★★★★☆
Four Stars

Dan Smith’s ambition was never to be a pop star. The lead singer of and driving force behind Bastille has gone on record saying that he always wanted to go into movies. ‘Other People’s Heartache’ is where he combines his passion for film with his music, weaves intriguing remixes and rethought versions of old songs, and just generally has a lot of fun. Part 2 builds on Part 1, with Dan Smith getting even more ingenious with his connections between film and music and adventurous with his production.

The new production team F*U*G*Z, formed by Smith and rapper F. Stokes must take a lot of credit for this album, and F*U*G*Z is accordingly given a number of ‘ft.’ acknowledgements. The team announces itself immediately (after Bastille have updated us with a TV-style ‘previously on Other People’s Heartache’ section with clips of each track from the last album and had a boys’ choir sing the chorus of Bastille’s song ‘Icarus’ of course!) in ‘Killer’ with some slick production; while it does draw attention to itself somewhat, it works well, instantly creating the atmosphere that the album gives off throughout – one of everything happening everywhere at the same time. The song, a cover of Seal’s ‘Killer’, is so eventful it’s ridiculous, with a sample from George Michael’s song of the same name, Liam Neeson promising “I will find you, and I will-” and downbeat electronic wizardry all over the place. And don’t worry, Smith’s tongue remains firmly in his cheek, having Marty McFly announce at the end “Guess you guys weren’t ready for that. But your kids are gonna love it.”

Dan Smith’s humour is a huge part of the album, and it is evident throughout. In the cover of ‘No Scrub’ by TLC mixed with The xx’s ‘Intro’ and filled with excerpts from Psycho, Smith implicitly accuses Norman of being a ‘scrub’ because he ‘lives with his momma’. The track ‘Thinkin’ Ahead’, a cover of Frank Ocean’s ‘Thinking About You’, opens with a reference to a rather different Frank in Donnie Darko’s “a storm is coming Frank says” speech. ‘Sweet Pompeii’, mostly a soulful cover of Calvin Harris’ ‘Sweet Nothing’, almost seems like a practical joke on the listener as we go from the verse to a clip of Bernie Sanders talking about the economy to a hilariously unexpected sample of the exact beat break from Harris’ version. Add to that an N-Trance cover and some more humorously appropriate film excerpts and you have a joyfully playful analysis of popular culture and media.

Despite all this, the album does flirt with sincerity at times. The wonderful Kate Tempest produces a beat poem on ‘Forever Ever’ which combines brilliantly with the cover of Bastille’s single ‘Bad Blood’ Dan Smith enlists the help of Gab Aplin’s spine-tingling voice to produce a beautiful cover of Fleetwood Mac’s ‘Dreams’, opening with Gene Wilder’s excellent Willy Wonka declaring ‘we are the music-makers, and we are the dreamers of dreams’ and littered with moments from The Corrs’ ‘Dreams’ to complete the theme. Ella, one of 2013’s most exciting prospects, assists on a goose bump-inducing rendition of Tina Turner’s ‘Private Dancer’ which explodes into life when she starts belting N-Trance’s ‘Set You Free’ and the album closes with a chilling rendition of ‘Holy Night’, and Dan Smith definitely has the vocal pedigree to pull off the hymn. It’s blended cunningly with clips from ‘Home Alone’ including the band’s parting message: “Merry Christmas, ya filthy animal, and a Happy New Year!”

The band are giving this album away for free, just as they did Part 1, on www.otherpeoplesheartache.com because, as far as we can see, they’ve only made it because they thought it’d be fun, and they want you to hear it. Much as we all wish Bastille would hurry up and release a ‘proper’ album already, it’s so refreshing seeing artists creating for the sake of creating, and obviously loving every second of it.

I love quiz shows, I really do. I love getting the answers right. I love pretending I got the answers right. I love mocking the contestants when they do not get the answers right. Though apparently not as much as Jeremy Paxman and his quizzical brow do. They are a chance to prove one’s unequivocal knowledge of the culture capitals of Europe, or films starring Kevin Bacon; essentially they are a great way to feel like a bit of a clever clogs whilst a wordless word document stares at you from across the room. However, the time of lording my superior knowledge of all things uninteresting over my family and friends whilst they try to enjoy their evening viewing has finally come to an end. 

‘Only Connect’, the most viewed show on the somewhat haughty and grown up BBC 4, is like an intellectual punch in the face. Scheduled to begin just as University Challenge ends, it maintains the mood of civil Monday night viewing (or in my case, aggressive fact fighting), but forces you to climb several rungs up logic ladder. As opposed to reeling off random facts potentially overheard at a pub quiz, the teams have to actually think about things. The basic format requires the teams to make connections between seemingly random images, words, or pieces of music, meaning you have to be able to link stuff like “things made out of melted guns”, or “tube lines if they were translated as snooker ball colours.” It’s torturous. It’s also genius. 

Everything about this program is clever, sharp and a teensy bit elitist. From the titular E.M Forster reference, to the fact that teams choose their question by selecting a hieroglyph (seriously), no academic is left unruffled. Even the classically stringy introductory music gives everything a sense of serious if-I-get-one-right-I’ll-be-a-better-person-ness. Cleverest of all is the show’s presenter, Victoria Coren. I don’t want to be quizzed by her, I want to be her. The somewhat unnerving lack of a studio audience does not phase this lady, as she embarks on monologues and witticisms, gently mocks the teams (most of whom look like they followed University Challenge when Bamber Gascoigne still presented it), and makes us believe she really did already know the answers to all the questions. 

So, though quiz show fans may have a more relaxing time watching QI, or a more successful evening watching The Weakest Link, nothing says ‘wild Monday night’ like a quiz show that repeatedly assaults you with stuff you didn‘t know. All it needs now is a drinking game.

The Strictly Come Dancing Final: a dramatic night for all. Tears, tantrums and twirls, and that’s just my living room. It’s as if the industrial strength hairspray has seeped through the nation’s television sets and partially sedated us all. I find myself laughing at Brucie and wishing my wardrobe had more sparkle. I even start to believe that Bruno is a real person and not a permanently aroused jack-in-a-box. I am completely and utterly sucked in. Described by a BBC insider as a "warm bath", the show’s continued success relies on the light-hearted silliness it brings to Saturday night; in short it is the comfort food of television. However, it is certainly not to be underestimated.

The tenth series of Strictly consistently defeated rival X Factor in the rating’s battles, and pulled in an incredible 14 million viewers for the final. X Factor and Strictly both aim to be a theatrical viewing experience, with each year becoming bolder, brighter and generally more abrasive to the eyes, but somehow the latter manages to retain some semblance of heart. By sticking to the same formula and pretty much the same team since its conception in 2004, the show has kept its core fan base whilst seducing disillusioned X Factor devotees with promises of sincere judging and (slightly) less desperate competitors. Though the show undoubtedly (and occasionally unfairly) boosts the profiles of those on it (Alesha Dixon I’m talking to you), there’s an overwhelming sense that is actually is just about the dancing, and, wait for it… the journey. The judges know what they’re talking about and offer the right balance of humour and advice, and the celebs seems genuinely bitten by the notorious ‘Strictly Bug’. 

This year has been no exception, with Louis Smith, Denise Van Outen, Dani Harman and Kimberly Walsh fighting tooth and highly-polished nail for the title. Though each have had their ups and downs throughout the series (such is the way of Saturday night viewing) it was Smith who stepped up to win in truly Olympian style. Despite playing up to his role as this year’s Strictly Stud, his Charleston was accurate and full of character, his Dirty Dancing Salsa preferable even to the original, and his showdance, well… just watch it on You Tube. 

Though the ordering of the show was a bit rushed, with Robbie Williams shoved on the end and sounding like an overtired pub singer, the dancers themselves provided more than enough entertainment. As a bit of a Strictly puritan, it was great to see all four of the finalists perform the dances with style and technical ability, whilst completely immersing themselves in the general giddiness that is Strictly. The whole show verges on hysteria; from the unpredictable nature of Bruce Forsyth (or for that matter, Bruce Forsyth’s hair), to the sheer brightness of everything and everyone on set, the show is pulsating with energy. Mercifully, the kind of energy that goes nicely with sitting in your pyjamas with a cup of tea.

Admittedly, I am more invested in Strictly than your average/sane viewer. Having been a ballroom dancer aged 3 through 18, the arrival of Strictly meant my weird and glittery hobby became cool overnight. Well, cool in an unashamedly not cool kind of way. Why the hipster contingency haven’t jumped on Ballroom is beyond me… Eight years later and Strictly is still bewitching us. We know it will be in-your-face, camp, and a bit cringey, but we do it anyway because it’s bloody good fun.

Contains spoilers from first sentence.

Downton Abbey’s 2012 Christmas offering bordered on the bizarre, subjecting 7.3 million viewers to clumsily introduced (and swiftly departing) romances, unmotivated Bitchy-Maid-Wars and, of course, the ‘unexpected’ bumping-off of its central character – Matthew Crawley (Dan Stevens).

The overwhelming characteristic of this festively feature-length turkey was the linger. So. Much. Lingering. The lingering smiles which new maid Edna hurls towards Tom Branson number precisely 762, with further lingering scowls/looks of intense mistrust between ‘Shrimpy’ and Wife, as well as O’Brien and Doppelganger, not to mention the longing looks (lengthily documented, of course) to which Thomas subjects Jimmy. After nearly every line comes an unnecessarily lengthy shot of the actor’s face, in which they are apparently expected to express the sentiment of lines past and plotlines future, in some form of facial charades game.

Of course the climax of this episode is the car-crash (if you can pull the single car-crash from the surrounding car-crash which forms the rest of the episode. It’s like Inception. But with car-crashes.). The one none of us saw coming… Unless you’ve read any of this year’s interviews with Dan Stevens. Or any of the speculation over his reappearance in Series 4. In which case you were sat through the entire thing waiting for him to walk into the path of gunfire, fast-moving vehicles or a rogue and/or enraged stag. There was a moment in which the birth of his son inexplicably made Matthew feel like he’d ‘swallowed a box of fireworks’, where I thought they might have gotten really inventive.

The really surprising thing about the car-crash was its complete silence. We didn’t see a crash. We didn’t even hear one. We hear piano and violins. We see a leafy drive. We see a lucky escape for Dan Stevens. We see a spate of Facebook statuses railing against ITV’s lack of festive spirit.  

The real measure of the absurdity of Matthew Crawley’s ‘sudden’ death is the fact that ITV felt the need to release an explanation for it: the plot failed so entirely that the production company actually needed to release a statement to explain the real-life reasons behind its decisions: Dan Stevens decided not to renew his contract. 

In many ways (all ways?), the demise of Matthew Crawley can be seen as a mercy-killing, palpably on the cards since he was forced, by some extraordinary (and medically dubious) plotting, to miraculously leap out of his wheelchair last year. And this episode presented all of the reasons that an actor would choose to run for the (Highland) hills rather than renew a contract: dialogue more wooden than Bates’ leg and plotting less plausible than Matthew’s increasingly-yellow highlights (Compare series 1 to series 3. Mysterious.), not to mention ratings decreasing by nearly 1 million viewers since last year’s Christmas special. 

Even this episode’s lingering (yes, more lingering) shots of historical trains and a whole new National Trust property didn’t prevent it from inviting its audience to ask, after 3 series, “Is this the end of Downton Abbey, the pinnacle of period porn?” 

Homeland Series 2 has received a lot of stick over the last few months. Many found its pace occupied two extremes: either madcap fast or dawdling through boring conversations with irrelevant characters. Others took exception at its lack of credibility, particular highlights including Brody’s superpowered bunker-breaching phone signal (mine stops working if I stand underneath a particularly leafy bough) or Walden’s secret ‘off-button’ pacemaker. Carrie Matheson, previously the toast of TV reviewers everywhere, began to grate, both through her patented ‘cryface’ (see Buzzfeed/Anne Hathaway’s Impression on Saturday Night Live) or lack of respect for her own safety that bordered on lemming-esque. Surely, many have cried, Homeland has lost its way.

All of this is valid, and I agree with it to an extent, but I still have a lot of respect for the show. If anything, it is a victim of its own success. Series 1 was such a well-structured and tense affair that recapturing that genie was always going to be a tough task. Homeland’s original gambit, questioning the motives of Sergeant Brody, had a shelf-life; after the twists and turns of Series 1, the audience was left fairly certain of where its loyalties lay.

Indeed, as Series 2 rolled into view, it was originally unclear how the new status quo would hold together; many reviewers opined that the new ‘mystery’ was as to how far Brody had been turned away from his terrorist chums at the close of the first series, and the first couple of episodes appeared to conform to this structure. Brody as congressman was being pulled in more and more against his will as a kind of terrorist roadie, while trying to keep his family unawares, with Carrie attempted to rebuild her career in the CIA elsewhere. Fine. That would work.

But then the writers pulled the unexpected; they outed Brody to the CIA. The entire premise of the first season was undone – Carrie was right, and everything changed. And that’s when I realised what makes Homeland stand out from other shows. It still has the power to surprise me.

There are many, many ways in which Homeland is like How I Met Your Mother (remember the episode where Lily and Marshall accidentally killed the suicide vest tailor? Hilarious.) but one difference is their attitudes towards the premise that first begat their respective shows. How I Met Your Mother promises an eventual, cathartic end that it never delivers, and as the years go on the connection of the storylines to the titular reveal becomes more and more tenuous, leaving the show depleted of much that made it so watchable in the first place.

Homeland’s bravery is the antithesis of this, nonchalantly blowing apart cover stories, preconceptions (and various characters) on an almost weekly basis. And it didn’t stop at the CIA’s discovery this series – Brody’s suicide tape played across the nation was truly shocking TV in a way that’s hard to find these days. 

Certainly, there are a lot of flaws with Homeland – sometimes it stretches plausibility (though it’s no 24), and it often feels like the writers have forgotten previous plotlines. And Dana is really annoying.

But I think that Homeland has done fantastically well to work past its limitations – and even if it doesn’t stand up well against its previous self, it still stands up to most other shows in that kind of genre. I for one will be looking forward to Series 3 with great interest. Although the real reason I watch it, like everybody else, is for Saul. He’s like a walking hug with a beard.

Until the next series, you can always stay entertained with the sheer brilliance of Homeland-inspired internet insanity. Mostly this.

I’m not sure exactly what it was that attracted me to Merlin originally. It filled the Doctor Who slot like Robin Hood had before, and originally it seemed to fill a similar role; medieval legend retold with a young cast, sort-of Skins meets Margery Kempe. Based on Smallville, Merlin had a similar premise; a younger version of a famous character hides his superhuman gifts from the small community that he lives in, facing another malignant superhuman influence more or less every week.

And it was very watchable, albeit with the irritating lack of character development from week to week which characterises a lot of television. The jokes were reasonably funny, the special effects were OK, Anthony Head is always great and the young cast were all pretty likeable. Not a bad show. 

But none of that explains why Merlin became one of my favourite TV series of all time.

It’s fair to say that Merlin had stalled somewhat by the end of Series 2 – every week was more or less the same story, and any sort of development was limited. Sure, Morgana seemed to be turning against Uther, but she’d done that about three times before, and she always changed her mind. In Series 3, she finally turned permanently, and became an enemy of Camelot from within; Merlin seemed to have found some balls. And as Series 3 rolled in to series 4, more changed; Uther was killed off, and Arthur became King, a huge shift in the structure of the series. 

Morgana was discovered, and Arthur finally married Guinevere. Merlin himself changed too, becoming somewhat more serious and less impulsive, and gaining something of a killer instinct that belied the series’ teatime slot. Week by week the characterisation and consistency of the show seemed to improve, reaching its pinnacle in the final series. The weight of Merlin’s destiny, always the central issue of the show, became a driving force as Arthur’s death was foretold and Merlin made tough, often morally ambiguous or even arrogant, decisions each episode. The series clearly had a gameplan, so the stories felt tighter, the characters’ actions weightier and the silliness more palatable. 

The conclusion first felt like a bit of an anti-climax to me, especially considering the epic battle that was hinted at in the previous episode, but, on reflection, making the final episode one final journey of Merlin and Arthur was a good move. The show’s popularity always hinged on their relationship, and their ill-fated quest was a good reminder of that – that Merlin was never really about the magic, or the spectacle, but the relationship between characters. And that made it all the sadder when Merlin failed to save Arthur, or when Gwaine died having betrayed his King, or even Gaius’ promise to make Merlin his dinner. 

As I say, it’s hard to put my finger on why I enjoyed the show so much. Certainly I’ve always been a fan of the Arthurian myth, and generally ‘genre’ shows are my bag, but I think there’s more to it. As it improved over the years, I became somewhat invested in its progress, and in its success. Usually I’m quite blasé about these sort of things, but I felt slightly emotional as the show ended. I suppose that in a way I grew up with it, and its ending was something of a comment on my own impending adulthood. 

Or maybe I’ll just miss getting to stare at Katie McGrath every week (or Colin Morgan’s death-defying ears). Whatever the reason, I think that Merlin is an example of a show that took on criticism, and made story decisions that really benefited the quality of plot, rather than the propagation of the show itself. I’ll miss Merlin, but I’m also glad that it had the guts to make a proper ending that closed all the doors whilst still honouring its own conventions. And in the process, it made something magical. 

★★☆☆☆
Two Stars

Maybe it’s the luxury of having Out of the Blue serenade me almost every time I walk down Cornmarket, but the thought of a entire film dedicated to acapella didn’t exactly fill me with excitement. I prefer my instrument-free adaptations of 80s hits in short bursts when I’m slightly pissed at a college ball, but not stretched out to an hour and a half. The trailer for Pitch Perfect  smacked of a feature-length episode of Glee, and as much as I once held a soft spot for Mr Schu & Co. (I really did; their mashup of Halo and Walking on Sunshine was spectacular), I’d left that behind when the obnoxious identity politics got too much and everyone kept harping on about how they were Born This Way.

The ‘this year’s Bridesmaids‘ hype also had me hopeful, but when producers feel the need to go as far as replicating the poster in order to hammer the message home, alarm bells should be ringing. The ensuing attempt to repackage the former for a younger demographic consists largely of ripping off Bring It On and hoping no-one will notice, from the lingo (‘cheerocracy’/’aca-scuse me?’) to the angsty protagonist who eventually realises that beneath the eyeliner and black nailpolish her and the preppy girls are one and the same. Yay, sisterhood!

Bridesmaids‘ use of gross-out comedy to prove that, yes, the girls can do it too, was brilliantly executed, but sometimes excessive vomit can be just that: to borrow a phrase from 10 Things I Hate About You (a teen movie Pitch Perfect would have done well to learn from), the ‘digestive pyrotechnics’ on display are unnecessary, bizarre, and dangerously close to Scary Movie territory. 

To make matters worse, not only is the plot hopelessly cliched – it’s also riddled with offensive stereotypes. Stacie (Alexis Knapp) has a lot of sex and thus, of course, is also incredibly stupid, whilst Ester Dean’s Cynthia, the token lesbian, uses every available opportunity to letch upon her fellow singers. Rebel Wilson as Fat Amy is the film’s saving grace, singularly responsible for every memorable quote and, despite what the name would suggest, blessed with a comic genius that stretches far beyond jokes about her weight. 

Despite my love of a good montage, no amount of jazzy edits can change the fact that Pitch Perfect feels like a lazy amalgamation of the best teen movies of the past two decades, but without any of the original spark. In a strangely meta moment Ashley Greene’s Beca declares that she “doesn’t like movies; the endings are predictable”. Nothing could have been more true.