Hopefully by now you’ve seen the news that Anglonerd has transitioned from acrossthepondtv.wordpress to anglonerd.wordpress at the top of 2017. If you were subscribed by email or with your WordPress account, please re-subscribe to the new site. Don’t forget, you can always visit our home page, too. You’ll see that Anglonerd has a whole new,…
Documentary / Idiot Abroad / Reality TV / travel / TV Review
The Moaning of Life is a comedy travel TV show presented by Karl Pilkington. It has run 2 seasons. It’s on DVD region 2/PAL. Season 2 of The Moaning of Life has been Karl Pilkington’s best travel adventures yet. We witness the breathtaking murmuration of starlings in England, a group of people that communicate just by whistles…
What is the official protocol for being contacted by aliens? Why do birds’ brains shrink after sex? What’s happening to all the bananas? These questions are tackled in the 14th season of the popular science radio panel show The Infinite Monkey Cage, hosted by comedian Robin Ince and Professor Brian Cox. This season whooshes us away…
I’ve never laughed as hard in a cinema as I did while watching Michael Winterbottom’s The Trip (2010). This film, also available as a six-part TV show, places real life actors Steve Coogan and Rob Brydon on a gastro-adventure across mild English countrysides. Employed as food connoisseurs for a newspaper, they dine on all the very best foods,…
The Theory of Everything (2014) is a tug-of-war between being a film about Stephen Hawking’s (Eddie Redmayne) medical spiral downward with simultaneous scientific discoveries and a film about (MILD SPOILERS) how his wife Jane (Felicity Jones) met her new husband Jonathan (Charlie Cox). And why shouldn’t it be? It’s advertised as a Hawking bio-pic, but if…
In 1954, a radio engineer named Albert Piteux (which appropriately translates to Albert Pitiful in French) used sound effects to pretend he was reporting live from the Battle of Dien Bien Phu, even though he was safe in his hotel room in Hanoi–on the complete opposite side of Vietnam. This event inspired the 2009 comical…
Maximum Nonsense is a recent Go Faster Stripe standup DVD by Canadian comedian Tony Law. You can buy the DVD–which comes with 10 minutes of extras and is region zero–or as a straight download for those of you who no longer have DVD players. “Law is enjoying himself hugely–and the feeling is contagious.” –The Guardian…
If you’re even half as much a Robin Ince fan as Anglonerd magazine is, you’ll appreciate that Go Faster Stripe has released a mammoth sendoff to Ince’s standup career: a two-disc DVD set containing hours and hours of recent standup material from Ince, including a recording of Ince’s last big standup show before he retired. Robin…
CHASING SHADOWS (2014) IS A MINI SERIES COP DRAMA STARRING REECE SHEARSMITH, ALEX KINGSTON, AND NOEL CLARKE. EACH OF THE TWO EPISODES IS AN HOUR AND A HALF (SHOWN IN TWO 45-MINUTE HALVES), TOTALING THREE HOURS. YOU CAN GET IT ON ACORN.TV OR AMAZON ON-DEMAND. Alex Kingston is back with the shadows, but this time instead…
Detectorists (2014-2015) is a TV show directed by, written by, and starring Mackenzie Crook, who you’ll recognize from The Office and Pirates of the Caribbean. It has so far run two seasons, totaling 13 episodes. Season 1 is currently on Hulu and Netflix. Both seasons are on DVD (region 1 and region 2), Acorn.TV, and Amazon Instant. Andy and Lance…
The Cottage has all of the ingredients that make up a classic horror film without any mucking around with unique plot devices or character depth. A thug who believes he’s the only competent person in the story. His scaredy cat brother, unwillingly thrust into criminal life. A martial artist stripper. Asian spies. A farmer with a…
Exile is a 2011 two-part television drama by Paul Abbott and Danny Brocklehurst. You know you’re in for a treat when you learn that you’ve got John Simm and Olivia Colman playing siblings with Jim Broadbent playing their father. Simm, who would win a BAFTA for his role in Exile, had just come off filming Mad Dogs, which…
Richard MacDuff is having one of those days. His couch is stuck in the stairwell, there’s a horse in the bathroom, and his old school pal Svlad Cjelli has invited himself back into Richard’s life on some kind of interconnected detective case. Penned by The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy author Douglas Adams, Dirk Gently’s Holistic Detective Agency is…
If you’re looking for a standup set about science, you’re better off with Robin Ince’s Happiness Through Science DVD than Ricky Gervais’ Science DVD because, as Gervais points out, Science is more “an investigation into the rational and non-rational” than it is cracks at Medel and his peas. However, if you’re in on Gervais’ irony…
Inside No. 9 is a comedy-horror TV show written and starring Steve Pemberton and Reece Shearsmith. With 6 episodes per season, it is currently on season 3. Season 1 is available on Amazon streaming. If you like scary movies, this is a good TV show for you. Every episode is self contained with separate stories…
Black Mirror is Charlie Brooker’s science fiction television series. Each season is three episodes long. Each episode is 45 minutes long. There is a new season every one or two years since 2011. Black Mirror is The Twilight Zone meets Person of Interest. Each episode is its own story with its own characters, like the Twilight Zone, and has some sort…
Trigger Warning is a collection of short stories by Neil Gaiman. Most interesting about the breadth of this volume is the variety of narrators, many of whom are unreliable or not making clear their identity up front: the points of view of an imaginary friend, a genie in a bottle, a killer, or a living statue.…
Do you remember a time when you were young and the world of science seemed so exciting? What do you mean over a million Earths could fit inside our sun?! What do you mean some apples have first AND last names?! And then when science in school got a bit harder, you went off science for a…
Imagine that you just moved from a rinky-dink village called Toaster to the big, bustling metropolis of London where the world is opening up to you, throwing offers of adventure at your feet. Just when you think London is more excitement than you could have ever hoped for, you discover that there is a second…
The students are making drugs in the chem lab, the science teacher has his trousers around his ankles again, someone’s slipped the drama teacher some speed, and MI5 is investigating a possible bomber. Just another day in the double award science department at Forrester College where high school kids are enrolled in a pre-University program…
Professor Brian Cox and comedian Robin Ince, who are both enjoying an alternate reality as puppets over on the children’s web-tv program The Quest for Wonder, welcome another bag of good gets in their comical science panel show on BBC Radio 4. If you’re unfamiliar with The Infinite Monkey Cage, it’s a radio show of comedians and…
Last year for Roald Dahl’s brithday (September 13), Penguin Random House posted ways to celebrate the children’s author’s birthday. PRH Audio Group has produced a collection of Dahl’s books read by famous British actors, and one of the ways you can celebrate (again tomorrow) is to listen to the free sampler of the Roald Dahl…
Beware, here be spoilers. Sherlock: The Abominable Bride has everything a Sherlock fan could possibly ask for. Moffat and Gatiss have really outdone themselves this time. It’s like they caved and said, “All right, give them everything they want. It is Christmas, after all.” It has Victorian garb and dialect (“the game is afoot”) for…
What is it? An Idiot Abroad (2010-2013) is Ricky Gervais and Stephen Merchant’s TV show starring their friend and former radio producer Karl Pilkington. Pilkington is not an actor or comedian but is nevertheless found (somewhat unwillingly) hosting a travel show. The series thrives on Pilkington’s unintentionally hilarious and unique outlook on life. The show ran three…
Will Proudfoot (Bill Milner) is a good little boy with a religious mother (Jessica Hynes) who isn’t even allowed to watch television and movies. What a perfect hobby for him, then, to be an amateur filmmaker. With the help of Lee (Will Poulter–the River Phoenix to Milner’s Wil Wheaton), the naughtiest kid at school, Will…
Michael (Bill Milner), his father (John Simm), and his pregnant mother (Kelly Macdonald) have just moved into a new home, making way for Michael’s forthcoming baby sister. While his family struggles with a premature birth, his father’s drunkenness, and his baby sister’s heart condition, Michael befriends the homeless man (played by Tim Roth) who, unbeknownst…
In the film adaptation of J. G. Ballard’s novel High-Rise, Anthony Royal (Jeremy Irons) has built what he believes will be the perfect residence: a high-rise apartment building that contains both affordable housing for the poor and luxury suites for the rich. It is so perfect that–with in-building super markets and swimming pools–one never needs to…
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