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  Disney can’t do much without being pilloried for it, and ideally a film like this would sustain cinemas, and although the big screen experience is joyful I wouldn’t want to risk it even if I could. So in one sense, and especially now, it’s okay that decent new films are going straight to streaming. This movie is a Christmas movie about modern times: it’s a classic fish-out-of-water comedy about a member of the Kringle family who has to go on a quest to get Santa back… And Anna Kendrick sells the idea of Noelle Kringle with everything she has. As a female member of the Kringle line she can never be Santa, but she has a full-time job in the family trade—and she majored in calligraphy and ribbon-making. She wears nutmeg deodorant. It’s that kind of funny. Nick, her brother with the name that’s right on the (red) nose. Said brother is having problems dealing with the weight of expectations: he messes up some elementary Santa stuff and decides to run away. Noelle, and for some rea...

In 1978, when Star Wars was new, George Lucas let some TV people have a go at a single TV episode which was aired once and went on to become notorious as a particularly awful example of TV entertainment, and terrible Star Wars. And now, because of people who recorded and kept it, and transferred it, it can be seen on YouTube. Harrison Ford, Mark Hamill and Carrie Fisher look out of place in a story that is: after the events of Star Wars, Han Solo is taking Chewbacca back to his homeward of Kashyyk, but he gets waylaid by the Empire. The bad guys also send an Allo Allo style baddie to the the Wookiee’s settlement, searching for any rebel activity. Yes, it's Mark Hamill The story has weird sequences including Broadway legend Bea Arthur singing and starring as a bar keeper at the Mos Eisley cantina. And she has to pour a drink into the top of an alien man’s head after going through some weird talk about how lovelorn this alien man is. And he does look human in all ways other than...

  “The Balmoral Test” is the meeting between Prime Ministers and the Royal Family. Margaret Thatcher’s stay in Balmoral is dominated initially by the hunting of a Stag which has been wounded on a neighbouring estate and stumbled onto Balmoral. So the rules of whatever dictate that it must be pursued only by the Royal Family. At the same time Lady Diana Spencer is in Charles’ life, he having met her in episode one as he romances her older sister Sarah. The Thatchers don’t really fit in with rural life or Royal Life. In stalking the Stag, Thatcher joins the Queen but her footwear is as unsuitable as her blue outfit, and she retires to be schooled by Princess Margaret, who is the one that doesn’t mince words. The whole gathering does come together to play a ridiculous parlour game, and it’s here where Thatcher seems most out of place.  This sense of being out of place goes to The Crown’s take on Thatcher: She considers the extended ‘break’ to be a waste of time which could be ...

Well it used to be that the big Sunday Night dramas happened weekly on BBC1. These days, though, an entire series drops at once and “everyone” binge-watches it, picking it apart on Twitter. The Crown has meticulously gone through the Queen’s monarchy from the beginning with Churchill, and we have now reached living memory with Olivia Coleman in the title role and Margaret Thatcher played by Gillian Anderson. The Crown is a lavish visual drama with attention to period detail that seems authentic even though it can’t always be. A close up of a Bakelite phone, albeit a posh model from Buckingham Palace, takes its place with some interesting performances by actors who are inhabiting characters that we think we know. This series opens with the spectre of Irish Republican terrorism as The Conservatives win the 1977 election and Mrs Thatcher goes to the Palace. The Queen and Prince Philip have already gossiped about the notion of a female Prime Minister, and then they meet! But there’s not...