling. It was as if the contestants were lab rats in a maze and we were watching them eat, sleep, and claw each other. The firm behind Big Brother, Endemol, apparently has gone in for an even more torturous […]

Review: Superman: Red Son starring Jason Isaacs and Vanessa Marshall

I must admit that I’m not a “comic book” sort of person. I never collected them. I watched some superhero cartoons on Saturday mornings when I was a boy. I don’t recall specific plots, but I do remember that the Green Lantern’s powers were useless against items coloured yellow. Also, there was a “Bizarro” version […]

Revisiting “Four Weddings and Funeral”

I remember the first time I saw “Four Weddings and a Funeral”.  I was visiting the Cheshire town of Wilmslow, and it was being shown in an old movie theatre in the centre of town.  I speculated that the theatre hadn’t changed much since the 1920’s: the seats were worn, and the floors were sticky […]

Transparently Love

I am not a fan of the Amazon series “Transparent”; I live in a country whose government is presently going through a nervous breakdown, so watching the neuroses of others played out on a screen is an unlikely form of entertainment.  Also, the revelations about Jeffrey Tambor’s conduct towards women makes the programme less than […]

Review: Tony Benn: “Will and Testament”

I owe Tony Benn a great deal. While he was Minister for Technology between 1966 and 1970, Mr. Benn created a British equivalent to IBM, International Computers Limited. Although its history was not trouble free, it was a success story; it was there that I began my working life after I graduated from University. It […]

Review: “Gone Girl” starring Ben Affleck and Rosamund Pike

Some films are meant to be taken at face value: a car chase is a car chase, an explosion is an explosion, and they are there solely to get the adrenalin pumping and to attract the eye. Other films are purposefully deeper: for example, the German film, “The Lives of Others” is designed to stimulate […]

Review: “Blithe Spirit” by Noël Coward, starring Angela Lansbury and Charles Edwards

It’s difficult for me to say when I first became aware of Angela Lansbury. Perhaps it was due the Disney film “Bedknobs and Broomsticks” in which she played the trainee witch Eglantine Price. It may have been when I saw her on television in the long running series “Murder She Wrote”. She certainly caught my […]

Review: “The Spirit of 45” directed by Ken Loach

[AMAZONPRODUCTS asin=”B00B26XU62″] Ed Miliband has just announced revisions in the Labour Party’s relationship with the trade unions. Previously, affiliated unions automatically donated part of their members’ dues into the party’s coffers. The forthcoming changes mean that this will have to be a conscious choice by each individual member. This represents a dramatic shift: there was […]

A Reticent Wagnerian

I work in an open plan office; there are positives and negatives. On the plus side, at least I’m not confined to a cubicle and I can converse with many of my colleagues without leaving my chair. Less happily, when it’s a particularly busy day and the phones are going off every few minutes and […]

Review: “Skyfall” starring Daniel Craig and Javier Bardem

[AMAZONPRODUCT=B006X040NY] I thought that James Bond had turned a page. Both of Daniel Craig’s initial outings in the role were markedly different from the blend of high-tech silliness and misogyny which characterised the previous episodes: his was a James Bond that could genuinely fall in love, get hurt (indeed nearly die), and was kept in […]

Me And My Blog

Picture of meI'm a Doctor of Creative Writing, a husband, a son, a brother, an uncle, a published novelist, a technologist, a student, and still an amateur in much else.