Review of the Year

Spoiler Warning - Star Wars: The Force Awakens - not really any spoilers but I do mention who plays one character and that might trouble some people.


So it's the end of the year and while I don't believe in New Year's Resolutions I do believe in making arbitrary decisions about what has been the best whatever of the year. By the way, when I say "of the year" I'm referring to stuff I discovered in 2015 as from a philosophical point of view I can't guarantee that any of this stuff actually existed before I experienced it.

Best Thing of the Year - including television, film, books, podcasts etc
Winner: Rick and Morty It has so much in it that would appeal to me; science, time travel, parallel universes, shockingly unsentimental and cynical characters and it is very, very funny. A line of dialogue has become my new personal motto:

"Nobody exists on purpose, nobody belongs anywhere, everybody's gonna die. Come watch TV"

This is not as bleak as it sounds and actually came as very welcome advice in the show. I don't believe that people exist on purpose or for a reason, I don't believe the universe has some grand purpose and, yes, we are all going to die and I was really happy to see this idea not presented as a nihilist gloomy philosophy but instead as a way to enjoy life.

Every episode is excellent but particular stand out episodes are Love Potion No. 9  (which explained why love potions are really not cool), Meseeks and Destroys (bringing the brilliant character of Mr. Meseeks into existence) and Total Rickall (featuring memory tampering alien parasites (a lot of episode titles are puns involving Rick's name)).

Left to Right: Morty, Rick, Beth & Summer having some quality family time

Person Who Exceeded Expectations 
Winner: Bob Odenkirk, twice.
Spin-offs and reunions have a bad track record. Spin offs usually have diminishing returns and most reunions are not worth it but Bob Odenkirk has appeared in one spinoff and one reunion and both were better than I thought they would be. The spinoff was Better Call Saul, with Odenkirk taking the Saul Goodman character from Breaking Bad and doing an origins story for him. In Better Call Saul the lawyer is still using his real name, James McGill (that Saul Goodman isn't his real was stated in Breaking Bad). At this point McGill was more or less still on the right side of the law and didn't want to get involved with drug dealers and criminals unless he was defending them in a court of law. Breaking Bad was one of the best tv shows ever made and to be honest I didn't expect much from Better Call Saul but it easily exceeded my expectations. The show has a different tone to Breaking Bad and had moments of real pathos - Mike Ehrmantraut's face-to-face with his daughter in law being particularly affecting.

The reunion was that Netflix had effectively reunited the Mr. Show team. Mr. Show was a HBO sketch show in the nineties starring Bob Odenkirk and David Cross - probably best known as Tobias in Arrested Development. Their nineties show was as weird and brilliant as a HBO sketch show should be and who knew if they would be able to recapture the essence of that show. But they did and it was as surreal and great as ever.

Person Who Can Seemingly Do No Wrong
Winner - Oscar Isaac
The winner is Oscar Isaac who in 2015 appeared in gritty crime thriller A Most Violent Year, mind-bending sci-fi film Ex Machina, the critically acclaimed HBO drama Show Me a Hero and topped it off with playing Poe Dameron in the new Star Wars film, so he hasn't had a bad year really.

Oscar Isaac posing for a calendar

Best Live Comedy
Winner: Jo Neary - Faceful of Issues

At the Edinburgh Festival I saw a number of excellent comedy shows but the best was Jo Neary. It's hard to describe Jo Neary's show, I suppose you'd call her a character comedian and in a show she might play numerous characters, like her previous show Jo Neary's Youth Club or just the one character as in this show. I first saw Jo Neary as part of Robin Ince's Nine Lessons and Carols For Godless People show where one time she played an extremely nervous and uncomfortable woman doing a talk on sex toys and another where she played a character who was straight out of Brief Encounter talking on the phone. Both were brilliant. In this show Neary adopted a very similar persona of a well-spoken, perhaps repressed middle-class woman but built up the character so it was far more than just a parody. The show was something like a variety show from a small village fete and of course everyone apart from Jo Neary's character has dropped out. From start to finish it was hilarious and sometimes oddly emotional and Jo Neary's character is surprisingly endearing and was as close to a perfect hour of comedy I have ever seen. Below is a preview of the Edinburgh show she performed which I am fairly sure she is fine with being available online.

Perfectly Tailored For Me Book Award:
Winner: Nick Harkaway - Angelmaker
I read The Gone Away World little while ago and really enjoyed it but it only partly prepared me for how amazing Angelmaker would be. It really does seem like Nick Harkaway scanned my brain to determine what would be the perfect book for me. The book has so many interesting ideas - from the organisation that praised the ideas of John Ruskin so much they devoted their lives to building unique beautiful items like submarines and trains, the spy organisation who during World War II recruited rebellious young women to be spies, to the idea of a doomsday device that relied on increasing the amount of truth in the world. It is wonderfully odd and entirely to my taste.

Surprise of the Year
Winner: American Horror Story

I have never been a huge fan of horror but I have been trying to work in this over the last couple of years watching The Exorcist, Rosemary's Baby, The Baba Dook and similar. I also tried giving American Horror Story a go. I had initially been intrigued by the way the show works; every season the setting and premise of the show changes, they keep the same actors but people play different parts.The first season is known as "Murder House" and focused on the various deaths and murders that have happened over the decades and the various malicious ghosts who occupy the house. The first time I tried to watch it I couldn't make it through the first episode but for whatever reason I tried again and while I still wasn't too keen on the first episode but the second turned things up to eleven and I really enjoyed it which was quite a surprise. The show  is absolutely bonkers and doesn't make much sense at times but it is very enjoyable and helped me watch more horror things. After much thought I am not going to watch the second season only because it is set in an asylum and I think it might genuinely terrify me.

The Thank God It Wasn't Awful Award
Winner: Star Wars: The Force Awakens
It is far too early for me to talk too much about Star Wars and I need to have some time to properly consider the film, but whatever else I enjoyed it immensely. No matter how many good things were appearing in the news and the great trailer part of me couldn't forget the awfulness of The Phantom Menace.

So that was a selection of stuff from 2015, things I'm looking forward to in 2016 include Quentin Tarantino's new film The Hateful Eight, the new West World tv show and Ben Wheatley's film High Rise.