Podcasts, Radio, TV, Books, Cycling, Photography and More
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HBO Max and Paramount+: What It Might Mean For Sports
Today the deal was done, and Paramount took over Warner Bros. Discovery in a massive deal that has much of Hollywood quaking. There were some last minute wrinkles with a deal being struck a couple of weeks ago with a group of US Attorneys General, with the general view being that they folded and didn’t…
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Sports TV: UK v US
Yesterday evening, UK time, the NFL championship games took place, deciding which teams will contest the Super Bowl. I have an on/off relationship with the NFL – but will flip over to catch a bit every now and then. So last night, when I wasn’t watching Les Miserables on BBC1, I caught a bit of these games…
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British Cyclo-Cross National Championships 2019
Last weekend, I headed down to the Cyclopark in Gravesend to see the British National Cyclo-cross Championships. These are held annually and the winner gets to wear their national flag on their jersey for a year (unless they go on to win the World Championships of course). The event was taking place at the Cyclopark,…
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Longer Lasting
Over the last few weeks, a lot of things around me have started to break. Most annoyingly, the TV that was given to my father just over 18 months ago has developed a fault in the panel – the lower quarter flickers and then stays slightly greyer and fuzzier than the rest. It’s only 18…
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Netflix’s UK Drama Originals
One of the issues that Netflix has to face is how it can satisfy all its users in every country around the world. If you set up in France, you need to produce local French programming. If you set up in Australia, you need to produce local Australian programming. To some extent, Netflix has been…
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Great Sadness
This week, the Paweł Pawlikowski film, Cold War, was released on home video. I missed this in the cinema, even though I found the film’s trailer utterly entrancing. So I thought I would treat myself to a Blu Ray copy of the film. Earlier in the week I actually saw an advertisement for the film in…
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HMV
A few thoughts on the new difficulties faced by HMV. In part this is response to some utter nonsense I’ve read online, and some of the news reports surrounding HMV heading into administration for the second time in five years. There are undoubtedly structural problems with how music is sold in 2019, but I think there are multiple…
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Is Bandersnatch the Future of Television?
No. No, it’s not. Bandersnatch is the recently released episode of Black Mirror from Charlie Brooker available on Netflix. It takes the form of a choose your own adventure book/game and I loved it! In many respects, this episode ticked just about every box for me. It was set in the eighties, in and around writing…
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DJI Osmo Pocket: A Slow Motion Test
Over Christmas I treated myself to a new camera – the newly released DJI Osmo Pocket. This thing is a wondrously small gimbal mounted camera, that I thought might be really interesting to carry with me on bike rides. This absolutely isn’t a proper review, since I’ve not had the device long enough. Instead, it’s…
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Very Good, Jeeves by PG Wodehouse
Just over a year ago, I thought that I’d read some Jeeves and Wooster stories set in and around Christmas. Looking around, it seemed that Very Good, Jeeves was my best bet. It included Jeeves and the Yuletide Spirit – a Christmas story if ever there was one surely? Now for the past few years, I’ve been…
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The Secret Barrister
I think it’s safe to say that The Secret Barrister is easily the scariest book I’ve read in a long time. The one takeaway you instantly get from it is that you never want to get involved in the UK legal system. Unfortunately, even if you’re a squeaky clean individual who does nothing wrong, there are many…
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Boxing Day Radio Times 2018
The third of three days’ worth of useful help to plan your TV entertainment. You’re welcome! In case you didn’t want to watch a new version of The ABC Murders on BBC1 (or indeed, watch the older version on ITV3 just to spoil your later entertainment), then there is always the radio – including a…
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A Gothic Christmas
Hadrian’s Wall
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