Today, is The Tweenies Blogfest where I invite you to tell me your favourite things from the Tweenies.
It's not too late to join in. Choose one thing from each year from 2010 to 2019, be it a film, a TV show, a radio show, a particular episode of a TV or radio show, a piece of theatre, a book, a comic, a piece of artwork, something online or something else entirely, and then tell us what you love about it.
Here are some of my favourite things from the Tweenies:
2010
Four Lions
A comedy about suicide bombers was always going to be controversial, but
Four Lions deals with the challenging subject matter so well that it's easy to enjoy the comedy on its own merits. Riz Ahmed's performance grounds the action of his misguided contemporaries, with a special mention for Adeel Akhtar whose character is so endearing that it's easy to forget his intentions. This film will make a lot of people very uncomfortable and justifiably so, not because of any jumped up indignation over claims of Islamophobia, but actually because it asks more of its audience, challenges expectations and representations of Muslims in Britain. Chris Morris' suicide bomber buddy movie is easily the funniest film I have seen in years.
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2011
The Martian by Andy Weir
This Robinson Crusoe on Mars story is elevated by its first person narrative delivered by a compelling character in an impossible situation. It's gripping, it's funny and it's geeky. I just couldn't put it down.
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2012
The Cabin In The Woods
What begins as a slasher movie, blossoms into so much more. You think you've seen it all before and you have, but never this well executed or all at once. A horror movie with three dimensional characters is a rare treat and the cast are uniformly magnificent.
The Cabin In The Woods has a script that earns both its jokes and its scares in equal measure. Drew Goddard and Joss Whedon deliver a movie that reappropriates all of the best and all of the worst horror movie tropes to make a genre-defining movie that takes on the fashion for torture porn and wins. The twists, the turns and the ending that you won't predict
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2013
Utopia
The deservedly International Emmy Award winning and criminally cancelled
Utopia was the jewel in Channel 4's crown. Brilliantly shot with a fantastic script, excellent performances across the board, but Alexandra Roach, Nathan Stewart-Jarrett, Adeel Akhtar, Neil Maskell, Paul Higgins, Fiona O'Shaughnessy, Oliver Woollford, Paul Ready, Geraldine James and Emilia Jones were so great I'm going to list them all anyway. The deepening conspiracy, the spectacular visuals and the shocking occulectomy,
Utopia is never less than enthralling.
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2014
Fargo
Arguably the greatest film ever made gives us a phenomenal television sequel.
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2015
Inside No 9:
The 12 Days Of Christine
Sheridan Smith is wonderful in this tale told through a dozen vignettes. Emotionally exhausting, which is in itself an amazing concept for half an hour of comedy with a twist ending. A twist by the way that is brilliantly alluded to, so that while you know there is one coming you probably won't work out what it will be.
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2016
Arrival
These days alien encounter movies need amazing visuals and
Arrival delivers these in spades, but at its core is a really smart film that attempts to show just difficult communication would be. It asks big questions about existence and perception. Staggering.
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2017
Dark TV show
This German language TV show is a densely-plotted time travel masterpiece. The casting of myriad characters at multiple points in their lives 33 years apart is an astonishing achievement in itself. If you have access to Netflix, can read and aren't watching
Dark you are wasting your life.
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2018
Doctor Who:
Rosa
This is a phenomenal episode of television. To take the story of Rosa Parks refusal to change seats on a bus and make it accessible as an adventurous episode of family friendly telly is an extraordinary achievement, but to take that story and have the recently widowed white husband of a black woman forced to sit so that her heroine must stand or be arrested is incredibly brave. Required viewing.
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2019
Years And Years
Russell T. Davies takes on the family saga that is a staple of television, but rather than focussing on the past here he shows us how the future affects the Lyons family. The phrase 'ripped from the headlines' doesn't do
Years And Years justice, but rather the predictions are startlingly accurate: the political attempts to appeal lowest common denominator populism, the rise of xenophobia and concentration camps in the Western world. The central characters are so likeable that they get us through the bleak nature of the world ahead of us.
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Here are the details on how to take part:
• Leave your name and link on the linky below.
• Feel free to publicise the blogfest on your blog, facebook, twitter, etc and post the above image on your blog if you wish.
• On the 28th of December (that's today) post a favourite something for each year 2010-2019, and tell us what you love about each of them.
• Leave a comment here, so that we know that you have posted your efforts for all to see.
• Visit as many other participating bloggers as you can on the list below. Compare, contrast and comment on their choices.
Join us...
