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Diving Into The Streets' Upcoming Album - 'Long Story Longer'

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Diving Into The Streets' Upcoming Album - 'Long Story Longer' The Streets were without a doubt a UK music icon throughout the 2000s, with what still stands, in my opinion, as an almost-untouchable five album run. Unfortunately, despite ending on a really high note in 2011, Mike Skinner’s post-reunion Streets catalogue (along with related side projects) has produced mixed results. Nothing out and out bad per se, but across the reams of stand alone singles, EPs, a duets mixtape and a 2022 album under the Darker The Shadow The Brighter The Light alias, the quality has ranged from “overall quite decent” to “perplexingly cobbled together.” Some absolute bangers could be found therein, don’t get me wrong, but overall it was dishearteningly inconsistent. That is of course, until 2023. While Mike had been creating music under the aforementioned TDTSTBTL alias since 2017, we were told, even way back then, that it was also the name of a film Mike was working on, along with its accomp...
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Ian Fletcher & 'W1A' - A Masterclass In Satire, With More Than Meets The Eye (Part 2)

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Ian Fletcher & 'W1A' - A Masterclass In Satire, With More Than Meets The Eye (Part 1) Image Credit: BBC If you consider yourself a fan of satire, I wou;ld probably say your search for the best of it is unfinished until you've watched 'W1A', written by the fantastic John Morton. A razor sharp, yet fantastically deadpan satire of the working world of the BBC, I firmly believe it's one of the best comedy programmes of recent times. I already went over some of my reasoning in part 1 , including the sheer brilliance of the premise, and the incredible wit and silliness of the writing, but today I'm diving deeper. So grab yourself a coffee, stand by, cue camera one, and away we go! The Plots On the flip side though, there are the plots. It’s not that they’re necessarily bad at all, in fact some of them are actually very funny at their core, but one thing you realise very quickly, is that it’s definitely a “journey rather than the destination” type of show. Th...
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Ian Fletcher & 'W1A' - A Masterclass In Satire, With More Than Meets The Eye (Part 1)

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  Ian Fletcher & 'W1A' - A Masterclass In Satire, With More Than Meets The Eye (Part 1) Image Credit: BBC Think of the list of the UKs most renowned sitcoms and satirical comedies, and obviously behind that you’ve got some of the most brilliantly creative minds in the British media sector. Chris Morris and Armando Ianucci of ‘The Day Today’, Damon Beesley and Iain Morris behind ‘The Inbetweeners’, Sam Bain and Jesse Armstrong who masterminded ‘Peep Show’ and ‘Fresh Meat’, or, for a relatively more recent example, the brilliant Robert Popper, creator of ‘Friday Night Dinner.’ A name that should also be added to that list is John Morton. Originally rising to prominence in a similar “radio-show-turned-TV-hit” success story to many of his contemporaries, the mockumentary show ‘People Like Us’ received high praise and more widespread recognition following its TV debut in 1999, even netting him a Writers' Guild Award. That may well be on my watchlist, but what I wanted to t...
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Senser - Live 2026 Tour Review - 12th June, Brudenell Social Club, Leeds

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Senser Live at Brudenell Social Club, Leeds, June 12th 2026, Reviewed - Rap-Metal Pioneers Could Wipe The Floor With Anyone The Brudenell is a Leeds venue that can fit up to 400 people. As someone who has had school assemblies notably larger than that, it hardly seems a high enough number of punters for the first night of Senser’s UK tour. For one of the best rap metal bands of all time, who also released my absolute favourite album of last year, they should be playing to thousands. Then again, there is something about the vibe of small club gigs - the sweat, the closeness, the intensity - that Senser would positively revel in, and revel they do. Before they can take the stage though, the small, yet thoroughly enthusiastic crowd are treated to an opening set from Collapsed Lung. Being a Grebo adjacent rap-rock band, I’m almost ashamed of myself for not having heard of them before, but boy am I glad to make such a discovery. What becomes abundantly clear from the off is quite how unseri...
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Why ‘Total Wipeout’ Series 2 is Peak Light Entertainment

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Why ‘Total Wipeout’ Series 2 is Peak Light Entertainment We all have those nostalgic TV shows. Those shows that define our formative years, and were maybe some of the first media properties we ever got “into”. If you're a cartoon fan maybe it was ‘Ed, Edd, and Eddy’, ‘Ren and Stimpy’, ‘Courage’, or for my friends, things like ‘Ben 10’, ‘Chowder’, ‘Regular Show’, or ‘Fosters Home…’. If live action is more your thing, maybe you watched classic CBBC shows like ‘Tracy Beaker’, ‘The 4 O’Clock Club’, ‘Sam and Mark’, ‘Trapped!’ or many others. For me though, the apex of entertainment TV for me from about the ages of 6 to 10, was the Saturday night, BBC type gameshow. Think 6pm, prime family entertainment. They might have been absolutely preposterous in some cases with their premises, but I gravitated to them like a moth to a flame. It’s a love I’m actually proud to say I still hold to this day, with my enjoyment of the joyfully ridiculous ‘First and Last’ presented by comedian Jason Manfo...
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