The Cutprice Guignol

Well, what a year it’s been over here at the Guignol. I finally finished my Fifty Shades of Grey recraps (thanks to the love and support of my family and friends, I think I’m finally putting that hellish ordeal behind me), I despaired over Doctor Who (or celebrated it, depending which set of reviews you were reading), I wrote about sexuality, gender, feminism, and John Barrowman’s lovely face. And, with less than twelve hours in the year remaining, I think I’ve just got time to squeeze in one more post- my best of 2015.

I published my worst list earlier this month, but I’ve spent a lot more time trying to figure out the best stuff I saw this year. It’s been a whirlwind if TV over the last twelve months, not all of it good (ahem Arrow), but there have been a few obvious standouts that require a little more attention.

Best Drama- Transparent

Everyone in the industry seems to have agreed to just post Jefferey Tambor all the awards for this performance, and he deserves it.

A close tie between this and the brilliant/trashy/brilliantly trashy How to Get Away with Murder, I don’t think I’ve written much about Transparent before, but please, allow me to sit down in your living room and pontificate on it’s wondrousness. A flawlessly written, powerfully moving, and often unexpected show, it’s packed with amazing performances and fabulous direction that render every episode a masterpiece worthy of hours of dissection in and of itself. Revolving around a family trying to deal with the news that their former husband and father is transitioning, it’s packed with nuanced family drama and a sharp eye for comedy that stops it becoming too pious. An Amazon original, the second season aired earlier this month, and if you’ve been looking for a heart-breaking, life-affirming bit of TV to restore your faith in time for the New Year, I found it for you.

Best Comedy-Bojack Horseman

Netflix has had a run of great original comedies this year-from Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt to Frankie & Grace to the more recent Master of None. And, while all of those are great in their own way, none came close to the superb Bojack Horseman. Starring comedy heavyweights like Will Arnett (Arrested Development), Alison Brie (Community), Amy Sedaris (Strangers with Candy), and, um, Aaron Paul, searching for his post-Breaking Bad home, it follows the story of ex-sitcom star Bojack Horseman (Arnett) as he searches for meaning in his life post-fame. I’m still not completely sure that a show which features so many anthropomorphic animals has any right to be as incisively hilarious or downright moving as it was, but take a look at the second season and tell me there isn’t anything to get choked up over there. Getting the balance of comedy and pathos right is a difficult task (and one of the reasons I enjoy the underrated Suburgatory so much), but Bojack Horseman nails it. Just watch those opening credits and TELL me you don’t want to see what comes next.

Best Genre Show-Penny Dreadful

SERIOUS FACES EVERYONE

It’s pains me not to put Doctor Who here, it really does, but I can’t ignore just how ruddy excellent the last season of TV’s most gothic porno was. Packed with sizzling performances, campy horror, and some of the finest writing this side of Hannibal (RIP), it’s built one of the best worlds on TV over the course of just a couple of seasons, and that deserves some notice. I hate that I genuinely considered putting American Horror Story here instead, as my God have they pulled a turnaround on this season, but they’ll have to do quite a lot to make me forget spike-rape.

Discovery of the Year-Attack on Titan. NEXT.

Best Performance (Lady)-Gaby Hoffmann, Transparent

Look, I’m going to be going on about Transparent a LOT, so get used to it now. I think any single person from the cast could have taken this spot, but it’s Gaby Hoffman who always sticks at the back of my mind, as the thirty-something drifter looking for some kind of meaning in her life and thinking she’s found it in various snippets of family history, lesbian professors, and all-female gatherings. Hoffman, as well as having one of the downright coolest wardrobes on TV right now, can convey everything you need to know-and everything her character won’t admit to herself-in a single look, and that’s pretty amazing.

Best Performance (Gent)- Travis Fimmel, Vikings

This scene in particular should have earned him a thousand Emmy nominations.

Fuck, I almost forgot that the third season of Vikings existed! I’ll admit that it was patchier than it’s predecessors, but Travis Fimmel shone in every episode. From the loss of one of his closest friends to his assault on Paris (the city, not the socialite), to his utterly compelling descent into corruption and paranoia, it boggles me that no-one has snapped him up for bigger roles yet. #GetFimmelWorkThatIsn’tWarcraft2k16

Best Cast-Hannibal

Fuck, even the PRESS PHOTOS are sumptously shot.

Farewell, sweet Hannibal- your name shall be spoken in hallowed whispers across generations of pretentious TV lovers, ne’er to be forgotten. And the thing that’s going to stand out most? That amazing cast- packed wall-to-wall with award-worthy performances, every scene is a chance for a bunch of great actors (Hugh Dancy, Mads Mikklesen, Gillian Anderson, Caroline Dhavernas) to get their teeth into an always-strong script and just emote at each other. While this season didn’t hold up quite so well for me, every single scene is a treat just in terms of the fabulous ensemble

Best Movie- Star Wars: The Force Awakens

I’d be lying to myself and to you if I put anything else here. It’s bloody brilliant; read my review if you don’t believe me.

Moment of the Year

This one’s a toughie, what with astoundingly brilliant scenes, like Richard Armitage’s transformation into the Great Red Dragon in Hannibal, or indeed bit TV spectacles like the return to Gallifrey on Doctor Who, but nothing beat out Sense8 and the sheer perfection of the scene that closed out their sixth episode- all the characters recalling the moments they were born, scored by gorgeous orchestral music. In a show full of giant, sweeping emotion, this was the biggest they went, and it worked.

So, that’s my best of the year, and my last post  of the year too. I’ll be back soon, and I hope to see a bunch of you back again for 2016 for more shamelessly geeky shenanigans. Happy New Year!

Outside of my incrasinagly suicidal Doctor Who reviews, I feel like I don’t review enough bad television nowadays. Christ, it was only a couple of years ago that I spent the winter holed up eating crisps and shouting at the Food Network; sometimes heaping praise on TV (or the new Star Wars movie) gets tiring, and I want to tear into something with all my bottled-up vitriol. So here’s a run-down of the worst pieces of pop culture I’ve seen this year, old and new. Merry Christmas one and all!

Worst Pilot-The 100

It’s not like any other young adult sci-fi franchise about at the moment and frankly they’re insulted you even asked.

Look, I know that everyone loves this show now, and even I can admit that it got better (not enough to convince me to watch an entire season, but still), but my God was this a staggeringly bad opening. The premise- in which one hundred children are dropped back down to Earth after a global evacuation for reasons that failed to imprint themselves on my memory- stank of cashing in on a recent young adult sci-fi boom, and wasn’t helped by the gawky nature of the premiere. The symbolism was as subtle as a marble bust to the back of the head, the dialogue ferociously awful, and the “characters” drifting off into the distance like the scent of a retreating bin lorry. It took me two goes to get through the whole thing.

Most Inexplicable Failure-Breakout Kings

I’ve never been super into procedural shows, but following my love affair with the brilliant How to Get Away with Murder, I decided to give this one a go. It had one of the Macpoyles from It’s Always Sunny in the main cast, for Christ’s sake! But then I actually watched it, and decided to assume for my own sanity that it’s some sort of derangedly po-faced satire on the genre. Following a bunch of inmates matched with police officers to try and capture escapee prisoners, it’s got every dumb renegade-cop-show cliché you could probably imagine, but doesn’t even have the good manners to make them any fun. I refuse to understand how or why this was considered a good idea.

Biggest Disappointment-Houdini

I ESCAPE THE FATAL LURE OF GOOD TELEVISION

I wrote about this miniseries before, mainly to rant on the historical accuracy (or complete lack thereof), but I think it’s also worth pointing out that this show-which should have been a fascinating biography of one of the most interesting figures of the last century, played by the always-brilliant Adrien Brody, rarely allowed itself to get beyond (somewhat appropriately, I guess) shallow spectacle. And was paced dramatically badly.

Worst Movie-Avengers: Age of Ultron

Of all the films I saw in the cinema this year, this was the one that just straight-up sucked the hardest. I think I tried to be reasonably diplomatic in my review, but as the film has faded in my memory all I can really remember is a jumbled bunch of samey action sequences and allowing my brain to get soothed into a coma by the sound of James Spader’s lovely, lovely voice. In a year with a few cracking blockbusters, AoU was one of the worst examples of the genre I can remember in recent memory. Except my nemesis Man of Steel, of course.

Most Unwatchable Scene of the Year

An accurate representation of the season to date.

American Horror Story’s violent spike sodomy. All the ugh.

Worst New Show-Scream Queens

After I watched the first couple of episodes, I kind of dismissed this with a shrug that it didn’t do it’s horror was particularly well handled and forgot about it. But I eventually caught up, and the whole thing had just become a manifestation of Ryan Murphy’s raging id; violent candy hues, intricately horrible violence, and uncomfortable doses of ironic racism at every turn. I mean, this got bad, and not even entertainingly bad- embarrassingly, avert-your-eyes awful. #GetLeaMicheleBacktoBroadway2K15

Worst Performance of the Year

I’M ACTING AS HARD AS I CAN

I seem to have gotten all snobby about performances this year, and lots of my reviews have taken time specifically out to rip on certain actors. The two most egregious failures that come to mind are Frank Dillane in Fear the Walking Cashcow, playing a pirate except without all the characteristics that make a pirate fun or cool, and Freema Aygeman in the otherwise superb Sense8 (a small nod has to go to Jenna Coleman’s texted-from-the-inside-of-a-tunnel turn in this year’s Doctor Who, too). John Barrowman in Arrow should probably take the biscuit, but he looks like he’s having too much fun to care.

Worst Episode Ever

The Girl Who Died. The Girl who Murdered the Show I Loved, more like.

So, what were your worst (and best) episodes, characters and shows on TV this year?

So, this is the last part in my blog series about Doctor Who and all things feminism-related. I hope you’ve enjoyed it, and thanks for reading along! This week, I’ll be looking at the fallacy of the strong female character in Doctor Who.

For starters, I find the phrase “strong female character” a bit…ugh in itself. Because it suggests that a strong female character is something notable and different, which isn’t wrong, but still kind of depressing to think about. I can’t remember the last time someone referred to a “strong male character”, because it’s just a given that a show will have solid roles for it’s men more often than not. And, more and more often, that phrase has come to mean a very specific thing- a woman who seems superfically powerful but actually has very little else going on underneath. But still, in all the diatribes I’ve read and heard about Moffat’s era of Doctor Who and how it isn’t, in any way, at all sexist, many people make reference to this concept, arguing that Steven Moffat has filled his series with powerful and significant women characters.

And to some extent, that’s certainly true. Women have a constant presence on the show, whether as assistants (Clara, Amy) or as recurring characters (River Song, Madame Vastra). And that’s great. But lot of the women on Doctor Who seem to fall very squarely into the trap of creating female characters who basically echo each other.

Let’s start with a look at the three most significant women in Moffat’s run- River Song, Clara Oswald, and Amy Pond. River Song encountered the Doctor as a child, fell in love with him, and pursued him through time and space until they got married. Clara Oswald encountered the Doctor as a child, took off with the Doctor as an adult, and jumped into his time stream to scatter herself all through his many lives. Amy Pond encountered the Doctor as a child, became obsessed with him after he vanished, then fell in love with him when he eventually returned for her. Not to mention the newly-introduced Ashildr, from this series, is brought back to life by the Doctor as a child and every time she encounters him begs him to take her on adventures with him. Are you seeing a theme here? Because I’m seeing a theme here.

Despite the fact that Amy, Clara and River seem outwardly different (let’s ignore the fact that they’re all saucy, quippy, flirty, etc), their personalities revolve around one man. For all these women, their entire lives have revolved around the Doctor, and their stories just don’t exist outside of him. Even in a couple of standalone episodes- notably the Girl in the Fireplace- the female characters meet the Doctor as a child then spend the rest of their lives pining for him. Compare this to the Davies years, where Martha actually left the Doctor and pursued her own life when she realized her feelings for him were hurting her, and it seems worryingly repetitive.

And speaking of worryingly repetitive, remember that episode with the tightly-attired, usually older, ruthless woman who turns out to be using her non-threatening exterior to mask inner evilness? Oh, sorry, I should be clear- I was talking about Ms Delphox in Time Heist. Or was it Miss Kizlet in Bells of Saint John? Maybe I meant Madame Kovarian.  Or Madam Gillyflower in The Crimson Horror. Sorry, no, Missy. I’m not saying that there haven’t been repetitive male character tropes either, but this one seems a particularly telling one to bash over the head, especially when you consider that it also turned up in some of Moffat’s other work (Jekyll and Sherlock.

What I’m trying to get across here is that, yes, while Doctor Who does feature women in lots of different roles doing different things, when you strip away the exterior, what’s going on underneath is extremely repetitive. I can appreciate, to an extent, what the show is doing with it’s women now, I think it’s fair to ask for a little bit more variety. And I’m not just talking about keeping the Daleks out of just one series.