The Long Call, Series 1
(ITV, 2021)
Another murder mystery (mini)series that is bigger on setting and personal issues than investigation. A step back from the in-your-face (over-scored) probing of religious insularism and anti-gay prejudice, Pearl Mackie provides nuanced support as DS Rafferty, a single mother of two teenagers.
Pyramids
by Terry Pratchett (Corgi, 1989); audiobook read by Nigel Planer (Isis, 2002)
Pratchett’s Discworld series truly hit its stride in this, the BSFA-winning seventh book. Pyramids is a self-contained and ingeniously conceived, desert-dry satire on the type of human thinking that underpins religious folly. Nigel Planer is suitably droll in voicing the befuddled participants.