Danny Franks

I'm rarely bothered by accents when the characters would be speaking in a foreign language anyway. If we're going for complete realism, their dialogue should all be in Russian so, as soon as we all agree to accept the artistic licence of them speaking English, I don't care about the accents. Now, if someone is playing a Russian character who is speaking English, I want to hear a Russian accent. Because their speech would be accented when they speak in a second language. For example - Sean Connery in Hunt for the Red October. When he's speaking Russian, I'm fine with him using his own accent, but when he speaks English to Jack Ryan, I wish he'd put on a Russian accent. Of course, Connery never did accents at all.

It shows how much TV has changed since the 70s, because if the show was being made at any time since the mid-90s, they would absolutely have elevated Nurse Cutler to a main role and had her as Hawkeye's 'will they, won't they' love interest for multiple seasons. And if not her, then another character would have been added. The fact that they decided to have no sympathetic romantic pairing at all on the show would be anathema to TV writers and producers today. I haven't watched the movie in a long time, but I'm sure that Hawkeye and Trapper were more on an equal footing, along with a third surgeon, called Duke. I guess in the TV adaptation they cut three characters into two. But Trapper and Hawkeye were too similar - wisecracking, womanising, drinking - and Alan Alda just did all that better than Wayne Rogers. BJ was a needed change of pace, because he could carry more dramatic stuff, and he was a complement to Hawkeye rather than competition.

I definitely expect more from a patisserie week showstopper than a biscuit tower. Especially when they looked as rough and basic as these did. None of them looked finished, which is fine if they're supposed to be stark and minimalist, but Prue used words like "exquisite" to describe what they should look like. If that's the standard you want, give them the time to create it. The biggest problem with Bake Off these days is the amount of time bakers are given. It's absolutely engineered to give them less time than they need, for dramatic purposes. That sucks. I want to see people produce their absolute best, not 'oh, that'll do. I'm out of time anyway.' There was no delicacy or finesse in any of the challenges to begin with, let alone the results. It was all chunky pastry and biscuits and desserts. The "vertical tarts" could be fine patisserie, I guess, but they seem dumb and the impact of them really wasn't that impressive. I'm glad Janusz went, because it was deserved (I still think the feedback he got for his showstopper a couple of weeks ago should have seen him saying goodbye). However, I'd have been equally satisfied with Sandro leaving, as his showstopper looked very dull and unfinished, and he apparently doesn't know what a semicircle is. I'm glad Abdul got star baker, because he and Syabira are the only bakers who seem to be improving markedly. Sandro and Janusz have just been doing well with what they know and kind of scrambling with everything else (Janusz seems to only have two ways of decorating - rainbow colours or drip icing. Sometimes both together). I'm pulling for Abdul to win now, because I think he's the one who has stepped up the most and he just gets on with things without any drama. Even his mishaps are met with a smile and redoubling efforts.

All the blame for everything that was wrong with the prequels falls on the shoulders of one person, and it's not either of the kids who played Anakin. George Lucas completely cocked those movies up, from start to finish. I think one of the only good decisions he made was hiring Ewan McGregor to play Obi Wan.

I've got £20 on the Ravens winning the Super Bowl, that will net me £380 if it comes off. I was feeling like a mug a couple of weeks ago, but they're starting to come together now. Roquan Smith is looking like a key trade already - an immediate leader and communicator on the defense and something of a force amplifier who lets a lot of other guys do what they're best at. Shame about the offense, where we're relying on a bunch of rookies and JAGs. It wouldn't surprise me at all if Lamar decided he wanted to leave, when he looks at the WRs teams like Miami and Buffalo have, compared to what the Ravens have given him.

That's putting it lightly. I'm fairly sure we got into double figures of: Mainly Alfred, but sometimes also Brida and Ragnar: "You've betrayed me by doing the thing you just did!" Uhtred: "I won't apologise because I did what I consider to be morally right, also I'm way too proud and stubborn!" The show would have been two seasons max, if they'd just run that trope two or three times. World on Fire was quite good. Another show where the put-upon women are the most vibrant, interesting characters by far, but are destined to orbit around the same, bland and forgettable posh boy hero. Arthur Darvill, Brian J. Smith and Max Riemelt are in it though, which is good.

Well, this week wasn't very good. Pastry Week is usually enjoyable, but not when everyone keeps cocking up and half of them seem to be unable to make pastry. One, in fact, doesn't even know what sort of pastry he's making for his showstopper. It was so bad that Paul and Prue flat out said in the post-showstopper discussion that they were disappointed with the weekend. Though I will say that there's an element of the time restrictions forcing drama, yet again. Did they have enough time to get the pastry cooked in the signature? Seems like they all had raw bits. I like Sandro, and so do a lot of other people, but I think he's the one who should have gone, based on the feedback received in the episode. At least Maxy produced a showstopper that had elements which tasted good. Neither made good signatures either. Janusz can't make custard? Like... at all? They really should have been more critical of his vol-au-vents having nothing more than strawberries and whipped cream as a filling. None of these vol-au-vents looked a patch on the amazing ones Flora made a few years ago, which looked like they could go straight into a high-end patisserie. Syabira is looking more and more like the final winner, because she's showing growth while the others seem to be reaching their limits. Although Abdul has sneakily done some really good stuff, but his personality clearly doesn't pop like the others.

I think it's a problem when the character ends up being loved unironically, seen as the hero of the show and held up as a great example of 'old fashioned American values' or whatever. Because then things like what @Annber03 mentioned can happen: Warren Mitchell, the socialist Jewish actor who played Alf Garnett, said that he was approached many times by people who didn't get the joke and thought they were supposed to be on Garnett's side when he went on a tirade about immigrants and women. They thanked him for 'saying it like it is'. If you make the character more sympathetic, you're likely to get even more people thinking that it's a tacit endorsement of some of their worst views.

There was a real romanticisation of unemployed men - either by choice or by circumstance - in 1970s British sitcoms. Mike Rawlins was one, Wolfie Smith was another - a would-be revolutionary with a following of one, in Citizen Smith. Terry Collier from Whatever Happened to the Likely Lads? as well. Frank Spencer could never keep a job. Fletcher and co. in Porridge obviously never did an honest day's work. I suppose they were reflective of Britain's own economic malaise in that decade. The prospects of finding decent work were slim, so why even try? Maybe we'll see a revival of characters like that, in the coming years...

Maybe I'd understand more of this trailer if I'd watched Loki? I realise that one guy is supposed to be Kang (an irredeemably lame villain) but the rest of it was just... indecipherable CGI. I'm getting much pickier about MCU stuff, now there's so much of it, and this one seems like a miss, even though I like Paul Rudd. Bill Murray doesn't excite me at all. Evangeline Lilly is not someone I care for (and somehow, she looks older than Michelle Pfeiffer in this trailer). The quantum stuff doesn't interest me. Apparently there's no Judy Greer.

I've not really minded too much when the likes of Scorsese and Cronenberg criticise the MCU, because I know what their own movies are like, what sensibilities they have, and can see how starkly different their ideas of moviemaking are to the MCU. People don't have to agree on what makes a good movie, and people don't have to enjoy the same things. But James Cameron? The man who is only famous for summer blockbusters and CGI-laden, formulaic storytelling? The man who has nothing but franchise sequels on his slate, and is still bragging about the 100% CGI, action nonsense movie that broke records? Get the fuck out of here. It smacks of nothing but envy.

This is getting off topic, but I'd say that failing to educate children properly about sex is the root of most problems relating to it.

Alright, that special looks so dumb that I know I'm going to love it. It's like a bad fanfiction brought to life. One - I can't wait to see Nebula as the Grinch before her heart finally thaws to the magic of Christmas (or not). Two - Mantis and Drax on a comedic caper will be great. Three - Kevin Bacon hopefully gets a nice payday and stops doing the awful EE adverts in the UK. Also, Cosmo the Spacedog is back.

Well, I'm just going to say that if 39-year-old Matt Smith is okay to play a character in their fifties, then 28-year-old Olivia Cooke should be okay playing a teenager. In fact, she's more believable as a teen than he is as a guy approaching sixty.

I enjoyed this one. Some inventive challenges that produced pretty consistently good results. People might argue that there wasn't enough baking, but this was all still very much within the skills of a high end baker. Having said that, floating islands really don't appeal to me at all. They seem like they'd be way too sweet, and too much of the same texture. But seeing some variations on them was interesting. Making ice cream is a new one, and I know from watching Master Chef that it's not straightforward. Clearly, some people made errors while a couple of them really did well. Sandro and Maxy's looked really good. Janusz and Syabira's... not so much. The showstopper cakes all looked really good, even the collapsed one. I'd give all of them a go. Really tough elimination in this one. Over the course of the season I'd say it was right, but over the course of this episode? Not convinced at all. Especially when another baker got the feedback "it tasted awful." I guess they decided to take the signature round into account more than usual.

I didn't think it was the casual sex that was his character flaw, so much as his inability to have an adult relationship. The whole build up with Pepper was about him having to figure out how to actually be a reliable person, and how to not just cheat his way into her affections with gifts and compliments. I'm also really happy that this show did away with Steve the Eternal Virgin, as though that was some kind of virtue that made him special. The puritanical attitude that too much modern culture (particularly American culture) has towards sex is tiresome. I'm glad a show was prepared to say, 'yeah, it's fun. Yeah, our heroine likes having sex and we're not going to say that she needs to be punished for it.' That she was punished for having sex with Josh was indicative of the sort of toxic attitudes the incel-leaning, online males have towards sex.

If kids can watch Endgame, where Natasha Romanov commits suicide and Tony Stark dies a gruesome death, or Infinity War, where Spider-Man dissolves while begging for his life, I'd argue that they can watch a show where a woman talks about how much she enjoys sex. And honestly, I'm just glad the MCU is letting its heroes act like real people sometimes, rather than weird, sexless action figures that just bang into each other, either violently or comedically.

Is it me or is it kind of fucked up that the Game of Thrones spinoff decided to recast the female characters after a time-skip, but keep the same actors for the male characters? There's just something inherent in that decision that suggests the women aren't as important as the men.

Daredevil in She-Hulk seemed pretty similar to the way Mark Waid wrote him, to me. Not every superhero has to be grim and dour all the time, not even those who have been written by Frank Miller, a man famed for his misanthropy, misogyny and misguided attempts at storytelling, who brags about things like "giving Batman his balls back." Daredevil is not all emo and Evanescence and he's not all gritty and fighting to the death all the time. The Netflix interpretation was cool, and bore a lot of similarities to something like Batman: Year One (also Frank Miller) - a vigilante getting started and experiencing a lot of painful setbacks as he learns how to best go about his vigilantism. I've already said I liked the self-punishing aspect of his fighting style, but that's not all the character is. This is a more experienced, more confident Daredevil, and one who knew he wasn't in any sort of high stakes situation. Why shouldn't he make some jokes? More than that, he's guesting in She-Hulk where, just as in She-Hulk comics, the guest star can be less serious than in their own stories.

I think the show made it seem like she succeeded, but perhaps by underhanded means. I've seen people online speculate that she had dirt on him, that she successfully argued why she should stay, or that she just browbeat him until he agreed (this was my interpretation, because Sister Michael has always been the most dominant personality on the show, and I can see them extending that to an unseen Bishop). Any of those explanations works, in the context of the scene where she and Father Peter talk about it. The alternative is that they were sharing a fatalistic smile about how much control the Catholic Church has over their lives.

She looked like she was wearing Cosima's glasses and braided hair, but I don't think I can see Cosima dancing like Jen was dancing in that video or, as you point out, dressing like that. It wasn't really her speed: She's a chilled, hippy-dippy dancer (though she is ill in this scene), which matches the energy the character had (and I love this scene, because it so effortlessly demonstrates how different the sestras were, and how well Tatiana realised them. Cosima is reserved and chill, Sarah is more confident and outgoing, Alison is prim and buttoned up but hiding a wilder side, and Helena is just crazy). I could definitely see college-age Alison dancing like Jen does in the video, after a few drinks. But I did wonder whether it was some behind the scenes footage of Tatiana messing around during the filming of Orphan Black.

Meanwhile, the usual suspects on line are outraged at the changes being made to this character that they've always loved and was a big part of their childhoods (while they actually can't even tell you who wrote the original Tarzan stories or who has played the character on screen before). I'm tired of the extremely online right wing movement to attack any diversity of casting, whether it's in new projects or adaptations or remakes. The same arguments, over and over again, with thinly veiled rationales that usually quickly drop that veil and become outright bigoted. I just got done thoroughly enjoying She-Hulk, which attracted all the usual attacks on women in lead roles, but accurately predicted all those attacks and lampooned them in the show, with neckbeard assholes saying the exact same things about the character that were being said online.

Yeah, I don't see any studio hiring an eighty-year-old if they have long term plans for his character. They already had to recast once, they won't want to do it again. And Ford is a curmudgeon who will likely find he hates filming MCU movies. There are a lot of other actors I'd have been more interested in seeing play Ross - Kevin Costner, Bill Pullman, Iain Glenn, Bryan Cranston, Mandy Patinkin, Jeff Daniels, to name a few. There's mileage to make Ross one of the main villains of the MCU, with Thunderbolts, Captain America and then into the likely Hulk movie (once they get the full rights back) and the next season of Shulkie. There's still a lot to say about creeping militarism and private military contractors gaining more and more power around the world. Ross could be the figurehead of that.

People love to bring up his famous fight with Chevy Chase at SNL like it makes Murray a hero - He called out a guy who was being a complete dick so that makes him laudable. To me, it always sounded like two ego-driven narcissists having a pissing contest. That Chase wanted to be the big man on campus again and Murray resented that because he's the one who took Chase's place.

I believe that Lisa McGee has said this was based on something that happened to one of her childhood friends. I can understand why she might want to include it, if it's something that had a big impact on her and her group of friends when they were young. It was rough to watch, but I understand why they might not have wanted to go for another trauma linked to the Troubles. Because random, mundane tragedies happen all the time too. I didn't mind that. I liked the letter as a time capsule that brought the words of teenagers in 90s Northern Ireland into the present day. It just made me think more about what those five kids might be doing today, and how their lives turned out after the hope and optimism of the Good Friday Agreement. This is why it really appealed to me as well. A lot of people have said this show is like The Inbetweeners, a far more tasteless comedy about a group of teenage boys, but I just don't see it. That show relies on gross out humour, on humiliating the characters in very broad, over the top ways. Derry Girls just slightly heightened all those little humiliations and embarrassments that we all experienced as teens. Things like being outed in front of your crush, or trying to be cool and failing, or trying to act like a grown up in front of your parents and being cut right back down to size, that fear that you've just ruined your friendship with someone because you didn't think before you spoke. It all felt so real, and I loved the way that meshed with the high stakes politics of the Troubles.