The Closest Thing to Crazy: My Life of Musical Adventures
by Mike Batt (Bonnier, 2024); audiobook read by Mike Batt (Nine Eight Books, 2024)
An engaging account of Batt’s long career in the volatile world of songwriting, performance and music production. Whereas many autobiographies skew heavily towards the early years and then drop into a perfunctory void, Batt provides even coverage most of the way through.
The Nargun and the Stars
by Patricia Wrightson (Hutchison Junior, 1973 / Puffin, 1975)
Wrightson’s MG fantasy makes the most of its Australian setting and Aboriginal Dreamtime influences while sneaking in a tale of bereavement and found family. The plot moves at its own pace, in its own direction, while the characters find their way forward.
Where He Can’t Find You
by Darcy Coates (Sourcebooks Fire, 2023)
audiobook read by Reba Buhr (Black Owl Books, 2023)
Dark yet not too gruelling. The protagonists might sound ever-so-slightly young in the audiobook reading, but their personalities emerge strongly and the characterisation is unusually convincing for YA. Reba Buhr’s narration employs an open, honest immediacy in carrying off the speculative horror.
Once Upon a Time in London
dir. Simon Rumley (2019)
Thematically sound overall but the relationships are murky and the shifting dynamics blur into an endless reel of dog-eat-dog gangster violence. While of more interest than the leads, the female characters are less well documented historically and thus, lamentably, have been relegated.
42: The Wildly Improbable Ideas of Douglas Adams
ed. Kevin Jon Davies (Unbound, 2023)
An unwieldy coffee-table book better suited to selective delving than cover-to-cover consumption. Lesser-known Adams projects are skimmed over, yet the dogged facsimilation of original documents both gobbles up space (especially when paired with typewritten transcripts thereof) and results in some eye-straining arrangements.
Jeeves & Wooster, Series Two
adapted by Clive Exton, dir. Simon Langton (ITV, 1991)
Clive Exton hits his adaptive stride, taking plot lines from various of the Jeeves & Wooster novels and short stories and stitching them into familiar (yet pleasingly independent) single-episode treatments. Hugh Laurie’s iteration really is the perfect multiversal embodiment of Bertie Wooster.
Flux
by Jinwoo Chong (Melville House, 2023)
audiobook read by David Lee Huynh (Tantor, 2023)
Suitably twisty in its time travel motifs and displaced narrative perspectives. The human element and the TV show’s formative influence are well integrated. Still, there’s a sense of Chong writing himself artfully into a corner and passing it off as a dénouement.
Arne Dahl: To the Top of the Mountain
dir. Jörgen Bergmark (SVT, 2012 / BBC, 2013) [subtitled]
[originally “Upp till toppen av berget”]
![Miniseries poster: “Arne Dahl: To the Top of the Mountain” dir. Jörgen Bergmark (SVT, 2012 / BBC, 2013) [subtitled] [originally “Upp till toppen av berget”]](https://www.derelictspacesheep.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/12/Arne-Dahl_To-the-Top-of-the-Mountain.png)
The middle story of Arne Dahl’s first season shifts the focus to second-generation Chilean Swede Jorge Chaves, resulting in a more up-tempo narrative. A-group’s personal lives are better integrated into the investigation, which links a car bombing to a deep-buried paedophilia ring.
Flash Gordon, Season 1
(NBC, 1979-1980)
Insufferably trite, 16-episode peril-per-minute space opera adventure serial, notable for: less-than-cut-price animation; objectified though strong-willed, powerful women; zero changes of wardrobe; and the endless gung-ho optimism of thick-necked, bull-at-the-gate hero Flash Gordon. Worthwhile only for its memorable SF backdrops and vehicle designs.
Doctor Who: Mind of the Hodiac
by Russell T Davies & Scott Handcock (Big Finish, 2022)
This two-parter is rather too long for what it offers, though the female-centric plot is welcome and Colin Baker is once again a delight. Davies and Handcock capture the Sixth Doctor’s personality, yet (as usual) have him largely superfluous to the resolution.