That was the year that was: 2025

Let’s be honest: it’s no big secret that 2025 was a shitty year in many ways, so much so that at times, as if we’d woken up in an episode of Black Mirror, it felt like reality itself had installed a doomscrolling plugin. You no longer have to take out our phone or tablet: just walk around with open eyes and the rest will take care of itself.

And yet: not everything is bad. Whenever I hear or read someone going on about how culture, originality, cinema and TV are dead, I can’t help but roll my eyes – because there is so much out there that is pretty damn good: fresh, engaging, challenging, riveting.

See exhibit A:

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I’ll be in my trailer… watching trailers: One Preview After Another

Join us every week for a trip into the weird and wonderful world of trailers. Whether it’s the first teaser for the latest instalment in your favourite franchise, an obscure preview for a strange indie darling, whether it’s good, bad, ugly or just plain weird – your favourite pop culture baristas are there to tell you what they think.

For this week’s Six Damn Fine Degrees, Melane swerves towards the East, introducing us to two Chinese series she’s been enjoying – The Untamed and The Sleuth of the Ming Dynasty – and their fan translations, showing us once again that there’s a wealth of stories many of us aren’t even aware of.

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I’ll be in my trailer… watching trailers: Hello, Mr Anderson

Join us every week for a trip into the weird and wonderful world of trailers. Whether it’s the first teaser for the latest instalment in your favourite franchise, an obscure preview for a strange indie darling, whether it’s good, bad, ugly or just plain weird – your favourite pop culture baristas are there to tell you what they think.

This week saw the first post of new contributor Alastair Bickley: in last Friday’s Six Damn Fine Degrees, he wrote about the first three minutes of the Sherlock Holmes mystery “The Priory School”, as adapted for ITV, starring Jeremy Brett. Once again, there’s no trailer – but the entire episode is on YouTube, so here’s that particular treat for all the Sherlock-heads out there!

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