Peaky Blinders – Season 6

Sarah: With a film in the making, it was interesting to see how the final season of Peaky Blinders played out. I was fairly late in the game to the show, binge watching the first four seasons before the release of the fifth back in 2019, and I absolutely loved it. However after getting delayed by the pandemic, it’s been 3 years since the fifth season was released, so long that I’d forgotten everything that had come before. This final season follows on from the events of the previous season and the aftermath of Edward Mosley’s rally, as Tommy Shelby and his family try and navigate the murky world of crime, politics and relationships.

The sad loss of Helen McCrory has definitely impacted this season. The showrunners have done their best to see her off, but there is a very sad Polly-shaped hole evident throughout the season. I also felt like the majority of characters are given short shrift in favour of concentrating on Tommy, and while Cillian Murphy is a fantastic actor, there needs to be more of the other Shelbys too – Ada, Arthur and even Michael are all side-lined. Arthur especially was one of my favourite characters due to his brash, aggressive nature and here he’s a shadow of his former self, an oversight and barely there until the final act. The only ones who get their brief moments to shine are Tommy’s ‘new’ son Duke and dock worker Hayden Stagg.

As always the series looks good and has a cracking soundtrack, but the plot this time became a bit irritating and repetitive. It didn’t help that the ending wasn’t actually a real finite ending, it wasn’t a proper conclusion and end and it’s no surprise considering they’re making a film. Personally, I don’t think a film is necessary and will ruin what could have been a triumphant end to a great show.

Bad Vegan: Fame. Fraud. Fugitives

Erika: Bad Vegan is the bizarre story of Sarma Melngailis, chef and former owner of a raw vegan restaurant in New York City. She meets this rando named Shane or Anthony and is ‘brainwashed’ into committing financial fraud. I really… don’t know what to say.
This story was bonkers. This chick actually thought her dog would live forever? Really? I thought it was a joke, but it was for real.

Sarma was not a likable person at all. At the beginning of the series, I smelled some bull, and I didn’t believe half what she said. How she went on about how she could be Alec Baldwin’s partner if only she’d been single was off. I’m not saying she’s a gold digger, but she didn’t go after broke guys. Even her father suggested that was the case towards the end of the series. The last phone conversation she had with the Shane/Anthony guy solidified for me that she was probably in on everything.

Everyone’s raving about this, and I get it; the story is bizarre. But was this a good documentary series? Not necessarily. Like many Netflix documentary series, it didn’t need more than two episodes. If you want to see what the hype is about and want to laugh at a grown woman thinking her dog will live forever, go ahead.

Various

Lee: My TV viewing this month has been very bitty, with plenty of shows started but not finished, so nothing really for me to properly review. We’ve only had a couple of episodes released for the sixth and final season of Better Call Saul so far (at the time of writing this), but it’s already reminded me that it is one of the most consistently well written shows on TV right now. Despite being the final season, and even after these first two opening episodes, we still seem to be a very long way from the Saul Goodman of Breaking Bad, with Kim beginning to turn more towards the dark side as we meet Betsy and Craig Kettleman once again. Meanwhile, the cartel storyline continues to play out separately, with Lalo and Nacho dealing with the aftermath of last seasons failed ranch hit in two very different ways. As usual, it’s an absolutely gripping watch and I cannot wait to see how it all plays out and comes to an end.

Another show that I was looking forward to is Russian Doll, which recently returned for a second season on Netflix. The first season was great fun, with Nadia (Natasha Lyonne) stuck in a time loop, dying over and over, only to reawaken at her 36th birthday party to the sounds of Harry Nilsson’s “Gotta Get Up”. But, unfortunately, despite all episodes releasing on Netflix, I’ve already ground to a halt on episode two. This time round, Nadia boards a 6 train heading south, only to realise that she’s headed back in time to 1982, the year she was born. I will stick with it to see how it plays out, but I’ve found the first two episodes to be pretty dull so far. Hopefully it’s building towards something a lot more interesting.

If you watch The Handmaid’s Tale then you don’t need me to tell you how incredible a show it is. It’s another one of those shows that I never got round to checking out, with my wife and I now in the process of correcting that mistake as we work through all of the episodes on Prime Video. We’re currently nearing the end of season three and were over the moon when Prime made all episodes of season four free to watch too, meaning we can steam straight on into it after this season. The cast and writing are superb and I highly recommended it if you’re the same as I was and haven’t decided to give it a go yet.

The Bubble

Sarah: The Bubble is the latest effort by director Judd Apatow, released on Netflix. It follows a group of actors returning to film an epic dinosaur sequel known as “Cliff Beasts 6” at the height of the pandemic. Locked up together inside a grand hotel and with a production company determined to get the film finished no matter the cost, the cast soon come to blows as they try to overcome a number of covid-related issues and get the film finished.

With a cast including the likes of Karen Gillan, David Duchovny, Pedro Pascal and Leslie Mann, I had at least some hope that this would be vaguely funny or at least slightly entertaining, but sadly I couldn’t have been more wrong. This was so un-funny that it was painful to watch. Aside from a couple of TikTok video type skits with the cast dancing that were slightly amusing, I don’t think I laughed at all. The film inside the film was just stupid (they really should’ve taken notes from Galaxy Quest), and the whole thing was just so long. There is no need for any comedy to be longer than 2 hours, and especially not one as dire as this. I also take issue with the fact that this is a film based around the pandemic, as personally I feel like it’s a bit too soon to be making light of all of the restrictions and everything we’ve had to go through these past few years. It might have been forgivable had it actually been funny, but it wasn’t. The only good thing about this film was a brief cameo from James McAvoy, but sadly that wasn’t enough to make me wish I hadn’t bothered. If I had to score it I’d give it a 1.

Worst Roommate Ever

Erika: When this show popped up in the “New” section of Netflix, I skipped past it. The title was so cringy; it was a hard pass. Then, I got a text from my friend, a fellow true crime buff, asking if I’d started watching it. So, I decided to give it a go. The series is five episodes long, the first three are individual stories, and the last two episodes are the same case. I was only aware of one of the cases out of the four presented. That doesn’t happen very often since I am a true-crime documentary fiend.

The roommate situations were varied: a scary granny with a boarding house for the less fortunate, a love-obsessed roommate, a violent conman, and a serial squatter. I’ve always had an aversion to roommates, and the series solidified my no-roommate-ever stance.
Even though the title is off-putting, it’s a pretty good true-crime documentary. It has a nice variety and is sufficiently entertaining.

We’re All Going To The World’s Fair

Lee: Every so often I watch a movie and absolutely hate it, only to look online and find out that a lot of people felt the opposite. After watching this I was going to write a full review for the site, but it wouldn’t have been a very favourable review, and I hate doing that when it comes to smaller movies. Hopefully this mini rant won’t be so bad…

Teenager Casey (Anna Cobb) spends most of her time in her attic bedroom. She follows the steps needed to begin playing an online horror game and starts to document her life to see what happens. Details surrounding the game aren’t clear, but we learn that players begin by reciting its name, drawing their own blood and then watching an online video, all of which is then supposed to unleash some kind of supernatural force that starts to take them over.

I liked the idea behind this and there are literally two moments where I thought that it was going to start to get really interesting. But it didn’t and instead I ended up spending most of the runtime shouting at the screen, begging for something to happen, pleading for there to be a point to it all. Turns out that there wasn’t and it’s just one big collection of scenes which are either extremely dull, serve no real purpose whatsoever, or both. This really didn’t work for me at all but, as I mentioned before, I do seem to be in the minority, so why not just ignore me and give it a go for yourself! It arrives in UK cinemas from April 29, and on Digital Download and Blu-ray from May 9.