#007 A list of things to listen to, watch & read
Whether you're looking for background noise while you cook and garden, want a guaranteed good read, or have just run out of Netflix shows to binge, I've got some great recs...
Over the last few months, while allocating the majority of my energy to growing a human being, it’s safe to say I’ve consumed a lot of content, mostly from my sofa/bed with a ginger biccie in hand. So, here’s my round-up of the podcasts, TV series, films, books and essays I haven’t fallen asleep to. Quite the accolade!
Listen
I promise this is the only potentially ostracising pregnancy-related rec in this roster! I’m trying to keep consumption of this sort of content to a minimum - there is such as a thing as knowing too much IMO - but it makes sense to seek comfort/info and in large part, comical camaraderie from women in a similar, ever-growing preggo boat, from the comfort of my AirPods. Perhaps now, unknowingly to all who love you, or one day in the future, you’ll be up the duff and glad to have some not-anxiety-inducing or stuffy, approved podcasts to help you through too. Anyway, Just You Wait is right up my current street. My number one annoyance IRL is the Just You Wait-ers who literally cannot wait to tell me how shit everything is going to be when I’m X weeks along or the baby is doing X. And, while Liv (a wannabe midwife and hypnobirthing enthusiast about to give birth for the first time) and Emily (a baby sleep coach and mother to a toddler) don’t hold back on the tough truth of it all by any means, they’re more focused on the excitement of having a child and still enjoying full, rich lives with kids in the picture.
Let me pull you back in with something more on-brand: cults! According to this podcast, they’re everywhere! From SoulCycle to Family Vloggers, Stanley Cups to Taylor Swift, Amanda Montell unpicks a different zeitgeisty group each week and questions whether it’s a cult or not, and if so, how bad is it on the cult scale? There’s an element of fun girlie gossipy-ness to it, which is balanced so well with credible experts who dig deep into each topic and really do make you wonder if you’re drinking the Kool-Aid on something that’s cultier than you first thought.
You’re Wrong About - The Tradwife Rises with Sarah Archer
I’ve recommended You’re Wrong About before, back in the day when there was an additional host. Now the ship is helmed by just Sarah Marshall, who invites a different guest expert or enthusiastic pal onto the show each week to discuss one person, event or subject that’s been miscast or misjudged by the wider world and invites us to rethink them/it. There are loads of good episodes but today I’m highlighting this one about Tradwives, a personal current obsession. Is anyone else knee-deep in the Instagram of Ballerina Farm or ruminating on how many veg beds and sourdough starters you need to cultivate to be a certified homesteader?
From the presenter of To Live and Die in LA (a goodie if you haven’t listened!), comes this equally captivating podcast about the largely uninvestigated underbelly of international intelligence: sexpionage. Neil Strauss talks with an ex-Sparrow or ‘honey trap’ about her training slash brainwashing to become the ultimate weapon for Russia and the missions she was sent on. Her first-person account is intercepted with his research and findings about the psychology behind this kind of coercion, the history of sex spies and the experiences of the male victims still in hiding because of the state secrets they revealed to the women who pursued them.
Possibly my favourite new podcast!? Except it’s not new at all. And it’s actually OUR favourite podcast - yep, Alex and I have a podcast we listen to together and even sometimes talk about afterwards and no I never thought I’d see the day either. So: hard recommend if you’ve got a long car journey coming up and struggle to find something both you and your partner want to listen to. Jonathan Goldstein (possibly the perfect podcast host, I wish he was my pal) takes friends, family members and total strangers that reach out to him for help on a journey into the past to act on the things they wish they’d acted on in the moment, reunite with lost connections and have difficult conversations. All of the episodes are succinct, smart and sensitive, some are sad, some are hilarious, and you can either dip in or listen from the start. To give you a taste there’s a guy who promised his dad on his deathbed he’d scatter his ashes on the 18th hole of a golf course and 16 years later he hasn’t done it, so a covert mission to get into the club with an urn ensues, a woman who has never forgiven her foster mother for stopping her playing basketball as a child and needs to know why, ooh and a woman who wants to find her long-lost gap year friend, who turns out to be a shockingly different (see: infamous!) person to the one she portrayed. We started with #38 - #44, then did #6 and #16 and are hooked if you’d like to follow suit.
Watch
Jake Gyllenhaal plays a prosecutor accused of the murder of his colleague and lover. It’s pacy, it’s thrilling, it’s quite dark and rather saucy, and, if you haven’t seen the film it’s based on starring Harrison Ford, it has some great, unexpected twists. We were drip-fed one episode a week but I’ve waited until now to tell you about it so you can binge them all and I think it will be even better viewed in quick concession.
I’ve seen this trashed elsewhere but I really enjoyed Kristen Wiig as Maxine Dellacorte-Simmons, a desperate beauty queen turned desperate housewife trying to make her mark on high society in Palm Beach in 1969. The sets and outfits alone are worth watching for, and then there’s also Ricky Martin! It’s fun and kitsch and a bit silly with a strong main storyline and delightfully dislikeable characters. Every episode gets a bit more insane (the whale, guys the whale?) and leaves you wondering what Maxine wouldn’t do to achieve Queen Bee status.
I’m rubbish at choosing a Saturday night film, addicted to grippy, twisty stories as I am. A Saturday night film, should be light and make you laugh; it’s not totally shit but it’s not going to win any awards or get watched again. It can be cheesy, it can’t be sad, no main characters should be in peril or die. An adventure or a rom-com, basically, but with actors you know and trust. Enter Anyone But You starring Sydney Sweeney and Glen Powell (love them both!). It’s loosely based on a Shakespeare play (as all the great 90s ones were!) and follows Bea and Ben who meet, spend the night together and via some totally unnecessary crossed wires believe the other didn’t actually feel the same way, making them mortal enemies. When they cross paths again at a wedding, they pretend to be together to make their exes jealous - another very 90s rom-com theme, which I’m sure you can predict the result of…
I have been far from impressed with both BBC dramas in general and Jenna Coleman lately, so didn’t go into The Jetty thinking I’d even get to episode 2 let alone binge them all and enjoy it. Jenna plays a detective investigating an arson in her hometown, which leads to a murder case that she’s more connected to than she realises. It flits between two timelines that provide red herrings aplenty and ends with a good twist and a fiery showdown.
If you’ve been umming and ahhing about watching this much-hyped drama, watch it. Drugs and gangsters aren’t my usual themes of choice in a TV show but Kin is about so much more than that and isn’t gratuitous with the guns and hits. It follows the Kinsellas, a Dublin crime family feuding with another local gang. The big bosses believe they can co-exist but loose canons on each side muck it all up and there’s no alternative to revenge. There are loads of familiar faces in it and the female cast is especially fab!
Annnnd we’ve got some more cult stuff! This documentary follows the families of TikTok dancers who’ve joined a church parading as a production company (or vice versa, hard to say), which is actually a strict cult that demands a chunk of their income and cuts them off from the people who love them. It’s a wild ride.
We’ve been re-watching Jonathan Creek and the early seasons are so good! If you’re not familiar, Alan Davies plays a creative consultant of sorts with a skill for solving puzzles, which sees him make up magic tricks for work and sleuth with the likes of Caroline Quentin and Sheridan Smith on the side. Think locked room murders, inexplicable disappearances and illusions.
The Secret Lives of Mormon Wives
This *just* landed on Disney+ and I’ve already binged all eight episodes. It’s as trashy as you’d hope and fills a Kardashian / Housewive Of X sort of hole, with the bonus of lifting the lid on the usually guarded world of Mormonism. It follows a group of varyingly progressive Mormon mothers who wear what they want, get Botox and tattoos, go to Vegas and are part of MomTok, which makes some of them the breadwinners in their families - none of this comes without its judgment from their husbands, each other and the church…