Been a long time since I posted – sorry about that but I have been very busy dodging Covid, catching Covid, recovering from Covid and now dodging the new Covid. In between those there has been a mountain of work involving film festivals, COP 26 and rock concerts among other things. For a man who has been locked in the house a lot I sure have been busy.

But now I ain’t and that means I can watch stuff – actually it means that I need to watch stuff because if I don’t then I would just find some way to get myself into trouble. As a person who ostensibly takes an interest in the media I tend to have most of the channels, apps. services and what have you – and that includes Apple TV and Amazon.

First up: Amazon and their new series The Wheel of Time.

Confession – even though I was a die-hard fantasy fan in my youth I kinda gave up reading the books after a while and so I have not managed to catch up with the Robert Jordan novels that form the basis of this series. But that doesn’t mean it won’t be good.

Only it isn’t – and not (I suspect) because the source material isn’t up to it.

This series tends to suffer from algorithmia – a disease whereby studios apply algorithms to creative material to such an extent that the subject dies of asphyxiation. They simply refuse to let it breathe in an effort to make it fit into so many small boxes. But that’s enough typing… here’s my review. It’s a bit long at just under 9 minutes but I had a lot to moan about.

Now that you’ve watched that I should say that there are a couple of things in The Wheel of Time that are good.

No, not the effects, they are fairly blah in this modern age, but there are a couple of points where they do actually subvert expectations – in an early episode (won’t spoil it) there is scene with Nynaeve and two trollocks in the woods that turns truly horrific for just a second.

If they would allow themselves the time (and trust the audience to stick with it) then I think they could make a decent go of this.

Next up: Foundation – an adaptation that really needed to be an adaptation. Only they didn’t get me to adapt it – and they shoulda.

Merry Xmas folks. Let me know what you’ve watched that’s good and if you don’t watch anything else watch Arcane (on netflix I think it is).