Twenty-fifth podcast – would be a giant-sized special if this were a 90s comic! (Yes, Nick writes these blurbs, how did you guess?) Nick and Alastair are back from the holiday season to talk about things they’ve seen on their travels, such as Revolting Rhymes, The Eagle Huntress and Inside Number Nine!
In our first Steven-Moffat-run TV show of the fortnight, we’re covering the start of Sherlock series 4 (5:02), as we ask: how much crime is enough? Full spoilers here, by the way, and here’s the review of it that Alastair mentions.
Whereas we’re a bit more sparing with the spoils in our talk about The OA (21:36), a strange new Netflix sci-fi mystery – detail-free thoughts for a while, finally plunging into total ending details at 34:31. Here’s the article Nick mentions about whether it really needs a second season.
Then back to Moffatland for the Doctor Who Christmas special (44:15) – fortunately, we’re releasing this on the twelfth day of Christmas so narrowly avoid suffering a curse.
Lastly, back in MFV #23, Nick recommended Alastair the first volume of JLA by Grant Morrison and Howard Porter (55:05) – will this straight action-superhero comic be a step too far?
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Twenty-three podcasts, just in time for the twenty-fifth of December! It’s nearly Christmas, and to celebrate, Nick and Alastair have seen An Inspector Calls and the Supergirl/Flash/Arrow/Legends of Tomorrow crossover. Neither of which are particularly festive. Oh well.
Next up, a rare MFV complete disagreement as both our heroes have seen Amazon’s Philip K. Dick adaptation The Man In The High Castle (22:48), but only one of them likes it much. Which host is the Nazi sympathiser? You’ll have to listen to find out. We’re also taking a look at Nate Parker’s new film The Birth Of A Nation (42:04), chronicling the 1831 slave rebellion of Nat Turner.
Then we reach a seasonal feature at last, as Nick finally watches Die Hard (53:10). Some say it’s the best Christmas movie ever. Does he agree? Is it even a Christmas movie at all? Rest assured, this will be discussed.
A spoilery clip cut from our discussion of The Hanging Tree (the new Rivers of London novel by Ben Aaronovitch), because putting ending spoilers for a fairly recent novel in our general podcast seemed bad form. But we hate to waste content, so here they are, just in case anyone wants to hear it anyway. Also Nick spoils a plot move from the first couple of Luke Cage episodes, though it’s quite an obvious one. Consider yourselves thoroughly warned.
Twenty-two episodes of our podcast and somehow 2016 is still going! This fortnight, both of us went on London outings, Nick to the SMASH comics-chat event run by the 
Finally, Alastair recommends Taxi Driver (54:59) directed by Martin Scorsese and starring Robert De Niro, a classic of modern cinema that Nick, unsurprisingly, has never seen.
Episode twenty-one! The podcast comes of age everywhere, just in time for the world to basically collapse. Alastair matches the mood with Hypernormalisation, a new documentary from Adam Curtis 
Forcing ourselves into the present day, we take on Fantastic Beasts And Where To Find Them (6:45), a new film set in the past of the Harry Potter universe. To help us get to grips with this, we bring in blogger, booktuber and Potter-lover Claire Rousseau, last seen 
If you enjoy Claire’s appearance here, you can get more from her at 
For the first time in a while, a deleted chunk from the last episode – Nick and Alastair talk about The Walking Dead and how it endures despite just being the same cycle of suffering again and again. (Well, okay, it’s mostly Nick as Alastair doesn’t watch it.)
Episode twenty! Another numerical milestone, and one recorded before the recent American electoral news, so no mention of that here. However, we do have intro talk of Flash, Arrow, Legends of Tomorrow and The Walking Dead from Nick, until Alastair raises the tone with indie film London Overground.
Meanwhile, in cinemas, we’ve got a review of Arrival (40:05), the new scifi/semantics movie starring Jeremy Renner and Amy Adams trying to speak to aliens, and then Lo And Behold: Reveries of the Connected World (53:26), a new documentary from Werner Herzog offering a slightly more uplifting view of technology than Black Mirror.
Episode nineteen, and it’s almost feature length this time! But in our defense, there’s a lot to get through. Before any of that, though, we’ve been attending live recordings of other podcasts, specifically 
Moving out of mainstream geek culture, we’ve also seen I, Daniel Blake (52:59), the new movie from Ken Loach about Britain’s none-too-fair welfare system. If you want to read Alastair’s take on the politics of this film, 
And then straight back into the nerdosphere, Nick’s recommended Alastair the first few episodes of anarchic sci-fi cartoon Rick & Morty! (68:14)
This is Alastair’s final update from the 60th BFI London Film Festival. For the end of the festival I saw The Man From Mo-Wax, Snowden and The Gual. Above you can listen to what I thought of each of them. The Man From Mo-Wax is a music documentary about James Lavelle, Snowden is Oliver Stone’s biopic of Edward Snowden and The Gual is a low budget British psychological thriller.
This is my final update from this year’s London Film Festival. It was a great festival. At the end of the recording I choose my favourite films from the entire festival.
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