Podcast

A Damn Fine Espresso: June 2026

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As anyone who listened to our March episode on three film adaptations of Agatha Christie’s whodunits can tell: no one at A Damn Fine Cup of Culture is a big fan of Kenneth Branagh’s Hercule Poirot. The erstwhile Shakespeare wunderkind tried his hand at the Belgian super-sleuth three times, with Murder on the Orient Express (2017), Death on the Nile (2022) and A Haunting in Venice (2003). Admittedly, we’re not the first ones to say an emphatic non to Branagh’s Poirot – but, having just recently taken a closer look at the Knives Out films, which feature a different modern movie detective that nonetheless takes more than a few cues from Agatha Christie, and from Monsieur Poirot himself, Sam and Alan nonetheless felt it was high time to give Branagh’s trio of period thrillers another chance.

Do they improve when approached with tempered expectations? Can they be salvaged, or do they remain not just second-best versions of these stories but downright failures of adaptation? How do the ensemble casts compare to those put together by Sidney Lumet in the 1974 version of Murder on the Orient Express and John Guillermin in 1978’s Death on the Nile? And just what is up with that moustache?

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A Damn Fine Cup of Culture Podcast #105: Summer of Genre – The Benoit Blanc Whodunit

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We’ve arrived at June, which can only mean one thing – it’s once again time for a Damn Fine tradition: our summer series. This year, we bring you the Summer of Genre: four episodes, from June until September, each dedicated to a genre that is close to our hearts. And we’re launching our Summer of Genre with one of Julie’s favourites – the whodunit. But not just any whodunit: Julie, Alan and Sam have got together to discuss Rian Johnson’s Knives Out mysteries, from 2019’s inaugural murder mystery via 2022’s Glass Onion to last year’s Wake Up Dead Man. Since our part-time sleuths, part-time cultural baristas are big fans of the classical whodunit (for key evidence in this particular case, make sure to check out this March’s podcast episode, Three Christies, featuring the same star-studded cast), Johnson’s modern-day riffs on the clasical format are the logical next step. But will our intrepid trio exonerate Johnson and his private detective Benoit Blanc, or will they reveal their unquestionable guilt once and for all?

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A Damn Fine Espresso: May 2026

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Another month, another espresso, another guest on our podcast: Matt recently spoke to David Fonjallaz, filmmaker and co-director of the Cinema REX in Bern, Switzerland, where David is responsible (among other things) for the repertory cinema programme – over the last year alone, the REX has shown programmes on David Lynch, Yasujiro Ozu and Andrea Arnold, on Iranian cinema and (currently) films told from the perspective of children. What are the challenges of running a cinema in 2026, and of scheduling a programme that is ambitious and that still attracts a cinema? But also: what are the joys of putting together such programmes on a monthly basis?

The recording was done live at the REX, so there’s the usual background murmur of cinemagoers and clinks of glasses and coffee cups (espresso, no doubt), but we hope the vibe more than makes up for the noise!

P.S.: This espresso episode is something of a sequel to our 2020 podcast, A Damn Fine Cup of Culture Podcast #37: Cinéma mon amour, in which we talked to Martina Amrein, who currently co-directs the REX alongside David. And for Matt’s lovesong to a well-curated cinema programme, check out his post from November 2024, A little less algorithm, a little more curation, please.

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A Damn Fine Cup of Culture Podcast #104: Powell and Pressburger’s Propaganda Pictures

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We’ve been talking about it for years, and now it’s finally happening: we are dedicating an episode of our Damn Fine podcast to the films of Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger – with a special slant. In our May episode, Matt and Alan look at three of the duo’s films that arguably were all made to be propaganda: 49th Parallel (1941), The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp (1943) and A Canterbury Tale (1944) were all made during the Second World War, and they all have a purpose and elements that can be described as propagandistic: to persuade the audience, at a time of national crisis, of a certain mindset or course of action. And at the same time, these films very much bear the hallmarks of Powell and Pressburger’s work: they are whimsical, inventive, humorous, earnest, and cinematically adventurous, playing with the audience’s expectations. (For instance: who would expect a precursor of 2001‘s famous time jump from prehistoric times to the Space Age in a whimsical tale set in rural Kent?) Join our baristas as they discuss what makes propaganda, and how Powell and Pressburger – a born Brit and an immigrant who made England his chosen home – put their own spin on the format.

P.S.: For listeners interested in the topic of cinema and propaganda, check out our episode from last year’s summer series on propaganda feature films from the Third Reich: Lost Summer – Films from the Poison Cabinet.

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A Damn Fine Espresso: April 2026

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While we do post articles about video games occasionally, the medium is pretty much underserved by A Damn Fine Cup of Culture’s podcasts – but we are hoping to remedy this at least somewhat with this espresso podcast: our guest for April is Johanna Pirker, computer scientist and educator at Graz University of Technology and the Technical University of Munich. In 2025, Johanna published her book The Game is On (currently only available in German, but there are plans for an English translation – and a Thai version is in the works!), in which she talks about the revolutionary potential of video games. Join Matt as he talks to Johanna about her work, her book, and about video games, from Johanna’s earliest memories of playing Prince of Persia on her father’s PC to more recent developments in the medium and art form.

For more from Johanna, make sure to check out her website and YouTube channel. Also, we’ve previously written about two of the games Johanna brings up in the podcast: Journey and Dear Esther.

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A Damn Fine Cup of Culture Podcast #103: Second Chances – Hail the Damned!

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Another year, another Second Chances episode: in this month’s podcast, Sam and Alan get together to revisit two historical pieces, though they couldn’t be much more different – one has decadence, deviance and Nazism, the other offers Hollywood mystery, Communists and dancing sailors. Yes, we’re taking a second look at Luchino Visconti’s 1969 film The Damned, the cause of something of a memorable, and traumatic, early movie memory of Sam’s, and at the Coen Brothers’ Hail, Caesar! (2016) (which we also wrote about here), generally one of the less-appreciated films of the writer-director siblings – but perhaps one that is unfairly maligned?

And if Alan and Sam’s chat about fascists, fixers, murders and musical numbers has got you in the mood, why not check out these earlier Second Chances episodes?

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A Damn Fine Espresso: March 2026

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It’s the Return of the Wuthering Brides! For this month’s espresso, Alan and Sam got together to discuss two recent cinematic riffs on classics of 19th-century literature, with both books penned by, and both films directed by, women: Emerald Fennell’s “Wuthering Heights” (apparently the quotation marks are an integral part of the title, based on Emily Brontë’s novel, and The Bride!, directed by Maggie Gyllenhaal, which builds on both Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein and James Whale’s iconic 1935 film Bride of Frankenstein. How do the two films succeed, as adaptations and in and of themselves? Where do they come alive, reinvigorating the original material, and where are they haunted by the ghosts of what could have been? So join us as we run across the wily, windy moors with Cathy (Margot Robbie) and Heathcliff (Jacob Elordi) in order to do the Monster Mash with Frank (Christian Bale) and the Bride (Jessie Buckley)!

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A Damn Fine Cup of Culture Podcast #102: Three Christies

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It’s been hinted at once or twice on A Damn Fine Cup of Culture: we do like a good whodunnit, and we especially like a good cosy – or sometimes less cosy – crime. So it’s high time we assemble all the suspects in the drawing room and pay our respects to the Queen of Crime: Agatha Christie. In keeping with our semi-regular series of episodes on noteworthy trios, our chief investigators Alan, Sam and Julie have rounded up three adaptations of Christie’s stories for the screen: Murder She Said (1961), starring the formidable Margaret Rutherford; Evil Under the Sun (1982), which not only features Peter Ustinov as Belgian sleuth Hercule Poirot, but a delightful cast that includes Diana Rigg and Maggie Smith; and the episode “Five Little Pigs” (2003) from ITV’s long-running Agatha Christie’s Poirot, in which David Suchet dons Poirot’s iconic moustache. Why do these stories have lasting appeal? How do Christie’s plots survive the adaptation into a different medium? And why exactly do they let Kenneth Branagh do those ghastly modern adaptations? (Now that is the real crime.)

P.S.: For more on iconic trios, make sure to check out these past episodes:

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A Damn Fine Espresso: February 2026

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The show must go on: our recent podcast episode on Tom Stoppard’s Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead got Sam and Matt thinking. While there’s a long-standing link between the stage and the screen, theatre and cinema are nonetheless different forms of art. What makes theatre tick differently from film? What translates well from one format to the other, and what is lost in the process? Where could a lot of cinema perhaps learn from the stage? What films are there based on stage plays that survived the transition from one medium to another – and perhaps even benefited? And what movies escape the conventions of cinema and bring a dollop of theatrical magic onto the screen?

P.S.: For more theatre talk at A Damn Fine Cup of Culture, make sure to check out last year’s March espresso, in which Sam talks to Julie about putting Clare Boothe Luce’s Broadway play The Women – famously made into a film by George Cukor in 1939 – on the stage. And for a discussion of Miloš Forman’s brilliant film adaptation of Peter Shaffer’s Amadeus, may we recommend A Damn Fine Cup of Culture Podcast #53: Exactly the right number of notes – Amadeus (1984)?

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A Damn Fine Cup of Culture Podcast #101: Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead

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Heads. Heads. Heads. If you have a moment, why not join us as we flip coins and somehow always end up with the same result? In our February podcast, Julie, Sam and Matt remember the late, great Tom Stoppard, in particular his seminal play Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead (1966) and especially Stoppard’s 1990 film adaptation of the same title, which starred Gary Oldman, Tim Roth and Richard Dreyfuss. How does Rosencrantz and Guildenstern land only a couple of months after Stoppard’s death on 29 November 2025? How does this quintessential piece of metatheatre translate onto the screen? Is it better to be alive or dead in a box? Can we give you love and rhetoric without the blood? And was there a moment, at the beginning, when they could have said no?

P.S.: For more on Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead (both the play and the film), and on why Roger Ebert was wrong about the screen adaptation, check out Julie’s Six Damn Fine Degrees #176 from way back in April 2024.

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