Welcome to a new experiment from the Crate and Crowbar! We love games, but we’re also huge fans of films and television, especially in these Covid times, so we decided to start a podcast about all that. Tom Senior joins TV writer Jamie Brittain for a whiplash tour of the shows we’re watching right now. In spite of everything going on in the world, TV is amazing at the moment, and deserves to be celebrated.
As this continues we’re planning to touch on every genre and mode of TV we can find, from HBO dramas to soap operas, reality TV, and sports coverage. We’ve tried to put in spoiler warnings as required, but it’s worth noting that DEVS in particular shines if you go in completely cold. Now all that’s said, here are the show notes for episode 001.
- “Morphine against the stress and terror of the time”: The Big Flower Fight on Netflix, and The Great British Bake Off.
- Sandi Toksvig has moved on to other projects but I believe she’s still hosting QI. She was brilliant on BBC Radio 4’s The News Quiz a few years ago, but they still have Nish Kumar and Susan Calman.
- “We’ve made some shady cakes.” STOP BAKING FOR THE MAFIA.
- What if you took the Great British Bake Off, ripped its soul out, and instead staged a cold blooded lizard war waged by people who no longer take joy from sweet treats? You get Creme de la Creme and Bake Off: The Professionals.
- Deep Fried Masters is art.
- The first series of Gordon Ramsay’s UK Kitchen Nightmares is also art.
- Chef’s Table, however, is wank.
- Snowpiercer! On Netflix! It’s bonkers. But kinda good? Maybe??
- Bon Joon-ho’s Snowpiercer film is great too.
- High Rise is pretty f*cking silly really, isn’t it?
- DEVS is very good but I can’t say why in these show notes.
- Alex Garland’s a busy chap and I’ll watch anything he writes/directs: 28 Days Later, Sunshine, Ex Machina, Dredd, Annihilation, DEVS.
- Into the Spiderverse is also art, obviously.
- CATHEDRALS MADE OUT OF SKIN. The Shivering Truth. Beware.
- The Shivering Truth animators made Anomalisa, which is a fascinating film in its own way that I’m sure we’ll talk about in future.
- Another show that mixes humour and horror: Monkey Dust.
- Both shows owe a lot to Chris Morris’ Jam.
- A Serious Man is quietly one of the Coens’ best. Jamie would like you to know that the thing he says about the villains in your life appearing at the door with Manischewitz wine is a reference to the rich and textured Jewish theming of the film A Serious Man, rather than a piece of horrifying anti-Semitism.
- Arguments! Hereditary; End of the Tour; Girls; Glengarry Glen Ross; Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy.
Phew! We covered plenty of ground in this one, and we’ll cover plenty more soon. Email any feedback to crateandcrowbar@gmail.com. You can hang out with us and our community on our Discord channel. Head to the ‘telly and books’ channel for film ‘n TV chat.
The Crate and Crowbar is kindly funded by our Patreon backers. If you’d like to know more about supporting our podcast and its spinoffs, visit our Crate and Crowbar Patreon page. As mentioned in the pod, we only charge Patrons for the core C&C videogame pods, but those donations support the main pod and allow us to do spinoffs like this. Thansferlissenin!
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