absolute nonsense

TV shows / films:

The Cleaner - Series 1-2 (2021) (Working through Series 3 at the moment..) Greg Davies-led sitcom about a guy who cleans up crime scenes, adapted from a German series as far as I know. It's enjoyable, with short episodes, and I like spotting all the britcom cameos.

Predators (2025) New trailer of Robert Pattinson playing Chris Hansen (?!?!) led to recommendations for this documentary and phewwwwwww this was a ride. I went in expecting your typical Netflix-level factual run-through of To Catch A Predator but what I encountered instead was something a lot more thought-provoking, nuanced, and personal. Make no mistake that the crimes in question are heinous, but I think this film effectively explores and questions the reality show's effect on some of the actors(decoys) who worked on it, the hazy boundaries between where justice ends and entertainment begins, its cultural impact (the copycat segment was wild), and why people find this kind of thing entertaining in the first place (i've mentioned my uneasy relationship with how true crime gets sensationalized somewhere else on this blog..) And if anything, its final shot is honestly one that will haunt me for a long time to come.

Tucci in Italy - Season 2 (2026) Cleansing of the palate with another wonderful batch of episodes featuring Stanley Tucci eating Italian food and being a charming little shit.

Radio shows / podcasts:

Drama on 3: The Hound of the Baskervilles (2023) Adaptation of the Sherlock Holmes classic, with Mark Gatiss as Holmes and Sanjeev Bhaskar as Watson, with a live orchestra! I listened this while driving through a storm and it was suitably atmospheric.

Drama on 3: The Defectors (2025) Mix of drama and documentary. Segments of interviews with people who escaped from North Korea, followed by dramatisation of how a former North Korea's Deputy Ambassador to the UK defected from his position (described as something out of a le Carre novel, and I can't disagree). Related recommendation: the documentary film Beyond Utopia (2023).

(A story in two pictures........)

Books:

Golden Age - Wang Xiaobo This was... fine. I understand it's a prominent publication in China because of how it satirizes the Cultural Revolution. I also got annoyed by the sheer ridiculous amount of sex in the story (sorry, 'committing epic friendship') as well as every single mention of how big the protagonist's dick was, as is my right LOL. One thing I really do admire though is how well this must have been translated; it's hard to explain but there's certain passages where I instinctively know how the original chinese sentence would have went and the translator has so poetically captured both the literal but also the figurative meaning in english somehow.

My Brilliant Friend - Elena Ferrante This broke my heart a little, hmmm. Growing up, class, gender, a tumultuous female friendship, it's all in there.

-

Personal note wise, I have been Stressed Out for the past few weeks because of work stuff. Doing my actual work with autopsies, reports and court testimony is absolutely fine. That's all I've been gearing up for during my postgraduate studies anyway. But the reluctant leadership role, being expected to step up and sort things out, I've been finding that really tricky. There's no textbooks or journal articles teaching you how to deal with insane bureaucracy between the police department and embassy delegates. But we crack on nonetheless.