The Best of 2024

I last did this publicly in 2020, but here we go again.

Best of the Year: The Penguin

Familiarity breeds contempt. That's the problem when franchise properties try to show how a well-known character (read: popular IP) became who they are. The anchors for their behaviour are in their future you know for them, not in the story you're currently watching.

I found even Wolf Hall guilty of this. Why do I care about this Cromwell guy if I'm not already bought into his big role in history? It has to work regardless.

That's what The Penguin does so well. The worst thing about it is any link to the Batman universe. When I recommend this show, I try to not mention that detail because you know it will stop people watching it. And yet it's basically irrelevant.

The nuance and depth of performance is "eye-twitch" level. It's never afraid to move the plot forward in the most difficult possible direction for its characters and it brings real life topics into the mix with style and care.

What makes a character scary is not always that they are an inconceivable bogeyman (see Joker), but that they are a normal person gone wrong. Someone the world has laughed at. Someone who has been down the bad fork of the road one too many times.

Books

In no particular order

Number Go Up, The Fund

Being a journalist during the crypto boom years was a misery. What felt like a clear story about Ponzi-style greed and scams was also having an undeniable impact on global financial systems. It was hard to sit back and just criticise, without reporting on the full potential picture for readers.

Number Go Up is what happens when it's revealed the crypto Emperor has no clothes, and that journalist is finally allowed to kick loose with the vitriol and criticism that trend deserved. Cathartic.

I didn't know much about Bridgwater Associates before The Fund but the underlying key to it for me is that rich people start to believe they are special people. But you usually only get that rich by being a broken person.

Only a few manage to weave their way from broken origins to billions without escaping the heavy truth that they probably just got lucky.

The Wager - A super readable telling of the most exotically disastrous ship journey, with twists and turns and great characters in abundance. Read it before the inevitable movie.

Doppelganger, Berserker - Both personal stories, in very different directions. Doppelgänger takes the Naomi Woolf/ Klein confusion at its core and broadens it to how we are constantly mistaking things in our society for those they resemble, with serious consequences.

Berserker is the story of Adrian Edmondson, whose work I'd never terrible dug into, to be honest. I was aware of Bottom, The Young Ones etc and knew his face, but this book is a great example of hidden depths that often dwell inside those who are drawn to performing comedy.

I read both of these as audiobooks and highly recommend the authors' performance in each.

Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow - For a long period, this slightly triggered my geek irritation of knowing the world better than I felt the author did. But this book is not what you think it is.

To say much more would be a shame but it was one where a certain moment had such an impact on me, I had to stop, go and be alone and read it again to fully take it in. Overwhelming and worth it for that rare experience alone.

Film & TV

Kajillionaire - Her star has since risen further thanks to All Fours, and I've previously read The First Bad Man, which made me laugh out loud. But Kajillionaire achieves that amazing movie magic of feeling like you are seeing the world through someone else's eyes entirely.

Poor Things - It took a little while for this to click for me, but once I realised what it was about, I fell in love. Food critic, Michael Pollan, wrote a book called Hot To Change Your Mind, which explains how psychedelics essentially stop your consciousness being able to use the well established pathways your brain builds over a lifetime. That means you are effectively seeing everything anew.

That's Bella's experience here. What if you were born into the world and had to get a grip on it? What's disgusting? What's fascinating, confusing, unfair, unexpected?

And the great thing: that's what life's like anyway if we're honest. We just pretend we know it all.

Gulliver's Zombie Travels.

Ripley - rippling with beauty, immaculately composed but accessible. It's a story of obsession and acceptance, of inferiority and the resentment it breeds. The performances are unhurried and generous, giving you so much of the good stuff and the difficult experience that other work leaves behind.

It reminds me of the idea in standup that you should never tread on your audience's laughter by moving on too quickly, let them enjoy every drop.

Mr & Mrs Smith - Another I bounced off originally, that now feels incredibly strong with the full picture. In some ways I'd compare it to Eternal Sunshine in the way it shows the long, multidimensional experience of a relationship: meeting, getting to know each other, the first fight, the biggest fight – and eventually, a decision point.

Balancing this with great action sequences is very hard to pull off, but the fundamental structure of each episode achieves it well.

(The only bummer is wondering what Phoebe Waller-Bridge's influence would have been, and what happened to disrupt her involvement.)

Games & Tech

Baldurs Gate 3 - I left this for most of the year before a hearty binge in December, and am now on a second playthrough (although I didn't technically finish the first, I just want to see more of everything and find what I missed.)

On first attempt, I basically alienated or killed every single potential companion that should join your party after the start. That made it very hard, and really quite confusing as I met a series of characters who had, at best, a tangential connection to me. And lots of strangely empty rooms.

Second time round, I've been able to undo some of the terrible terrible things I did first time, relax into how I set up the characters and their abilities, go new places in new ways and finally see way more story and gameplay by bringing the right people in.

When I was 13, I think I used to achieve this with a game (ruin it, learn then start again with understanding) in a weekend. Now it takes so much longer that sometimes I don't make it back. But when we do, boy is it worth it.

Desperados 3, Midnight Suns - One of the other things I've realised about my relationships to games as an adult is I feel best when I'm playing something that requires strategy. Turn-based, challenging, deep, lots of variety – that means often roguelikes, deck-builders or similar.

Desperados is a fantastic demonstration of this, hooked together with characters who are far more compelling than they need to be. Coordinating a team of four , with different ability and weaknesses to dismantle a camp is satisfying despite having to reload again and again and again. This kind of practiced failure is also one of my favourite things about games, that I think helps develop a lack of fear in real life, particularly work.

I could take or leave the social side of Midnight Suns (making friends with superheroes reminds me of the most tedious bits of Fire Emblem) but give me decks of satisfying powers and challenging situations all day long.

Vision Pro - A slightly different inclusion here. I got to try it the first time before the UK release for about a month, then picked up another for Nov/ Dec thanks to the generosity of Apple's Xmas return policy.

The consistent realisation for me is that this is simply the most incredible monitor. Unlimited space, easy connection to your Mac for a massive desktop (good for development), Incredible experience for Movies.

But most importantly: during a shitty grey winter, it gives me a place I can go that's sunny, bright, invigorating, with my music playing and photos of my wife and kids around me (this sounds like I'm dying, I'm not dying.)

It gives me access to FLOW. That helps me write, helps me work, helps me concentrate.

Should I be able to achieve this without it? Yes. Do I care? No. If it works, it works.