Top Twelve Best Film/Television Moments of 2023

I’ve managed it at last: my final annual end-of-year post. This one was meant to wrap up the year by listing the Twelve Best Moments of Film or Television in 2023, but Covid and full-time work have delayed it until now.

What’s more, 2023 was a difficult year for me in regards to actually finding noteworthy moments to write about, and you’ll discover that the entries on this list often have more to do with “ideas” or “concepts” or “designs” than actual scenes.

The other reason this list may feel a little thin is because I didn’t watch much new stuff this year – I’m sick of starting things only to watch them get cancelled, so 2023 had me seek out entertainment from ten or more years ago, where I could be assured of a beginning, middle and end to any given story. To do otherwise is just a waste of precious time.

Which means that much of what is featured here are from projects released at the tail-end of 2022, though I’ve always allowed myself a bit of wriggle room on what constitutes “the year.” Anything from the nineties is way out, but anything released between 2020 to 2022 passes muster (provided I actually watched it in 2023).

So, here we finally are – the Top Twelve Best Moments of Film or Television in 2023:

1. The vampires are gay now in Interview with the Vampire

That pretty much sums it up. When Anne Rice first published Interview with the Vampire back in 1976, it was melodramatic and sordid and engrossing... and leaden with homoerotic subtext. But that last element remained subtext, even into Neil Jordan’s 1996 film adaptation, which actually toned down some of the material from the book in order to placate Tom Cruise.

(Heck, just to compare them to another famous vampire pairing, I think even Joss Whedon verbally confirmed that Angel and Spike had sex with each other during their centuries-long reign of terror, well before this Anne Rice reimagining ever saw the light of day).

Queer readings of established texts are at least as old as Holmes and Watson, Ishmael and Queequeg, Gilgamesh and Enkidu – and sometimes it’s better for things to stay subtextual. Sometimes the potency of a dynamic can be found in what’s not said, what’s nestled in those quick glances and fleeting touches.

But now we’re in the 2020s, and what’s the point of being coy? The subtext is now text. In hindsight, it’s absurd to suppose that these characters weren’t knocking boots every chance they got, or that their toxic, co-dependent relationship wasn’t based on a genuine sexual/romantic relationship. I mean, the show doesn’t even bother teasing the will they/won’t they aspect for very long. To make Louis and Lestat lovers makes so much sense that it’ll be surprising to reread the books and realize it isn’t explicitly the case there.

But more than that, the show ends up doing so much with Rice’s work, whether it’s grappling with the racial tension of the time, exploring the theme of memory versus reality, and delving into the complexities of the relationships between its vampiric cast and the hapless humans that surround them. And I dare say, none of it could have worked to the extent that it does had the writers not committed to the fluid sexualities of its two leads. It was a very welcome updating of the original material.

2. Raccacoonie from Everything Everywhere All at Once

It’s still hard to wrap my head around this movie, as it (as the title fully implies) contains absolutely everything. It’s so rich in meaning, on so many levels, that you feel like you could watch it one hundred times and still only be scratching the surface of its symbolism and motifs and themes and ideas.

But perhaps my favourite component, which is somehow both a vivid bit of characterization and a running gag and an important plot-point and then something that legitimately made me choke up despite being utterly absurd is Raccacoonie.

Here’s how it goes. We first hear the word “Raccacoonie” when Michelle Yeoh’s Evelyn is trying to explain precisely what’s going on to her husband and daughter. She’s being flung through countless dimensions without warning, being thrown into alternate versions of herself, almost like someone is controlling her like a puppeteer manipulates a puppet.

She reaches for the right analogy and comes up with Raccacoonie. You know, the raccoon that hides on the chef’s head under his hat and helps him become a master at cooking. Evelyn’s daughter Joy immediately bursts out laughing, because her mother clearly means Ratatoille, though Evelyn is adamant that she’s talking about a raccoon. It’s a funny misunderstanding, all the more so because Evelyn is so certain she means a raccoon, demonstrating just how out-of-touch she is with American pop culture.

But then, the plot thickens. As Evelyn continues her trip through the multiverse, popping into variations of herself and their lives, one of them reveals she works as a Teppanyaki chef, where her rival is a young man called Chad who is obnoxiously good at his job. Sure enough, he’s got a raccoon hiding under his toque (which also suggests that Evelyn’s confidence regarding the species of animal was the result of a glimpse into one of her parallel lives).

And then things take another turn. As the worlds start to deteriorate and Evelyn loses hope, she exposes Raccacoonie’s hiding place atop Chad’s head. It’s part of a larger montage in which things go wrong all across the multiverse, but in this particular reality poor Chad is forced to watch as Raccacoonie is driven away by animal control. In their own tiny subplot, which barely takes up a sliver of the film’s runtime, we’re left distraught as Chad sobs on the sidewalk: “Raccacoonie taught me so much!”

It’s all so ridiculous, so why am I crying? Raccaoonie!!!

By this point, Evelyn has emotionally rallied herself, and hoists Chad onto her shoulders so that they can chase after the poor incarcerated creature. We never get to see what happens after she throws Chad over her head and onto the moving animal control vehicle, but I’m going to assume he managed to free his partner-in-crime, perhaps to continue their cooking career somewhere far away.

But a throwaway gag that becomes an important clue which then becomes its own little subplot. How does this movie do it?

3. M3gan’s Killer Dance in M3gan

What can I really say? A robotic doll does a little dance before she starts slaughtering people with a guillotine blade. It’s genius.

Apparently, James Wan wasn’t keen on the fact this scene was featured heavily in the trailers, though later (after the clip went viral) conceded that it was the reason the film ended up being as successful as it was. It captures to perfection the dark campy humour of the movie in its entirety, nailing the tone in just one simple meme-worthy scene. You don’t even need context: it’s a robotic doll dancing as a prelude to murder. Neat!

4. Catherine Cawood and Alison Garrs help each other out in Happy Valley

The third and final season of Happy Valley ended this year, and it struck me that (as is often the case in trilogies) the second season wasn’t referenced all that much. It involved a lot of characters that didn’t appear in either the first or third season, and some of its oddities (such as the lack of Catherine’s ex-husband; the somewhat disconnected murder-mystery) make it the odd one out of the three.

But there is one character who carries on from season two to three, and that’s Alison Garrs, the mother of (SPOILER) the second season’s killer. It was a very sad story, in which she ends up shooting him and then herself in order to spare him from a prison sentence, though Catherine finds and brings her back from the brink of death. Alison serves her time, but the two women manage to maintain what has got to be the strangest “friendship” of all time.

I put the word in parenthesis, but that’s what it is – a friendship between a woman who shot her own son and the cop who both saved her life and put her away. But early on in season three, Catherine tries to assist Alison in getting a job, a favour that Alison repays by doing up her second-hand car. It’s while she’s tinkering away in the driveway that Catherine’s ex-husband notices her out the window and enquires as to who she is, leading to this A-plus dialogue:

Richard: Do you know there's a woman outside doing something to your Land Rover?

Catherine: Yeah, it'll be Alison. She said she'd fit me that new alternator I got on eBay.

Richard: Does she know what she's doing?

Catherine: Yes, of course. She's a farmer. Well, she was until I arrested her.

Richard: What for? 

Catherine: Manslaughter.

And that’s the end of that conversation! Solidarity between women, it appears at the strangest of times.

5. Bingo’s dream in Bluey

I’m stretching the boundaries of the timeframe for this one, as it originally aired in 2020... but one particular episode from the second season of Bluey ended up being one of 2023’s most memorable viewing experiences. It’s called “Sleepytime” and is ostensibly about Bingo learning to stay in her own bed all night, as befits a child her age. She promises to do her best, despite her fears of the dark, and her mother Chili tucks her in with the words: “remember I’ll always be here for you, even if you can’t see me.”

What follows is Bingo’s dream, in which she hatches out of an egg, floats around the galaxy with her stuffed rabbit (now life-lived), runs across the surface of Jupiter – and with each new experience, we see the real-life equivalent as Bingo sleepwalks through the house (when she’s shivering on a small moon, it’s because her blanket has fallen off and so on).

And then, after bidding farewell to Floppy, Bingo is rocketed through the sky by a shooting star until she reaches the sun itself. She basks in its warmth, and hears her mother’s voice once more: “remember I’ll always be here for you... even if you can’t see me... because I love you.”

Now, so often in stories, it’s the bond between fathers and their children that take precedence in the narrative. Think of all those dead mothers in animated Disney films, or growing-up tales in which a father and son learn to get past their differences, or even stuff like Star Wars or The Lord of the Rings, where the wise mentor/father figure is always a man. Daddy issues are sometimes inserted into stories where they have no business being – remember Tim Burton’s Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, which went on a weird plot tangent in which Willy Wonka reconciled with his dentist father? What the heck was that about?

My point is: mothers never get their due.

But here, Chili’s love for her youngest daughter is symbolized by the sun itself: so great that its circumference surpasses the edges of the screen that depicts it. I’ve honestly never seen a mother’s love portrayed like this before, as something as powerful and vast and almighty as the sun, the reason for life and light in the universe. Strengthened by its warmth, Bingo makes the subconscious decision to stay in her own bed: an insignificant thing compared to the enormity of space, but a momentous choice for a child to make.

And all of this is set to Gustav Holst’s “Jupiter,” just to get the waterworks flowing. How can something so simple carry so much narrative weight? If it had been submitted as a short film that year, I’m sure it would have taken home the Oscar.

6. The Moriarty/William reveal in Enola Holmes 2

I enjoyed the sequel to Enola Holmes, all the more so when it came to its third-act twist. But to explain why, you have to take a step back and look at the wider cultural context in which it occurs. To sum up as succinctly as possible, we’re currently in the throes of a culture war which doesn’t seem interested in winding down any time soon. People are relentlessly whinging about “wokeness” infiltrating their media like it’s some sort of insidious disease, when all that’s really happening is more female protagonists, more colour-blind casting and more inclusion of the LGBTQ community.

When the complainers reference “wokeness,” they generally seem to believe that these minorities are somehow stealing all the plumb roles for themselves, or are portrayed as “good” in comparison to the “badness” of straight white males. It’s a perceived overhaul of social norms (or at least narrative optics) that they find threatening.

Now, consider this scenario: in a film set in the Victorian era, in which the sister of Sherlock Holmes is tasked with finding a missing matchstick girl called Sarah Chapman, there are two periphery characters: first, a Black woman who is working as a secretary to an upper-class businessman. She’s meek, she’s subservient, and her opinions are dismissed. But she notices Enola’s hiding place and doesn’t give her away. Later, she makes an overture of solidarity to our protagonist and offers some helpful advice.

Secondly, there is a young white male, also of the English upper-class, who is the son of the matchstick factory owner. He comes across as very standoffish, haughty to the point of rudeness, with one of those priggish moustaches that always scream: “I’m a huge douche.” It’s gradually revealed that he was an admirer of the missing girl, sending flowers and poems to the dance hall in which she worked.

We know this old tune: Sarah was one of those poor naïve girls, used and abused by a member of the aristocracy, fooled into believing their relationship was one of true love. As a stagehand says: “blokes like that – they want cheap but they marry dear.” He’s clearly the main suspect in her disappearance.

So, would it shock you if I said that the young white male, William Lyon, is revealed to be completely innocent? Not only genuinely in love with Sarah Chapman, but helping her expose the corruption in his father’s factory and secure better working conditions for the girls therein? Or that the Black secretary turns out to be Moriarty, who was using her social invisibility to pull the strings of a blackmailing operation that relied on the continued exploitation of the matchstick girls and their exposure to phosphorous?

William was a true ally and a reformer. “Mira Troy” murdered two innocent people to protect her racketeering scheme.

What fascinates me about all this is that the Hidden Villain reveal is predicated entirely upon a contemporary audiences’ expectation of what type of actor will fill the “hero” and “villain” roles. It would appear we’ve reached the point in which a viewer would naturally assume that the white male British aristocrat is automatically coded as bad, and the Black female underdog secretary is good – an assumption that’s now so pervasive in the language of storytelling that subverting it makes for an effective twist.

Director/screenwriter Harry Bradbeer and Jack Thorne knew the preconceptions a viewer would carry into this film, which are based on what is still a (relatively speaking) very new perspective of the world through the lens of popular culture. We assume that William is taking advantage of Sarah, like so many other young men of his standing would do in a similar situation. We assume that Mira is an ally to our white female protagonist, because hey, that’s what Black women are to young white female protagonists, right?

That the reality is quite different feels like a watershed moment of some kind, though for what I’m not  entirely sure. Hopefully the continuation of this kind of “woke” media, which is handled in ways that clearly stymie the arguments of those railing against it.

(Is there any hope of Enola Holmes 3? Any at all? Because we must be allowed to see more of Sharon Duncan-Brewster as Moriarty).

7. Harley Quinn psychoanalyses Bruce Wayne in Harley Quinn

Four seasons in and Harley Quinn is still evading the dreaded cancellation announcement! Between its ability to fly under the radar of the HBO suits and the fact that James Gunn is enough of a fan that he’s lent his voice to an animated version of himself that appears in the show (he’s directing a movie about the death of Thomas Wayne) this is the little cartoon that could.

Season three involves the disappearance of Frank, the sentient Venus Flytrap, and Harley and Ivy’s subsequent search for his whereabouts. The clues lead them to Bruce Wayne, who has kidnapped Frank for some unknown reason, leading the women to utilize the abilities of Doctor Psycho in order to delve into Bruce’s subconscious for Frank’s location. Naturally, they end up in Gotham City (“but grittier”) just in time to see Thomas and Martha Wayne leaving the movie theatre with their little boy – who then witnesses their deaths at the hands of Joe Chill.

Actually, they kind of miss this part, as they’re too busy arguing the differences between Joe Chill and Joe Cool. But then the scene plays again... and again... and again, in every direction, as far as the eye can see. (Doctor Psycho: “so were his parents murdered? I’m not quite getting it. Could you show us a thousand more fucking times?!”) Everyone is pretty baffled, only for Harley to remember: she’s a qualified psychiatrist!

What they’re seeing is a reverse-repressed memory. Instead of your bog-standard repressed memory, his parents’ deaths are the only thing Bruce Wayne ever thinks about, as though the event is on a prerecorded loop in his brain. And currently, he’s in no state to share any information with them about Frank’s whereabouts – he’s suffering from extreme post-traumatic stress.

This is an unexpectedly lovely development on two levels: firstly, that Harley’s experience as a psychiatrist is what can resolve the issue. She understands what’s happening and can effectively diagnose what’s happening in Bruce’s head. Secondly, she’s capable of feeling empathy for this traumatized child, picking him up and carrying him away from the horror of the murder scene.

She talks him out of a panic attack, asks “do I have your verbal consent to become your licensed therapist?” and then guides him into a mental safe space. It saves them both, and he tells her where Frank is (as well as his plan for the very dodgy resurrection of his parents). Of course, during the subsequent tour of Bruce Wayne’s memories, Harley figures out what’s really going on with him, and that he became Batman out of a misguided sense of guilt that he was the one responsible for killing his parents. 

The whole episode is essentially a prolonged therapy session in the recesses of Bruce Wayne’s mind. To watch two such unlikely people make an unexpected connection and help each other heal is a real joy, and it ends up being a showcase for Harley’s profession, demonstrating just how much she’s grown when the pair end up trapped in a memory involving the Joker and her former self. She even brings up patient/doctor confidentiality, promising Bruce that his secret identity is safe with her.

Not everything between them gets resolved at the end of this episode (or even the season) so I’m looking forward to seeing what will happen across season four – especially since Harley is going to try her hand at being a hero among the other bat-sidekicks. Because let’s be honest, Bruce going to therapy might just be the very best thing for him, even if the psychiatrist is the ex-girlfriend of his greatest nemesis.

8. Luci admits he loves Bean in Disenchantment

The end of Disenchantment got a little out-there, with Luci the demon ascending to heaven along with some guy I honestly can’t remember (was he the kingdom’s executioner or something?) and having a few chats with God that culminated in Him having His head shattered (said head was a lightbulb). After some consideration, Luci begrudgingly finds and screws in a brand new one.

Yeah, it all presumably has some deep allegorical meaning, but I don’t have the time or inclination to analysis it right now.

The important thing is that God is restored, and He knows He’s got Luci to thank for it. So, He offers him a single wish – anything he wants, no strings attached. Wealth, fame, success... Luci has a think about it, and then asks for Mora the mermaid to come back to life, she having recently perished while helping Bean storm Dreamland’s castle and defeat her evil mother. God is intrigued, and asks why.

Luci hems and haws for a while, then pulls the answer from his agonized little body: “because I love Bean.” I’m rather hazy on how exactly this story started in relation to how it finished, but I’m pretty sure that Luci was originally in on Dagmar and Satan’s plan to take over the world. Yet after five seasons of trying to lure Bean over to the Dark Side, he surrenders to his better self and makes an unselfish wish on her behalf.

The kicker is that Bean never even knows it. To her, Mora’s resurrection was an unexplained miracle. She credits Luci’s sacrifice in a speech to the kingdom, and then gets on with her life.

But on reflection, that’s the point of true acts of kindness: you never get credit for them – you just do what you have to in order to make the world a better place.

9. Sabine is reunited with Ezra in Ahsoka

When this episode aired on Disney+, it had been exactly two thousand and twenty-four days since Ezra Bridger sacrificed himself to ensure the safety of his friends and the success of their mission in Star Wars Rebels, one of the better-than-expected-but-still-mostly-for-kids Star Wars shows that existed in that liminal space between Lucasfilm still owning the franchise and the Disney takeover.

I was a reasonably invested viewer in the animated show, and Ezra’s final moments of contact with his crew were surprisingly touching – as was the recording that he left in the wake of his disappearance in the tendrils of the purrgil (space whales) that contained a request to Sabine Wren: that he was counting on her to bring him back.

(Not to get too complicated, but a similar promise of finding one another was made between Ezra and Ahsoka earlier in the show, while both were in the World Between Worlds, and... okay, this mythos is really complicated).

Suffice to say that when Star Wars Rebels ended, it was with an implicit promise: that Sabine and Ahsoka would join forces to find Ezra, wherever he was in the universe, and bring him home. Fast-forward one thousand nine hundred and ninety-six days: Ahsoka premieres. It was not a great show. The pacing was glacial, the dialogue was appalling, and showrunner Dave Filoni seemed to be under the impression that everyone was already familiar with the story left dangling in his former show (though the fact it was animated means that a lot of adult viewers probably gave it a miss).

But about halfway through the proceedings, that long-awaited reunion takes place. Sabine finds Ezra. The pseudo-siblings are reunited, and take a few moments just to hold each other.

And heck, even with the muted performance of the actors and the generally weird vibe of the show in its entirety… I felt a feeling. It still managed to be a cathartic moment, one that the most committed Star Wars fans experienced in real time, since approximately the same amount of time passed for the characters as it did for the audience. And it was still more moving than anything in the sequel trilogy.

10. The bi-generation in Doctor Who

It’s safe to say most people were looking forward to Russell T. Davies returning as showrunner to Doctor Who and the debut of Ncuti Gatwa as the Fifteenth Doctor. But before he made his grand debut, Jodie Whittaker unexpectedly regenerated back into David Tennant.

It soon became clear that RTD was taking the opportunity to wrap up a dangling plot-thread from 2004. With Catherine Tate also back on board, the issue of Donna Noble’s erased memory, which removed all traces of the Doctor and her experiences with him from her mind, could finally be resolved. That’s the advantage of shows that can commit to long-form storytelling: a writer can return DECADES later to reopen narrative doors that audiences had assumed were shut and bolted.

Audiences were also under the impression that David Tennant would carry the three Christmas Specials before handing the torch over to Ncuti Gatwa... which made it an extra surprise when Gatwa turned up in “The Giggle” as part of a “bi-generation” with Tennant. Instead of generating into a brand-new body, Tennant splits in half, with Gatwa taking over the Time Lord duties while his predecessor gets a well-deserved rest.

It's not something that we’ve ever heard of in the annals of Doctor Who lore, and yet RTD proves that a deus ex machina can be whole-heartedly accepted by audiences if it is emotionally satisfying. The Doctor coming back with Tennant’s face, Donna’s reawakening, the Doctor’s obvious weariness and trauma – Davies uses all of it to posit that the Doctor really needs to take a break from saving the galaxy and get some therapy.

And thanks to the Timey Wimey Ball, Gatwa’s Doctor can go forth with the benefit of all that healing and mindfulness (thereby sparing the audience from another dark and grim version of the Doctor). Say what you will, but that is very neat “twelve birds, one stone” storytelling. The audience gets a more satisfying send-off for Donna Noble, allows the beloved Tenth Doctor to enjoy some downtime, and sends the Fifteenth Doctor shooting for the stars with none of the internal baggage of his predecessors, all with one easy narrative device. A bi-generation may not make much logical sense, but has huge emotional heft.

And ahead of us is Ncuti Gatwa’s entire run! We’re so used to actors having screen presence and charisma that we usually only notice when they don’t, or if it’s through the roof. The latter is certainly the case with Gatwa, who is so bursting with enthusiasm and energy that it’s obvious the next season of Doctor Who is going to be a joy to behold. I haven’t been this excited about a franchise in years.

11. Gwen gathers the team in Spiderman: Across the Spider-Verse

I’ll admit that I’m not as massively excited about the Spider-Verse movies as the rest of the internet seems to be. I can appreciate the characters, twisty plots and gorgeous animation, but have never really been a huge fan of Spiderman... or really, superheroes in general (and this was well before the term “superhero fatigue” was coined).

But after reading this article about how the ending of the film was changed, and how the writers explicitly compared it to The Empire Strikes Back (in that it ends with the heroes on the backfoot yet still seizing upon a thread of hope) my opinion on the final sequence went from “good” to “really great, actually.”

I’ve always been fascinated by the way in which stories are constructed and why certain creative decisions are made, and on reflection, the final few minutes of Across the Spider-Verse are masterfully put together, despite being conceived just months before the film’s release: Miles coming face-to-face with his alt-world doppelganger, his parents staring sadly out the window, the terrifying reemergence of the Spot in the sky above, Peter waking up to see Mayday pointing to Gwen, and Gwen’s final voiceover, linking it all back to the start of the film where she was bemoaning her inability to find the right band.

Now she’s made her own, and the cuts between her face and Miles’s are just gorgeous. I felt what I was meant to: stirrings of hope, excitement, suspense and a big “fuck yeah!” in regards to what’s coming next. As the article points out, they took their cue from The Empire Strikes Back by making sure that: “they gave you hope at the end.” That’s probably the key to any story – giving hope.

12. The villainy of the Director in Nimona

I rewatched Nimona just to refresh my memory before writing this entry, and it’s a film that yields more rewards than I first realized. In many ways, it’s an obvious transgender allegory, and yet the message doesn’t dominate the proceedings. You could watch this and just enjoy a fable about tolerance with a cool medieval/futuristic aesthetic. That said, there’s also dialogue like: “it’s not what Gloreth would have wanted” and “see something, slay something” to align the story with contemporary events, and later on a character weaponizes the concept of “fake news” in order to conceal the truth of her own crimes.

To summarize, Ballister Blackheart wants to become a knight and defend his city from the monsters that live outside the walls. Because he’s a commoner, his initiation into the ranks with the Queen’s blessing goes against several centuries of tradition, a convention that seems justified when his sword malfunctions and assassinates the Queen. Having been framed for her murder, he goes on the run.

He’s soon joined by a shapeshifter calling herself Nimona, and together they uncover the real culprit: the Director (essentially the Queen’s righthand woman) who switched Ballister’s sword with the murder weapon. Her motive? Fear that the knighting of a commoner would be the first crack in the gradual collapse of the city’s values and safety. When Ballister turns up in league with Nimona (a “monster” in her eyes) she only feels more justified.

And of course, people believe her. Despite being confronted with the truth of what she’s done, she only digs in deeper. She grows more paranoid. The steps she takes to protect her way of life become more radical, until she’s ready to blow up a significant portion of the city (and its people) to stop Nimona. No one can get through to her, and she cannot be convinced she’s doing anything wrong.

That’s the terrifying thing about the Director. She’s not a cynic, not someone who knows full-well that Nimona is relatively harmless and that sowing fear is the best way to advance her own political ambitions. She’s truly sincere in her terror of the unknown, sharing a dream she’s had since she was a child in which a crack appeared in the city wall that led to monsters flooding into her home.

Now, a monster or a shapeshifter or a transgender person COULD hypothetically pose a threat... but not innately, and not more or less than any other type of sentient being on Earth – including an articulate, powerful, and intelligent white woman like the Director. What she does is classic fearmongering and scapegoating, though the difference between her and your bog-standard villain is that she really, truly is afraid. She believes that she’s being threatened, and that the walls of her world are being breeched by some unknowable, terrifying threat.

The harrowing thing about J.K. Rowling... er, I mean the Director, is this sincerity. There is a great article on the subject here, which goes into a bit more detail – to quote: “To be clear, the Director is not a sympathetic character. She’s not conflicted or morally ambiguous, she doesn’t get a redemption arc. She’s bigoted, tyrannical, and manipulative, willing to kill her entire society rather than allow a “monster” inside the walls. But she’s sincere. She’s willing to do all that because she’s just as terrified of the world outside the walls as every other citizen. And that very sincerity is what makes her willing to commit such heinous crimes, to go such lengths and make such sacrifices. Because she knows, deep-down inside her, that it’s all worth it. That she’s doing the right thing.”

The Director’s design is interesting too: not an ugly Dolores Umbridge, but a sleek, regal, attractive woman. In any other movie, told from any other viewpoint, fandom would be crying: “yaas queen!” and “girlboss!”

So in hindsight, it was an interesting decision to make the Director a woman, reminding me a little of the aforementioned twist in Enola Holmes 2. There’s still a narrative temptation to make female characters the unassailable good guys by dint of their underdog status in the patriarchy, ignoring the fact that you can be both a victim and a distributor of oppression. And with the onset of the tradwife movement and the reality of many conspiracy theorists being women, it’s timely to remember that feminism means accepting that women can be just as awful and dangerous as men when it comes to bigotry.

***

Last year was marked by more cancellations and legacyquels/live-action remakes, but more pertinently: a very vocal exhaustion with both those things. There are mainstream articles and think-pieces about “cancellation fatigue” and the self-defeating nature of streaming services that refuse to commit to their projects: if you’re leery that something is going to be cancelled, you’re not going to bother watching it, and so it doesn’t get the ratings it needs to continue.

There have always been shows that get canned before reaching a satisfying conclusion, but things have gotten so much worse these last few years, and only partially due to things like Covid and the Writers Guild of America strike. Oftentimes stories are cut short or removed from streaming services simply for tax write-offs or other cost-saving measures. (For instance, actors’ contracts are renewed after a certain number of years, giving them the opportunity for a pay rise – which only provides more incentive for studios to let the axe fall).

Here’s a list of the shows I’ve enjoyed in the last few years which have gotten cancelled prematurely, in rough order of how disappointing it was:

Shadow and Bone (two seasons)

The Dark Crystal: Age of Resistance (one season)

Willow (one season)

The Nevers (one season)

The Midnight Club (one season)

Perry Mason (two seasons)

Earth to Ned (one season)

The Great (three seasons)

The Babysitters Club (two seasons)

The Irregulars (one season)

Westworld (four seasons)

Julia (two seasons)

Cursed (one season)

Avenue 5 (two seasons)

Dangerous Liaisons (one season)

Our Flag Means Death (two seasons)

And here’s a list of shows that I was planning to watch at some point (because there aren’t enough hours in the day to watch them all at once) but now probably won’t bother with because they were unceremoniously dropped:

American Born Chinese (one season)

Lockwood and Co (one season)

Paper Girls (one season)

A League of Their Own (one season)

Grease: Rise of the Pink Ladies (one season)

Kindred (one season)

1899 (one season)

Warrior Nuns (two seasons)

Y: The Last Man (one season)

Vampire Academy (one season)

That’s... pretty insane, and at this point I’m genuinely confused when I see people look forward to new shows. You really think they’re going to get a chance to reach a satisfying conclusion? They’re not. And what’s the point of a story without an ending? Who on earth wants to watch that?

For me, Shadow and Bone was the last straw – I said goodbye to my Netflix subscription and headed back to older shows with DVD releases, lengthy seasons, and definitive goodbyes. Spooks, Elementary and Sailor Moon dominated my viewing in 2023, and because of the dizzying amount of episodes they all had, viewing stretched out for months at a time, giving me the luxury and space to enjoy them without the proverbial axe hanging over my head. (Though of course, the lack of variety also made it difficult to mine content for Women of the Month entries).

At this point, I’m just too sick of getting invested in stories only to watch them get canned.

***

As stated, 2022 – 2023 was the year of more legacyquels, either released or announced: Hocus Pocus 2 and Disenchanted were long-gestating projects that finally saw the light of day, along with The Flash (thanks to the presence of Michael Keaton’s Batman), Indiana Jones’s final hurrah in Dial of Destiny, and Scream 6 bringing back more familiar faces from the decades-old franchise.

My favourite of the bunch was Willow, which I greatly enjoyed and which seemed eager to set itself apart in regards to its tone (having included a soundtrack of classic rock songs). The best description I saw was the one that compared it to a Dungeons and Dragons campaign, though in hindsight, they probably should have just made it a movie. I can’t bring myself to recommend it, as like The Nevers and Shadow and Bone there was no definitive ending – just setup for a follow-up that will never come. Still, it was great seeing Warwick Davies and Joanne Whalley in those roles again.

And there’s more to come: Ghostbusters: Frozen Empire, X-Men ’97, Beetlejuice Beetlejuice, another Alien project, and (as announced yesterday) a remake of The NeverEnding Story. Are you tired of revisiting your youth yet? Isn’t it time for the kids to enjoy stuff that defines their generation instead of our re-heated leftovers?

Multiverses were big last year as well, featuring in everything from Spiderman: Across the Spider-Verse, the aforementioned Flash movie, Everything Everywhere All At Once, and the MCU, still doing its level best to make us care about other dimensions.

It’s fine. Everything is fine. That’s all that can be said at this point. All these projects are of varying quality, but they’re exactly what they’re intended to be, with a carefully calibrated mix of nostalgia bait and fanservice – which incidentally, is what makes them simultaneously so inoffensive and so forgettable.

The world is ready for the Next Big Thing, which I can guarantee won’t be a regurgitated appeal to the childhoods of Millennials, but something we’ve simply never seen before. Only time will tell what it turns out to be.

***

Reading wise, my Slavic Fantasy Month is soon to become my Slavic Fantasy Year, as I started in April 2023, and am only just wrapping up the last handful of books in the stack (currently reading Leigh Bardugo’s Rule of Wolves, but still have Katherine Arden’s The Bear and the Nightingale trilogy and Margaret Owen’s Little Thieves duology to go).

It seemed like a good idea at the time, as the atmosphere of a pre-Christianized Eastern Europe as a backdrop for stories appeals to me on a deep aesthetic level, but there’s only so much you can absorb of any single thing. At this point, I’ve certainly had my fill of stark landscapes, onion domes, vodka shots, men wearing bearskins and houses on chicken legs. (Plus, I can only imagine how much real Slavs despise those clichés).

And if there’s anything I can take from the experience, it’s that I’m definitely not a YA reader anymore. That’s not just a self-deprecating comment, as the truth is this category of fiction is in rather dire straits at the moment, with none of the imagination or creativity that’s currently being poured into books written for much younger readers. At least not in the material I’ve been reading.

Most of the YA I’ve read lately adheres to a strict formula, one that’s very much born out of social media discourse. This naturally comes with its pros and (serious) cons. On the one hand, sure – there’s plenty to laud about exploring current social issues within a fictional context, and YA is easily the most committed and far-reaching genre of fiction when it comes to inclusion and representation.

But the problem is in the delivery. THE DELIVERY. Argh, it’s so hard to read one of these books and not feel like checklists are being ticked off, or that TikTok was a consultant, or that writers are so hyperaware of their audience’s exacting standards that there’s never anything complex or challenging or ambiguous in the actual story.

You’ll find girl-bossing, and love triangles, and simplistic revolutions, and hat-tips given to the anger and required performative femininity of girls, and the patriarchal unfairness that surrounds them – but nothing feels REAL. It’s like they’re all writing in fear of the bad-faith reader, who will tear apart anything that seems mildly controversial, or who won’t understand what the story is about unless it’s spelt out for them.

(For what it’s worth, the adult version of this are all those current retellings of Greek myths told from the perspective of women. Seriously, there are MILLIONS of them out there right now, and none of them have anything interesting to say).

This seems to be the price of close contact between creators and fandoms through social media. Writers can read the thoughts of their fans and configurate their work accordingly. Fans can campaign or harass writers in order to get what they want. Everyone is up in everyone else’s business, and writing appears to be more of a collaborative endeavour than anything resembling A.S. Byatt’s beautiful description of the writing/reading experience, that “the writer writes alone and the reader reads alone, and they are alone together.”

Now the writer and the reader are yelling at each other through the internet.

To sum up, having a surplus of books that examine – even clumsily – the social inequalities that surround us is a good thing. In that sense, maybe the level of quantity is worth the lack of quality. But the fanfiction-to-publishing pipeline and the mentality that arises from being terminally on-line has not improved said quality of stories, nor the way in which they’re written. I trust you’ve heard of the women who lost her publishing deal after sabotaging the Goodreads reviews of her peers (oh, and her book was a retelling of a Greek myth – what a surprise!)

Look, I am clearly not the target audience of these books, but I would accept that there’s nothing of value for me to glean from them anymore were it not for the fact that authors like Frances Hardinge and Philip Reeve DO consistently prove there’s room for nuance and complexity and beautiful prose and real dramatic weight in fiction written for teenagers.

I think the first step is to extract oneself from social media, and to write for the sake of the story, not the feedback.

***

2023 also saw the continuation of my read-through of the entire Babysitters Club series, and I’m having a blast with that one. Whether it’s the dated references, the weird fashion choices, the insane plots, or the fact that Mary Anne is a real passive-aggressive piece of work (I never noticed as a child) it’s been a trip – especially when it comes to the mysteries. The likes of Mary Anne’s Bad Luck Mystery, Mallory and the Mystery Diary, and Stacey and the Mystery of Stoneybrook are easily the best of the bunch, and the narrative trick of explaining everything except one inexplicable detail makes each story surprisingly tantalizing.

Graphic novels were also the highpoint of my reading year, with plenty I couldn’t add to my 2023 Recommendations either for the sake of space, or because they’re part of a series that isn’t finished yet. In the former category we have The Dire Days of Willowweep Manor (a hilarious send-up of Gothic fiction), Grimoire Noir (a magical mystery with a – duh – noir ambiance) and A Guest in the House (Emily Carroll at her best). In the latter there’s T. Probert’s Lightfall, Jo Rioux’s Cat’s Cradle and Marjorie Liu/Teny Issakhanian’s Wingbearer, all of which are stunningly illustrated. Truly, kids get all the good stuff!

To sum up the rest of the bookish highlights as succinctly as possible: I loved tracking down as many Joe Todd-Stanton books as I could: The Secret of Black Rock, Bear, The Comet, A Mouse Called Julian, and the five books in the Brownstone’s Mythical Collection were great reads, and his detailed illustrations are always worth a lengthy pore over. I also continued a little way with Joseph Delaney’s Spook’s Apprentice series, but got distracted. Hopefully I’ll get back to them soon, as Alice in particular was a fascinating character.

But special note has to be made of Eleanor Estes’s The Hundred Dresses and Betty Ren Wright’s Out of the Dark. I read each one as a child and they held up remarkably well when reading as an adult. Both (in broad strokes) involve a young girl trying to negotiate the complexities of a difficult friendship, though that’s where the similarities end: one is about bullying and how the actual bullies deal with the emotional consequences, while the other is a ghost/mystery story involving a bully that the protagonist must solve.

But the Best Book Award of this year goes to The Daughters of Ys and Spinning Silver. M.T. Anderson and Jo Rioux’s joint venture is a graphic novel in which every panel is awash with mystery and atmosphere, while Naomi Novik’s take on “Rumpelstiltskin” is a near-perfect novel as it pertains to my specific tastes and interests.

It’s not a lot of books that can move me to tears, but when Miryem’s father is attempting to dissuade her from returning to the Staryk Kingdom in order to save its people, he quotes scripture by asking: “Are there even ten righteous among them?” Recalling the three servants that helped her during her captivity, she responds: “I know that there are three.” And that’s enough.

***

I managed to get to the theatre three times last year, which is less than usual, but always a balm for the soul. Sense and Sensibility was a comedic take on Austen’s material, notable because it was performed by an all-woman cast that took on a number of roles, including (obviously) the male ones. Romeo and Juliet was a gorgeous ballet adaptation of Shakespeare’s play, which very much put its spritely Juliet front-and-centre of the story (more a “Juliet and her Romeo” than a Romeo and Juliet) while Hansel and Gretel was given a fascinating makeover, with the old story rendered as a tribute to Georges Méliès films with a black-and-white noir flavour: dreamy and strange and captivating.

I finished up the third and final season of His Dark Materials, and for all its flaws, I’m glad I took the time to review each individual episode. It’s really the last of the present-day shows I’ve done that for, and the book trilogy was such a formative reading experience that I couldn’t not deep-dive into its adaptation, despite serious flaws in pacing and tone. It’ll be the last one we get for a very long time, and I’m glad it made it to the finish line (which is more than we can say for the Stillborn Film Franchise). But I still mourn that Lord Asriel episode we lost to Covid.

(On that note, I also read The Collectors by Philip Pullman this year, a tantalizing little book about a portrait of a woman and the statuette of a monkey that cannot be separated).

Speaking of Covid, it gave me the chance to complete the second season of The Legend of the Seeker, which ended on a note that clearly expected at least one more season (like I said, premature cancellations are hardly a new thing). But I will continue with my remaining episode reviews, even though I’m disappointed I didn’t have the time to get the whole show under my belt before the New Year and my subsequent embarking upon a grand Buffy the Vampire Slayer rewatch. Ah well, a little overlap never hurt anyone.

And I know I’ve been lax in my Xena Warrior Princess coverage as well...

***

The beginning of the year saw me devour several movies that – for reasons I can’t articulate – just worked very well together in terms of their tone: Hocus Pocus 2, Disenchanted, Enola Holmes 2, The School for Good and Evil, My Father’s Dragon and Guillermo del Toro’s Pinocchio. All of differing quality, but which all understood the importance of actual colour.

I mean, say what you will about The School for Good and Evil, but that was one heck of a set piece when the rival schools battled each other to the strains of Britney Spears’s “Toxic.” My Father’s Dragon was not Cartoon Saloon’s greatest offering, but the animation is as bright and beautiful as ever. Ditto Pinocchio, whose designs for the Blue Fairy and Death (an old-school Biblical angel and a languorous sphinx, respectively) were just gorgeous.

Having written my Ten Pilots, One Day post back in 2022, I caught up on a number of shows on that list (in fact, Vampire Academy is the only one I haven’t yet seen in its entirety). Of these, Willow and The Sandman provided solid entertainment – well acted, well shot, reasonably well scripted... but held hostage by the streaming service curse. I mean, The Sandman has been granted a second season, and got two bonus episodes, but I can promise you it’ll go no further than that.

There were plenty of other shows and films that were fun without being standouts: Dungeons and Dragons, Unicorn Warriors Eternal, the second season of The Wheel of Time – all fun, but all fairly disposal. I feel like that’s the general theme of the year – plenty of genre stuff that was “fine,” but no remarkable standouts like Interview with the Vampire or the first season of Andor.

It was also a year for fun cameos, whether it was Hannah Waddingham in both Willow and Hocus Pocus, Sallah and Marion turning up for one last hurrah in the final Indiana Jones film, or even (going back a few years) Malcolm popping in to lend his expertise in the Spooks movie. If a cameo is utilized well, it feels less like fan service and more like a cheery wave.

Speaking of Indiana Jones, I took the release of his final movie as an excuse to watch the entire film franchise from start to finish, including The Kingdom of the Crystal Skull, which I’d never seen before. And excluding a few dubious scenes, it wasn’t that bad! I certainly enjoyed the first half more than the second, and the science-fiction bent definitely didn’t mesh with the rest of the franchise’s tone, but after so many years of hearing other people act like it was a crime against nature, I was surprised by how much I casually enjoyed it.

Which is to admit that I was never an uberfan of the franchise. As a child, I did go through a phase when I was mildly obsessed with The Last Crusade (still my favourite of the series) and I’ve since at least come to appreciate Raiders of the Lost Ark (I dunno, it just never really captured me), while Temple of Doom is also a film that exists. In all honesty, I think the best Indiana Jones story is The Fate of Atlantis, a Lucasfilm computer game from 1992.

And finally, the Dial of Destiny, which was a bit of a lacklustre finale, though I want to give it credit for not being a morass of cameos and callbacks: a new adventure, new sidekicks, new treasure, new nemesis. Like so many things in 2023, it was fine.

(Though it’s not over yet. I’m currently watching through episodes of the BBC’s Robin Hood with a friend, and once we’re done there, the plan is to continue with The Adventures of Young Indiana Jones, which I’ve never seen before).

On the subject of long-running franchises, Scream 6 strained a little under a large ensemble cast that the writers were clearly loath to kill off (we had the self-proclaimed “core four,” plus Courteney Cox, plus a return from Kirby) though it opened up a new range of possibilities when it came to the identity of potential Ghostface killers. What if there were two Ghostfaces working independently of each other? What if they ended up at odds, with innocent people caught in the crossfire? What if a former protagonist – like Sam or Tara – DID snap and start their own murder sprees?

Of course, well never know when it comes to that last one since Spyglass fired Melissa Barrera for speaking out against genocide, but apparently Neve Campbell is back for the seventh instalment. If it’s not her trying to defend Patrick Dempsey and her kids from Ghostface, then what’s the point?

***

I’ve already gone over the standout female characters of 2023 on my Women of the Year post, though there were some notable exclusions: Florence Pugh as Lib Wright in The Wonder, a nurse who is sent to Ireland in order to investigate a young girl who claims to be surviving on mana from heaven. Kaitlyn Dever’s Rosaline from (what else?) Rosaline, who gets the chance to tell her story after Romeo ditches her for Juliet (the best part is that the famous couple survive, only to realize they have nothing in common after making their escape from Verona). Susan Ryeland was a woman of a certain age who gets the chance to solve her own mystery in Magpie Murders, a miniseries which is perfect for a rainy day and continues Lesley Manville’s great run of recent projects.

India Amarteifio was a powerhouse as Queen Charlotte in the Bridgerton spin-off, playing a young version of Golda Rosheuvel’s character who has to adapt to life in England and the mental afflictions of her new husband, while Viola Davis led a fantastic ensemble cast in The Woman King, which shone a spotlight on the Agojie, an all-women regiment of elite warriors who lived in the Kingdom of Dahomey in the 1800s. Then there was Suranne Jones in Vigil, playing a detective who is called aboard a submarine in order to look into the death of one of its crewmen – and of course, realizing there’s more to his demise than initially assumed.

(As an aside, it’s rather amusing how many shows/films I watched this year that were just women’s names: Ahsoka. Coraline. Nimona. Harley Quinn. Queen Charlotte. Barbie. Wednesday. Zita the Space Girl).

There was a somewhat disappointing continuation of Queen Emma’s story in Vikings: Valhalla, who has gone from a savvy and sensible ruler in the first season to a cold and paranoid wreck in its second, but the portrayal of the show’s female characters is still buoyed by the likes of Freydís, Ælfgifu, Eleana and Mariam.

Peter Morgan finished The Crown with a love letter to the late Queen Elizabeth, though the show was certainly wearing out its welcome as it moved though the events of the nineties, and Sanditon and Happy Valley also wrapped up this year, each with their third seasons. They had nothing in common beyond a female protagonist with a similar-sounding name, but since I watched them in tandem, they’re linked together in my mind. Both a little lacklustre in different ways, but fitting farewells to Catherine Cawood and Charlotte Heywood.

Carnival Row and The Nevers also came to a close, another pair of shows that vibed well with each other (more understandably in this case, as both had a steampunkish Victorian setting) but which came to premature ends. The former at least knew the end was nigh and managed a conclusive ending, but the latter was a cliffhanger finish with no resolution at all. Perhaps a graphic novel continuation will manifest at some point? It all depends on Joss Whedon’s fortunes I suppose. 

The Tudors and the Yorks also became a surprisingly prevalent theme for the year, kicking off with a rewatch of The White Queen for its ten-year anniversary, which naturally meant I had to follow up with The White Princess and the first season of The Spanish Princess, all based on the dubious works of Phillipa Gregory, who never read any slanderous libel about the women of the time without believing in it wholeheartedly. In any case, it all provides a good lead-in to Showtime’s The Tudors, which I’ve never watched in its entirety (only a few clips on YouTube back when it first aired).

The Dragon Prince is still chugging along, though it still pales in comparison to the likes of Avatar: The Last Airbender and She Ra (but then, what doesn’t?) and Ahsoka was something of a mixed bag. What was up with that pacing? It remains a mystery as to why Disney can’t get a handle on one of the most popular franchises on the planet.

Still, on the animation front, at least we got Puss in Boots: The Last Wish, which brought the Shrek franchise unexpectedly back to form. I haven’t heard much on Shrek 5 in a while, but surely it’s in the works. There was also Strange Worlds, which bombed at the box office, but which I found to be very underrated. Not a hidden gem, but definitely underrated. Hopefully it’ll find its audience in due course.

I also found time to watch some classics – some I’d seen before, others for the first time: Roman Holiday, Casablanca, The Sound of Music, Gaslight, The Seventh Seal, The Treasure of the Sierra Madre and Psycho. There’s not much I can say about any of them that hasn’t been said a million times before, but all of them are classics for a reason: the care and consideration and craftsmanship that goes into them is what coined the phrase “they don’t make ‘em like that anymore.”

April was a time to revisit all the eighties fantasy films that I watched as a kid (The NeverEnding Story, The Princess Bride, Legend, Labyrinth, Willow... and Ladyhawke too, I suppose, though I came to that one much later in life) while October was a month of werewolf flics, giving me the chance to catch up on yet more cult-classics I’d never seen before (The Howling, An American Werewolf in London, Teen Wolf, Silver Bullet). All things considered, my eyeballs absorbed a lot of good stuff this year!

But it was Barbie who took home the prize for the most successful movie based on a plastic toy since The Lego Movie, and I’ve done myself a favour by staying out of the dreaded discourse. It was a light popcorn flic, guys – no need to unpack it. Look, here’s Ryan Gosling performing “I’m Just Ken” at the Oscars. Don’t overthink it!

Finally, my friend and I finished the year with The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King for its twentieth anniversary. What more can be said about it? Thank God it got made when it did, and not in our current movie-making hellscape.

***

Looking forward into the New(ish) Year, what’s next? I’ve started my great Buffy the Vampire Slayer rewatch and am currently halfway through season one (you can read my reviews on Tumblr). I’m also planning a rewatch of Avatar: The Last Airbender as a response to the subpar live-action remake, and still have plenty more of Elementary to go. I replayed King’s Quest II and III last year (with commentary) and will hopefully get to The Perils of Rosella soon – that’s a special one given it features the world’s first female protagonist in an adventure game. I’m slowly but surely whittling down my stack of library books, and then will once more try to commit to reading my own damn books (many of which I’ve bought, but never read).