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Screen Babble - Oscar nominations, Masters of The Air, Twin Peaks and My Little Pony
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00:12Hello and welcome to Screen Babble, your guide to what to watch. We'll be tuning into hours and
00:17hours of TV so we can tell you what to switch on and what's to be avoided. I'm your host
00:22Kelly
00:22Crichton and as ever our resident TV critics Stephen Ross and Benjamin Jackson are here
00:27praying, praying for January to end soon, overcoming illness and exhaustion and all sorts of things so
00:35solidarity everybody. Remember if you want to see our exhausted faces you can head over to
00:41Freeview Channel 276 Shots which is brought to you by a network of journalists across the country who
00:46are transforming stories at the heart of your community into great TV. You'll find true crime
00:51stories, football news and analysis plus coverage of lifestyle, TV, film and much more. If you haven't
00:56tuned in before each week we'll be chatting about what we're watching as well as looking
00:59more closely at a new program or something making the headlines in the deep dive. This week Stephen
01:04brings us the much anticipated Masters of Air. Finally we go back to the future to tell you
01:10about a program we may have, you may have missed when it first aired a stream. This week Benji
01:16takes us to the wacky world of Twin Peaks, a cult classic for sure. But first we like to talk
01:22about
01:22what everyone has been watching recently. So Stephen over to you and magic. Stephen's got a new colour
01:30top on. Is it because I was wearing such a nice brightly coloured? Yeah, I just thought the sort
01:36of colour palette on my end was a bit grey and washed out. So I've added a pop of colour.
01:43This is the only
01:43coloured item of clothing I own actually. Everything else is navy, grey or black. You're bringing it. Okay, sorry. Over
01:51to you, Stephen. Tell us what you've been wearing.
01:53Yeah, so as I said last week I'd started the Apple TV free trial. Oh yeah. And I was hoping
01:59to milk it and
02:00and watch a load of films on there. In the end because I was watching Masters of the Air for
02:05the
02:05Kind of took over. I didn't really get much chance, but I watched another Apple TV
02:11Second World War drama and it was a movie again with a Tom Hanks connection called Rayhound. So Tom Hanks
02:21plays...
02:21What's Rayhound? Like a name?
02:23Greyhound. Greyhound. Oh, Greyhound. Sorry, Greyhound. Okay.
02:25Which is the name of this, well, I assume it's the name of the ship that they're on and Tom
02:31Hanks is the captain.
02:32Okay.
02:32And he's essentially trying to cross the Atlantic and his job is to help defend the sort of flotilla of
02:41allied ships
02:43as they're crossing the Atlantic through the U-boat peril and the German submarines.
02:49Okay.
02:50And I watched it with my friend and he's also quite, you know, discerning about movies and we both just
02:56thought it was, for the first half, laughably quite bad.
03:00And there's no like sound in the background. Like someone just shouts through a doorway from outside the ship.
03:07Quite clearly.
03:09And I said, I said to my friend, I said, the sound on this is terrible. And he said, he
03:19was just looking at his phone and he said, yeah, it won the Oscar for best sound.
03:23No.
03:24And like, I mean, maybe if you're not...
03:28I think it's only, you know how like when you notice something and then you can't stop noticing it. But
03:32I sort of thought, A, the sound is just terrible.
03:35Like it's very difficult to hear a lot of what they're saying because they're mumbling. And then the sound doesn't
03:40seem to make sense.
03:41And then also the like dramatic sounds like the Jaws music, that kind of thing, just seemed very amateur and
03:49obvious.
03:49And like, oh, something's about to happen now because it's going...
03:53Yeah, yeah.
03:54I thought, this is amateur hour. And he was like, yeah, no, it won best sound.
03:58The second half was a lot better. But I think Tom Hanks definitely phoned it in. Like it wasn't a
04:04strong...
04:05Weird.
04:06It felt like the movie, that it should have been another Captain Phillips and it just had none of the
04:15like emotion.
04:17We didn't care about any of the characters. I don't think I could tell you any of their names.
04:21None of them had any personalities. It was, it was pretty bad. And it was one of the first Apple
04:26TV original movies as well.
04:27That's what I was going to say. I feel like I have no knowledge of this thing whatsoever. I've never
04:33heard of it. So, you know, I think you might be on to the fact that it's a bit of
04:37a lemon.
04:39What do you think? Benji, have you heard of it?
04:42I don't know. Controversions, it sounds kind of a little bored of Tom Hanks these days.
04:47Mm. He's got it everywhere, isn't he? He's got his finger in so many pies, it's like, oh, okay.
04:51And at some point, he's going to bump into another version of himself in all these world movies because he's
04:56been in every aspect of the second world war.
04:58Yeah, that's quite funny. Maybe you should write that film, Stephen. Maybe you should do it. It'll be a bit
05:02of a being John Malkovich spayed off.
05:05You could call it like Big Two. Big Two. Cruise control.
05:10Okay, so a major avoid on Greyhound and Apple TV. I'm sure lots of people will be avoiding it because
05:15they won't have Apple TV anyway, but fair enough.
05:18Looking forward to hearing about Masters of Air in a while, though. And I know you spend a lot of
05:22time watching that. So cool.
05:23Okay, Benji, tell us, you've not been well, so you've probably been doing a little bit more viewing than the
05:28rest of us. Tell us, what have you been watching?
05:31Somewhat. I mean, when you have a man flu, like I've had, you know, one eye pairing underneath the cover,
05:39drinking Lemsip after Lemsip, you kind of get a bit feverish. You kind of get a bit weird.
05:46So my viewing habit was watching the entirety, once again, of My Little Pony, Friendship is Magic.
05:53That's just, I can understand.
05:56I got into it because there was a documentary called The Brony Movie, which just basically followed the whole subculture
06:04of bronies when it was peak kind of fandom back in, like, would have been late 2000s, early 2010s.
06:13And I went into the series thinking, this is just going to be childish and trivial.
06:20No, it's actually brilliant.
06:22It was like old school Simpsons that had, like, a bit of a morality play going on.
06:27Nice.
06:28So I enjoyed re-watching that.
06:30For anyone that wants to know how I watched it, I'll out myself now.
06:34I own it on DVD.
06:36Benji, I love it.
06:37I brought it with me.
06:39I brought it over with me from New Zealand, along with my wife and my personal belongings.
06:44I have to say, I have such respect for your massive genre-spanning likes.
06:50Like, good for you.
06:52Yeah.
06:53And so hard recommend there.
06:55So that's good, especially if you're ill.
06:56Oh, yeah.
06:57Definitely hard recommend.
06:58You just need a bit of escapism.
06:59And then on the flip side of that, I ended up also making time to watch Bob Hoskins in The
07:05Long Good Friday, which was a 1980s British gangster movie that heavily influenced the genre.
07:13I mean, if you go and watch The Long Good Friday, which is basically about what effectively has become Canary
07:19Wharf in London in the 80s,
07:21and a British mobster, one of the, you know, with Bob Hoskins, I want to get into the old, the
07:27building game.
07:28I'm tired of being a thug.
07:30I just want to get and be in proper British and, you know, get into industry again.
07:34And then you go watch Rock and Roller by Guy Ritchie, which was basically about a British mobster who had
07:40his fingers in many pies regarding developments.
07:43And that last scene in the taxi has been one that has been frequently, it's up there with how the
07:53Untouchables, the iconic scene with the pram that goes down the staircase and how that was borrowed from Battleship Potemkin.
08:01There's my media course knowledge coming through there.
08:04But it was one of those scenes that everybody has taken or derived from the whole, I'm in the back
08:11of a taxi, I'm in trouble, and I've just got this contemplative look on my face.
08:15Yeah, yeah, sweet.
08:16And I love Bob Hoskins.
08:18Yeah.
08:18I only knew Bob Hoskins through, originally, Super Mario Brothers 2.
08:24Yeah.
08:24Is he still alive?
08:25Yeah.
08:26Is he?
08:27No, no, no.
08:27He died.
08:28He died 2017 or 14.
08:31Okay.
08:32But I remember going back to watching Super Mario interviews he did, and I will always remember the classic comment
08:38of, oh, my son showed me, he's just this character that jumps up now in a video game.
08:44Why once played King Lear?
08:46And that was the end of the interview.
08:48I love it.
08:48I love it.
08:49Mario is King Lear.
08:50Love it.
08:51I'm on board for that.
08:52Okay.
08:53So there's a bit of a segue there from Mario to, I've not been watching anything particularly new this week,
08:58just continuing it like The Traitors and After the Flood and True Detective and all that.
09:02So I'll chat about some of them next week.
09:04But the Oscar nominations came out since we last spoke, and Mario didn't get any.
09:11Oh, yeah, it didn't.
09:12Oh, is that?
09:13Oh, really?
09:14It didn't get the sound from Peaches, and it didn't get animation, which I am, I'm pretty annoyed about, to
09:19be honest.
09:20Were you upset about it as much as people are upset that Barbie apparently has been snubbed, apart from the
09:25fact that it's gotten eight nominations?
09:27Yeah, exactly.
09:28And when I went on this morning to look at it, and I was like, well, it's got loads of
09:30nominations.
09:31And I know Greta Gerwig, okay, fair enough, and Margot Robbie.
09:35But like, Margot Robbie's performance is like, she's playing a doll.
09:38You know, it's not like, do you know what I mean?
09:41Can I just interject and say that before, so I was covering the Oscars yesterday, and about an hour before
09:48the results, I turned to my friend, who actually is the friend that I watched Greyhound with.
09:55And I said, wouldn't it be strange if Ryan Gosling wins Best Supporting Actor, but Margot Robbie and Greta Gerwig
10:04both miss out on nominations?
10:06Yeah.
10:06And he said, haha, yeah, that would miss the entire point of, and that happened.
10:10I think Greta Gerwig's more of a snub than Margot Robbie.
10:14I agree, I suppose I was just about to say.
10:16Yeah, yeah.
10:16But I do, you do sometimes think to an extent, like, because of the weight of the film, Margot Robbie
10:22should have maybe got a nomination.
10:23Like, Martin Scorsese got a nomination.
10:26I'm glad America Freer got hers, because I thought she was really good in Barbie, and I felt like she
10:30was very overshadowed in the publicity, you know?
10:33And I thought she was actually quite a key character in it, you know?
10:36But anyway, okay, sorry.
10:37But what I did like, considering she was playing a doll, she did properly put the work in for her.
10:42Like, it was a pretty stonky performance.
10:44I don't necessarily think she should have got a nomination, but it's more that Ryan Gosling did and she didn't.
10:52And I think Greta Gerwig was snubbed as well for her in 2020 with Little Women, and that was a
10:59whole thing back then.
11:01So to potentially snubber again here is an interesting one, but, yeah.
11:11Oppenheimer has done very well.
11:1213, 13 nominations.
11:14Yeah, Barbie's got, what, eight?
11:16Poor Little Things.
11:18Poor Things got 11.
11:20Killers of the Flower Moon got 10.
11:21Yeah, so they're dominating, aren't they, you know?
11:25But I think it's going to be interesting.
11:26I'm hoping Cillian Murphy does the business.
11:29But anyway, we...
11:31Saltburn got none, which I think we were in agreement about, weren't we, a few weeks ago.
11:37But, yeah, so there was a little bit of controversy.
11:39Again, not an awful lot of Black women nominated, which seems to be an ongoing issue.
11:46And, yeah, but anyway, it'll be interesting to see what happens in a few weeks' time.
11:50Okay, we will be back after the break with Masters of Air and Twin Peaks.
12:04Okay, welcome back to part two, where we're going to be talking about Masters of Air and Twin Peaks.
12:10So, Stephen, we're going to go to you now to talk about Masters of Air, which has been hotly, hotly,
12:17hotly anticipated.
12:18Is it all it's cracked up to be?
12:19You've watched all of it now, fair play.
12:22Yeah.
12:22Tell us.
12:23So, it's pretty good.
12:24Masters of the Air, it's a successor series, a spiritual successor to Band of Brothers,
12:32which I guess is one of the very early super, super prestige TV shows where TV shows basically became movie
12:43-level experiences.
12:44And now we have Masters of the Air, which follows American fighters and bombers in the B-17 Flying Fortress
12:53planes.
12:54Flying missions over Germany in occupied Europe during the Second World War from bases in Britain.
13:01So, you have a bit of the very stereotypical British characters in it who are not the villains, obviously, because
13:10they're the Allies, but they're sort of a bit snobby and very RP and they don't come off too well,
13:17which is fine.
13:18I don't mind.
13:18We all know that we sort of helped the Americans out more than they helped us out, so we can
13:26laugh at it when they come back at us.
13:29Right.
13:29But, yeah, it's got a super-duper cast, this film.
13:34So, it's got Austin Butler, who we now all know from Elvis.
13:38He was sort of fairly low-level in the UK until he did Once Upon a Time in Hollywood, and
13:47then Elvis really sort of shot him to, like, megastardom and Masters of the Air.
13:52He's great, and he plays Major Gale Cleven, who is one of the sort of main pilots that we follow.
14:02And he is cast alongside Callum Turner as John Egan.
14:07You have Barry Kern, who plays Biddick, and one of my, probably my favourite character in it, Anthony Boyle, plays
14:13Crosby.
14:14And Crosby is a navigator, and he's super nervous.
14:19He gets airsick.
14:20He doesn't have any faith in his own abilities.
14:22And in the end, it turns out that he's probably one of the best navigators they've got.
14:26He's super, like, he comes in clutch all the time, and he keeps putting it down to look and just
14:33doubting himself.
14:34And he has a really nice development of the series.
14:37He comes up against some real, like, bad luck and some unfortunate incidents.
14:42But he's a great character, a real bit of inner turmoil as well.
14:49But the series is exec-produced by Steven Spielberg and Tom Hanks, who worked, obviously, together on the probably definitive
14:5890s World War II movie, Saving Private Ryan,
15:01and then came together for Band of Brothers and The Pacific.
15:05And it's got, it's, I would say it's closer to Band of Brothers than The Pacific.
15:10It's got a lot of insanely good action scenes.
15:13Is it a discreet series that is not going to go on, is it?
15:16There's not going to be future?
15:17No, I imagine it'll be like Band of Brothers.
15:20Well, no, it won't go on because the war is seen through in the series.
15:25So it'll be another Band of Brothers-type show where it's the entire, well, a vast swathe of the war
15:32from this perspective.
15:33I hope they do more.
15:35I hope they come back with, you know, maybe an African campaign series.
15:39Or what I would love to see is a submarine series or, like, the Atlantic series where they're sort of
15:48manning the fright over the Atlantic.
15:51I think that would be fantastic.
15:54But, yeah, I heavily recommend this.
15:57It's, yeah, it's a great, great series.
16:01So people can get a week's free trial, can't they, of Apple TV and binge it on if they want?
16:05So, well, yes, you'll have to wait a little while, though.
16:09So it comes out on the 26th with the first two episodes and then it's weekly.
16:15So if you wanted to watch it all with your free trial, you probably want to watch the end in,
16:20like, March and then binge it all.
16:23Darn it.
16:26Fair enough, fair enough.
16:27If you want to be on top of it, you're going to have to subscribe to Apple for a few
16:30months.
16:31Okay, cool.
16:32That sounds great.
16:33I am actually looking forward to watching that.
16:35And, yeah, God, the cast is amazing, isn't it?
16:37So that'll be great.
16:40Great, Master of the Year.
16:41Thank you, Stephen.
16:42Right, Benji, over to you.
16:44We're going to talk about, I mean, like, quite different TV series here.
16:50And confession time, I have never watched Twin Peaks.
16:55Well, let me just break it down for you.
16:58It's a nice, simple TV series.
17:00I mean, I think everybody knows it, though, don't they?
17:02Everyone knows Twin Peaks.
17:03They know what it's about.
17:04They know names of characters.
17:06They know it's a cult.
17:07It is a cult classic completely.
17:09But it's like I've never I never actually sat.
17:11I actually remember when it came out the first time.
17:151990.
17:16What?
17:1619.
17:17What was it?
17:18What was it?
17:19Well, it first aired on ABC in 1990.
17:22And for those that perhaps aren't familiar with the series, it's pretty simple.
17:29It's about it's almost like a crime procedural drama that's based around an FBI agent teaming up with a local
17:37sheriff to determine who killed the body of a woman called Laura Palmer.
17:42Hence, the tag for the first season was who killed Laura Palmer.
17:46And it takes its name from the coastline of the sleepy little lumbering town where the murder took place and
17:54is being solved, which is Twin Peaks.
17:57And, yeah, it's a fantastic show.
17:59Thanks for coming.
18:00Wait a minute.
18:01It's a David Lynch production, though.
18:03So there's more to it than that.
18:05Of course.
18:05Yeah, there is, of course, the cult and the fandom.
18:09With it being David Lynch, it means that anything and everything could happen can happen.
18:14So we're treated to Agent Dale Cooper, played by a regular collaborator with David Lynch, Carl McLaughlin, who was in
18:22Dune and Blue Velvet.
18:25He uses a bunch of unorthodox methods, including spiritualism, First Nation mysticism, to try and find out who, or maybe
18:37not to spoil it too much, what killed Laura Palmer.
18:40And every cast member has their own little idiosyncrasies.
18:45Agent Cooper sending memos on his recorder.
18:49And we never find out who he is talking to until a couple of seasons later.
18:56We have an audience surrogate, I felt, in the form of the local sheriff, Harry Truman, who is basically the
19:03straight man as opposed to all of the well-meaning but slightly odd town folks in Twin Peaks,
19:10which meant I have to give a big shout-out to She Died when the recording of Twin Peaks The
19:17Return, which was the third season that came out a couple of years ago.
19:21The Log Lady.
19:23And I'm sure if you're not familiar with The Log Lady, she was a character that used to work around
19:28with a log,
19:28and the log would actually be a conduit to the spirituality in Twin Peaks, such as, for example,
19:34My Log believes that it's a spirit that has killed Laura Palmer rather than anything else.
19:40Yeah.
19:40Right.
19:41It's a log.
19:42The log, for every reason, is a conduit.
19:45Not tarot card readings or anything like that, but a log.
19:49I really don't want to give too much away because, much like Cooper remarks in The Diner in Twin Peaks
19:54about the cherry pie,
19:55there's a damn fine television series that had a very damn fine prequel with Fire Walk With Me,
20:01which starred the late David Bowie, and the second season venturing more into the lore that actually killed Laura Palmer.
20:10But it's brilliant.
20:12You could, I mean, I haven't got too much time.
20:14I could probably go into an entire podcast about Twin Peaks, the whole mythos surrounding it, and everything like that.
20:22But, you know, unfortunately, if you want to watch it, it's on Paramount+, so a subscription is required.
20:28There might be a possibility that it might still be on Sky Atlantic, which showed Twin Peaks the return when
20:36that first came out.
20:38But I know for a fact all three seasons are on Paramount+.
20:42Okay.
20:42And, yeah, I can't do it justice within the five minutes to talk about it.
20:47You have to go and see it.
20:48Even if you're not a Lynch fan, Lynchian is a word now in the cinematic universe that gets used a
20:55lot.
20:55And Twin Peaks is definitive, you know, not offensive to the point where you, I mean, Fire Walk With Me
21:04is a different story.
21:05But, yeah, it's entry-level Lynchian surrealism, and it's fantastic.
21:10I think it's worth saying that probably nowadays we're a bit more used to sort of surrealism or sort of
21:18otherworldly elements coming into sort of like normal TV programs or whatever, you know?
21:24Yeah.
21:25Whereas he was one of the first people to do it.
21:27He was one of the first people to be like, what if this happened?
21:29Yeah, I mean, it's the only TV series I can recall where the opening episode both had the impactful reveal
21:37of Laura Palmer wrapped in plastic being found, but that same episode having Jack Nance, another frequent Lynch collaborator, because
21:46he was Henry in Eraserhead, remarking, oh, there was a fish in the percolator.
21:53So that's the kind of humor that Lynch goes for, the very stark, but then very surreal.
21:59Off the wall, yeah.
22:01But I think because of that, it did become, like, it must be the most cited TV program.
22:08You know, it's been referenced in everything from, like, The Simpsons.
22:12Yeah, when we talked about The Sopranos, we talked about how The Sopranos opened the doors for prestige television.
22:19But I think perhaps we're not too kind on how Twin Peaks did that on a network, which was ABC,
22:26which is the equivalent to maybe our ITV Channel 4 in America.
22:30And the fact that he got, they asked him to do a soap opera, kind of like a crime drama,
22:36and he got away with what David Lynch thinks a soap opera should look like.
22:40It's incredible.
22:42Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
22:42And the fact that he got away with those elements of surrealism, of spiritualism, and just absolute existential horror at
22:50times as well, when you realize just exactly it's unfolded.
22:54And if you don't have time to dedicate to all three seasons, the international version of the pilot acts as
23:01just basically a one and done, which gets confusing.
23:05Because then, if you watch it on some streaming services, they will play the international pilot, and then you get
23:13confused.
23:13But this has all been solved.
23:15Why do they continue?
23:17Great, great, great.
23:18Cool.
23:18Okay.
23:19Thank you so much, Benji.
23:20And thank you for joining us this week, everyone.
23:22Do look out for Friday morning's Screen Babble Weekend Watch, which will preview what to watch over the weekend and
23:27beyond.
23:27And if you have any suggestions for what TV we need to get into our lives, do drop us a
23:31line by our social media at National World TV and on all other platforms at National World.
23:37We'd love for you to rate, review, and subscribe to the podcast so we can reach as many TV lovers
23:40as possible.
23:41We'll be back next week with more Screen Babble.
23:43Cheers.
23:44Bye.
23:44Bye-bye.
23:45Bye.
23:46Bye.
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