Yesterday Origins – strong adventure game, sequel to Yesterday (see Seen and Heard Jan-Mar). Unlike this reviewer, I thought this was actually better than the original; at least the trans-historical story hung together better, and the female protagonist, basically just a love interest in the original game, here at least has a bit more to do. I rather liked her troubled relationship with John Yesterday with which the game starts, as well as the steady drip-feed of revelations in both the past (the era of the Spanish Inquisition) and the present. Nice puzzle-solving mechanic too, involving acquisition and selection of the correct ideas (represented by icons, generated by interaction with people and things) as well as objects in your inventory. I found myself caring about John and Pauline this time, which I didn’t in the previous game, despite (or maybe because) this one is even more grisly and pessimistic.
Ghostbusters Afterlife – now this is how to do a forty-years-on homage, with respect for the spirit of the original and the skill to recreate it with totally new characters, rather than depending on quotes and repetition of tropes (although there are plenty of those too). Mckenna Grace, playing geek girl Phoebe, is a revelation; her firing a proton pack from the external gunner seat of the speeding Ectomobile is one of the defining images of the film.
Horrible Histories: The Movie – tremendous, often hilarious, fun film, just like the TV series. Two really impressive things: (1) that they managed to extend what is essentially a sketch show into a full length story, set in Roman Britain and centred on Boudicca’s rebellion (including the definitive rendering of Boudicca’s song); (2) they neatly side-stepped the child-unfriendly aspects of the historical actuality, doing so with a knowing wink. (As in the happy ending finale song: “Merge our cultures, mix our past, / Maybe next time wait to be asked / Sharing's good, Sharing is fun, / Shame you had to kill everyone… / Yeah but let's not talk about that.”) Cudos too for securing Derek Jacobi to reprise his stammering role of Emperor Claudius, as a cameo (he dies, poisoned by his wife, in the first scene).
Mission Impossible – the sixties television show, now being re-shown on Legend. When the BBC first showed it in 1970, it was selective, omitting entirely the first season (in which the IMF was headed not by Jim Phelps but Dan Briggs, who wasn’t as good – for one thing, his plans didn’t always work), and then showing only the best episodes, and my own re-viewing has followed their selection, replaying the experience of my childhood. First episode: 'The Astrologer' (2:13), featuring Cinnamon (the beauteous Barbara Bain), pretending to be the titular astrologer, and a remote controlled dummy, which does just one thing, jerking his arm downwards (“that’s all he needs to do”); next 'The Mercenaries' (3:4), in which Barney and Willy extract the gold from a locked vault by drilling into it from below and melting it out. Other memorable episodes include 'The Exchange' (3:12), in which poor claustrophobic Cinnamon is captured and disturbingly terrorised, while Jim and the team liberate and extract information from one of their own side’s intelligence prisoners to exchange for her; and 'The Submarine' (4:17) in which an ex-Nazi is tricked into revealing the location of hidden Nazi funds, which he has stubbornly resisted for decades, by use of a fake submarine. These best episodes stand up really well today; the basic formula of the impossible mission, with the gradual revelation of the steps of its execution, thus preserving the mystery and surprise, is still a winner.
Astrid: Murder in Paris – classy French detective show. This is an argument for listings magazines; I’d never have spotted this, hidden away in the More4 schedules, if it hadn’t appeared in a Radio Times ‘Pick of the Day’ feature. The hook is that the principle character, Astrid, is autistic, and so we see her alternately terrified by everyday social interactions and brilliantly insightful into the clues of a case, through her ability to observe and recall detail and see patterns. The set-up pairs her, an archivist in the Criminal Records Bureau, with Raphaëlle, an inspector, and the relationship between them – Raphaëlle tenderly protective of Astrid – is one of the joys of the show.
Red Eye – high-voltage ITV-produced six-episode contemporary thriller, with Jing Lusi as the ex-Hong-Kong-Chinese Met officer escorting Richard Armitage as a prisoner on an overnight (red eye) flight to Beijing. Very compelling, and I’m just glad I was able to watch the episodes in quick succession, rather than having to wait a week, in order to keep track of the twisty, turney plot, in which revelations come fast, like summer thunderstorms, involving the secret services of the UK, the USA and China, all focused on that plane and the information which Richard Armitage may or may not, unknown to himself, be carrying. And of course I enjoyed seeing Chinese people taking a variety of leading roles in a top-quality drama.
Mirages of Winter – a replay for me of this Zen-like meditative game, like an animated Chinese ink painting, in which you follow a fisherman as winter storms, snow and ice give way to spring. Much better second time, when I had some residual memory of the solutions to the puzzles – more precisely, what you need to do to move the game on to the next scene – and so spent very little time in frustration and more time enjoying the sights and sounds, which is surely the point of the game. (See Seen and Heard, April-June 2020.)
The Excavation of Hob's Barrow – well-reviewed and award-winning adventure game. I suppose it should be classed as a horror game, but I’d say it’s more creepy than the shocks and scares than that label might imply; there’s a sense of menace and dread from the start, and it builds and builds until it can build no more. What keeps one playing, even though one just knows the ending is going to be horrible, is the principal character Thomasina Bateman: a late Victorian lady archaeologist, who arrives in a small Yorkshire town to excavate the nearby burial mound of Hob’s Barrow – about which the locals seem to either deny knowledge, be vague in their information, or adversarial in their warnings to Thomasina to stay away. The voice actor for Thomasina is particularly good, giving depth and character to each line; I particularly liked the way she says “Hogwash!” – her favourite word for dismissing the folklore of the locals (fairies, witches, hobgoblins, something worse): in the early parts of the game, where she is still strong in the scientific rationalism in which she was brought up by her father, she says it with confidence and contempt; in the later parts of the game, it is undeniably defensive, as the uncanny events pressing in on her become ever more threatening. The graphics are very simple and highly pixelated; nothing realistic is needed, and actually it helps one engage with the story to know that one’s never going to see anything too gory and horrible; the horror is all in the imagination. The title screen is particularly strong and well-designed; good games designers know that the title and main menu are the things which a player is going to see again and again, and so use it to establish mood and character for each playing session. In this case, we see Thomasina in a train carriage (the only non-pixelated graphic in the game), with Hob’s Barrow visible on a hillside through the window, the purple light which in the game is associated with the supernatural shining from its door. She is writing a letter; the game events are narrated by her in the past tense, so perhaps (as one reviewer thought) it’s the story of the game she is writing. But no, that can’t be it, because she is writing her account from – no, I won’t say! (Spoiler!) Unless perhaps what this shows is her travelling back to Hob’s Barrow in her imagination as she writes. So the imagination is already being invoked from the title screen. And the title music: howling, mournful, pounding. This is a game which stays with one long after one has finished playing.
On Chesil Beach and Effie Grey – two films, seen close together and connected in my mind, although very different (the first set in the early 1960s, sensitively based on a novel by Ian McEwan, the second set in the mid-nineteenth century and based on real historical characters) because of their similar theme of a love-relationship driven onto the rocks by a disastrous wedding night as a result of the would-be lovers’ sexual ignorance and inexperience. What struck me was how this could (and probably does) all happen again today, though perhaps not a late as a wedding night; the problem would not be ignorance but mis-information, thanks to internet pornography.
Draw On Sweet Night – concert by Voces8. Wonderful to hear them in the flesh, having first seriously discovered them through their livestreamed “Live from London” concerts during Covid Lockdown, with a programme of their (and our) favourites, including Arvo Pärt’s 'The Deer’s Cry', which I felt I understood for the first time. I knew the story: how St Patrick and his companions were kept safe from those who planned to ambush them, because he prayed for protection and so they appeared to their would-be attackers as a deer and a faun. But the Voces8 introduction explained how this relates to the music: why it keeps stopping and starting again. The repeated chant “Christ with me, Christ in me” is said by a person in terror of their life, pausing every few steps to check: have they been detected? And then, rather beautifully, as their confidence grows, and they realise that they are going to make it after all, they find they are able to extend their compassion even to their aggressors: “Christ in the heart of every man who thinks of me, Christ in the mouth of every man who speaks of me.” We may never have to live through such a situation (although these days, who can be sure), but if one does, this is the breastplate to have.
Vox Musica, 'L'Eco di Monteverdi' – a superb concert by this London-based choir, in the chapel of the Ducal Palace, Mantua, while Polymnia were giving concerts in nearby towns. Lots of Monteverdi, of course, this being the chapel in which he was Director, before he went to Venice. A great sound and sensitive singing; it was like every member of the choir was a soloist (and many actually did sing solos).
Star Trek: Deep Space Nine – rewatching Season 2 of this show, which I reckon the most serious and most grown-up of the Star Trek franchises. Some episodes should have been good but weren’t (such as 'The Maquis' – why is Sisko’s betrayal by his old Starfleet Academy friend so unmoving), but a few are top notch and classics, notably 'The Alternate' (Odo suffers Oedipal problems when he re-encounters the Bajoran scientist who discovered and raised / experimented on him), 'Necessary Evil' (a burglary which leaves Quark fighting for his life leads Odo to reinvestigate a murder during the Cardassian occupation and hence to re-evaluate his relationship with Kira), and 'Whispers' (Chief O’Brien has an Invasion of the Body Snatchers experience, when everyone else on the station starts behaving oddly, so that a massive conspiracy seems the only possible explanation).
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