Tagged “tv”

That was a productive and fun weekend.

On Friday, Clair was meeting her mum and cousin in town so this was my quiet night in. I settled down to watch episode 4 of the The Penguin and ordered fish tikka from Kebabish – banging).

I started Saturday with a short Rudy-walk then it was off to Pete’s for some table-tennis practice. I’ve been playing crap recently and wanted to fix things. Pete was as generous as ever with his tips, and his advice on “the triangle” and "dialling up/down power" was really effective! By the end I was playing both forehand and backhand much better. After this I drove out to Kirky and collected my brother Martin to go for a chat over lunch at Nonna’s Kitchen. On the way home we popped into my niece Chloe’s new house and I enjoyed chasing wee Leo around his garden. At night Clair and I stayed in and watched Where the Crawdads Sing which was enjoyable enough.

On Sunday I had a really lovely autumnal walk around Pollokshields with Rudy and bumped into Mark M, then Dawn A, in the hood. In the evening I caught up with Mick M and, after a beer at Shilling and food at Rosa’s Thai we went to see Skinshape performing at Room Two. The music was great and the bassist was particularly impressive. I just think Will could do with belting the vocals out a tad louder. My favourite moment was hearing The Longest Shadow live.

This was a great watch. Big Zuu (Zubair Hassan) approached his pilgrimage with good humour, curiosity and genenrosity. And I learned lots from it about Islam in general and muslim men and their friendships in particular.

Chef and rapper Big Zuu makes a pilgrimage to Mecca on a personal spiritual journey to try and understand more about his faith and what it means to be 'a good Muslim'.

I really liked some of the contradictory things Big Zuu tried to reconcile. For example could he be a good mulsim but also enjoy some western ways such as alcohol? How would he feel being in Saudi Arabia (Jeddah and Mecca) in light of negative way the region is stereotyped? And is the fee of nearly £8000 paid to the Saudi government the best place to use his money?

In the end there’s a nice theme where Zuu say he’s not perfect nor will he become so… but that understanding his faith is part of striving to become the best version of himself.

This is the best TV I’ve watched in a while, and Clair and I eagerly binged it in two days. I loved how it looked, the atmospheric music, the characters, the acting and the issues. I’ll now need to watch the other two Mystery Road series.

Panorama tells the inside story of the development of the Oxford vaccine against Covid-19. For the past 11 months, the BBC's medical editor Fergus Walsh followed the team at Oxford University and AstraZeneca, as they designed, developed, manufactured and trialled the vaccine.

In the middle of a pretty depressing period, this is fantastic TV about an inspirational scientific effort.

UK rap legend Rodney P reveals how the first generation of British-born black kids was inspired by the avant-garde musical fusions of black America in the 70s to lay the foundations of modern-day multiculturalism by creating the first black British music culture with the jazz-funk movement.

A brilliant documentary featuring great music from Pharoah Sanders, War, Hi-Tension, Ronnie Laws and more.