The latest series of Taskmaster feels a little like an ageing champion taking a valedictory lap, running on nostalgic fumes and goodwill. I think it’s probably time for it join Dr Who in having a bit of a rest.

I will always defend every aspect of SHAKESPEARE IN LOVE, a film I adore from top to bottom, but especially Ben Affleck’s performance. He seems often to be cited as a weak link but I think he’s a hoot, and pitches it exactly right.

Can the readers of audiobooks featuring quotes from Churchill resist the urge to give their impression a go? History suggests not.

Starting a petition for Tegan and Sara to record a less holiday-centric take on Make You Mine This Season. It’s one of my favourite songs ever but listening to it outside December makes me feel mildly guilty (but I do it anyway because I am punk).

I have now cancelled Disney+, Prime Video, Sky Showtime and Netflix for various political disappointments. I am saving a lot of money and getting a lot of reading done, but I am going to be sad to miss the final season of The Boys. I will have to infer its resolution from new Homelander GIFs.

Shame on Downing Street for going along with this. So much for being committed to a free press

Watching this state visit, and the fawning of the British establishment, and the breathless reporting by the Beeb, is turning my stomach. What a joke of a country.

The Emmys seem to have made an uncharacteristically high number of sensible decisions last night; the best by far, for being all the more unexpected, is Jeff Hiller. If it helps one more person discover the joy that is Somebody Somewhere, that can only be a good thing for the world.

I know it was thirty years ago, but I’m still annoyed that the Battle of Britpop, the highest profile moment for the music of the mid-90s, featured comfortably the worst singles either of the two bands had released to that point*. It made us look stupid.

Either this guy’s parents took an incredibly literal approach to baby names, or the BBC’s proof-reading has really gone to heck.

This morning’s office view. Not too shabby.

My phone has decided, on no evidence, that I really want to listen to Wet, Wet, Wet and keeps adding them to playlists. I have never wanted to listen to Wet, Wet, Wet.

In honour of my first stab at Swedish theatre, I have been thinking about the shows I have most enjoyed. My ten most wonderful stage experiences (plays only) in purely chronological order:

I like living in Sweden, the dreadful current government notwithstanding, but the thing I miss most is theatre. I have finally screwed my courage to the sticking place and booked to see a play; I hope I should be able at least to follow it, if not appreciate it, and things can only get better.

I am reading Phineas Finn. Out hero has just - despite his misgivings - signed his name on a bill for £250. I have read enough nineteenth century novels to know that this never ends well.

I am finally reading Brooklyn, in anticipation of reading Long Island. The screen adaptation is one of my most beloved films, and the book - of course - is just as wonderful. Unfortunately, literary context does not in any way diminish my RAGE towards Tony, a character I despise.

If there is still an America in 2028 which holds elections, I hope JB Pritzker is in the mix; partly because he seems like a very good and humane politician and partly because I would like Oliver Platt to be in line for a juicy role in a biopic.

Stephen Glass is probably feeling outraged after he put in so much hard graft making things up the old-fashioned way.

The trailer for THE ROSES is making me wistful for the original, which was the first 15 certificate film I ever saw in the cinema (at the late lamented Granada in Harrow). I was fourteen and a half when it came out, and that was about as close to being a rebel and tearaway as ever I came.

I think Evans, Pine and Hemsworth are all so lovely because Pratt somehow became the sin-eater for all the Chrises (and he is really tucking in).

Every Monday, I fire up a VPN for Only Connect on iPlayer and chat to my mum on WhatsApp as we watch it together in real time. The internet may mainly be terrible and hastening the end of civilisation, but it’s also a little bit brilliant sometimes.

Yeah, maybe apologising to Jenrick for suggesting he was xenophobic was a bit much, BBC.

The stranglehold Lipton has on tea sales outside the UK is bewildering. No wonder people think Brits are weird if they imagine we swig that bilge all day.

It's a tiny drop in the ocean of horror engulfing us but for some reason this struck a particularly depressing chord with me. Apparently calling racists xenophobic is worse than them being racist. I used to be so proud to work for the BBC. What is the point of them now? www.bbc.com/news/article...

Given my fondness for 80s teen movies and vampires, I’m embarrassed it’s taken me this long to see THE LOST BOYS but I’m so pleased I waited to do so on a big screen. I loved every gnarly, grainy, seedy, gory second of it, and even had the joy of an unexpected Edward Herrmann. Two fangs up!

It is long past time for someone to cast Peter MacNicol and Joshua McGuire as a brittle, neurotic father and son. Tom Hollander can play the louche brother/uncle.

Niche skeet, but Frederick Kerr - who plays the Baron in FRANKENSTEIN (1931) - is an uncanny vocal doppelgänger for Roger Livesey. You wouldn’t think it possible for two people to have sounded like that, but life finds a way.

There is no bigger glow-up in recorded history than Dan Stevens in Downton Abbey (boke) vs Dan Stevens in literally everything else.

The Gold is absolutely fantastic television; it takes the true crime docudrama and broadens it into a clever, provocative and compelling reflection on the state of the nation. Neil Forsyth also wrote Bob Servant, Guilt, and Eric, Ernie and Me. What an extraordinary range and talent.

Bela Lugosi is a truly striking presence but otherwise DRACULA (1931) is a bit of a chore to sit through even at 75 minutes, with stilted, stagey performances and lethargic pacing. Its occasionally powerful moments come entirely from vestigial echoes of the novel’s brilliance.

I revisited Fred Zinneman’s A MAN FOR ALL SEASONS. Beautifully written and performed, though I am more instinctively sympathetic to Hilary Mantel’s portrait than Robert Bolt’s. I like that they’re united in contempt for Richard Rich, one of history’s greatest weasels.

What a lovely book this is, tender and thoughtful on loss and forgiveness. It also made me think of how many of my favourite novels are set in religious communities: In This House of Brede, The Corner That Held Them, The Bell, The Name of the Rose. I think it’s the morbid fascination of the atheist.

The new generation of Oasis fans inspired by the comeback will never be able to recreate the experience of the release of Be Here Now. Months and months of breathless hype followed by the catastrophic bellyflop of 80 minutes of coked out dad rock that everyone forgot by the end of its first day out.

I am an incredibly soft touch for Superman films (I even like THE QUEST FOR PEACE) but I had an absolute blast with SUPERMAN. Bold, bright, silly and fun (if a little over-frantic in the third act). It finds a new style and timbre for the supergenre, which is no mean feat.

An unplanned (courtesy of the vagaries of Stockholm’s public library reservations queue) but serendipitous and hugely enjoyable double bill. The Savage is the more substantial work in every sense, but Ian Wade’s book is a sparklingly Smash Hitsy soupçon.

After loving (most of) the Barchester novels, I am making my way through Trollope’s parliamentary novels. Has there ever been a more unlikable set of characters than the cast of Can You Forgive Her? All of the Vavasors are horrors - either vile or pathetic - and the Pallisers are ghastly.

I revisited Michael Winterbottom’s WONDERLAND last night. It’s not quite the masterpiece I remembered, but that merely relegated it to being very good, and it’s a truly great London film and, now, a tremendous time capsule of the grimy city of the 90s.

Oh, Brian. This doesn’t feel quite right as a tribute since he didn’t write it and it’s Dennis singing - but I’ve always loved this propulsive arrangement (which definitely IS Brian) and exuberant performance, complete with Mike uselessly prancing like a tit. youtu.be/zBs6hMMcqMg?...

There is no drama queen quite like Photobucket, whose breathless daily threats to delete my account have now been rolling in for at least two years.

A new (to me) credit at the end of THE PHOENICIAN SCHEME: ‘This work may not be used to train AI.’

Oh, but THE FINAL RECKONING is a mess. Wildly incoherent - spatially, temporally and narratively - and equal parts pompous, dull and silly. It’s less a film than an LLM’s approximation of one, which I suppose is at least thematically appropriate. What a disappointing end to such a strong franchise.

I adore Pulp, and I am very happy that they’re back. I especially appreciate that, as a nod to long term fans, Got To Have Love sounds like a pastiche of literally every Pulp song at the same time.

Hacks is getting very close to joining Friday Night Lights, Freaks and Geeks and The Americans in my tv pantheon. The latest episode was breathtakingly good. It made me laugh while it made me cry; can’t ask for better than that.

I think we’ve seen enough of them by now to say that the best legacy sequel, by a mile, is T2 TRAINSPOTTING. (Worst is obviously Trump 47.)

Always a good day when you get the Pac-Man grille on the T-Bana.

I became a fan of X Japan in 2016 (after seeing the fabulous WE ARE X). At that time, their new album, first announced for 2011, was going to come out in March 2017. There’s still no sign of it. They make the Stone Roses look like Taylor Swift. But I love them anyway. youtu.be/02x2kQrT0zc?...

David Haig maintains the tradition of gloriously unlikely casting of creative directors of ballet companies, alongside Peter Gallagher in CENTER STAGE and Malcolm McDowell in THE COMPANY.

Over-written dialogue, broad characters, heavy handed pop culture references and Yanic Truesdale for some reason: Étoile is most definitely an Amy Sherman-Palladino joint. It’s no Bunheads but it’s a much better waste of Jeff Bezos’ money than Blue Origin.

I have just moved house and, thanks to my ideological refusal to organise my bookshelves other than by size and inability to stop impulsively buying books, have discovered several multiples - which means I get the pleasure of giving the spares to friends. But which to keep and which to share?

Penguin Diplomacy, by the brilliant John Finnemore, is probably my favourite half-hour of radio ever and it has become shockingly topical since it concerns diplomatic disputes over Danish territories and small islands principally inhabited by penguins. castbox.fm/episode/John...