It's Been a While...
Let's talk knights, tasks, sad shorts, French thrillers and hoglines.
Hi.
It’s been a while! The holidays took their toll on me as I got bombarded with a bug, then Toronto saw more snow in a single day than ever before, and I travelled to Philly.
But I’m back. My goal in 2026 is be a bit more consistent this year. Hope you’ll bear with me!
Let’s start my first post of the new year with a smattering of five interesting things I watched. Not all of them good, mind you!
A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms
I feel like A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms is the best thing on TV at the moment. While I am a bit of a House of the Dragon defender (while it’s certainly made some questionable decisions in its storytelling, it also got hampered by HBO cutting an episode and not being able to pivot due to the writer’s strike), it still feels like a show I’m invested in.
That being said, much like Duncan the Tall, this new show stands head and shoulders above it’s peers. This show has charm, wit, depth and emotion.
The first thing that works for this show is that it’s anchored in the perspective of Duncan the Tall (played by Peter Claffey) and his adorable little too-smart-for-his-own-good squire, Egg (played by Dexter Sol Ansell).
The show occasionally has felt tuned to a dial that I don’t always jive with (cue a flying stream of poop interrupting the iconic Game of Thrones motif and the second episode having a giant dick on screen within five minutes of the show starting). But when it really dives into the themes of the show — identity, class and righteousness — it’s quite effective.
This is the story of a knight (who might not even be a knight) wanting to rise through society to do good in the world. Along the way, he picks up a boy who is as enamoured with being a knight as our hero was when he was a youngling. What they face off against is power, corruption and the glimpse that being a noble knight might not be all it’s cracked up to be. In fact, you might get your head cracked open.
While it doesn’t have the scale of Game of Thrones, I’m thankful for this little show to exist in a universe that I do love dearly, even if George R.R. Martin continues to refuse my pleas to finish the gosh darn books.
I’m recapping episodes of A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms with DM Filly over on his podcast, Screen & Page, which you can find a link to below.
The Taskmaster Live Show
I was fortunate to travel to Philadelphia, PA, to grab one of the most coveted tickets in America this winter: the Taskmaster Live Show. I also got the chance to interview Alex Horne and Greg Davies before the show.
The first part of the show was a Q&A session hosted by the wonderful Josh Gondelman. The hosts answered questions about the show, the comedians they’d like to have, its success in America, and more. Frankly, I was a bit heartened to see that many of the questions Josh asked were ones I had asked as well, so you can find many of their responses in the interview above!
But the real treat was after the intermission. Just before, they played three tasks to bring three audience members up on stage for a live version of the television show. They were joined by two comedians. In Philly, these were Chris Gethard, a Philly comedian, and Paul Chowdhry (Series 3 contestant).
We got a prize task and several live tasks from the show, completing an episode that Chris ultimately won. All of the tasks performed on stage were ones we’ve seen as the show’s final live task, including finding a stranger’s profession, wibble bibble bop, and blowing items off the table.
The show had all the charm of an episode of Taskmaster, with the added dynamic of recruited comedians and the randomness of superfans thrown into the mix. It was hilarious, weird and magical.
The added bonus was that I got to hang out and meet some friends on this trip! A good podcast friend let me stay at her house; two friends travelled into town to hang out; and at the live show, I met a friend I play D&D with online.
5 points all around!
The Oscar-Nominated Documentary Shorts
If you ever want to be truly sad, I’d highly recommend watching the Oscar-nominated documentary shorts of any given year and just have a little bit of a cry. This year, the nominees include:
All the Empty Rooms: a photographer & journalist takes photos of the empty rooms of children who were killed in school shootings.
Armed Only With a Camera: The Life and Death of Brent Renaud: The story of a journalist who was killed covering the war in Ukraine.
Children No More: The story of a silent protest by Israelis to mourn the death of children killed in Gaza
The Devil is Busy: The story of a woman who runs the security & check-in at an abortion clinic
The list also features Perfectly a Strangeness, a short that follows three donkeys who stumble upon an abandoned astronomical observatory that features no dialogue.
Okay, so maybe that last one won’t make you cry, at least not in the same way as the others. But what this category does every year is remind me just how much I love documentaries. These powerful true stories give us a glimpse into what’s going on in the world and the real way such events impact people’s lives.
I’d recommend all five of them, just make sure you bring your tissues.
Misericordia
This is a film I watched because I was on the 32 Fans spin-off movie pod, There Will Be Pod. Misericordia is a French black comedy thriller that follows a man who returns to the small town he grew up in because his former boss has died. He stays with his widow, and a series of events unfold to make this a captivating exploration of sexuality, grief and life itself.
The word I was left with at the end of this was ‘messy’. The main character, Jérémie (played by Félix Kysyl), encounters all sorts of individuals in the hometown, with whom he has complicated relationships. It seems as though he may have been in love with his old boss, and his widow knows. Her son is irate that Jérémie is staying with his mom, thinking he’s sleeping with her. The local pastor seems to be infatuated with him.
I do not think this is a movie that is technically perfect, but that seems to be more to its benefit than a detraction. As the central aspect of the film unfolded (a murder and whether the person who commits it can get away with it), all of these questions about right and wrong, life and death, and morality and immorality swirled around my brain.
I don’t know that this was the best movie I saw last year, but it was certainly one of the most interesting. You can listen to my thoughts on this, along with several other movies on There Will Be Pod.
The Olympics Curling Drama
I’m not sure anything has quite grabbed my attention this past week more than the Olympic curling drama between Team Canada and Team Sweden.
In case you missed it, Team Sweden accused Team Canada members of double-touching their rocks, something against the rules. The sport abides by the spirit of curling, in which you are supposed to self-identify breaking of rules and in the case of a double touch, remove your own burned stone. When Team Sweden raised the issue with Team Canada, the result was some fiery language hardly seen in a curling rink.
Now I have to admit, I’m going to be slightly biased here. While I can acknowledge that Canadian players likely did touch their stone again after releasing the handle, I don’t know that it a) had any impact on the play and that b) the way it was done is inherently against the rules.
To the first point, it’s my belief that what we’re seeing from Canadian curlers is likely either a professional tick they’ve picked up or a way to gauge how quickly their stone is moving forward or spinning. Why they do it, in my estimation, with no real evidence, is that it helps them determine whether they need to call for their teammates to sweep. I guess as I write that out, it might feel like cheating if other players feel they can’t do it.
As for point 2, you may touch the stone again, provided you do so on the handle and release it before the hogline. So, to that point, combined with point one, I don’t think it’s the type of advantage that is against the spirit of double-touching a stone, or touching a stone after it’s passed the hogline.
Though again, maybe that’s just my Canadian bias showing.