Your Monster, The Madness & A Sally Wainwright Gem From The Archives
Just three of the bangers from your new weekly must-watch list from White Noise (Fri 29th Nov-Thurs 5th Dec)
It’s your second instalment of the new weekly White Noise feature: Oi, Watch It! Your curated-from-the-choas watch-list, with my unchecked opinions/reviews/rantings to boot. I’ve trawled TV listings, press releases, cinema listings, social announcements, forward planning lists (and listened to the voices in my head). All so you don’t have to. Each weekly list of picks is single digits, every pick is a banger (here is last week’s list). And, as of this week, I’ve added a couple of new bonus bits. Like…Oi Oi! Watch It Of The Week (time for only one? Your declarative top recommendation). And Rare Sort - a random recommendation from the TV and film archives. The only criteria: a)do I love it, wanna march in the streets for it? b)has it flown under the radar for many and/or not received the legendary status it deserves.
Did I miss summat this week? Do you have your own Rare Sort you think I should consider/watch? Tell me in the comments! Was this handy? Share it! But most importantly: read, watch, enjoy.
OI OI! WATCH IT OF THE WEEK
1)New Film Friday//Your Monster
What happens when the game isn’t banishing your childhood monster, but your childhood monster getting shot of you? The latest low-point for Laura Franco (Melissa Barrera) in Caroline Lindy’s sweet and savage romcom, Your Monster. The musical theatre actress diagnosed with cancer, dumped by her dickhead director boyfriend and losing the role she helped him create, when Monster (Tommy Dewey) emerges from the closet to help her get a grip (once he’d stopped trying to run her out of town). A cipher for Laura’s repressed rage? Yes! A reveal of who the real monsters are? Yes! A fucking delight? Yes, yes! I wept, laughed, screamed at Laura to just get off with Monster already (who knew I had a thing for Ron Perlman’s Beast in CBS’s 1987 Beauty & the Beast TV series? The spit). And just when you’ve got Your Monster all figured out, Caroline Lindy lands a gigantic rug pull and well, it’s a glorious, glorious last ten minutes that I’d buy a cinema ticket just to see up big.
Your Monster has a limited cinema run in London, Liverpool, Newcastle, Edinburgh and Milford Haven (search here for listings). It’s also available on digital platforms right now
2)A Slick Thriller To Stream//The Madness
First things first, people. My god, Colman Domingo is charismatic: a human fish hook, tugging my eyeballs to follow where he leads. The Madness - even with a cast that includes John Ortiz, Alison Wright, Bradley Whitford (I drink from the keg of glory! Sorry, couldn’t help myself) - is entirely his show. He eats up the screen as Muncie Daniels, hopeful-CNN host and progressive media pundit (see! No good can come of being a media pundit!) and soon-to-be murder suspect who lands in hot water while writing a novel in the Poconos (no good can come of this either). There’s a mad conspiracy, far right maniacs, an estranged family and did I mention Colman Domingo is wildly charismatic? Your eyeballs deserve this.
Watch The Madness on Netflix now
3)New telly to tune in for//24 Hours in Police Custody: Living The High Life
A new series of 24 Hours always seems to arrive by stealth, episodes stumbled upon as they go out live (me, a thirsty girl seeing the pop man). It’s hardly like we need more true crime shows, but this one - airing for a decade - manages to speak to society right now and avoid being blatant PR for the police. Each episode - following the clock running down post-arrest - exposing the cracks in the system. The CPS at the end of the phone refusing to charge, limitations of the law leaving those who are meant to protect us powerless. The latter in (terrifying) action in last week’s stalking episode, ‘The Murder Messages’. The detective saying of the suspect landing bail, “He’s made death threats. He’s made rape threats. But these threats haven’t been acted on. This is where stalking falls between the cracks, because he is still out there - and if he’s really intending causing the victim serious harm, he can still go and do that. And by the time the police are aware, it could be too late.” And it so often is. This week’s episode features fraud, exploitation and a drug investigation.
24 Hours in Police Custody: Living the High Life airs on Channel 4 on Mon 2nd Dec at 9pm. The first episode in the series, The Murder Messages is now available on demand
4)Saturday Night Settee Pick//About Time
OK, if you haven’t seen About Time a)why? b)what could you have possibly been doing instead? c)beware! Spoilers ahead. Right, you good? Good! Truth be told, my feelings about About Time defy all logic and reason (much like time itself, amirite!). There’s Domhnall Gleeson as time-travelling dweeb Tim, being all umm ahh, well, umm, I actually quite like you ummm ahh; dad Bill Nighy, who passed on the time-travelling; wife Rachel McAdams in a spectacularly underwritten role (so much so I had to google her character’s name even though I’ve watched it 40-odd times); though perhaps not as underwritten as Margot Robbie’s Hot Posh Girl. Yes, OK, why did I watch it in excess of 40 times given, you know, *points upwards*? Because it’s also sweet and charming, so utterly pure of heart and well, profound. Because it provokes emotion in me that I had no idea I was capable of. Also, because there are a handful of weird characters that I enjoy greatly: Tom Hollander’s prick playwright Harry; Lindsay Duncan as dweeb’s rock-hard mum; even ‘kooky’ Kit Kat (Lydia Wilson), dweeb’s sister and ‘mad girl’. The perfect feel-good, feel-sad, feel-everything Saturday night movie. Oh, and it’s Mary! Of course. Her name is Mary.
About Time is on 5STAR on Sat 30th Nov at 9pm
5)Telly You Might Have Missed//Inside Barlinnie
Not to be confused with ITV’s 2017 documentary Ross Kemp Behind Bars: Inside Barlinnie this BBC documentary called, er, Inside Barlinnie was first broadcast last month and is now going again from this Sunday. Merry fucking Christmas from The Big Hoose aka Glasgow’s most notorious prison! Which, after 142 years faces closure, though not before we hear from prison staff, journalists and prisoners past and present. Riots, assaults, suicide, therapy, rehabilitation and reoffending: this ain’t no…About Time. But it’s utterly compelling, particularly the testimony of those who’ve been locked inside its walls - like the inmate who so succinctly says: “I widnae recommend it. I widnae recommend it at all.”
Episode 1 of Inside Barlinnie airs on BBC Two on Sun 1st Dec at 10pm. Eps 2 and 3 air the following Sundays (8th & 15th Dec). All episodes are available to stream now on iPlayer
6)An Early Christmas Classic//Christmas With The Royle Family
Remember when specials of shows like The Royle Family were on the Christmas Day schedule? We’d all crowd round the telly, bellies out? (Yes, I realise I sound 78 years old). This, from 1999, was the first of their six Christmas specials and as per, we’re welcomed in at the point of no-drama (when we’d be long gone were it not for Craig Cash and Caroline Aherne’s take on telly). Christmas day: dinner’s done, presents long opened and they’re all watching some “shite” on the telly (Noel’s Christmas Presents). Apart from Barbara (Sue Johnstone) who’s in the kitchen surveying the pots and Denise (Caroline Aherne) who’s ringing from upstairs, trying out her new ‘emergencies-only’ mobile. Heavily-pregs, she’s about to pop, and indeed she does - though only after 25 minutes of rinsing Anthony for playing “parlour games” at his girlfriend’s (“Is their telly broke??”), rating Barbara’s turkey and drinking Snowballs. Then, Denise shouts her mum from upstairs, her waters having gone on the loo. It’s left to Jim to comfort her (“Are you sure it wasn’t just a great big piss, love?”), and so we’re gifted another soul-shifting, dialogue-light, emotion-heavy scene with Denise and Jim (much like in the series one closer, ‘The Wedding’ - Denise, fag on,”Well…you know…you and me mam, more than anything”). This time, they’re on the bathroom floor, Denise sobbing, terrified, Jim, his arm around her shoulder, placing a light kiss on her forehead, the damp eyes and stare of a man transported back to when she came into the world. A moment, just a moment, between father and daughter, suspended in time. Is there a better way to open Christmas than with this episode? (No).
Christmas With The Royle Family airs on U&Gold, Sun 1st Dec at 9:40pm. It’s also available now on iPlayer.
7)The Sunday Night Scary//Cape Fear
De Niro and Scorsese’s (and Thelma Schoonmaker’s) second mention in as many weeks, this time for the 1991 remake of Cape Fear. I can think of nowt worse (by which, of course, I mean better) for the Sunday night fear than watching a psychopathic Max Cady (a deranged De Niro with gigantic cross - and scales of justice - tattooed across his back), astride Nick Nolte’s almost-mistress Lori Davis (the remarkable Illeana Douglas) poised to bare his teeth. And to the Cape Fear haters I offer….Juliette Lewis’s high-wire performance as Danielle; Thelma Schoonmaker’s increasingly-audacious edit, particularly in that wet & wild finale; the genius of Robert Mitchum as chief of police; the splash and flash of cinematographer Freddie Francis’s uncompromising work; De Niro’s farewell. speaking in tongues as he sinks. A regular old Monday morning suddenly seems like a walk in the park.
Cape Fear is on BBC Two, Sun 1st Dec at 11pm
RANDOM SORT
8)The Stone-Cold Sally Wainwright Classic//Unforgiven
Remember that 2021 Netflix film starring Sandra Bullock as Ruth, a convicted murderer looking for her sister? This isn’t that! This is the 2009 British TV series that became that film (called The Unforgivable. There’s also Mel Giedroyc panel show Unforgivable, Clint Eastwood Western Unforgiven, and John Ritter TV movie Unforgivable and IT CAN BE CONFUSING). The film is not entirely without merit (Sandra Bullock nails brutalised working-class female rage), but it’s nowt on the show, written by Sally Wainwright and starring Suranne Jones. She’s Yorkshire Ruth, searching for the little sister adopted by a middle-class family after she was sent to prison for killing two policemen as a teenager. Revenge, retribution, forgiveness, class, loyalty, betrayal, family! Suranne Jones and Sally Wainwright on full beam! Not to mention Siobhan Finneran, a young Emily Beecham, George Costigan, and (a very good) Will Mellor. I’m going to ruin your weekend by saying it’s not available on digital in the UK (it had been on BritBox - RIP - and it can be streamed on Prime Video in the US). You can buy it on DVD (below) for only four English pounds, but if anything needs a campaign to get it up on ITV player or one of the streaming sites, this is it. ARE YOU LISTENING, DISTRIBUTION FOLKS? Take our money!
Have you watched Say Nothing? I think it’s one of the best things I’ve seen.
Also watched Boybands Forever (from your last recommendation) and it’s sooo good. I would love someone to make a doc about the FANS! The girls sobbing in the streets, where are they now!
Had no idea 24 hrs in PC was back on - thanks!