2024 Review List
I haven’t done one of these “review” lists in a couple of years because there was a lot going on for me and my family in 2023 and 2024. We did a fair bit of travelling and moved three times in the space of 12 months, not something I want to do again in a hurry, although it now feels like it’s worked out well: after fifteen years in New York and New Jersey, another transatlantic move sees us back in Europe, dividing our time between the mainland and the UK.
Anyway...
I didn’t get as much time as I’d like last year to read or watch stuff, so this is really just a list of good things that kept me going as I worked.
About that: unless you follow me on soshul meedja (I am currently on BlueSky and IG - though jury’s out on the latter), you might not know that the long-promised graphic novel (and partial memoir) formerly known as Skin Trouble, about racism, anti-racism and the comparison of both in the UK and the USA is in the final stages of creation. More will be announced about its forthcoming publication by 23rd Street Books (Macmillan) later this year. Please stay tuned!
Podcasts
The following are the ones that have been essential news and current affairs listening for me:
Media Confidential Alan Rusbridger and Lionel Barber, former editors of The Guardian and The FT respectively, talking about anything that takes their fancy. Always informative and enlightening.
Origin Story Complex subject matter demystified and explained by the brilliant, insightful and sweary Ian Dunt and Dorian Lynskey. (If you’re on soshul meedja, i.e. BlueSky, it’s worth following both.)
Quiet Riot More humane insight on the state of world politics from Alex Andreou, Naomi Smith and Kenny Campbell.
Page 94 - the Private Eye podcast. Well, it’s Private Eye, innit?
This is Not a Drill Excellent deep dive into geopolitics from Gavin Esler and his team. They often cover climate change.
John Harris’ Politics Weekly UK - John Harris reports from the frontline of UK politics, always staying anchored to the lives of the ordinary peeps in the street.
Jonathan Freedland’s Politics Weekly US - one of the finest, most fair and informed political commentators out there does a weekly roundup of what passes for politics in the USA.
Good Bad Billionaire Like Origin Story, this gives you some good background on some of the individuals who shape the world we live in, with an exclusive focus on the super-rich. It’s also a more lighthearted take - sometimes.
Bubbling under: The Rest Is Politics, The New Yorker Radio Hour, anything of Channel 4’s output and, if you’re of a mind to know what’s going on in Hollywood, Matt Belloni’s The Town.
Culture and Fun Stuff…
Witch A documentary series about witches, historical and modern. If there’s one podcast on this list you listen to, make it this one.
North-East Witch Trials Needed more info after listening to the above - supplied here.
Uncanny If you haven’t heard of Uncanny at this point, now on its fifth series (?) you haven’t registered that our planet is moving into a nu-medieval era of phantasms, pageants of cruelty and techno-feudalism. Anyway, this might divert you from any worries about that, at least a little bit.
If Books Could Kill describes itself as, “The airport bestsellers that captured our hearts and ruined our minds.” ‘Nuff said.
Comfort Blanket Host Joel Morris is a comedy writer but this is more of a meditation upon those cultural artefacts we turn to when the world is just being a little too much today. Always in-depth and lovingly thoughtful with some great guests.
Scarred For Life based on the books of the same name and featuring many contributors to those fine publications plus some high profile broadcasters as guests. Always a laugh.
Startling Barbara Bain A dedicated “Watch Space: 1999 with me” podcast by the makers of the excellent Maximum Power Blake’s 7 podcast. Niche, maybe, but if you enjoy discussions of vintage British telly with an appreciative Australian flavour, this is for you. Joyously funny and insightful.
Strangers In Space There needs to be a Doctor Who podcast, right? SiS started out as one, but I honestly can’t keep up with it. It’s always good, always heartfelt and honest, and has in recent years transmogrified into a sort of critical catalogue that examines almost every aspect of pop culture that you can think of, at least from a UK perspective.
ITC Entertained The World Another vintage British TV podcast, much more magazine-styled and superblyresearched, but if you’re into these shows, you’ll love this.
Music
Anything on BBC Radio 6, but very specifically:
Zakia’s Dreamtime which has kept me going on several working weekend late nights. An exceptional show.
You can see the music I’ve bought on Bandcamp here. It’s by no means a definitive collection - I also buy a lot of old and new vinyl, a lot of reissues, box sets and film soundtracks on CD, but all the stuff here is... well, it’s my taste, not yours, but perhaps you’re curious and maybe you’ll find something you like. Civilization might be over soon, but we live in a golden age of music, and Bandcamp remains one of the best ways of supporting the artists who make it.
Box sets of 2024 - 1985 by The Waterboys. It’s essentially “The Making of” their third album, This Is The Sea, which is one of those LPs that was talismanic to me as a kid and soundtracked my entry into working adulthood. I got in fast and picked up the limited edition with the book by Mike Scott, which is OOP now, but there’s also a less exhaustive version that just has all the tracks (and of course you can stream it). If you happen to love that album, all the demos and sketches included here, from notions and inspirations to finished songs, give you a sense of how it all came together. Alchemy, basically.
Rusty Egan presents Blitzed. Basically, the best late 70s / early 80s mixtape you’ll ever hear, spread over 4 CDs. During the period he DJd at the legendary London Blitz club during which time Electronica was growing up, New Romanticism was born and post-punk was evolving. Egan was there, and the tracks contained herein are what he played. Hopefully there’ll be a Volume 2.
Comics
Shock, horror - I bought no “new” comics this year, aside from some of Paul Ashley Brown’s mini-comics that you can find on his website (there is a store). His work somehow reminds me of 60s kitchen sink dramas and is edgy, intense and beautiful. He has an exquisite eye for character detail and every strip he creates is a half-shredded postcard from someone’s furthest distant psychological shore. If you don’t know his work, you really should check him out.
Most looking forward to: Julia Gfrörer’s World Within the World, a book which collects a decade of her output. I think she’s remarkable, highly original and just out there. A lot of stuff gets lauded for how it looks - and there’s a lot of pretty pictures out there, both in mainstream and indie/artsy sectors - but there ain’t much that feels like it’s poetry, funny poetry, beamed in from someone’s consciousness, another world, a horror dimension, another perception. Her muse seems utterly restless, always explorative and her artistry is sublime.
What both these storytellers and comics makers have in common is that they need to create these artefacts; it’s not simply about being seen and heard (although it would be really nice if the pedestrian media world would notice and celebrate this kind of fine work more).
I did buy several collections of old comics: Friday Foster and The Tomorrow People, volumes 1 and 2. Lots of art by British comics legends John M. Burns and Mike Noble. AUK also do a Robin of Sherwood collection (more art from Mike Noble). If you know, you know.
Film
The Boy and the Heron (dir: Hayao Miyazaki)
This came out in 2023, but I didn’t see it until just before the 2024’s end. A mind-blowingly beautiful, strange and near-hallucinogenic film and already one of my favourite of Miyazaki’s.
Nosferatu (dir: Robert Eggers)
Here’s what I said on Bluesky about Nosferatu.
Civil War (dir: Alex Garland)
Alex Garland is another of those genuine auteurs.
Super / Man - The Christopher Reeve Story (dir: Ian Bonhôte & Peter Ettedgui)
The Holdovers (dir: Alexander Payne)
The Zone of Interest (dir: Jonathan Glazer)
Lot of things I missed and want to see, but I’ll save those for another time.
TV
Again, not a lot of time to sit down and genuinely watch, and I also watched a lot of vintage TV via some lovely box sets (hi Doctor Who and Blake’s 7), but this is the memorable stuff:
Enjoyed the journey and offbeat, beautiful direction, perhaps not the slightly disappointing denouement, but as a whole this is intriguingly weird and Rebecca Hall is one of those performers that is just always worth watching.
Eddie Redmayne and Lashana Lynch are terrific in this very stylish, Bond-ian unpicking of an assassin’s world and those who hunt him. If you weren’t taken with the Ben Whishaw and Keira Knightly spy-fi thing on Netflix, try this instead. Again, probably best not to think about it too much, but this carried us all the way to the end without wanting to shower the telly with a volley of rotten tomatoes.
They get a lot of stick, don’t they, after the ending of Game of Thrones, and that wrap-it-up-and-get-out-of-jail final season left me wondering whether the Two Daves are really just gifted adapters rather than original thinkers. The literary SF trilogy this show is based on forgoes the ingredients of hope or optimism and feels ready-made for their brand of convenient nihilism (and indeed, that of today’s streaming landscape). It’s really quite nasty in places, but of course is incredibly slick and it’s full of cool science fiction ideas.
Industry S3
Riveting stuff. This show has just got better with each season, and we couldn’t stop binging this one. At times frivolous, other times forensic in its depiction(s) of human awfulness, it features a fantastic cast who have really grown with the show, and the writing is unfolding into places you don’t expect it to go. Currently peerless. Also, if you’re missing Succession, go here.
Yeah, I wasn’t going to bother until the Missus told me it was worth it, and I binged it in one night. Questions remain, but it’s undeniably compelling TV.
In amongst all the dark, there are chinks of light, even in a comedy (dramady?) that stares into the face of death and makes fart jokes. It’s poignant in places, even grim but it’s also genuinely warm and funny in a world where there isn’t much of that around. See above. Truly, this is a show with a heart of gold.
Shrinking S2
Shrinking shouldn’t work, but it does. The characters live in a middle-class Californian utopia where everybody talks in rapidfire quips and goes to therapy at a practice where Harrison Ford is the boss. The first season was enjoyable, but this second time around, they’ve thrown away any pretense of building to moments of comedy via observation, everybody just walks around spouting withering one-liners at the slightest provocation. Like I say, this shouldn’t work, but it does, thanks to a supremely likable cast and Harrison Ford at his most grumpy, demonstrating his phenomenal comedy chops. I am never gonna apologise for loving Harrison Ford being grumpy, but everyone is tremendous in this.
…
That’s all folks! I’m sure I missed several things, but now I can just send this list to people when they asked me what I did in 2024, because this is all I am. (Not really. That’s satire. This is why I don’t write comedy. Now you know.) See you soon for a radical site and career revamp.