The new books are great, especially the first one. Better than the original trilogy I reckon.

It got a five star review in Empire so it's on my list but I've not watched it yet.  His second in the Small Axe series (Lovers Rock) also got five stars (it's a mere 70 minutes rather than two hours, apparently).

@Tin, I'd follow Steve McQueen anywhere so I am going to watch it at some point, he's a powerhouse of a director. Thanks for the reminder.

We are still plugging away at the Leftovers, with the AV Club Reviews as a chaser. It continues to be top tier television if you can get over the fact that the character stuff is incredibly well drawn, brilliantly acted, and brazen in its depictions of violence/grief/loss/depression etc. Every actor is great, and Season 2's addition of the Murphy family and change of location is really interesting. 

All of that does of course clash incredibly with the show's overarching mystery. I get the feeling Lindelof sort of learned a lesson from Lost, but I am not sure that lesson was "explain your shit" but rather, "your shit doesn't need to be explained if it exists as a test of faith - which seems to be the only unifying theme so far. Not faith as in religious or spiritual (though these two points are often in question) but just faith in something, be that the aforementioned god stuff, or reason, or human integrity, or the power to learn/grow.

So far season 2 has just be pummelling me and my partner with its emotional heaviness, there's a real nastiness running through the twisty puzzle box narrative, last night we watched "No Room at the Inn" where everyone's favourite priest proudly exclaimed his favourite book of the bible was the Book of Job, - the only book of the bible any TV/Film writer ever bothers to read or reference extensively - whilst himself being Job, and going through an ungodly amount of suffering in the space of a day. He remains an incredibly compelling character, and Lindelof refusing to answer the question everyone wants to know about his situation is exactly why the episode works so well - we have either accept he is correct, or doubt him, and it colours everything in the episode so beautifully.

Small point about the AV Club though: I used to really enjoy chasing an episode of something with these reviews, they were often fantastically digestible little chunks of writing, tying things together, doing the research for you, pointing out little Easter Eggs you might have missed. The Leftovers reviews have been pretty frustrating though, the S1 was by an associate editor who seemed to only care about her own life and how the show reflected it, and S2 and S3 are passed on to someone else who is far less self involved, but seems to be unable to do the basic fact checking, especially for "No Room at the Inn" where the final paragraph of his review massively contradicts what happens in the episode Shame to have the neat little ritual of watch/read disrupted by subpar writing on a site i'd grown to trust.

Everyone's here with their eloquent opinions about a diverse range of credible television and I'm just sat here like 'the crown go brrrrr'.

fear the walking dead has been back since oct, i'm binge watching it now. I massively prefer this bunch now over the original cast. The plot is slow but it doesn't matter as much as I care more about the characters.

Fargo is Netfrix.

I'll be interested to see if anyone thinks it's as shit as I do.

Oh sweet, I didn't know season 4 is new. Natch.

We watched “Lens” last night which was brilliant, I very much enjoyed Carrie Corona and Regina King facing off against each other. Show manages to do so much work with its weird little supernatural asides.

I actually like how much they’ve stuck Theroux in the back seat now. He was the world’s shittest, angriest cop in season one and it got a bit tedious. He really came into his own for “The Garvey’s at their Best” and i’m glad that he’s getting to play up to his strengths, but he’s nothing vs Matt, Nora, John and Erika.

There was also this from a few days ago:

https://twitter.com/Wrexham_AFC/status/1328339177746927624

Couldn't give a shit about the soccerball club but regardless of whether or not the £6K donation was PR-related it's made the lives of some people in difficult circumstances just a little bit better.

Gman pretends to be happy for tax reasons.

I'd certainly be happier if I was due to pay less tax this year. January's bill is fookin' massive

Sounds legit.