He played Malcolm Tucker in Armando Iannucci’s The Thick of It, probably one of my all time favorite funny roles on television.
Have watched the first two episodes of season 2 of Criminal Record. Feels very dark this season but I really love both the actors and will continue onward.
I did love listening to Isaac Mizrahi’s memoir narrated by him.
Oh, I bet it was interesting. I have nothing against him myself, but out of respect to H, I have to embrace proxy hatred.
Horowitz is a prolific content creator. Besides Foyle’s war, he wrote the very interesting Magpie Murder series which has been on PBS and also the Hawthorne (made up ex police detective) and Horowitz (the author is a character in the series) which I highly recommend. Just finished the latest-A Deadly Episode.
I really liked that one.
That was an excellent series finale of The Comeback. Real biting commentary on how AI is taking away the jobs of writers and actors.
Hokum (2026) - dir. Damian McCarthy
Adam Scott (Wyatt from Severance) plays Ohm Bauman, a famous author who is very depressed and disgusted by his own success. Haunted by the memory of his deceased mother and abusive father, he decides to take their ashes to a little boutique hotel in Ireland where they had honeymooned, in order to finish his latest book. The hotel is populated with a number of stock characters: the creepy wheelchair-bound owner who tells kids nasty stories about how witches will capture them and take them to hell, the frightened weasel of a desk clerk, the hot lady bartender, the gruff manager, etc. It also has the locked away honeymoon suite, rumored to be haunted by a witch, trapped there years ago.
Ohm is an ill tempered dick who is deliberately terrible to everyone around him. Even the hot bartender. So he’s very sorry that it’s her that finds him having tried to hang himself in his room and cuts him down. Going to thank her after he recovers, she’s nowhere to be found, missing since that night. Ohm is determined to find out.
That’s not a terrible setup for a haunted hotel film, and for a little while, anyway, this film has a decent enough atmosphere, with some fun jumps and creepy sequences, even if the all the plotting and attempts at character development are a bit crude.
But the ending.. my goodness. It’s not that the end is ‘wrong’, in terms of what actually happens. Its tying together the various plot threads with Ohm’s tragic past etc etc is all expected and par for the course. Nothing groundbreaking, but perfectly serviceable material for a summer ghost story. But the way its written and edited is just so… OBVIOUS. So “on-the-nose”. It’s like they assumed the audience were Film Studies 101 students, so they needed to have big flashing lights and neon signs reading “This Way to Thematic Closure!” I was having a perfectly good time for 80-85 minutes, and then my eyes were rolling so hard that I’m pretty sure I saw my own brain.
2 of 5 dumbwaiters, a fun feature of weird old houses and hotels with a lot of cinematic potential that’s not used nearly enough, IMHO.
It’s been a trend for a while to have a lengthy exposition and explain every single detail bc today’s audience has the attention span of a mouse. Or is looking at their phones.
I have observed the phenomenon of “have characters state what they’re doing or summarize the plot so far out loud”. Supposedly, it’s a frequent studio note on Netflix productions, exactly for the reason you say: they assume people have the tv on while scrolling or cooking or whatever.
But that isn’t quite what I mean re: the end of Hokum.
It’s more a quality of the writing and filmmaking itself. It’s the triumphant moment with the hero looking down over the vanquished foe as it rains and the camera pans up over the city. It’s “maybe the real monsters are us!” It’s Liam Neeson crying “I could have saved more!” at the end of Schindler’s List. “The real treasure is the friends we made along the way.” The sentiment is correct, but it’s done in such a blunt, clichéd, frankly unskilled way that it pops your suspension of disbelief bubble. The end of Hokum does the right things. It just does them in the least creative, least nuanced way possible.
I’ll wait for it to stream, then 
In the last week, we watched How to Get to Heaven from Belfast, created by Lisa McGee, who also brought us Derry Girls. What a strange trip! Funny, odd, with more than a few “WTF?” moments, but well written and cast. We had to turn on subtitles because we struggled with some of the accents, and it was fun to see some of the actors from Derry Girls again. It’s definitely darker than Derry Girls, but just as quirky. Maybe quirkier. If that’s your jam, check it out.
We watched a few more episodes of the Monsterland anthology. Some are better than others, but the best so far is E3 set in NOLA (viewer discretion advised), and the worst a silly eco-themed one (E4). E5 with Taylor Schilling from OITNB touches on themes of codependency and death. Ho boy 
Palate cleanser were 2 episodes of the brilliantly funny Peep Show. So happy there’s like a million more seasons 
If you haven’t yet, do look up That Mitchell and Webb Look. Their sketch show.
Sir Digby Chicken-Ceasar is one of my partner’s favorite bits.
And they gave us this, which needs to broadcast regularly on every digital surface in the country until people come to their senses:
Thanks, on our list. These guys are hilarious.
Mārama (2026) - dir. Toa Stappard
So, there’s a vague sentiment floating around some corners of horror movie pop culture that laments the idea of ‘elevated’ horror, where every monster is “a metaphor for grief” or “but really, it’s about traaauuuma…”. And to be sure, since a few films like Babadook and Get Out did it extremely well, there have been a host of imitators doing it… less well, where it often comes across as pretntious and too self-serious. So when one reads the description of this film, where a young Māori woman in 1859 travels to Northern England to find the truth of what happened to her family, it might be tempting to shrug and lump it in with those “lesser” films.
That would be a huge mistake.
To start, this is a very well made, tightly written, well paced bit of filmmaking. Atmosphere, sound design, and performances all top notch. But mostly, this is not a clumsy metaphor for racism or generational trauma. While there are some supernatural elements, the horror here IS the trauma itself. No metaphor. It’s right front and center. And the revelations, as they come, are absolute gut-punches.
If you’ve ever watched rugby you’ve probably seen the NZ All Blacks, who regularly perform a Haka, a Māori “war dance”, before each match. It’s the most aggressive choreography you can ever see performed by a few dozen muscle bound hulks.
Those are a 3rd grade ballet recitals compared to one performed in absolute righteous FURY by Ariāna Osborne in an overflowing red gown.
As the credits rolled, the audience sat in stunned silence for several minutes before quietly leaving.
This is really, really good. See it if you can, but be prepared. It’s a tough one.
5 out 5. No glib jokes. It would be inappropriate.
Also loved the Ambassadors (only one season) and Back (4 seasons) with both the guys. David Mitchell also stars in the very good Ludwig on BritBox I think.
Oh yeah, I completely forgot about him being in that one. Very enjoyable!
I finished Dying for Sex a couple of days ago after my PIC had gone to sleep. It was very sad, of course, while still managing to keep up the humor and SEX parts until the very end.
Michelle Williams and Jeni Slate were incredible in it.
Finished Lord of the Flies, which I kept calling Lord of the Rings by mistake. It was very well-acted and shot, and exceedingly grim. Definitely worth watching, if you have the stomach for such depressing fare.
We enjoyed the excellent 2016 film, The Infiltrator, with Bryan Cranston. It’s based on a true story.
“Overview
In 1986, federal agent Robert Mazur (Bryan Cranston) goes undercover to infiltrate the trafficking network of Colombian drug kingpin Pablo Escobar. Working with fellow agents Kathy Ertz (Diane Kruger) and Emir Abreu (John Leguizamo), Mazur poses as a slick, money-laundering businessman named Bob Musella. Gaining the confidence of Roberto Alcaino (Benjamin Bratt), Escobar’s top lieutenant, Mazur must navigate a vicious criminal underworld where one wrong move could cost him everything.”
