This week on Geektown Radio, Dave is joined by Matt for an episode that bounces between Kenyan romance, ambitious sci-fi, gritty crime drama and a very large amount of time disappearing into space. The main headline talking points this week are ‘Boda Love’, ‘Project Hail Mary’, the return of ‘Criminal Record‘ for a second season, and Dave once again getting pulled back into ‘Starfield’ like Bethesda personally knows how his brain works.
Matt kicks things off with ‘Boda Love’, a Kenyan romcom that turns out to be a surprisingly lovely watch. The film follows a British woman who travels to Kenya after falling for someone online, only for that plan to go rather sideways and send her into a very different corner of family life than she expected. Officially billed as a kind of Nairobi spin on ‘Notting Hill’, it sounds like the film leans into humour, drama and culture clash in a way that really works, and Matt clearly had a great time with it. It also helps that it gave him and Mina a very specific joke to enjoy, given that the setup is essentially the reverse of their own relationship. Which is either very sweet or a dangerous precedent for future movie nights.
He also brings in a social media review for ‘Project Hail Mary’, which sounds like exactly the kind of big, brainy sci-fi swing that can either collapse under its own ambition or absolutely nail it. Thankfully, this one seems to be firmly in the second category. Matt is very high on it, praising how much it manages to do with its long running time, and how well it earns the scale of its ideas. It helps, of course, that Ryan Gosling (Barbie, The Fall Guy) is leading it, and that the people behind the camera include some properly strong sci-fi and genre talent. So yes, this sounds very much like one for people who like their films smart, expansive and just a little bit obsessed with the details.
On the TV side, Matt is also still keeping up with ‘Euphoria‘, which continues to be, by the sound of it, a very intense place to spend time. The current season seems to be pushing its characters even further into adult messiness, bad decisions and situations that are somehow both shocking and completely in keeping with the show. In other words, ‘Euphoria’ remains ‘Euphoria’, just with even more emotional shrapnel flying around.
For Dave, the main TV pick this week is ‘Criminal Record’, which is back for a second season on Apple TV. Once again led by Cush Jumbo (The Good Wife, Stay Close) and Peter Capaldi (Doctor Who, The Thick of It), the series shifts into a new case while keeping the same uneasy tension between its two leads. Dave is still very sold on it, particularly because Capaldi’s character remains just slippery enough to keep everyone guessing about whether he is helping, hiding something, or somehow both at once. It sounds like the sort of drama that is more interested in tension and ambiguity than flashy twists, which is usually a good sign.
The other major time sink this week is ‘Starfield’, which Dave has dived back into thanks to its big Free Lanes update and the steadily growing pile of extra content around it. A lot of that comes not just from official updates, but from the game’s creators and modding tools, which are apparently now stuffed with everything from smart little quest additions to full-blown DLC-sized expansions. The upshot is that ‘Starfield’ now sounds much closer to the game a lot of people hoped it would become, rather than the one that took the initial hit when it launched. So if you wrote it off first time around, Dave is making a decent case for giving it another look.
There is also a quick ‘Geekstorians‘ plug this week, with the latest episode looking at virtual worlds, real-world consequences, and how places like ‘World of Warcraft’, ‘EVE Online’ and ‘Second Life’ ended up mattering far beyond the games themselves. On top of that, there is also a new ‘Geektown Talks To‘ interview in the feed with Joséphine Jobert (Death in Paradise, Saint-Pierre), chatting about her new show ‘Saint-Pierre‘.
In the news section, NBC has handed out a couple of cancellations, with ‘Brilliant Minds’ and ‘Stumble’ both getting the chop, while ‘Law & Order’ and ‘Hunting Party’ remain nervously on the bubble. ‘Son of a Critch’ is ending after its fifth season, ‘The Night Agent’ will wrap with Season 4, and there is even talk that parts of the abandoned ‘Gen V’ Season 3 story could still reappear somewhere else in ‘The Boys’ universe down the line.
On the renewal side, ‘Scrubs’ and ‘Shifting Gears’ are both back at ABC, ‘Stranger Things: Tales From ’85’ has landed a second season, and the BBC has renewed ‘Death in Paradise’ for another two series and Christmas specials, because apparently murder on a sunny island still has plenty of life in it yet.
There are also some fresh air dates to note. ‘Lanterns‘ now has an August launch, ‘Stuart Fails to Save The Universe‘ is arriving in July, and ‘Welcome To Wrexham’ returns later this month. The newly announced lineup for ‘Celebrity Traitors’ also gets a mention, and it is a pretty gloriously strange one, with names including Bella Ramsey (The Last of Us, Game of Thrones), Michael Sheen (Good Omens, Staged), Richard E. Grant (Saltburn, Withnail & I) and Romesh Ranganathan (Avoidance, The Weakest Link). So that feels like it should either be brilliant television or total psychological warfare. Possibly both.
Elsewhere, there is more casting for ITV’s lunar thriller ‘First Woman‘, Netflix has started production on another Harlan Coben adaptation with ‘The Woods‘, and the BAFTA-winning game ‘Atomfall’ is now heading for TV adaptation territory too. Which means, as ever, the entertainment industry remains fully committed to never sitting still for more than about six minutes.
As usual, the episode also rounds up what is coming to screens next week, including ‘Amandaland’ Season 2, ‘Citadel’ Season 2, ‘Matlock’ Season 2 Part 2, ‘Legends’, ‘M.I.A.’, ‘Monsieur Spade’, ‘Believe Me’, ‘Hudson & Rex’ Season 8 and ‘Devil May Cry’ Season 2.
So if you want one podcast episode covering ‘Boda Love’, ‘Project Hail Mary’, ‘Criminal Record’, ‘Starfield’, plus a full stack of TV and film news, Geektown Radio Episode 496 has you covered.
Listen below.
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