10 for 10: what be on teevee?

[I said I wasn't going to do these anymore...like 2 years ago...but it's back!
10 for 10... that's 10 movies (or TV shows) which we give ourselves 10 minutes apiece to write about.  Part of our problem is we don't often have the spare hour or two to give to writing a big long review for every movie (or TV show) we watch.  How about a 10-minute non-review full of half-remembered scattershot thoughts? Surely that's doable? ]

In This Edition:

1. Shoresy - Season 5 (2025, Crave, 6/6 episodes watched)
2. Agatha Christie's Seven Dials - Season 1 (2026, Netflix, 3/3 episodes watched)
3. Wonder Man - Season 1? (2026, Disney+, 8/8 episodes watched)
4. The Muppet Show - pilot (2026, Disney+, 1/1 episodes watched)
5. How To Get To Heaven From Belfast - Season 1 (2026, Netflix, 8/8 episodes watched)
6. Hijack - Season 2 (2026, AppleTV, 8/8 episodes watched)
7. Laid - Season 1 (2024, W Network/Peacock, 8/8 episodes watched)
8. The Burbs - Season 1? (2026, W Network/Peacock, 7/8 episodes watched)
9. Look Around You - Seasons 1-2 (2002-2005, Tubi, most episodes watched)
10. Smack the Pony - Seasons 1-3 (1999-2003, Tubi, a handful of random episodes watched)

...and...go!

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Season  2 | 4

All the talk in 2026 about hockey-based TV shows has been about Heated Rivalry, which comes from former Shoresy writer/director Jacob Tierney. The second most talked about hockey-based TV show of the year has been, well, the Olympics, I guess, where the Americans squeaked out wins against the Canadians on both the men's and women's ice (it wouldn't be so upsetting if America was in a better space right now). Shoresy has had four good years of being the pre-eminent hockey-based TV show, so they've had a good run. This season is, like the other seasons, full of laughs and slow-motion shots of women in thongs walking away from the camera. As ever the dichotomy of a Jared Keeso project of both being progressive and salacious is present.

Shoresy is Keeso's love letter to hockey, a sport he clearly, dearly loves (the man played Don Cherry in a TV biopic mini-series and obviously relished it), and so the writer-star uses it as his platform to examine his concerns or frustrations or hopes and dreams for the sport, by way of a "whale-shit hockey league" in Sudbury, Ontario.

This season, Keeso turns his, and Shoresy's focus to the criticisms facing North American hockey players being too soft, that the Europeans, once known for being real delicate, finesse players, are now the biggest and toughest on the ice. The local league having folded, and the Blueberry Bulldogs no longer having a home, Shoresy, with inspiration from none other than Wayne Gretzky (making a cameo...or is it a literal Cameo), decides to stage an exhibition game of tough North American SOBs against the reigning Euro team.

I'm not sure I agree with the violence-as-sport aspect of the game (the one thing about the Olympics is how tamped down the fighting gets) so this idealizing of it kind of shifts me uneasy, but then, that's the point Keeso is trying to make, that we've gotten soft on the ice, I guess. Elbows up?

[11:27]

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Lady Eileen "Bundle" Brent comes from affluence, but that affluence has waned since her father's untimely death. Her mother has to rent out the manor for parties and events in order to keep up the lifestyle. But in the morning, following the latest soiree, Bundle's beau turns up dead in his bedroom, and things are more than suspicious. Like, what's with all the clocks?

Anyway, turns out Bundle is a tenacious young lady, and also quite astute, and she starts poking around the shadowy world of the elites, which leads her to a secret meeting place upstairs from a private club where a secret society gathers and plots and machinates.  Bundle suspects that the secret society is responsible for the foul play that's stricken her life, but the clues start leading her elsewhere.

I enjoyed Mia McKenna-Bruce's performance as Bundle,  her petite and doe-eyed appearance mask a fiercely independent streak and formidable intelligence. Shockingly, her mother, played by Helena Bonham Carter, appears quite the opposite... she hides in her home, tending to her plants and seems to have little interest in expanding her knowledge of the world outside her ground. The men bundle finds herself surrounded with are largely boys of priviledge, and somewhat daft, inept, pompous or oblivious, except maybe Martin Freeman's detective who definitely sees her capabilities but also sees her only as a vulnerable young woman.

At three sub-hour length episodes, not sure why this wasn't just a movie, but it ends with the promise of something more, something much bigger and more adventurous for Bundle, and if we're going to do "cozy adventure" or "cozy espionage" instead of "cozy mystery", I might be there for it.

[23:51]

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In the long stretch of Marvel projects since, oh, let's say X-Men appeared in the year 2000, my enthusiasm for a Wonder Man project was at the very least in the lower quarter of said projects. I mean, certainly quite above things like the non-MCU-related TV shows or the Fox Network shows of the early 2000s, but I just have no experience with or opinions on the character. Its star, Yahya Abdul-Mateen II, on the other hand, I think is tremendous, even though the majority of his work I've seen has been in other comic book projects (Aquaman, Watchmen).

In a series created by Shang-Chi director Destin Daniel Cretton and writer Andrew Guest (Community, Suburgatory, Brooklyn Nine-Nine), it keeps Simon Williams as a Hollywood-based actor, but it seems that the majority of the show is cut from new cloth...but then I don't really know.

Here Simon is an aspiring actor who invest too deeply in any role he is given, much to his detriment. He's often fired from gigs because he wants to do too much to make his role meaningful to him and to the production. His family doesn't fully believe in him, but there's also worry, because Simon has super powers which have always seemed beyond his control.

Simon meets Trevor Slattery (Sir Ben Kingsley, Iron Man III, Shang-Chi), the actor who played the terrorist The Mandarin, at a movie theatre and they wind up at an audition for the new "Wonder Man" movie (a remake of a 80's cheesy sci-fi classic) and become fast friends. Trevor takes Simon under his very experienced wing and teaches him a new approach to acting to compliment his talent, rather than get in his way. 

It's really not a superhero show, despite being set in the Marvel Cinematic Universe, it is a show about performing, and friendship, with a bit of loving criticism thrown towards the filmmaking process.  The heart of the show is the bond between Simon and Trevor, and both Abdul Mateen II and Kingsley crush the shit out of it. These are two phenomenal actors playing struggling actors who become unlikely friends, and it sells... even as we find out that Trevor is actually a plant who is being pressured by a government agency to expose Simon as an unregistered super-powered individual (even that angle is a critique on how policing agencies wind up having quotas merely for optics, not necessarily for the good of the public).  It's clear that Trevor doesn't feel good about what he's doing and, while the conclusion of the series is a given, it's still a pretty enjoyable ride getting there.

It's a sweet and lovely series, way outside the usual MCU parameters. It's a surprise, and I liked it a lot, but I still fall into the camp of wanting more superheroics in my superhero show.

[42:29 - of course I spend double the time talking about a superhero show]

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Disney finally, FINALLY, did it. They bought the Muppets off of the Henson company two decades ago and outside of two rather terrific films (The Muppets and Muppets Most Wanted) they have really, really struggled with what to do with them. Their attempts to contemporize the Muppets as TV shows haven't ever fully worked.  What the die hard fans have been shouting on message boards for ages is for Disney to just do The Muppet Show again. Disney has resisted for so long.

With Seth Rogen and Evan Goldberg among the Executive Producers of the series, there was a slew of creatives involved with a strong desire to recreate The Muppet Show as exact to the vintage series as possible.  Disney conceded but without commitment. They got one episode.  One episode to get it right, to recapture all the feelings of a series that ended 40 years ago, and also make it feel like more than just a nostalgia trip. Pop superstar Sabrina Carpenter, also an executive producer, gleefully offered herself up to be the celebrity guest for the return.

The sets look astounding, as if they were always there and just needed dusting off. The Muppets look great, only the voices -- to this old fan -- seem off, because of course they are. There are different people puppeting the central characters these days. The skits... well they're classic Muppets bits, vaudevillian in nature, song-and-dance numbers, joke-centric comedy that's intentionally corny, and just the lunacy of the Muppets...but the show is as much, if not more, about what's happening back stage as on stage and the way the two bleed into each other has always been the delight of the series.

By all rights, this pilot seems to have been very, very well received with high viewership over an extended period of time, which has fingers tightly crossed that Disney is finally ready to commit to the format, and just let The Muppet Show live again. 

As soon as it was over, I was ready to watch the next one... I need a next one.

[56:29]

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I probably wouldn't have given How To Get To Heaven From Belfast a second look if not for the auto-play trailer on Netflix highlighting that it's the new series from Derry Girls creator Lisa McGee. I liked Derry Girls just fine, but Lady Kent loved it, having watched it through at least twice before I waded in.

Derry Girls was a half-hour comedy about Northern Irish Catholics teenage school girls in the mid-90's during the waning days of The Troubles, How To Get To Heaven From Belfast is definitely not that.

The show is a comedy, but more like a comedy-thriller maybe as three old friends learn about the death of an estranged member of their high-school crew of outsiders. Saoirse (Roisin Gallagher) is now a detective show creator/writer, Robyn (Sinéad Keenan) is a mother of three and going mad, while Dara (Caoilfhionn Dunne) is still a died in the wool Catholic lesbian who takes care of her mom as an excuse not to live life. When they get together and venture to the small town outside of Belfast to pay their respects to their old friend, things are...weird. The family is really weird, almost cult-like. And Saoirse thinks she discovers that the body in the casket is not, in fact, her dead friend.

It's a twisty, spinny mystery, especially as the show very clearly and very early tells us that the dead friend (and a wife and mother) Greta (Natasha O'Keeffe) is in fact alive and being held by a woman who seems very much like a contract killer (Bronagh Gallagher).

Everything, though, ties back to a secret from the women's past, a murdered man that they buried and tried to forget about, but now seems to be at the center of everything.

It's an exceptionally weird and twisty show that constantly upends what the actual threat is to these women. The dynamics between the characters is a comedic one so there are tremendous laughs throughout, but the situation is a wild puzzle that only the showrunner knows the answer to. She provide the audience just enough information to keep them guessing at the wrong answers.

It's also a show that subverts expectations over and over again. It sets up many characters as being villainous, but usurps that expectation time and again in terrifically interesting (although just as often, sloppy) ways. 

It's quite a mess overall, but the mess seems almost intentional, as part of the fun (at one point, the show winds up in Derry, where, for promotion of season 3 of Derry Girls, they painted a huge portrait of that cast on the side of a building... that portrait not only pops up in this series, but also has Derry Girls star Saoirse-Monica Jackson standing in front of it eating an ice cream, which is mind-breaking meta).

[whoops, the timer got messed up...let's just say 1:08:30]

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The next train is arriving...handsome

In the last season of Hijack Idris Elba's Sam Nelson, a high powered corporate negotiator, was on a flight that got hijacked, and he took it upon himself to try to keep the people on the plane safe while helping the boots on the ground and the hijackers communicate and follow-through on demands. The big deal of Hijack was that the hijackers, for the most part, were unwilling participants, and that there were other plants on the plane.

Season 2 kicks off with the methodical business of a subway train in Berlin, which Sam is on, getting hijacked. It seems Sam is keenly aware that something is starting to happen and attempts to intervene...but no, to spoil the surprise at the end of the episode, Sam is the hijacker this time.

Much like last season, Sam is an unwitting participant, as are others involved. Sam must convince the metro control room that he is the lone hijacker, he must take the credit/blame/fall for this action. His only demand is that the Berlin police find Bailey-Brown, the terrorist that was at the heart of last season. Sam's been convinced that Bailey-Brown murdered his son (between seasons) and that his ex-wife Marsha (Christine Adams) is going to be killed if he doesn't follow through.

And so, over the eight episodes of season two, Sam tries to keep the train passengers in line, tries to keep the police actions at bay, tries to deduce who the plant(s) are on the train, tries to keep Marsha safe, all while trying his best to somehow find a way through all of this that keeps everyone alive. Nobody needs to get hurt, but people do get hurt.

I dunno, I've been following a lot of transit nerds on youtube over the past couple years and so I think a lot about subways and public transit systems, so seeing the Berlin network, trains and stations was really quite awesome. The first half of the season is full of upending expectations (not unlike How To Get To Heaven From Belfast, only having less fun with it) and the second half feels at times like it's stretching to fill the runtime. This would have made for a fabulous 2-hour movie, and would have still been really solid at 4 or 6 episodes, but 8 was too long, and it took too much time to get to what was actually happening (the ties to the previous season's adversaries implied that people who watched the previous season cared that much about the bad guys of that season to see them return). 

But watching Elba is always a pleasure. That's a handsome man right there. And of the large cast involved, they all do solid work, but there's not enough time with most of them to really invest in anyone but Sam and so what the other characters are doing seems...unimportant. A movie would have been more tightly focussed.

[1:20:19]

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Based on an Australian series of the same name and adapted by Nanatchka Khan (Don't Trust the B... in Apartment 23) and Sally Bradford McKenna, Laid is a comedy about sex and death, as so much media is. In this case event planner Ruby (Stephanie Hsu, Everything Everywhere All At Once) learns that seemingly all the men and women that she has had sex with are dying, and not from an STD or anything directly relational to her, other than they're dying in the order in which she slept with them.

Ruby's best friend AJ (Zosia Mamet, Madame Web) is a true crime obsessive (worshipping at the feet of Amanda Knox) and immediately wants to get down to business solving this thing, creating a whiteboard for Ruby's sex timeline.  

The gist of the show is that Ruby is a bit callous with her sexual encounters, using men (and women) in disregard for their feelings. She's in therapy but resists any action that would see self improvement.  She finds herself attracted to her client Isaac (Tommy Martinez) in spite of herself, and he in turn is into her, despite himself. But she knows she can't be with anyone else because all of her sexual partners are dying in very weird ways.  Unfortunately, that also means AJ's boyfriend, Zack (Andre Hyland), who Ruby slept with when they both were drunk at a mutual friend's wedding during the brief time in which he and AJ were broken up. The fuse is lit and it's only a matter of time before that bomb goes off.

Ruby is... selfish, self-centered and inconsiderate. She's defintely not the most horrendous person in the world but she's just on the other side of the line from being a "good person".  In trying to figure out why this is happening to her, why her exes are dying, she also needs to examine herself and the impact she has on others... and it's tough for her to escape her seemingly inescapable tendencies.

Laid, as a comedy, is a failure. Each episode has a few chuckles and sometimes a really good laugh or two, but for the most part the comedy is more conceptual, and when you're playing in dark comedy territory, you have to have a really good handle on tone, and this show never quite gets there.  Many times Ruby (and sometimes other characters) actually witness the violent deaths of one of her exes and there's maybe shock or surprise but no sense of trauma or lasting effects on them, and it's the weakest decision the show makes. That people are dying and Ruby is so centered on her romance with Isaac or AJ is just fixated on the mystery does the characters a disservice.

It's only trivian night host Richie (Michael Angarano), from the middle of Ruby's sex timeline, who doesn't die, and gets dubbed her sex loophole. Surprisingly Richie seems to become Ruby's grounding point, despite their sort of disdain for one another. 

While I didn't necessarily love every aspect of the show -- tone was definitely the most challenging part -- I was very invested in how this possibly could be happening. By the end of episode 6, we have an answer as Ruby's world falls apart, and episode 7 gets to the meat of it while Ruby's tries to pick up the pieces. Episode 8 goes for redemption, but Ruby's still Ruby...stripes don't change that fast. But it seems we have a finale, a resolution, except that there's obviously an unresolved Richie plotline and then Ruby's dad shows up the whole thing seems to have started again. Bam, cliffhanger...and the show is cancelled, and the American version didn't really follow the Australian version's plot, so ...no resolution.

The only part of this show Lady Kent seemed to enjoy was the theme, which was just James' "Laid" (of course). Stuck in my head for weeks.

[1:40:32] 

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Decent remake of the Hanks poster

I don't really remember The 'Burbs, Joe Dante's 1988 dark comedy starring Tom Hanks about a man moving into the suburbs with his wife only to get paranoid about suspicious things in his neighbourhood.  I definitely wasn't itching to see it remade into a TV series.

But much like watching Hijack because Idris Elba, it's almost irresistable to have Kiki Palmer (Nope, One of Them Days), one of the most magnetic performers in Hollywood, in a starring role and not watch it.

Palmer takes on the Hanks role here as Samira.  She got knocked by with Jack Whitheall's Rob after a short courtship, and they got married, had the baby and now are moving into Rob's parents place, which they offered up as they're on a "permanent cruise".  The home is in a large cul-de-sac where all the neighbours seem to be up in each other's business, and stuck at home with the baby, Samira understands why, there's some weird shit going down here...especially across the street in the abandoned manor that was just sold.

Turns out the house used to belong to the family of Rob's friend in his high school years. She disappeared under mysterious circumstances and the family moved away a while later leaving the place to rot. This disappearance gets into Samira's head, as new weird things start happening in the neighbourhood, and she's not the only one who thinks so. She makes friends with a wine-drinking porch crew and they kind of fuel each other's paranoia, as they each harbour their own secrets. 

The show starts as all mystery, everyone is a bit of a blank slate and kind of suspicious, including Rob. Samira's pent-up house-bound energies need to go somewhere, so she puts it into nosing around, and trouble follows.

Palmer is, as ever, a damn delight. The show does touch upon her being a black woman in the suburbs (and the requisite racism that surrounds it) in the first episode but sort of lets the anxiety of it ebb as she becomes part of the community quickly. Julia Duffy (Newhart) reminds us why she was nominated for Emmys six years in a row, and bringing Mark Proksch's weird energy vampire energy from What We Do In The Shadows into the cul-de-sac is a real gift. Whenever Paula Pell and Palmer share the screen, the most unlikely of comedy-duos emerges and I want nothing more than a big vehicle for the two of them to lead up and drive around.  If anything, the weakness of the show largely falls on Whitehall's shoulders.  He's not bad, but there's nothing in his performance that tells me why someone like Samira would be with him, and he doesn't bring anything unique to the role that makes him stand out from the other very talented performers (like RJ Cyler who plays Samira's brother, they needed more of him in the show).

I haven't watched the finale, but already, most of the mysteries are resolved around the main cast, and the central mystery which started it has morphed into another one that's just a little less sticky. It's a fun, if light watch.

[1:56:49]

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Created by Robert Popper and Peter Serafinowicz, Look Around You started its life as a series of edutainment shorts that was all about editing, images and voice over, no real roles or characters. On Tubi the nine 8-to-10-minute shorts are compiled into two 35 minute episodes.  They seem to be spoofing something very specific from British culture of the 1980s, but such things are not alien to any child of the 1980's who had access to PBS or TV Ontario. These sorts of informational videos were filler on TV throughout my youth, the only difference here is these videos aren't teaching you anything useful...everything they're talking about is made up and/or patently absurd.

It's pretty frivolous, but at the same time tugs on both nostalgia and comedy strings in a delightful way. There won't be a lot of big belly laughs, but if you appreciate conceptual comedy, this will definitely scratch an itch.

The second season of Look Around You is an entirely different show. It's once again in the edutainment sphere, only this time as a hosted show, likely aimed at kids but for all audiences. The four hosts (including Serafinowicz and Olivia Coleman) all speak in a very gentle fashion as they explain their topic or engage with their guest or chat about the video we've just seen. It's all still styled so very early '80's and it's really silly business being played very, very straight. In one episode, Jack Morgan (Popper) is going to have plastic surgery performed by a miracle robot (operated by Benedict Wong), and in another the cast meet a horse that can predict the winner of horse races, while in yet another they discuss a super-serum that will give an athlete super-speed only for it to cause them to shrink in the process.

My favourite bit of the show is Serafinowicz's penchant for portmanteaus. He slips at least one in per episode.

Silly business. Good fun.

[2:08:10]

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I like British comedy, but I'm by no means obsessive about it...mainly because a lot of it can be very localized, and/or too broad for my tastes. Well, hows this for too broad... a sketch comedy show starring...3 women? I kid.

I'd heard of Smack The Pony long ago, but really had no idea what it was. An Only Fools and Horses spin-off? I don't know. I never investigated because I had other things to consume.

The show stars Fiona Allen, Doon Mackichan and Sally Phillips, and yeah, it's just sketch comedy, the hardest programming to review. I wasn't keen on starting from episode one, because those early ones can be the roughest of a sketch series as the cast and writers find their feet. It's sometimes better to start in the middle so you can see the peak work and get familiar with the players involved so that you're a bit more forgiving of the roughness of the early shows.

I'm not keen to binge the show, just putting an episode on when I have 20 minutes or so to kill, it kind of fills a hole, being amusing enough, and completely non-taxing. The show has little structure, and from what I've seen so far, no real recurring characters, although there are repeating bits, like dating profiles (where different characters record their absurd dating profiles). 

The show will have long-form sketches where ideas are given room to play out and grow, and there are a lot of sub-1-minute gag-based sketches which are uncultivated nuggets that feel, unfortunately, too slight to be satisfying (my favourite sketch I've seen so far involves characters meeting at an art show, kissing each other on the cheek and smearing lipstick, only for the smeared lipstick to be seen everywhere all over the place in incremental ways, really quite amusing).

More than a few British character actors-to-be pop up here, including Darren Boyd and Sarah Alexander... I'll no doubt come across more as I continue my relaxed pace of consumption. 

Enjoyable, if not earth shattering, my only real problem is the quality of the sound on Tubi. The mix of the audio has the laugh track too loud to sometimes hear what's being said in a sketch. 

[2:22:19]

[I don't know why I fool myself into thinking I could ever get these written in 10 minutes or less.]

---FIN---

3 Short Paragraphs (Or Not): Fackham Hall

2025, Jim O'Hanlon (Your Christmas or Mine?) -- download

OK, a British absurdist comedic parody of other classic British movies about the divide between upper-class and lower-class in the 1930s; think Merchant Ivory or Downton Abbey, but with Jimmy Carr's humour, albeit tamed down significantly. Apparently its based on an idea he and his brother Patrick put together.

The Davenports are the lords of Fackham Hall but that is in jeopardy because Lord Davenport (Damian Lewis, Billions) has had no male heirs. His daughter Poppy (Emma Laird, 28 Years Later) is set to marry her first cousin Archibald (insert, "Eww, David."; Tom Felton, Rise of the Planet of the Apes), while his other daughter Rose (Thomasin McKensie, Last Night in Soho) is the weird one, who reads books and wears glasses ! Except on the day of the wedding Poppy runs off with a local manure hawker, for love, leaving the family in disarray. Meanwhile Eric Noone (Ben Radcliffe, The Witcher), low-class pick pocket and orphan, has found his way into the home whilst delivering a message. He was also run down earlier, by Rose, when their eyes met and sparks flew.

Oh, and they toss in some Agatha Christie by killing someone off, requiring a detective to show up and solve a mystery.

Its not like the plot really matters. What really matters is the non-stop silliness and crass humour. But again, rather tamed down considering its from the mind of Jimmy Carr. The movie maintains the play on language common to the genre they are spoofing, as well as a heavy dose of Cockney mockery, but never really gets as crass as he can in his own stand-up. I think I might have been disappointed by that timidity. Jimmy himself has a bigger-than-cameo role as the minister who constantly pauses his sermons in the wrong spots (insert shocked titters), and who looks like Hitler.

It was alright, I chuckled a lot and enjoyed myself. Admittedly, I am not a big fan of the parody comedy movie genre (yes, that includes The Naked Gun) but I was hoping this could be just a bit sharper in its wit. I prefer my comedy without giant floating turds, and no, not metaphorical ones. 

So This Is Christmas Leftovers (2025) - part 1?

 

AD/BC: A Rock Opera - 2004, d Richard Ayoade - Tubi
La guerre des toques (aka The Dog Who Won The War) - 1984, d. André Melançon - Crave
Cup of Cheer - 2020, d. Jake Horowitz - Tubi
A Make or Break Christmas - 2025, d . Martin Wood  - Hallmark/W

Preamble:
Between Hallmark, Lifetime, Netflix, UpTV, GAF, and all the Canadian (and non-Canadian) independent production company's, I would conservatively estimate there have been over 500 original Hallmarkies produced and released in the past decade. Together Toasty and I cover, conservatively, 25 of them in any given season on this here blog and we only started in earnest in 2019. So we're at about 25% coverage rate at best, which means...well, we have a mental illness. 

To be fair (tooooo BEEEE faaaIIIIIRRRRrrr!) we're not even trying to cover them all, it was never the objective. We would have to devote pretty much all of our watching and TV viewing time for the next two or three years to catch up. Even the Deck the Hallmark crew who do year-round Hallmarkie viewing and reviewing multiple times a week are still probably only at about 70-80% completion rate.

The point I think I'm trying to make here is, there's a lot of damn Christmas movies, and more every year. Even outside of Hallmarkies there are upwards of a dozen actual non-romance-based non-TV Christmas movies released every year in all different genres. It's impossible to watch them all, and if you find some favourites, it's hard to rewatch them when you're writing a blog and dedicating yourself to watching at least a dozen new ones every year.

Each holiday season I see new movies that I would like to rewatch in subsequent year and rarely do (Holidate excluded). But the same goes for regular movie watching where I find films I absolutely love and would like to rewatch but rarely do because there's so much new stuff to consume.

I always start into Christmas movie season in November, and by December Christmas movies are pretty much all I want to watch. I'm glad Toasty and I switch off days on the Advent Calendar because while I could probably write up 24 days on my own, where would I find the energy? (I'm not sure how Toasty does 31 horror movies in October every year). And so... here's some more Xmassy things:

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Under the pretense of being a forgotten televisual special (tele-viss-you-Al spess-eee-Al) from 1978, the cleverly titled AD/BC: A Rock Opera tells the story of the nativity, but from the innkeeper's perspective...you know the one guy whose sole part is "There's no room at the inn!"

In this funk and psychedelia infused parody of hippie rock operas like Godspell and Hair, Matt Berry plays the writer and star of the rock opera (op-ear-aaahhh) Tim Wynde who introduces the special, as well as performs the lead role of "Inkeeper" (no first name).

Inkeeper is in competition with big hotel across the street run by Tony (Julian Barratt) but is also leasing the property for his in from Tony. Innkeeper is paid a visit from God (Matt Lucas) who tells him that he should expect a divine occurrence, a divine guest at his meagre in. So he cancels all reservations and kicks all the guests out (his mother-in-law included) in anticipation. His wife, Ruth (Julia Davis) is upset and decides to leave him but he throws her out an she turns to Tony for solace, which Tony is all in for.

Eventually Joseph (Richard Ayoade) turns up with (unseen, unnamed) pregnant wife, and Inkeeper tells him that he's expecting a special guest but offers up his meagre stables. A child is born, a bright star shines upon all, and they all feel the joy and rapture of the event. Tony encourages Inkeeper and Ruth to rekindle their love, offers his hand in friendship to Inkeeper, and the pair declare they will offer reasonable rates and exceptional service, not as competitors but as collaborators.

AD/BC is tremendously silly, and is completely keyed into the style of British comedy that Berry and Ayoade (co-writers of the piece) were really into at the time, which heavily, heavily relied upon pastiche and lampooning without going full parody (pair-oh-daaayy).

It is indeed a singing-and-dancing rock opera throughout, most of the dialogue is sung. Berry, whose comedic performance  I've been a fan of for a long time, always likes to infuse music into his projects (see also Snuff Box and Toast of London for example) and in his non-acting time he's a prolific (pro-liff-yick) songsmith. The only problem is I've never really attuned to his style of music, and I find it can get exceptionally same-y (he will often have the same or similar chord progressions or keep returning to specific sequences of notes) and his vocal range is quite limited. Here he once again taps into familiar tones of his own use, but also dipping into 70's era music like a little Creedence Clearwater Revival or... others (memory already failing).

But in a comedy special like this, it's less about whether I'm humming tunes afterwards than if I was laughing or chuckling throughout, and it's a sold half hour of gleefully silly, anachronistic comedy.

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Kids sometimes become obsessed or enamoured with the things that scare them or traumatize them (emphasis on the "sometimes", don't go seeking to scare or traumatize your kids) and one such scary thing for me as a youth in the 1980s was a Canadian oddity called The Peanut Butter Solution.  It's the story of a young boy who gets so scared upon entering an abandoned house that all his hair falls out. He finds the solution in a gross mixture of peanut butter, eggs and, I want to say frogs? This solution then causes his hair to grow rapidly and he's kidnapped by a weird artist who harvests his hair to make unique fine art brushes.  It's gonzo, and I've always loved it (I acquired it on blu-ray in 2017 and only wrote about it briefly in the year-end post).

What I didn't know until recently was that The Peanut Butter Solution was a part of a series of films produced by legendary Quebec producer Rock Demers under the banner "Tales for All". The series lasted some 30 years (up to 2014 before being acquired by another company which has since continued the series) Some of the titles in this are familiar to me in name only but were in as frequent rotation on the CBC as The Peanut Butter Solution, but none of them have had the same staying power... for me.

But arguably the most famous of all of these "Tales for All" is La guerre des toques (in English "The War of Toques" but popularly know as The Dog Who Stopped the War), the story of a gang of pre-teen friends and neighbours who decide on their winter break from school to pick sides and wage a snow war against one another.

On one side is take-it-too-far Luc, who calls himself the General because he has his grandfather's bugle. On the other side is the much meeker Marc (actually it's Pierre, but for some reason they changed it to Marc in the dub and even the English subtitles). Only three lads choose Marc/Pierre's side, and so they are greatly outnumbered. Luc gives his enemies a day to build their snow fort, and it turns into a thing of glory. But they are so outmanned they have no choice but to accept the assistance of the new girl in town, Sophie, and her younger sister Lucie.  

Turns out Sophie is tough as nails and also a bit of a tactical genius (well, for a 12-year-old). Luc sets his sights on her, and, she, in turn, sets her sights on him. It's clear they dig each other in that very confused pre-teen, don't know what to do kind of way. And they're so French about it.

La guerre des toques is an incredibly low-key film. We're reminded frequently that these kids are supposed to be friends and that there are rules they have to follow, but that sometimes kids can't help but get carried away in their actions. Things can get pretty rough, like when one kid drops an ice block on another kid's head, or Luc sets his troop on kidnapping Sophie in the dark, a clear violation of the rules. She runs like her life depends on it, and it's a pretty intense sequence for what is just supposed to be child's play.

If you haven't seen the film before, there's a big honking ***SPOILER*** I'm about to drop, so skip on down to the next post if you don't want to know....

There are about a dozen or so kids participating in the war (and little brothers or sisters who want in but aren't allowed) so there's a lot of little white French kids to keep track of, mainly distinguished by their unique winter garb).  But one of the major secondary characters, and sub plots, is around Marc/Pierre's dog, Cleo, a big loveable old Saint Bernard.

Cleo has been feeling depressed ever since Marc/Pierre's younger sibling came along. Cleo keeps getting scuttled outside and is lonely being away from her family so much. Eventually, because of shenanigans during the war, Cleo is forced to stay outside. Marc/Pierre builds her a dog house, but she stops eating and is just so sad. Marc/Pierre also stops taking her out with him to his wartime events.

So on the last day of winter break, the kids plan a big final battle at the castle, and Cleo breaks free of her restraints and finds her way into the mix of the battle... the tower to the castle collapses in the heat of war and ...well, it crushes Cleo, like, to death! Seriously, the kids playtime killed the dog. And then they do the admirable thing and bury it in their secret storage spot in the abandoned shed they play in. Like, what are Marc/Pierre's parents going to say (well, Marc/Pierre's dad, always off screen, probably doesn't care that much, he's the one who wanted it out of the house).

But yeah, brutal and even as an almost 50-year-old man, traumatic!  I noticed Crave had a newer version of "The Dog Who Stopped The War", a modern 2015 animated remake that uses the style of massive heads on wee bodies that seems to dominate cartoons these days. It's a decent overall production, but I didn't watch the whole thing, I scrubbed through to the end just to see if they would chicken out or not...and to my surprise they did not. It's clear they changed the nature of Luc's character in this remake, losing some of the subtler touches of the original, but still pretty brave.

I liked this movie tremendously, and I'm going to be diving heavily into "Tales For All" in 2026.

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I'm not sure what the first holiday romance parody was (probably a Saturday Night Live sketch or something) but by 2018, the year after I really started watching Hallmarkies in earnest, the "ironic watch" and drinking games had already started to crop up. It wouldn't be long after that actual movies were being made making fun of the formulae and tropes of Hallmarkies.

I've seen many of these, including A Christmas Movie Christmas, A Clüsterfünke Christmas, The Bitch Who Stole Christmas, A Hollywood Christmas, and Christmas With The Campbells (I watched the first half hour of The Christmas Classic starring Malin Akerman, Ryan Hansen and Amy Smart - three very recognizable faces from TV and movies - thinking it would be a gentle parody like Christmas with the Campbells, and it's not...it's just a very bad Hallmarkie probably directed by a guy whose dad had money to burn...but I digress). I had not even heard of Cup of Cheer.

It popped up in Tubi's list of recommended viewing after watching AD/BC (see above), and the preview that started autoplaying showed a scene where the film's heroine arrives in her childhood perfect small town, to be greeted by a friendly santa-like hobo who offers her cookies from his pocket, only for her to run into her future love interest who is carrying what can only be described as a vat of hot chocolate which he then spills on her.

It's not really that funny a sequence, but I'm always curious about Hallmarkie spoofs and parodies.  This one coming from 2020 was an early adopter, a beautiful animated "Indiecan Entertainment Inc." title card declares this is very much a Canadian production which usually would make me say "uh oh" but the sheer quality of the title card had me feeling ...pride? Weird.

Cup of Cheer is a parody and a spoof, leaning hard into the maximum jokes per minute (jpm) with very little in the way of ground rules. Unlike Clüsterfünke or Christmas Movie Christmas which still tried to retain the chaste and puritanical nature of olde style Hallmarkies, this falls somewhere in between the great Zucker-Abrams-Zucker style of parody and the horrible "Not Another X Movie" non-series.  The jokes are a mix of leaning hard into Hallmarkie tropes and pushing them even further, some dexterous wordplay, some real bawdy humour, surprise cursing, and even a (*ahem*) splash of gross-out humour. 

The jpm is so high in this thing, and, frankly, the hit rate is at best 40%, which is not necessarily a passing grade, but when you're still getting a good laugh or chuckle 40% of the time, that's not actually too bad. When it comes to comedy, so much of it has to do with performance, and the relatively novice cast here are all surprisingly adept. The average Canadian Hallmarkie often only has one strong lead (occasionally two) the the supporting players a steep step down and the bit players even further down the quality slope. Here, I really couldn't find fault with any of the players throughout. 

Storm Steenson plays Mary, the big city girl who gets assigned to cover a big cover story for the big city magazine from the big city, but her assignment is in the perfect small town of Snowy Heights(ville Fallstown) which just happens to be the perfect small town she grew up in and left for the big city. Oh and she has to file the story by Christmas Eve. There she meets cute with Chris Mass (Alexander Oliver) in the aforementioned hot chocolate collision. Turns out he runs a failing hot chocolate shoppe with his brother Keith (Liam Marshall) which was bequeathed to him from his Grandmother. It's failing primarily because Chris doesn't feel right about charging his customers.  And then the big citiot with sever gastrointestinal troubles and a toxic personality, Mai Ex (Shawn Vincent), who happens to be Mary's ex, arrives and announces that he's opening a big hot chocolate chain cafe in the very spot Chris' hot chocolate shop is in... on Christmas, unless Chris can raise enough money to save the shop... but he's not willing to take charity or even work for it.

The movie is so joke dense and so joke focussed that the story and the characters get lost. I never felt too invested in the characters or their journeys and their relationships with one another were really hard to really grasp hold of. I think Chris being such a negative Nancy and such an utterly terrible businessman deserving to fail was probably a bad choice. Oliver performs him well enough that he's still somewhat likeable, but it's hard to see what Mary might be falling for (the fact that the falling in love is sort of perfunctory is probably just another joke, it's just a barrier to liking these characters though).

Brother Keith works part-time at the mall as an elf, it's set up and reiterated a couple of times before the big payoff is finding out that Keith is actually a stripper, which is news to Chris who needs his brother's advice while he's working. This results in some hilarious wordplay and really entertaining physical comedy from Marshall and Oliver as one brother is forced to lap dance the other brother in order to have their conversation. If you're looking for a gentle spoof in the same tone as an actual Hallmarkie, this isn't it, but it leans much more towards playful than mean spirited.

It's a cartoon world so the film's best running joke, about Chris and Keith's niece who gets kidnapped and nobody notices, comes across as toothless fun rather than dangerous or dark.

I had a good time with Cup of Cheer, and I didn't even mention the side-plot of Authuh (Jacob Hogan) the time-traveling prince from centuries past who very much takes a romantic shining to Chris but is primarily focused on trying to find a way back to his own time. As noted, it's definitely not perfect and it's throwing so much at the wall to see what sticks, it could prove as exhausting (or off-putting) to some as it is entertaining to others.

Also, so much actual Canadian snow for the win!

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A Light Toast to HallmarKent: A Make or Break Holiday

The Draw: I find Hunter King sooo cute, but she's been almost only in terrible Hallmarkies and after last year's godawful football/KC Chiefs-themed Holiday Touchdown I was ready to swear off her for good. But then I found out that this season's Finding Mr. Christmas winner Craig was going to have a part in A Make or Break Holiday that made it mandatory follow-up viewing, for better or worse.

HERstory: Liv (King) and Daniel (Evan Roderick) meet at a Christmas Party held by a mutual friend (never to be seen again). They start talking about cookies and never stop talking about cookies (too much cookie talk to the point of annoyance). 

Montage for the next year showing photos of their first date and other events (who took those photos!?!). By the next Christmas they have bought a house together (seriously how the ffff* did they afford *that* house...their professions are never indicated). But all is not as perfect as the perfectly made up house of Christmas. To put it bluntly Liv has OCD and the need to appease while Daniel has ADHD and can't seem to get started on some tasks or finish other tasks (I wish this were a more literal OCD meets ADHD-coded relationship...the analogy is such Hallmarkie accidental). Daniel hasn't even gotten rid of his apartment in the city yet and they've had the house for 3 months (red flag, Liv, red flag!)  They get into a fight and the Ross-and-Rachael idea of "a break" comes up, and they're both too escalated to be rational, and they both agree to "the break" (of course Daniel still has that apartment so he's already ready for "a break" I'm sure). 

They try to call off their Christmas festivities with their respective families but Liv's afraid of disappointing her type-A parents and Daniel is guilt-tripped by his mom before he can even say anything. So they agree to put up a charade for the holidays. The whole family comes, their hotels are overbooked, so they're all staying in the house, including Daniel's grandma and sister, Kim, and Liv's parents and brother, Reid (Craig Mr. Christmas).  

Immediately Kim sniffs out that there's trouble in paradise, while Liv confesses to Reid who wants to hear none of it because he's bad at secrets. And then it's all shenanigans as the family all needles and annoy one another while Kim and Reid conspire, poorly to reunite the lovers who have clearly just made a mistake.

Oh and Daniel keeps trying to hide a gift box that is so obviously a box-within-a-box-within-a-box engagement ring. It's a literal Chechov's Box-Within-A-Box-Within-A-Box Engagement Ring...it's only a matter of when, not if it will go off. And when it does, well, that's the third-act complication I guess (even though this film starts with the complication).

The Formulae: The film opens with a Christmas baking montage as Liv makes a Nutella roll (we only see "Nutella" prominently displayed, like, a million times in that first 120 seconds. There are ugly Christmas sweaters. The house is decorated to the nines with no less than 3 Christmas trees, one of which is the catalyst to Liv and Daniel's arguement. There's a hot chocolate toast, and festive games leading to conflict (there's a bullshit Christmas obstacle course that no family ever has set up every year). Grams watches a Christmas baking show (intently). There's no less than three trips to the Christmas market. There's an outdoor christmas dinner(!?) which is interrupted by everyone getting up to dance (!?) before getting kicked out because they start taking the microphone and making speeches and Reid grabs the snow-maker-blower thing and cranks it to 10. Oh yeah, and so much goddamn cookie talk.

Unformulae: What no Christmas/Eve deadline? No caroling? No ice skating? No perfect small town? I mean they hit so many other tropes, can't fault them for the ones they missed. Oh and no red dress, just fetching silk blouses.

True Calling? "Make or break" is defined as "be the factor which decides whether (something) will succeed or fail" so yes, I guess this is a true calling. This Christmas will be the deciding factor in whether Liv and Daniel succeed or fail.

The Rewind: When Liv and Daniel split off to call their parents and tell them Christmas is off, the edit goes into a series of split screens cutting between the couple and their families in a surprisingly complicated fashion. It gets recalled later in the film as well. It's a surprising DiPalma-esque touch I really, really wasn't expecting and it's very well executed.

The Regulars: Hunter King is part of Hallmark's next wave of superstars, while Evan Roderick seems to be a desperate "we need a new, younger Andrew Walker-type". He acquits himself just fine (he's also been in a fair share of Hallmark stuff...as well as an Arrow veteran). Craig (Geoghan apparently is his last name) was obviously on Finding Mr. Christmas, and I have to say this role of the sort of put-upon younger brother who is a grown-up but still a bit immature was pretty much the perfect starter role for him. He was surprisingly enjoyable. I still can't imagine him as leading man, but he can work his way up to it I think (now). Sister Kim is played by Brittney Wilson was pretty great in this role as the pushy sister character (I was worried they were going to try and pair Maya off with Reid, but thankfully that didn't happen) and used to be in a lot more of these pre-pandemic. Daniel's flighty mom Maya is played by Jennifer Juniper-Angeli who has been in XMas Hallmarkies the past two seasons. Liv's dad is played by Days of Our Lives legend Roark Critchlow (see also this year's The Christmas Cup)...he seems to have been more of a Lifetime murder movie staple than holiday romance guy. Liv's mom, played by Marlee Walchuk is a regular on Hallmark's Chicken Sisters but otherwise doesn't have much history in Hallmarkies. And Grams, played by Linda Darlow has a few under her belt, like Hanukkah on Rye from 2022.

Oh and Jonathan Bennett makes a cameo as the restaurateur angry at Reid for grabbing the snow-maker-blower thing. He says "how'd you get that" to which Reid says "I won a contest". Zing!

How does it Hallmark? It's enjoyable enough and certainly watchable. The complication of Daniel and Liv being broken up seems almost completely unnecessary when the plot simply could have been trying to navigate dealing with each other's parents...or it could have been more poignant had they leaned into each character's neuro-atypical nature. A sharper comedic mind could have really made this just a full on "Meet The Parents"-style comedy but instead it just sits as a pretty average Hallmark movie.

How does it movie? Nope.

How Does It Snow? Rolls upon rolls of cotton batting topped off with shaved ice or soap flakes.

Toast & Kent's Xmas (2025) Advent Calendar - Day 19: Silent Night

2021, d. Camille Griffin - Tubi

It seems to me that in creating a Christmas movie, the point is to make something that will make people want to watch it at Christmas time, to get into the festive season, to fill one's self with holiday feels, and to do it again the next year.

I can't imagine anyone watching Silent Night and thinking it a part of annual tradition.

With a quite wonderful ensemble cast, including Kiera Knightly, Matthew Goode, Lucy Punch, Kirby Howell Baptiste, Annabelle Wallis, Lily-Rose Depp, Sope Dirisu and Roman Griffin Davis (the young star of Jojo Rabbit), this pretends in its outset to be a holiday gathering of friends that promises some laughs, good times, and drama, as all ensemble films about holiday gatherings might.

What starts as weird statements, odd turns of phrases, and curious anecdotes soon reveals that a toxic gas cloud is slowly enveloping the earth, and that in the UK, the government has issued its citizens the Exit Pill, that will allow them to pass on in a quick and painless manner, sparing them from the more slow and brutal death that the gas will provide.

And so the gathering is not simply a holiday feast, but also an event for the dearest of friends to gather one last time, to speak truth and offer forgiveness and to share in each other's love one last time.

But, this isn't going to be a simple silent night. Not everyone is part of the "inner circle". Some are significant others who don't have the history and connection and are left on the outside, and some, like Art, are children who refuse to accept their fate and are angry and want to fight.

This is a deftly woven tale, with some genuinely funny moments as well as some darkly funny moments, balanced with some juicy drama built out of the vow of honesty, and some gut-wrenching intensity as the story peeks here and there into the outside world.

The ending is just as bleak as you would expect, with an aspect of sweetness and beauty to it all, but it's the aching release after 90 minutes of anticipation. There should be no joy to this world, but there's still little moments that crack the bleakness, stop it from being so dire.

I don't know who would want to watch this every Christmas, as it didn't make me feel terribly festive. That said, it's a remarkable little film, an emotional rollercoaster that's surprisingly much more evocative than I was expecting.

[not to be confused with this Silent Night]

Toast & Kent's XMas (2025) Advent Calendar: Day 6 - Jingle Bell Heist

2025, Michael Fimognari (The Fall of the House of Usher) -- Netflix

Two not-Hallmarkies in a row? Yeah yeah, boo on me.

This one was actually unexpected. Sorry, its not like I turned it on by accident, but I assumed I was just watching another British movie with an American lead (see previous movie) which was to be a "Christmas Caper". That's a thing, right? I mean, technically, you might call Die Hard, a "Christmas Caper" movie? Anyway, I like me a good caper (as I am a Caper) and since our household is still firmly footed in British Land (watching a lot of panel shows) I suggested this. But yes, as I was saying, it wasn't just another Christmas Caper movie. So, be warned, to tell you how it wasn't, I will spoil the jingle bells out of it.

And yes, we will get back to proper Hallmarkies.

Sophia (Olvia Holt, Cloak & Dagger) is an American working at Sterlings, one of those mega-department stores you see in British movies, apparently only catering to high end clientele and pretending its the 1950s, the height of pretty young things catering to the whims of rich assholes. She's also a pick pocket with a heart of gold, as the "angry man yelling at buskers" establishing scene exhibits. And she uses any opportunity to pocket cash at the store, one time which gets her caught on security camera, which Nick (Connor Swindells, Rogue Heroes) happens to be spying in on. Nick's also a thief?

But doubling-down on the "heart of gold" thing, we find Sophia is just stealing money to pay for her mother's extended needs during cancer treatment. They did move to the UK for free health care, after they exhausted all their funds in the US, but every little bit counts. Especially when a doctor offers her entry in a trial study that could see her mom improving drastically, but its part of the two-tier system where people with money can jump queues. They don't barely have enough money.

Nick tries to blackmail Sophia into stealing stuff from the store's special vault, and while she initially refuses, the trial costs convinces her otherwise. Enter caper one, and the first time my expectations were tossed aside. I kind of thought the movie was moving along rather quickly, and when she goes to do the actual stealing, its... all gone. Sterling (Peter Serafinowicz, Shaun of the Dead) himself, the family named boss of the store, has reported it all stolen.

So, Sophia suggests robbing Sterling directly. He always keeps tons of cash in his personal safe. She knows this from eavesdropping. She scouts out the office, finds a hidden walk-in safe behind a bookshelf and brings the knowledge to Nick, who as we saw in the "spying on her" bit, works in security but we also learn, is down on his luck after spending two years in jail for theft. He has an ex, a daughter and a roommate who spends all day playing video games and wants in on whatever caper Nick has coming up. Nick denies everything. But he does need cash to further his relationship with his daughter, as currently repairing laptops barely covers his expenses let alone child payments. Nick knows how those safes work, key fobs with security codes. Caper two! Get the fob!

Yeah, this was the hijinx caper, one where they know they have to get into his house and the only way they come up with is "seduce his wife". How is it in these movies, when they dress the shabby young man up in a tux, they never consider him actually shaving off his perpetual three-day-scrub? No matter, if goes miserably but... the wife (Lucy Punch, Motherland) is onto them anyway. Buuuut she's into it, the stealing from her husband, whom she loathes but also wants his fortune, not into Nick seducing her. Caper three! Armed with the fob, rob his store safe!

Oh, I should mention that by this point, we have found out Nick isn't even a thief. He was actually framed by Sterling himself who had Nick build some security for him, only to use it as a manner for Sterling to steal his own goods and get the insurance money. This was turnaround for a main character, and the other... well, I should have seen it coming, but I barely put it together before it was revealed. You see, Sterling is her dad. She is his illegitimate daughter. Sterling denied her existence and it drove her mother to the US. When DNA is required to get into the safe, its hers they use. BUT THAT'S NOT ALL ! They aren't even stealing from Sterling, but putting back a ton of the shit he stole in previous events, including the goods from two years prior when he framed Nick. This caper, as designed by the wife, is to put all the goods back into the safe, call in a robbery (in cute winter themed balaclavas at that) and get the evil man arrested, after which the wife will set them up for life.

So yeah, a fun little caper-ish movie that plays with expectations, still squarely runs in romcom land and is all set during the Xmas season, so while it doesn't adhere to any really strong holiday tropes, the coming Xmas days and packed department stores play important parts in the story. Nick and Sophia seem like an unlikely pair, but that works out better for Hallmarkie style romcom-y land.

Yeah, I liked it.

Toast & Kent's XMas (2025) Advent Calendar - Day 5: The Crowded Day

(aka "Shop Spoiled", aka "Tomorrow is Sunday")
1954, d. John Guillermin - Tubi

It's getting closer to Christmas at London department store Bunting and Hobbs, and the shopgirls are slammed.

Taking place over just one day, the film tracks a few of the shopgirls' lives, starting with the congested morning routine at the women's boarding house. There's an impressive amount of exposition and set-up in these early moments, but if it's just your first viewing (and, really, who has actually heard of this film to have viewed it more than once?) it's hard to tell all these women apart. Except there's the blonde with the high, high hair (the impression is that actress Vera Day is the British sexbomb equivalent to Marilyn Monroe, but she has the same haircut my Gramma had her whole life, so it's hard to look past), and the woman with the short curly hair and the Geordie accent who's always eating (there's always got to be one in any ensemble, huh?)...they stood out. The rest, well, it was like the female version of Dunkirk, just a lot of pale, British brunettes on screen.

The film has a cast of upwards of two dozen characters to keep track of, of different levels of import to the story. There are the cleaners, the shopgirls, the management, and the men circling the shopgirls' lives.

The centerpiece story is the on-again/off-again relationship between Peggy (Joan Rice) and Leslie (John Gregson). Leslie loves his old jalopy (if you read an Archie comic, you should know exactly what I'm referring to) very much, and it drives Peggy crazy, so Peggy in turn finds any angle to drive Leslie crazy, including flirting with the much older head of personnel.  The tumultuous flirtations of Peggy and Leslie continually draw others into its orbit, coming to a head at the big evening dance with Mr. Bunting and family getting sucked into their farce. It's pretty fun although not quite as sassy or go-for-broke as it thinks it is.

The second major storyline follows the dour, pouty-lipped Yvonne (Josephine Griffin). Yvonne is, to put it bluntly, depressed. She's been searching for her man, Michael, who has up and gone missing two months earlier. She's tried Michael's mother on the phone but she really hates her and won't tell her a thing. Yvonne can't hold her wits about her. The workplace is too chaotic and she has a 1950's panic attack and abandons her post. She races out at lunch and runs across town to talk to Michael's mother. When she tells her she's pregnant with Michael's baby, she calls Yvonne a slut and a street walker. For a 1950's film, it's downright scandalous how she talks to her. Late returning from lunch, she gets called into personnel, where she's told she has to go seek social services to help her through her pregnancy and adopting out her baby, and when that's all over, she can come back to work as if nothing happened. Yvonne, then steals some pills with strychnine in them and contemplates suicide and also is pursued by a sex pest in the streets. It's a damn grim storyline, capped off by the fact that Michael actually returned to the store and left her a message but Yvonne's bitter co-worker just couldn't be bothered. It's fucking bleak man. The rest of the film is pretty much a comedy, but every time they cut to Yvonne it's tonal whiplash.

There's more to the affair, including a commission-stealer's comeuppance and the running gag of an inept male store manager trying to help with a mannequin display.

There are definite delights and even a few shocks (that confrontation between Yvonne and Michael's mother is capital "h" Harsh! The music is ever-present and somewhat abrasive in a way that detracts from most scenes, but not enough to ruin any of them. The story's setting, both the cramped women's dormitory and the frantic-paced department store are both pretty much alien objects now, so there's a whole sense of not just another time and another place, but, like, another reality.

A compelling, charmer that goes down fairly easily...but what of Christmas?
Well, this is what you would call a movie set at Christmas time, and not a Christmas movie.

KWIF: lazy Sunday

 KWIF=Kent's Week In Film. This week's film watchings was interrupted by the return of AppleTV to the household, and by the awareness of a mouse in the house and the rampant messes that it made beneath our own cluttered masses. After a five day hunt the mouse was finally defeated, and I am exhausted. But prior to both of these events, I had a lazy Sunday of movies and Hallmarkies.

This Week:
Devil In A Blue Dress (1995, d. Carl Franklin - Hollywoodsuite)
S.O.S.: Save Our Skins (2014, d. Kent Sobey - Hollywoodsuite)
Three Wisest Men (2025, d. Terry Ingram - Hallmark/W)
A Keller Christmas Vacation (2025, d. Maclain Nelson - Hallmark/W)

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When you think of detective noir genre, you're thinking 1930s or '40's, black and white, lots of sultry horns on the soundtrack, cigarette smoking and stylish hats, dames in dresses and so much sexism, twisty plots and downer endings.

I never really embraced the detective noire genre. It seemed so...outdated when I was younger, and couldn't get over how much of it seemed like...affectation. It didn't help that the genre was riddled with cliches which comedies had mined to death. So at 19 years old when Devil In A Blue Dress came out as Denzel's sixth movie in the two years following Malcom X, well, I wasn't interested in this olde timey claptrap. Give me Virtuosity and Crimson Tide, all day everyday.

But, I've been in a detective/noir mood of late, inspired largely by rewatching the films of the Coen Bros., and it struck me, pretty hard, that I should give Devil in a Blue Dress a shot. I mean, if detective noires demand a strong lead, you don't get much stronger than Denzel J. Washington, Esq.

Devil in a Blue Dress is an adaptation of Walter Mosely's 1990 neo-noir novel of the same name, and introduced the world to Ezekiel "Easy" Rawlins (Washinton) [just try to tell me that Easy Rawlins is not the best noir detective name ever], a veteran of WWII who gets laid off but is desperate for work to pay his mortgage. He gets sent his way a smarmy, suspicious looking character, Albright (it's Tom Seizmore, so you know he's bad news) who wants Rawlins' help in looking for a woman. Easy sees the money, and even though he already senses something is off about the request, can't help but take the work.

Even though Easy is not a detective and has no past with law enforcement, he has a way with people, a confidence most others lack, and a physicality which is very intimidating even if you're twice his size. Soon after taking the case, an acquaintance who knows the woman he's looking for winds up dead, and suddenly things are getting real. Albright we quickly learn is a thug, and has misrepresented what exactly he's after. There's also an L.A. mayoral race at play and somehow both candidates are involved in whatever this big mess is.  At a certain point, Easy needs help, and calls in his army buddy Mouse (Don Cheadle) but Mouse's more...trigger-happy tendencies may be more of a hindrance than a help.  

Beneath it all, Easy still has PTSD from the war, and whatever the active version of traumatic stress disorder is from just being a Black man in America. The cops harass him, the white men play him, and he knows a white woman need say but a word and a mob will come after him.

Devil in a Blue Dress is an incredible noir story, featuring incredible characters, from the most major to the most minor (there's a mentally challenged man on Easy's street who keeps trying to cut down people's trees, and Easy is constantly chasing him off...while still acknowledging him as part of the community), and there's nothing quite like watching a character get chucked into the deep end and having to learn how to swim, only to discover they're an olympic caliber swimmer.

Devil in a Blue Dress did not do great at the box office, and it's a damn shame. Mosely has written 14 novels since 1990 starring Easy Rawlins (the latest came out this year), and we should have gotten a new Washington-starring Easy Rawlings adaptation every three years. With AppleTV killing it with their novel series adaptations, I think we need an Easy Rawlings relaunch as a series, maybe with John David Washington in the lead?

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In the before times, one would surf channels until they found something the caught their attention and just watch, usually all the way through, no matter how bad it was, because options were limited. We have nothing but options now, and it causes "analysis paralysis" where you just scroll and scroll and scroll through your various streaming services, often watching nothing more than a 60 second auto play snippet before moving on to the next thing. So much of the pain (and sometimes fun) of sifting through streaming is cutting past the cheaply produced, licensed-in-bulk amateurish garbage, only to occasionally find one starring a whole bunch of name-brand actors from TV series you used to watch 15 years ago, or it features a conceit that you just can't pass up watching.

S.O.S.: Save Our Skins is very much from the cheaply-produced, licensed-in-bulk pile, a British/Canadian co-production starring nobody I'm familiar with, but tantalized me on concept alone.

Two British nerds, Ben and Steven, have travelled to New York City for a comic book convention, only to wake up and find that the TV is off and their mobile service is down. Oh, and when they hit the streets the city is empty.

Right off, it's incredibly impressive for this exceptionally modest production to have managed to capture scenes on absolutely vacant NYC streets. This was shot 6 or 7 years before the idea of lockdown was in anyone's mind.

The nerds do what nerds do, which is annoy one another, look for junk food, go shopping, and panic only a little... er, well, a lot when they encounter a blue monster (which looks like if a pro wrestler from the 1950's joined the Blue Man Group). While foraging at a bodega, they encounter another man who invites them around to their place, and, yeah, he's a creep. The internet still works (I really have to wonder how much of our infrastructure can truly run on autopilot and for how long without human intervention) and they send out a message, which in turn they get a response from two Canadian nerds who beckon them to Toronto.

Along they way they encounter a mentally deranged woman who tries to assault them. Ben takes a liking to her and calls her "Killey". It's not a very flattering portrayal of the mentally ill, and also the fact that Ben, a lonely nerd, effectively grooms this woman who doesn't seem completely in her faculties is all kinds of ick.

At the centre of the entire story is a series of random images that flashes on screens, subliminal messaging from a strange figure who plays into the final act, where we learn about what's actually happening and why.

S.O.S. is meant as a comedy, but is rarely ever funny. The character portrayals are incredibly thin, with Ben being kind of oblivious and id-drive while Steven is the worrier who just wants to get in touch with his mum. 

The film does manage to effectivley capture, at least visually, the sense of emptiness with nobody else around, but emotionally you never truly feel it. I can only imagine what this would look like as a Pegg-Frost-Wright joint, which this is clearly a pale shadow of.

The ideas are definitely there, and it's decently well acted, but the characters, the adventure, the humour are all very much lacking.

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A  Light Toast to HallmarKent: Three Wisest Men

The Draw: Three Wise Men and A Baby was a goddamn delight. The casting of Hallmark superstars Andrew Walker, Paul Campbell and Tyler Hynes as brothers in a legit comedy was inspired. The sequel was diminishing returns, but still the leads made it more than worth the while. A third entry was going to be the "must watch" of the season, because even if it was lesser-than what came before, there was no doubt it would still be a joy to watch these three men perform together.

HERstory: Mom (Margaret Collins) is selling the house! Taylor (Hynes) has been given a job offer...in San Francisco... and his ex Fiona (Ali Liebert) is there too. Mom selling the house means he has to move anyway, but he's having commitment issues with current girlfriend Caroline (Erin Karpluck). Stephan's (Campbell) indecisiveness is getting in the way of marriage preparations with Susie (Fiona Vroom), and their house springs a leak just as Fiona's dad (Lochlyn Munro) comes to visit. Luke (Walker) is expecting twins (well actually it's Sophie [Nicole Major] expecting twins but Sophie's always been such a non-entity in these movies) and Thomas is getting jealous and acting out. Um, they're all staying at Mom's for one last Christmas in the home and it gets tense. Hijinks ensue.

The Formulae: Oh cripes...there's really none? Even the "getting a Christmas tree on Christmas Eve" trope is brought up but skipped over. There's no snowball fights, no cookie baking montage, and no overt propaganda for Big Hot Chocolate.

Unformulae: At one point the three boys, each in the midst of their own personal dilemmas, sit down to have a drink...and they're drinking beers, not hots cider or cocoa. This, unlike other Hallmarkies (not even the Evergreen movies), is very invested in its franchise and brings characters back from previous movies. Unlike the first sequel, it avoids callback-as-comedy which is great. This also steals a sub-plot from other movies like Jingle All The Way where Thomas wants a popular toy for Christmas but it's hard to get, so the boys go to extremes to get it. Where that could have been a whole movie, it's just a 10-minute aside.

True Calling? Who cares at this point, it fits the series, and it's more eloquent than the clumsy Three Wiser Men and a Boy.

The Rewind: There's an early sequence in the film where Luke and Sophie are at Lamaze class for parents expecting twins (or more) and the instructor is in the midst of a meltdown, providing no reassurance for the attendees as to what life will be like with multiple babies. As she starts bemoaning her husband's own mental breakdown, there's a brilliant smash-cut to "Tom" on his knees with three babies strapped to him like a baby bandolier.  

The Regulars: They're all regulars at this point, if not of Hallmark, then at least of the series.

How does it Hallmark? Because it's the third in a series, it's kind of way outside the usual parameters of a Hallmarkie. Where the first was still infused with holiday romance, because each of the brothers was single and they meet someone, and at least the second one hat Tayler meet cute-ing the awesome Caroline, this one has no romance at all. There's the hint of complication with Fiona (Taylor's love interest from the first) but the film doesn't play it out. So with that, and not leaning into any of the usual holiday tropes, it's not very Hallmarkie.

How does it movie? It remains a joy to see these three leads together. But this should have been a six- or eight-episode half hour sitcom. There's too much going on and not enough time for the movie to explore it all, and the shenanigans they get themselves into together feel disconnected from their individual story arcs.

The Taylor love triangle never pans out. Luke's anxiety over becoming a dad of twins isn't adequately explored. Stephan's Meet The Parents anxiety is the most underwhelming sub-plot, but make this a sitcom, give these stories room to breathe for both emotion and comedy and I think it would have been solid gold, rather than tarnished silver in need of a good buffing.

How Does It Snow? There's less than 60 seconds of outdoors in this movie, and what little outdoors we see are establishing shots of real winter scenes, or backgrounds where they've tufted some batting to make it look like snow around the edges. 

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A Light Toast to HallmarKent: A Keller Christmas Vacation

The Draw: Brandon Routh makes his triumphant return to Hallmark movies in a non-cat-centric movie this time. I'm here for it.

HERstory: The Keller kids are joining their parents on an Austrian riverboat cruise visiting the best Christmas markets in the world. College football team manager Cal (Routh) just lost out on what he thought was the love of his life. Construction executive Dylan (Jonathan Bennett) needs a break from his boyfriend (William) after his proposal is met with a "this is not the right time". Data analyst Emory (Eden Sher) has just been laid off. So they each are coming to the trip with baggage. But when a kindly grampa introduces Cal to his comely granddaughter Felicity (Jill Winternitz), and the ship's events coordinator takes a shine to plucky Emory, and William decides to join the family trip anyway. Mom and dad have a secret they need to share. It's all, well, it's a trip full of family bonding and romance. 

The Formulae: There is a scene where Emory and her bestie talk while decorating a Christmas tree. There's a gingerbread house making contest on the boat.

Unformulae: The film's opening credits play over a photo album that features the main family cast in different locales at different ages which is, I'm sure, all AI generated. The photos are too clean to be Hallmark's usual sloppy photoshopping. Strauss' "Waltz on the Beautiful Blue Danube" plays overhead, a touch of class over the AI tarnish.

Hallmark rarely springs for location shooting, and here they have a riverboat as a main set, they have beautiful Austrian cities and markets as backdrops, there's a rustic converted barn that's an ale house and lodge, and the kids have to take "Hansi" (a motorbike with a side car) through the hillsides to catch their boat after missing it the previous night.  Actual production values and wild, non-Canadian locations are so exciting and rare in Hallmarkies.

True Calling? They are Kellers, and they have a Christmas vacation.

The Rewind: So, Felicity is introduced to Cal by her grandfather and these two very attractive people take one look at each other and say "huh...not right now". Felicity is recently divorced, and Cal has some thinking to do. But they keep talking to one another, not flirting, just being friendly. But then in the Vienna market, Cal starts getting hit on by a pretty Austrian lady who is entranced by this American and Fiona, even though she has said she's *not interested* totally cock blocks him. "I love being rescued from an adorable Austrian who is totally flirting with me, especially when it's by a super-cute American whom I'm not allowed to flirt with." But in the scene right after that, the leering glare of the Austrian in the background...oh, the daggers her eyes are throwing.

The Regulars: Bennett is Hallmark royalty, Routh has a few of these under his belt, but this is Sher's first, but probably not last (she's got serious Lacey Chabert vibes, so it seems like they're seeding her). Winternitz's only prior is "Christmas in Scotlan", while handsome and charming Anand Desai-Barochia is a first timer as Bennett's boyfriend, but he's so sultry on screen without even trying (their kiss is great). Mom and Dad (Laurel Lefkow and Nigel Whitmey) are new to the genre, which is surprising given how the parent roles are usually where you find the most veteran of Hallmarkie actors. Beyond our leads, I think most of the performers here are regional hires.

How does it Hallmark? It's a top notch Hallmarkie, not defying the standards of a Hallmarkie too much while still offering something heartfelt and Christmassy. It's charming and funny with some sweet moments and a few pretty decent romantic moments.

How does it movie? As a Hallmarkie it's on a much grander scale than most, but even at that scale it's still shot like a Hallmarkie, and as well as it's acted, I don't think anyone could confuse this cast for a movie-movie. I mean Jonathan Bennett's hammy physical comedy and over-the-top snoring immediately take it out of contention for actual movie movie.

How Does It Snow? REAL SNOW! And LOTS OF IT!......