Seen and heard: January to March 2018

Call the Midwife – box set of Series 1-6. Perfect television, perfect comfort viewing.

Norse Myths, by Neil Gaiman – powerful, economical re-telling of the Asgard stories, surely the definitive version for today.

Down Among the Dead Men – Ingle-produced digital conversion of a 1993 gamebook, with compelling writing style and gameplay which had me researching Twine (an interactive narrative authoring tool, whose potential I first saw when playing a training scenario by Cathy Moore).

A House Through Time – lovely compassionate TV series with David Olusoga tracing the inhabitants of a single Liverpool house since its original construction in the mid-eighteenth century: a microcosm of British history.

The Post – gripping and timely film, reconstructing The Washington Post’s defiance of political pressure to published leaked documents showing that the Vietnam War was going a lot worse than the government was saying. Tom Hanks is sturdy as the editor, of course, but an interesting and important role for Meryl Streep as the paper’s owner, giving her a prominence which she never had in All the President’s Men. Lovely reconstruction of old-technology hot metal typesetting too, when her critical decision to publish sets the presses rolling.

What Remains of Edith Finch – beautifully-crafted atmospheric game, in which the eponymous young woman returns to her abandoned family home and recovers the tragic histories of her ancestors, all of whom died in bizarre circumstances. For a game in which death is a recurring theme, the mood is neither depressing nor ghoulish: just sad. Who’d have thought a “walking simulator” could be so engaging.

Suffragette – difficult, infuriating film telling the story of The Cause through the story of an imaginary working class woman (superbly played by Carey Mulligan) propelled into greater and greater militancy not so much by suffragette campaigners as by the hostility and humiliation she suffers as she starts to step out of line. A more useful tale for these times than the usual narrative of the movement’s leaders.

The View from the Cheap Seats, by Neil Gaiman – fun collection of reviews and introductions, really making one want to read the books and comics about which he’s enthusing: the hallmark of a good review.

Art, Passion and Power: The Story of the Royal Collection – Andrew Graham-Dixon’s enjoyable and informative TV romp through the history of royal art-buying, explaining why so much top-notch stuff, and why those particular items, ended up in royal palaces.

Nigel Slater’s Middle East – always a pleasure to watch a TV programme from Nigel Slater, here sitting down to eat daily food with ordinary families in Lebannon, Iran and Turkey: about as far from restaurant chef cuisine as you can get, and demonstrating how traditional food is related to the physical and social landscape from which it comes.

Trumbo – real-event-based film drama, showing the power of the Hollywood blacklist in the McCarthy era and how writers succeeded in working covertly, ultimately rendering the blacklist ridiculous, when Trumbo won an Oscar for a screenplay he hadn’t officially written.

Goetia – aesthetically pleasing but (for me) deeply boring game, in which you play a ghost drifting around her family mansion, trying to undo the damage of occult experiments gone awry. I found it impossible to get interested in any of the characters (not helped by an absence of voice acting and, I think, the author not being a native English speaker), and the secret passwords and astrological / alchemical codes which form the basis of the puzzles left me cold. This game seemed to be all head and no heart, which is probably right for occult philosophy, but doesn’t make for a good adventure – at least for me; others seem to have liked it.

The Silk Road Ensemble – documentary with fantastic footage of Yo-Yo Ma and his motley band of enthusiasts finding and making beautiful music together. Some great discoveries for me here, for example Wu Man the Chinese pipa player.

Tones, Drones and Arpeggios: The Magic of Minimalism – informative exploration of some of Minimalism’s milestones (La Monte Young, Terry Riley, Philip Glass, Steve Reich), with great archive footage and knowledgeable interviewing and reconstructions by musician Charles Hazelwood.

Civilisations – appointment TV, of course, even if only to see what Simon Schama, Mary Beard and David Olusoga do with the air-space, but I have yet to get through an episode without falling asleep and having to catch up on recording. So far Schama has been totally traditional, Beard critical and challenging but in expected ways; the big surprise, I gather from viewers who’ve skipped ahead on the iPlayer, is going to be Olusoga telling a whole new story.