PLUS Man vs Baby, and Stranger Things spoiler discussion

0:07Boyd Hilton:Welcome to Pilot Plus, your extended guide to every show that matters. And this morning, we are handling a baby, which is obviously relevant to this festive period, a baby in a manger, although this time it is being looked after by Rowan Atkinson. So those of you who watched Man vs. B, which came out, I want to say in 2022, which saw Rowan Atkinson as a house sitter, basically versus a stinging insect over a number of episodes. This is the second series of that show, but instead of a bee, he is now taking on a baby, which is, let's be honest, slightly less ambulatory. So season two, this man versus baby, it's the same character.

0:44Boyd Hilton:He's still a house sitter, but this time he has a baby in tow. And if you're thinking, this is a strange thing for you to be reviewing. Is this a slow week? Yes, yes it is. Shut up. Right. Right. Who wants to talk man versus baby? I don't mind going first. So, as you said, I mean, he's back to house-sitting mode. Now, when we find him, it's a bit of a sorry situation because evidently he's split up with his wife. He thinks he's spending Christmas with them, but then he gets this lucrative house-sitting deal come up, which he can't say no to because he has to pay the exorbitant fees of his daughter who's going to school or university in Paris.

1:26Boyd Hilton:At the Sorbonne, apparently. Yeah, exactly. So yeah, he can't say no to it. And there's a contrivance where he is in the possession of a baby. Nothing illegal. It gets left abandoned at the school where he's a caretaker. And they're doing a nativity. And he thinks it's the baby that's been offered up as baby Jesus. But alas, no, it's just a different baby. Anyway, so he has this baby, but he has to go to this house sitting duty of a very wealthy family and so he has to take the baby with him. Now what I would say is if you didn't like the first series you know almost certainly you're gonna not like this one because you have to suspend your belief a lot and that's the thing I would advise all listeners if you're gonna watch this just accept that there is a there are a lot of times in fact the majority of the time you're gonna be like that wouldn't happen or why didn't he just do this if you can make peace with that I have to say it's just a nice fun family watch I can imagine you could watch this with your kids niece nephews whatever grandchildren and it's just a bit as James would say it's a bit silly but it's fun Rowan is a great physical actor still and so a lot of the comedy comes from his reactions to things also the baby is so cute I like really love the baby like he's got such a great i mean i would love to know how long these scenes took to film um because i can imagine you know obviously they say don't work with uh animals or babies and this baby gives great reaction shots as well so i would love to know uh rowan if you're listening get in touch let us know how long this whole uh caper took to record but um yeah overall i would say it's an enjoyable pleasant watch entertaining watch if you can just detach like if you can disconnect your brain it's not a logical watch there's also a dog as well did you see the dog episodes oh there's a delightful border terrier arrives I think in episode 3 I watched the whole thing it could be a film it should it should be a film I think yeah it essentially is a film divided into four episodes that's what they said about Man vs.

3:30Boyd Hilton:B wasn't it that they did a feature length essentially story and then thought how do we cut this down into however many episodes yeah yeah but the Baldur's area is very cute as well I'm guessing that there must be some CGI involved with the baby as well because sometimes it does stuff that is too, I don't know I mean it would be interesting to see the making of it yeah I'm a huge Ron Atkinson fan I grew up watching Not the Rundercook News all the different Black Adders even like the Johnny English films which this guy he works with on these Man vs. things co-created William Davis. So I'm not necessarily Mr Bean.

4:11Boyd Hilton:Mr Bean I never really got into, particularly because it was aimed at small children, almost effectively. It won't surprise you that I enjoyed it as a kid. I mean, it was like slapstick, in theory, slapstick as great art, but never quite. I don't know. It didn't ever seem that... it didn't tickle your fancy fancy thank you exactly the thing about this is it is very enjoyable yeah and the changes like disdain i mean you're right it is a thin week of partly what we're doing but this is a major tv event any any new rowan atkinson show is i i would i would suggest a major event um and i'm sure it'll do really well he's still incredibly popular i think what's interesting about him is that if you read as I have Ben Elton's autobiography he talks about what a perfectionist Rowan Atkinson is and how when they were doing Blackadder together and other shows they did The Thin Blue Line as well together like Rowan would sit there going through the script with Ben Elton and being incredibly dismissive of half the script and going this is not funny, not funny, not funny and redo it, redo it like completely almost like coldly um insisting that they redo bits of the script that he wasn't happy with and then you end up in him doing this and you're like when was that where was that process in this because where was the perfectionism yeah i don't think it'd be too harsh but it's not funny it's not in the slightest but funny it's it's in an area where even and even though it's not funny it almost doesn't matter it's amusing it is it's gently amusing exactly at best and i think it's trying not to be it's not even trying to be anything more than that in fact i would say that the tone of it is so kind of um not the way for the opposite of in your faces it's right it's so mild mild mannered he's mild mannered the character is mild mannered and you're trying to get a whereas previous incarnations of red atkinson characters are much more i would say out and out comedic and in your face and stupid effectively whereas this guy he's not really stupid he's just kind of, he just has to deal with a lot of, he's a bit bumbling but he just has to deal with a lot of extreme situations really and his reaction to them using Rowan's rubber-faced face to react to stuff in a vivid way.

6:40Boyd Hilton:That's all fine but I just wish it tried to be a bit more funny. I think the heart of it is a kind of just a kind of cosiness that he weirdly extends to not even trying to be that funny. that's what my main point of problem with it but having said that i did watch the whole thing and i didn't need to watch the whole thing you know no one was no one was putting me a gunpoint to watch it and in the end as you say is it is kind of enjoyable it is it's fun for all the family i think that's where it's that's what it's trying to do you know now 100 yeah and it's just like and it is completely accessible for kids of all if you're 7 to 70 you know whatever it's a four quadrant comedic hit it's a four quadrant comedic well it's a four quadrant well it's it's something yeah maybe not comedic so yeah it's it's a weird one i enjoyed it i really enjoyed the border terrier arrival um you do like a border terrier yeah i love this area yeah it isn't funny i mean does it matter i don't know it's funny you mentioned ben elton because uh i think this kind of is the crux of my issue with this show and my issue with mr bean mr bean i found not just unfunny but archly anti-funny um i really didn't enjoy that at all but i don't enjoy rowan atkinson playing stupid i think he plays clever a lot better than he plays stupid and it's like nowhere is that better sort of you know emblematic than the transition between black adder the black adder which richard curtis row and then black out of the second where ben elton came in and when they turn him from this sort of bumbling naive fool from the first series of black adder to this kind of arch sarcastic super smug anti-hero like he just absolutely sort of flies when he does it Because no one does smug and supercilious as well as Rowan Atkinson.

8:20Boyd Hilton:And to this day, I don't think anyone has ever done it as well as he does. I think you're doing yourself down there, James. Thank you. I appreciate that. I do model myself on Blackadder. But it's just, he's genius. And so I always felt like every time he went back to playing the buffoon character, I was just like, yes, he does have a very expressive face. Without a doubt, the rubber face thing has stuck. I think Baldrick accuses him of that in Blackadder III. but um but it's just not as good as when he played blackadder and like so johnny english is an interesting one because he straddles the divide like there's a little bit of blackadder and a little bit mr bean in there because he's a buffoon but he's also quite you know smug and sort of thinks he's very suave and stuff uh and so johnny english i had some time for but i think whenever i see him in something like this i feel the waste of it like i feel the ache of it i'm like he is so much better than this and so it just makes me a bit sad and randomly off the back of this i watched the i don't know if you ever saw the i think it's called um uh i can't blackadder rides again or something like that it's the documentary about how they made it and they talk about blackadder and obviously the final episode of blackadder goes forth which is one of the greatest tv episodes and greatest endings ever made um it's genius watching how they put that together where because they film them going over the top and they film them running towards the barbed wire and then they film them more having elaborate death scenes in front of german machine guns and then when they got into the edit they were like this doesn't work at all this is terrible and uh and they were like well we don't have enough footage to do anything better with it and they played with all these things and it's just an incredible story of how they snatched victory from the jaws of defeat because first of all they slowed down the over-the-top charge and then they slowed down the audio as well and then they realized that the flashbang going off which at full speed was nothing it gave this sort of whiteout effect and then you have the you know all of that sort of like debris flying over over blackadder and then apparently and i think it was the intern or something said at the end we should have poppies and they went to the picture archive got a picture of poppies and did that slow dissolve from them in slow motion to the poppy field and the bird song that they added over it and they have that really slow piano version of the blackadder theme and it's moving and it's touching and it's tragic and it's this perfect ending and it could have been an absolute disaster but anyway I only mention that because I watch that as well and it's much better than this so go back and watch Blackadder would be my advice it's a very different proposition though isn't it it is yes and look Mr Bean was a massive hit right it was hugely popular I just detested it and didn't find it at all funny but I'm sure many many people enjoyed it no I agree he is a comedy genius and there is something a bit I know what you mean yeah there's something a bit I also found a little bit every now and then And him dealing with this little baby gave me the ick a bit.

11:02Boyd Hilton:It was like, I don't know, the baby in danger, baby in peril elements. So there's one bit where the baby's walking up the, kind of clambering up the, crawling up the stairs, the big huge story, while Rowan Atkinson's character is back on the ground floor dealing with something else. And you're like, I don't know if I really want to. It's almost like a horror film. It's quite stressful. It's quite stressful, yeah. so yeah I don't know there's something different about the baby is very cute and everything but there's something different about him trying to look after a baby of just forgetting about the baby long interludes as opposed to dealing with a B in the first series Man vs Baby then, Netflix today dropping in full should you wish to partake Blackadder, probably available on iPlayer shall we do the post bag Ladies and gentlemen, it's Miss Kaye versus the Postbag.

12:10Okay, we're going to start with a message from Daphne, who says, James versus Taylor Swift, question mark. Hi, Pilot TV crew. I can't help but notice that James has yet to give his actual opinion on Taylor Swift's most recent album, The Life of a Showgirl. It has had very mixed reviews, and I consider it a step down from her in terms of writing. After the heights of folklore, it does take a bit of readjusting to listen to songs like Wood and Wishlist. How would James rate the recent Swift album? And furthermore, what is his fave album from her? This is my Christmas gift to you, James, reading this out.

12:44Boyd Hilton:I was about to say, this is the anti-gift to everyone listening. I think the Venn diagram of people who want to hear me talking about Taylor Swift and want to listen to this podcast, the overlap is probably quite small. It's never stopped you before. No, no, that is actually true. It has never stopped me before, but I'll keep it very brief. I like it, but I don't love it. It is definitely not among my favourite of her albums, but I generally like a lot of the songs. They've grown on me over time. Wood, I don't like, because it's not just that it's a song about Travis Kelce's dick, which is literally what the song is, and it's a little bit Sabrina Carpenter, a little bit Purell, but I also just don't love it.

13:15Boyd Hilton:It's just that's not a song I like. but all the others I get on with quite well but my favourite album is Folklore there we go that's all I'm going to say for the sake of those of you who do not want to hear me talk about it a little bit Sabrina Carpenter a little bit what did you say it's a little bit puerile a puerile because she's literally singing about her boyfriend's penis that's the song I thought it was another act a little bit Sabrina Carpenter a little bit puerile a little bit puerile you know puerile I've seen puerile unplugged yeah although just you know to follow up on this I will say like James vs.

13:42Boyd Hilton:Taylor Swift is 100 % the series that Netflix should have commissioned instead of man versus baby god can you imagine oh no and then you'd make us review it as well and it would just be like a hideous yeah me trying to look after Taylor Swift while random things and tragedies happen around us no I think it'd be more than you trying to find her in some weird scenario where you're stalking her well it's just it could just be you trying to get a shot of her you know a stealth shot of her as you actually did that's true when she came to the office yeah stealth shot makes it sound like I was hiding in a bush I wasn't He was lurking.

14:17He was like a lurker.

14:18Boyd Hilton:It was almost hiding in a bush. Okay, now for Sarah, who's got in touch, about Poirot, the greatest email ever sent. And she says, Hi, Kay Jameson Boyd. Having read a fair number of Agatha Christie novels, I would like to, and let me emphasise this, 100 % back Kay in saying Poirot wouldn't run. He sits in a room and uses his little grey cells while Hastings, other assistants are available, run around gathering all the clues for him. and that's why David Suchet is the best Poirot but will accept an argument for Peter Ustinov many thanks Sarah brackets K there are a lot of there are a lot of Poirot films on over Christmas I noticed so I think I think Channel 4 is showing all of the Ken Branagh ones that you obviously have issues with and BBC I think is showing most of the Peter Ustinov ones which you may prefer you know Evil Under the Sun Death on the Nile Oh, I do like Evil Under the Sun.

15:13Boyd Hilton:Yeah, Evil Under the Sun is really good fun. It's really camp, Evil Under the Sun. Yeah. So, yeah, you won't be wanting for Poirot-based films over the festive period. How wonderful. Or I could crack open the DVD box that you gave me. Very kindly for my birthday. Well, indeed, yeah. Right. One from Amar who says, Hey, gang, after the talk of Westerns this week on the pod, I have to recommend Godless on Netflix. It's a seven-part miniseries that came out in 2017, just to know listeners Boyd is nodding I discovered it last year and I thought it was great it's a revenge story based in a New Mexico mining town that's population is mainly women it's got Jeff Daniels Jack O 'Connell Merit Weaver but the two standouts are Michelle Dockery as Widow Alice and Thomas Brody Sangster as the scene-stealing deputy sheriff Whitney Wynn or Whitey Wynn I'm just re-nating Whitney Whitney Houston sorry anyway sorry it feels like one of those shows that would be talked about more if it was on HBO or came out a couple of years later an excellent show yeah it was very good I thought I mentioned it when we reviewed the what's it called The Abandons I thought I mentioned it as in previous Netflix westerns but it was really good but it was only a one season wonder because hardly anyone watched it basically unfortunately but incredible cast and yeah it was a really good series It's a really, really good.

16:42Boyd Hilton:It's because the town is La Belle, isn't it? The town is, I think most of the men have died in a mining accident. So it's almost all women in the town. And it's written by Scott Frank, who did like Out of Sight and Logan and stuff. Yeah, it's a really, really good series. So yes, highly recommended. Stuart agrees with us about me, myself and I. So he says, yes to the infuriating use of yourself and myself. It's rampant in work situations too. So many emails asking people to reply to myself. Oh no, really? That's awful. Grammatically, this is incorrect use of the reflexive pronoun where the end of the sentence, myself, yourself, should always refer back to the beginning of the sentence, i.e.

17:16I did it myself, rather than the mad replacing of you and me with yourself and myself, just because people presumably think it makes them sound more intelligent due to using a longer word. It's also really common amongst footballers, I find. A similar example of people thinking they're sounding more intelligent is when they say I instead of me, e.g. please send in emails to Boyd and I. yeah these things may drive me mad this is myself sending this email to yourselves Stuart

17:43Boyd Hilton:please send your emails to myself and myself yeah no brilliant that's a brilliant email message yeah thank you for agreeing Stuart I think Claudia at the beginning of each series of the traitors and by the way traitor screening coming soon should say it's against the rules for them to say I pick yourself in the round tables yeah They just have to say, I picked you. I know, it's mad. And I do agree with Stuart. I think it is people think they sound more intelligent. In fact, it's the opposite effect. Yeah, yeah. Now for Andy, he says, Hello, everyone. Greetings from the Isle of Man. I hope you're all well.

18:19I'm a huge fan of the podcast and a Pilot Plus subscriber. Dare I say it's better than Empire because it is. Wow.

18:28Boyd Hilton:You may dare. Yeah. I went there. Thank you for the great discussions. I can listen to you talk about random thoughts for hours. I was eagerly listening to what constitutes a deliberately paced show compared to what is considered slow pace and I have a theory. My theory is that the difference is defined in hindsight. It's all about the payoff, whether at the scene level or the culmination of significant plot events. Vince Gilligan's work is considered deliberate, to which I agree, because he has trusted the audience and earned our trust in return with a payoff, be it the end of a scene involving ants and ice cream or the culmination of Jeremy's plot with his brother in court.

19:04Where there isn't the payoff, it doesn't have to be immediate, there isn't the trust in the craft that there is purpose behind slowness, even if that purpose is to build atmosphere and the wonder of minutiae. I think where shows are often slow, they don't have the bankable trust either of or in their audience to create the momentum that leads to enjoying it all in retrospect, sort of like a magician's act. However, where Vince Gilligan starts a scene with a somewhat unknown and often mundane situation, we viewers sit in anticipation of the reveal of what this is and how it might enhance the scene or progress the plot from a trusted television maker.

19:40Anyway, just a thought. Keep up the amazing work. Thank you always, Andy. P.S. K. I want to add that I also love a human name for a dog. One of my dogs, a pure white Labrador, is called Trevor. Oh my God, that's a brilliant name. Trevor.

19:55Boyd Hilton:That's a good one. Trevor. That's excellent. Yeah, I agree about that. Yeah, it's about the context, isn't it, for the slow burn storytelling. Yeah, Vince Gilligan loves, like, plunging you into something that you don't really know why you're watching it or why he's filming it or why he's dramatising it. And then at some point, you'll kind of become clear. And I think that is, you trust him because we know it. Yeah, he's been doing it for so long in lots of different shows that you kind of go along with it completely, yeah. It's also slightly hypnotic, the way he does it. There's something about the way it's shot and the way the sound is designed and all of it, like, it draws you in.

20:33Boyd Hilton:It's got kind of an ASMR quality sometimes. Whereas I know other people have tried to do that. And I think, you know, like, I mean, we talk a lot about the deliberate pacing of some shows and some shows are just slow, partly because they're dragging a story out over more hours than it technically needs to be. because there's much story in the first place. Sometimes, I guess, maybe they're just sort of aping that style. But he does it exceptionally well. It's down to the quality of the character work and the story, and it does draw you in. But yeah, it's a risky proposition. It is a risky proposition, that kind of storytelling, because it can go horribly wrong.

21:05Boyd Hilton:And look, it took me a while to get into it with Better Call Saul and even the first series of Breaking Bad. I was like, this is not going anywhere anytime soon, is it? It's not the quickest. But by the time you get into it, like you can't imagine it any other way now for an idea and it comes from jonathan and it's specific to james actually oh god don't worry dear boy james and k first of all thanks for your excellent work which i've been enjoying immensely since the podcast launch you guys are the best thanks jonathan you're the best apologies for a bit of a setup but in the recent pilot plus there was a very brief diversion into video games and on the empire podcast hints of dungeons and Dragon sessions within the team.

21:45I love the pilot podcast and would not wish to see it change, but ever since James's interview with Henry Cavill back in 2021, I've had an idea in the back of my head which I wanted to give voice to. In the Henry Cavill interview, they delved into the fantasy book genre, which for me reawakened an interest I had neglected for decades. A few years later, and I have since devoured Brandon Sanderson, Ray Feist, and the Warhammer books based just on that short chat. Well done, James. For whatever reason, it seems quite hard to find this type of content unless you are already deeply invested in something.

22:19Therefore, since I found it so useful, I wondered if there might be room for a quarterly pilot slash empire nerdsplainer podcast or segment which dives into the latest video games, tabletop games and fancy novel trends. Perhaps with Kay and Boyd, Jonathan, wash your mouth out, asking reasonable questions about the finer points of Elden Ring or Joe Abercrombie. Kay would love that.

22:41Boyd Hilton:Love it. Jonathan, why do you hate me? And witnessing the horrifying levels of detail it is possible to absorb on these subjects, but also allowing James to get it out of its system. Mindful that this might lead to the teetering Jenga tower of your tireless podcasting commitments collapsing, but always keen to hear your thoughts on a wider range of subjects. All the best, and thanks again for many hours of entertainment each week, Jonathan. Oh, God. yeah helen would uh helen and i have talked about doing a kind of a fantasy books podcast it's slightly undone by the fact that i read incredibly slowly like she reads and an incredible yeah oh yeah i read really slow she reads at such a clip like she can get through an entire like 600 page novel in a day like it's ridiculous have you ever seen my stepmother is an alien where she just lays her arm in a book and absorbs it by our osmosis that's basically how helen reads whereas i have to do all the voices in my head it has to be very it's like a big audio production it's like a fucking podcast when i do it like an audiobook so it takes ages for me to get through down as a slow reader yes very slow but also i'm slow for two reasons one i am slow to read generally uh because i need to sub vocalize as i'm doing it but also um because of the amount of stuff that we have to watch for the various podcasts all of my commute time is spent watching things so i don't get that time to read so i have to carve out other times to read things and i end up actually listening to a lot of audiobooks because i can do it while i'm doing other things um so yeah i wish i had more time to read and then we would probably do a fancy podcast maybe we'll um maybe me and helen would be like exactly said like a quarterly or an annual one by the time i've got round to finishing a book uh we'll we'll do it then i will uh i will when we do our review of the year either on empire or pilot i will definitely uh go through the games i've played most this year oh good because i thought you'd enjoy that i'll do it briefly um i'm waiting for my playstation rats to come up although i know what it'll say um i might just go through my favourite films of the year then.

24:31Boyd Hilton:I mean, that'd be just as relevant. Or football matches, you know, whatever you like, boy. Football matches, yeah. By the way, I've got a whole rant about the Empire's treatment of the Quentin Tarantino, 20 best of the millennium lists. Oh, have you now? Well, get onto that. Before you give me that, and I want to hear that, but before we do, I would say to our reader who was looking for a reader, I mean, that's really how you shouldn't, you shouldn't consume podcasts by reading them. If you do, then you're doing it wrong. But if you want something to read over Christmas, may I suggest Empire of the Vampire by Jay Kristoff.

24:58Boyd Hilton:The trilogy has just ended. the final part, Empire of the Dawn, just came out. And it is one of the best fantasy series I've read in a very long time. It's very, very good, even though it has a slightly pulpy title. Can't recommend that enough. That is Empire of the Vampire by Jay Kristoff. What vampire? Empire of the Vampire. Empire of the Vampire. Okay. Yes. Boydie, what was your issue with our treatment of the Quentin Tarantino films list? My issue is you hadn't, none of you had really fully digested the context of it. So... Okay, give me context. Yeah, you're all like speculating like, oh, you know, it was all like...

25:28Boyd Hilton:Sneary, you can say it. Yeah, no, no, no. But it is a really weird list, right? Any list that has Black Hawk Downs, the best film. The film. His favourite film of the Millet. So first of all, it was his favourite film. So the whole context was, he was saying that it's not best. He's not, you know, he didn't research it. He didn't sit down and write lists. It's literally his favourite films off the top of his head. And that was the whole point of it. Right. And you guys almost took the piss by saying, oh, it's almost like he came up with it off the top of his head. Well, he did. That's his whole point of it.

25:58Boyd Hilton:so he so part he actually said part of the reason why films by his friends like go right you know is in there is because they would be the forefront of his mind because you know yeah he is of course his bias still was made by his friends so he kind of dealt with all of these criticisms you know people wondering why the hell he was being so in a way contrary a lot of the entries he was like well he doesn't give a shit what other people think of these these are just the films that came to his mind at that moment as his favorite films of the millennium. And he said, if you did it tomorrow or next week, they'll be different, you know.

26:31Boyd Hilton:So it was just the context that no one had really got hold of. And the only reason I know the context is because it was on the British Sinners podcast, which as listeners to this podcast will know I am a religious listener of. So I knew what the whole background of it was. And the final thing to say about it was it was on a whim. He was supposed to go on the podcast, and they were going to talk about their favourite films of the year or, you know, something like that. And on a whim, Tarantino said, I don't know, why don't we just do my favourite films of the millennium? And that's how it all started.

27:01Boyd Hilton:Well, if you remind me, when we do this week's Empire podcast, I will read out your objection and your context for it. And I will correct the record, Boydie. Thank you very much. So what we've essentially done here, this is like the MCU. We've created a crossover event that spans both podcasts. Yeah, exactly. This is extraordinary. Yeah, it's exciting. The pilot Empire cinematic universe. 100%. Okay, so I know that you're going to go on to the Stranger Things chat, so I'm going to end with a Stranger Things correspondent, who is called Paul Barrow. And he says, Hey, everyone. I'm sure someone has probably mentioned this before, but as I surf from service to service, I think the Stranger Things release schedule was likely designed to prevent anyone from subscribing for just one month and fitting it all in.

27:42Boyd Hilton:Yes. Got to get that extra month fee if you want to buy Warner Brothers. Love the pod. And as a message just a void, up the villa. oh dear yeah oh dear indeed yeah i mean it's about it's all about retention isn't it it's to prevent churn because if you drop them all in november then no one is then everyone can just cancel uh whereas if it's in november and december and then crucially the last one is in january you've got three months out of people so and then maybe they'll stick so yes there's an element of eventizing i think kind of making a cultural milestone but yes there's also a rather more cynical capitalist agenda at work there 100 i agree in entirely the reference there to the hbo max netflix thing is obviously that's a big thing which we'll cover i guess on the main podcast when we talk about it uh i don't know quite well quite what the ramifications of that will be but it's um it's a hell of a thing well it's not just it's one of brothers discoveries the whole yes it is yes it is not just hbo max the reason i said hbo max is because i went to the hbo max thing last week so i've got it on the brain yeah um but uh yes it is of course one of the discoveries not just hbm max they didn't just say yeah do you know in that streaming service you know what we need as netflix what we really need we need a streaming service if you've got one can we buy a streaming service uh yeah no not just that i mean obviously it hasn't gone through yet and it may yet fall through although if it does it will cost netflix an awful lot of money but uh yeah they sent an email out didn't to netflix don't worry about it it's all going to be fine and i haven't even bloody it hasn't even been a weird email wasn't it all subscribers to Netflix got.

29:13Boyd Hilton:Hey, by the way, we're thinking of buying Warner Brothers Discovery. Yeah. But that hasn't even been, you know, it's going through major investigation by, you know. I think they've got to the point where they have bought essentially the right to exclusive talks. So they are now the exclusive partner and whether or not it goes through. But isn't there there's a several billion penalty if they pull out, I believe, at this point as well. So it's, you know. I might charge you guys to have exclusive talks with me every week. That seems perfectly reasonable, Kate, yes. Or just generally in between the parts as well if you want to talk to me.

29:42you have to subscribe

29:46Boyd Hilton:just to speak to Kay alright well that was this week's postbag if you'd like to send in your message do send them to pilottv at empiremagazine.com and don't forget if you want to submit your question for the review of the year podcast do the same but use the subject line ROTY now it is time for the much promised, threatened, whichever you like spoiler chat about Stranger Things season 5 this is the episodes we've seen which are the exact episodes you've seen, we've only seen the first four we have not seen the rest yet so fear not we couldn't spoil those if we wanted to but we are going to chat a little bit about these uh and kay will use this opportunity to catch up on her emails so uh let's have the spoiler klaxon

30:25Boyd Hilton:okay stranger things boydy yes you determined as you were to try and spoil it on the regular podcast we've corralled it into this one instead so what did you want to say it's unbelievable what I wanted to say was I enjoyed the way so I enjoyed the way the Duffer Brothers had kind of corralled all the main characters and all of the issues and situations into these four episodes and it just kind of reminded you that it's about the show is about because all of these people are all in their own way coming together and trying to deal with feckner the monster of the upside down and also um protect themselves and each other and their friends so it just kind of thematically it i think it underlined that this show is all about um how that people will go to the ends of the earth to look after their friends basically and there was a lot of all the different all the different kind of weird and kooky things like some of them were in the radio station some of them were in the van with the thing on top of the van to enable them to communicate with each other others were going into the upside down others were dealing with the um kind of government facility um and all of the implications of that but it was all essentially everything that everyone was doing all of these different characters were doing was all about trying to look after each other and trying to um protect one another and i thought that was really well done and it all built up to this extraordinary climax in the fourth of the new episodes when there was the reveal about eight being in this, being like a subject of their experiments behind this closed door.

32:08Boyd Hilton:It was a literal closed door mystery. And that was quite interesting because I was like, who's that? And I didn't immediately go, oh yeah, I understand what's happening here. I had to kind of, you know, look it up and like, oh yeah, that's that. And then when this huge battle takes place, I thought that was really thrilling and well done. And the fact that Will is at the centre of things and Will kind of taking control and doing stuff, kind of coming to terms with his powers, if you like, was really interesting. And the whole issue of his sexuality was very carefully and subtly dealt with, I think, in his conversations with Maya Hawke's character, Robin.