Magic Mobile by Michael Frayn – lovely collection of short funny pieces, including many perceptive pastiches of people's extraordinary use of language. My favourites: 'As true as I'm standing here', a documentary presenter is determined to render the film-making process transparent to viewers by including ALL the shot footage. 'Well done ya!', a telesales caller is treated to unsolicited replies to their unsolicited questions. 'Oh, you shouldn't have' The MD of a gas company sends an inappropriately chatty letter to a customer who has just paid their final demand bill under threat of legal action.
Agent A: Puzzle in Disguise – very enjoyable escape room puzzle game. The sixties spy thriller theme – it both looks and sounds (musically) like The Incredibles – has you playing in first person as the eponymous secret agent (gender unspecified), in pursuit of the femme fatale Ruby La Rouge, who has set numerous obstacles and traps in your path while carelessly also leaving around sufficient tools, hints and passcodes for you to overcome them. See also a review (of Part 1 only), an interview with the designer, and a walkthrough guide.
Rusty Lake: Cube Escape – another escape room puzzle game, but this one is creepy: a bit David Lynch. Astonishing how hard puzzles can be, even in a very limited setting with very restricted possible actions. Thank goodness for walkthroughs...
Funeral of the Duke of Edinburgh – a most impressive display, actually made more impressive by Covid restrictions, without thousands of public spectators, and the Windsor Castle chapel choir replaced by four soloists who did a stunning job. See a detailed commentaries on the musical choices by John Rutter and on the performance by James MacMillan (composer).
Saved by a Stranger – BBC TV documentary series. The concept sounded a bit cheesy - people whose lives have been saved are reunited with the people who saved them - but it was actually moving and soul-enlarging, mainly down to two things. The first was the time and care taken to reconstruct for us the life-threatening circumstances (the 7/7 London terrorist bombings, the Bosnian genocide, HIV infection in the 1980s, the Belfast 'Troubles' etc). The second was Anita Rani as presenter and interlocutor for the survivors, displaying the necessary compassion and sensitivity to an extraordinary degree.
Baby Surgeons: Delivering Miracles – astonishing fly-on-the-wall documentary series of life-saving surgery inside the womb. If you needed to have it done, this is the team you’d want to have doing it.
Call the Midwife, series 10 – another set of challenging but heart-warming episodes, now up to 1966.
Gris – the game looked good, with an intriguing premise, but I just couldn't manage the platforming, and quickly abandoned it.
Jenny LeClue: Detectivú – well-reviewed cartoon adventure game. Now this is more like it! A game that isn't too hard (arguably it's too easy), yet manages to continually baffle and surprise. Jenny LeClue is the heroine of Arthur Finklestein's series of children's detective stories, now facing declining sales as readers start to find them too safe and trite. Under pressure from his publisher, Finkelstein throws Jenny into a challenging story, involving conspiracy, corporate cover-up and (gasp!) actual death, at least apparently. Pitch-perfect scripting and (in the enhanced edition) voice acting brings the story to life. Once again, indie studios show how it should be done.
The Odyssey – in a new well-received translation by Emily Wilson, breaking with the tradition (going back to Alexander Pope) of rendering it in portentous language. "Homer's language is markedly rhythmical, but it is not difficult or ostentatious.... Stylistic pomposity is entirely un-Homeric." (Translator's note, p. 83) Her straight-forward, ordinary language certainly makes it easier to see what is happening, and indeed not happening. The surprise for me was how little of the work is actually occupied by heroic adventures (which are all one gets in popular re-tellings), and how much by people being entertained as guests in each other's courts. Is this in fact a work primarily about hospitality? The ending – in which Athena abruptly intervenes to prevent all-out war between Odysseus's family and the relatives of the suitors he slaughtered – is just baffling.
Extra Life – BBC documentary series, in which David Olusoga and Steven Johnson recount the history and the science of four key developments which led to the past century's dramatic increase in life expectancy, with more than an eye on the current Covid pandemic: vaccination, drugs, data and hygiene behaviour. No dumbing down or presentational gimmicks, and great history from Olusoga (as you’d expect), always pointing out the social and political setting of what might otherwise appear as simple scientific progress. TV at its best.
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