1205 - ITV1
Our final guide for this year starts with this film, which brings up the first question of what is this doing on at this time of the day? I mean, the violence is quite cartoony but it certainly doesn’t skimp on the detail. I guess this is fine now so why not watch it with lunch
1220 - ITV4
Yes, it’s that film with that soundtrack with that SOUNDTRACK. One of those films that you’re genuinely surprised got made in quite that way.
1440 - Film 4
More Harryhausen goodness, its actually this one that has the iconic battle with the skeleton warriors so don’t listen to me from a couple of days ago.
1630 - ITV2
I think we had Shazam on a previous day, but we’re including it again here as it acts as a nice filling in a big dumb fun sandwich. The Pirates! is arguably the best of the Aardman Animation feature films, and Hobbs & Shaw is the absolute dictionary definition of big dumb fun action films. Its so big and dumb it makes the Fast and Furious films look positively high brow
2200 - BBC2
As adaptions of Shakespeare go there are several ways to go; stick to the original text (Hamlet from 1996), move it to the modern era (Richard III from 1995) or keep the bones of it but change everything else (10 Things I Hate About You). This film does the first two at the same time, keeping the iambic pentameter dialogue but placing it in a modern setting. It shouldn’t work, but it really does
2210 - BBC4
So we had the film version a few days ago, now we have the TV series that first adapted the original book. And, surprisingly enough, its a belter. Not having to squash the story into the length of a feature film means everything can spread out a bit more and take its time. This fits perfectly with that studio based 70s BBC aesthetic, just don’t forget to watch the other episodes as well
2230 - BBC1
It feels apt that this is the final entry of the strategy guide this year. This is because, much like Andy Dufresne, we crawled through a river of shit (the year 2020) and came out clean on the other side. By clean I mean emotionally drained and wondering if things will continue to get worse before they get better.
See you next year!