Recommendations: The Best of 2025

Well, the year 2025 is over and not a moment too soon (though who am I kidding, 2026 is looking equally grim). This post may be a bit late, but I always get there in the end, so here are my top recommendations for the year that’s just passed: everything I read, watched or played that struck a particular chord and which may help you escape the hideous burden of day-to-day reality.

I actually found it rather difficult to narrow things down into a reasonable list (especially given my OTT gorge of pop-culture franchise material in July), which speaks to the surprising quality of my reading/watching year.

2025 was divided into several themes, and though that sounds like it might impinge on just enjoying myself, it actually gave me the structure I needed to focus on specific interests while also finding new material in each subject, whether it be Arthurian legend, Greek myth, Tudor drama, pirates, unicorns, folk horror, or Magical Girls.

There was also a surplus of television shows that were cancelled after one season, though many of them I was watching for the second time: Crossbones, Nautilus, Around the World in Eighty Days, NBC’s Dracula, Sinbad, Atlantis (okay, that one had two seasons), The Winter King, Camelot, Cursed, Onyx Equinox – and I’ve just this month finished Emerald City. So yeah, I broke my own rule about not starting new shows until I was sure they’d be finished, but there’s still something a little fascinating about projects that get greenlit but are unable to gain enough traction for a continuation.

As it happened, my New Year’s Resolution was to avoid American-made or US-based material, which saw me in good stead for most of the year (sans July, and a few films in December) and made for a nice change of pace. The decrease in violence – specifically gun violence – on the screen was extremely noticeable, and so my viewing intake was considerably more restful as a result. Of course, this meant I missed out on a few shows I’ve been meaning to catch up on (Elementary, 1923, Welcome to Derry) but hey – they’re not going anywhere.

Blog-wise, I managed more reviews and commentary than most years (I see on the sidebar that even though my activity gradually decreases with each year that passes, I managed three more posts than in 2024). Personal highlights include a Contrast/Compare between Black Sails and Andor, an in-depth look at the treatment of Rebecca and Rowena in Walter Scott’s Ivanhoe, meta about the Evolution of the Vampire in projects like Dracula, Nosferatu and Carmilla, Ranking the 39 Episodes of the BBC’s Robin Hood, and reviewing every episode of MGM’s Robin Hood (still no word of a renewal on that front, so I can probably add it to the above list of single-season shows).

There was also an uptick in fandom drama this year, or so it seemed, whether it’s the tedium of the culture war, the astounding lack of media literary in your average viewer, histrionics surrounding thwarted shipping endgames, or stories once again being held hostage by the whims of the loudest online voices. I may have more to say about it in a later post, as bloody hell was it a headache.

Finally, we lost a lot of talent this year, from Robert Redford to Diane Keating, and though I always feel a little uncomfortable about noting such things on a blogpost (it feels so superficial somehow) I was especially saddened to hear of the early death of Michelle Trachtenberg at just thirty-nine years old, who I’ll always remember as Harriet the Spy and Dawn Summers. Likewise, Val Kilmer was probably more of a Han Solo to me than Han Solo himself as Willow’s Madmartigan (sorry, I came to Star Wars later in life!) and Cary-Hiroyuki Tagawa as the very sinister, but equally very compelling Shang Tsung in Mortal Kombat (conversely, it would appear I went through my villain phase very early in life, at age ten or so).

And of course Rob Reiner, whose death was a terrible shock and part of an ongoing investigation. I’ve no idea what I could possibly say that could be in any way meaningful, only that The Princess Bride was a staple of my childhood, as it was for so many others.

Recommendations: The Best of 2024

My annual list of recommendations! These are the films, shows and books I most enjoyed reading or watching across the course of the last twelve months, though I have to admit this was something of a fallow year for me. Nothing truly grabbed me by the throat, and a lot of what I ended up liking was material that I was revisiting after a long hiatus.

A lot of that had to do with the fact I deliberately avoided new releases and big franchise stuff in 2024, partly out of a lack of interest and partly because I’m just fed up of getting invested in stories only for them to be prematurely cancelled. Fool me twice, and all that.

In any case, here are my personal picks of 2024...

Recommendations: The Best of 2023

2023 was a year of change for me, what with a move from working at my local library to a larger, further-away one, but I surprised myself by eventually realizing that I’ve enjoyed the switch. There are younger families and more children there, and far less elderly folk who consider you a repository for their endless complaining (of course, there’s also more swaggering little shits who roll their eyes at you when you point out that a library is not a good venue for their shouting/wrestling/posturing matches).

Working full-time means less time for writing, as you can see by the stats in the right-hand column of the page. This is the lowest number of posts I’ve written in any year since starting this blog in 2014, so thanks to all of you who have kept reading and commenting over the last decade. I write this blog mainly for my own enjoyment, but it’s always gratifying to get comments and feedback.

This was also the year I met my nephew for the first time, and even as I write this, my sister is in hospital giving birth to her second child, my niece. Or at least, she’s trying to. The baby isn’t particularly interested in joining us any time soon, so my sister has been put into induced labour – and that’s still not working, so keep her struggle in your thoughts as you peruse this list of my personal recommendations for 2023.

I ended up reading a lot of children’s books this year, partly because it’s my job and partly because they take less time to get through than the massive fantasy doorstoppers that never reach an actual conclusion. I also ploughed through my Slavic Fantasy reading list, which is still an ongoing project, though I’ve only got eight more books to go. I’ll be very relived once all that’s under my belt. 

For the second year in a row I didn’t get the chance to write up any meta, probably because my episode reviews for the third season of His Dark Materials and the second season of Legend of the Seeker took up a lot of free time. Xena Warrior Princess, not so much, as I wrote out those reviews for a message board years ago... but it’s been so long since I watched the episodes that I no longer recall the context of a lot of what I’ve written. Which means a rewatch is in order, which takes up even more time.

I did manage an in-depth look at the prematurely cancelled second season of Shadow and Bone, and two more playthroughs for games in the King’s Quest series: Romancing the Throne and To Heir is Human. Hopefully I’ll get to The Perils of Rosella during my break, which is a big deal in computer gaming history.

Below are the books, films and television shows I enjoyed most this year, and it’s interesting to compare this to my lists of 2021 and 2022 in order to see what medium I favoured. It was an incredible year for children’s graphic novels (books like Wingbearer, Cat’s Cradle and Lightfall are only omitted because they’re not completed yet) but not so much for television (probably because I spent a lot of time watching enjoyable but hardly must-see long runners such as Spooks and Sailor Moon).

By the time you’ve read through it, hopefully another little member of the human race will have joined us in the world.

Recommendations: The Best of 2022

I guess it’s time for the yearly roundup, in which we all take a quick look back on the ups and downs of the year, and the most enjoyable material that I read or watched.

It hasn’t been a great year, what with Covid still plaguing our shores, though the truly frightening spectacle was that of fellow countrymen and women deciding that temporary safety measures put in place to protect everyone was too great a price to pay for their personal convenience. It’s truly frightening to see just how deranged some people can get and how easy it is for them to justify violence; imagining themselves as heroic freedom-fighters instead of just belligerent assholes.

Some cold comfort can be derived from the fact that many of them found out the hard way that the virus is in fact, very real, and suffered the worst effects of it without the vaccination – but I know plenty of people who have lost friends and are now estranged from family members because of the lies that have been spread.

Things are starting to calm down in public, but that underbelly of arrogant anti-intellectualism remains.

We also lost some great talent this year: Angela Lansbury, who I will remember most fondly for her role in Bedknobs and Broomsticks, a movie I was completely obsessed with as a child. Forget Mary Poppins, Eglantine Price was the only stern but supernatural lady I needed in my life. She also voiced Mrs Potts in Disney’s Beauty and the Beast, one of the absolute pillars of my childhood, and I have some very fuzzy memories of playing in front of the television at my Nana’s place while Murder She Wrote was on (now that’s a show I have to binge-watch one of these days).

Nichelle Nichols passed after a difficult illness, but she was extremely cognizant of the huge impact she’d made by playing Uhura in the original Star Trek, and news of Sidney Poitier’s death made me realize I’ve never seen a single one of his films – hopefully I’ll get to rectify that in the new year.

I was too young for Cheers, but Kirstie Alley was a familiar presence in the Look Who’s Talking films, as was Olivia Newton John in Grease (which I was probably also too young for, but watched it religiously anyway). Robbie Coltrane’s lasting legacy to a generation of children will no doubt be as Hagrid in the Harry Potter films, while Kevin Conray will always be the definitive Batman/Bruce Wayne to me – that voice was imbued with so much clarity, strength and underlying kindness.

And of course, Christine McVie, who performed my favourite love song of all time.

It always feels a bit strange writing brief obituaries for celebrities – I’ve never met any of them, and their families are the ones that are going through the actual grieving process, but when someone’s talent touches your life, it’s worth saying something, however briefly.

In the wider world of media and entertainment, it was all a bit of a mess. Actors abruptly quit their projects, Netflix committed to cancelling all sorts of strong and interesting projects in favour of more shows that will in turn get cancelled before completion, and God only knows what’s going on with HBO and the DCU. Westworld is over despite having only one more season to complete its story, as is The Nevers, which never even got a chance to finish its first season. Batgirl got pulled despite being nearly finished, Patty Jenkins has left Wonder Woman III (which will probably never get made at this point) and after the big song-and-dance about Black Adam changing the face of the franchise and bringing back Henry Cavill as Superman, all that’s been canned as well.

It's so wearying. This obsession with “expanded universes” means that everything has to be interconnected with each other, crammed with Easter eggs and cameos and fanservice, and essentially operate as movie-length trailers to other upcoming projects. But when that’s the case, you don’t get a complete story – and if one thing fails, then everything does. I’m so tired of getting invested in something only to see it go off the rails or get cancelled before it can end properly.

Dialing back to my own blog, 2022 marks the least number of posts I’ve made in a year since starting it in 2014, which is one of the drawbacks to fulltime work. Looking over my stats, I’m surprised to realize I didn’t write any original meta this year, focusing instead on single-episode reviews (largely for Xena Warrior Princess and Legend of the Seeker) plus anything else I thought deserved an in-depth look.

I managed a long (almost exhaustive) review of the Fear Street trilogy, which still blows me away by how good it was, especially compared other franchises’ attempts to do similarly update properties, combine a nostalgia kick with contemporary issues, or even just tell a coherent story with a beginning, middle and end. I replayed The Colonel’s Bequest and its sequel The Dagger of Amon Ra for the first time in ages, and wrote out a summary/review of The Adventures of Maid Marian, my favourite bad film of the year. I also played and wrote about the first King’s Quest game, and definitely plan to continue with the series in 2023.

Finally, I spent a Saturday watching pilot episodes, my rundown of which ended up being one of my most popular posts for the year. Now it’s just a matter of watching everything else on the list – though I’ll probably hold off on Wednesday until the Halloween season. Next up is The Sandman and Interview with the Vampire – and I’ll also finish my episodic reviews for the final season of His Dark Materials, which has already come out.

So much to do, but here are my personal favourites of 2022...

Recommendations: The Best of 2021

Perhaps it’s too late to be doing this near the end of January, but here’s a quick wrap-up of some of my posts, views and recommendations of 2021...

I wrote very little meta this year, with one being The Craft and the Craft Legacy, which I wasn’t particularly happy with. It’s too long and a bit repetitive, and I’m not even sure I got my point across – but hey, it was fun returning to one of my favourite witchy films and its misbegotten sequel.

If that one was too long, then The Problem With Witches was too short, and barely scratched the surface of my theory: that fictional depictions of witches – whether old or modern – share a deep consternation about the idea of a woman with hard power, and do everything they can to alleviate the perceived threat. Perhaps I’ll return to this subject at a later date with more examples to flesh out the argument.

I did have a lot of fun working through the first season of The Legend of the Seeker, and even though I couldn’t find the time to post on the season finale, it’s on its way. And then my first ever watch of season two will begin! I’m so excited about this, especially since I’ve been delaying it for over a decade!

Other than that, I managed only three in-depth reviews this year: for Raya and the Last Dragon, the first season of Shadow and Bone, and the three Irish-inspired films of Cartoon Saloon studios.

As for the best of this year’s watching and reading material...