jgmcquarrie

Cal Pep, Barcelona

A seafood place in Bareclona – but can it swim against the tide of tourist traps and mediocrity?

What’s The Restaurant? Cal Pep, in Barcelona’s El Born area.

What’s It All About, JG? It’s a seafood restaurant. Remarkable, I hear you cry. But yes, it is indeed remarkable. It’s been in business in the El Born region of Barcelona for over forty years, during which time it’s reputation has grown and grown until it’s reached it’s current level. That level being “extremely high”.

Now let’s be honest, seafood places aren’t exactly something Barcelona is hurting for – there’s about a bajillion of them. But with a city like Barcelona, the key is to get away from all the tourist traps that lurk around La Rambla and similar areas and find something that’s actually able to provide amazing food. It doesn’t necessarily have to be a “for locals only” place or whatever – something too many food writers try to put too much emphasis on in order to come across as “superior” and knowledgeable – it just needs to have good quality food that doesn’t fall into tourist levels of mediocrity.

One Hand Clapping – Paul McCartney and Wings

After 50 years the movie version of One Hand Clapping finally sees a cinematic release. But was it worth the wait?

What’s The Movie? One Hand Clapping

What’s It All About, JG? It’s an in-the-studio recording of one of (many) Wings line-ups, this ~~week~~ time including Geoff Britton on drums and Jimmy McCulloch on guitar, alongside regulars Denny Laine, Paul McCartney, and Linda McCartney. We get to see them messing about in the studio, running through a few tracks, faffing about in the control room and so on. There’s also “The Backyard” tacked on the end, which is literally McCartney sitting in Abbey Road’s backyard with an acoustic guitar, running through a small handful of classic rock and roll numbers. The whole thing is topped and tailed by 2024-vintage McCartney doing a specially-recorded introduction.

Hades

A game that isn’t just more Zelda! But can Hades capture the imagination the same way Hyrule could?

What’s The Game? Hades

What’s It All About, JG? It’s a roguelike dungeon-crawler released in 2020 by Supergiant Games, and if your eyes are glazing over already, wait, come back! You play Zagreus (I’ve heard that name before somewhere), son of Hades, of Greek myth. He’s trying to escape the Underworld, feeling unloved by his father, and to make it to the mortal realm and his mother, Persephone. Alongside the action, the story gradually unfolds, as Zagreus finds out more about his Olympian family, who help him along the way. The Underworld is divided into three distinct regions, each of which will contain a randomly generated series of rooms which Zagreus has to hack and slash his way through to move on to the next level. Each region has an end-of-level boss of increasing difficulty, the defeat of which allows access to the next level. Once all three have been defeated, there’s a final series of quickie rooms, then the Final Big Boss. But who could he possibly be?

Jet Lag: The Game

Can Jet Lag: The Game be a YouTube series that’s worth spending time on? You better believe it!

What’s The Show? A first for this blog – a YouTube series, Jet Lag: The Game

What’s It All About, JG? It’s a travel competition, starring Sam Denby, Adam Chase, and Ben Doyle. Each season of the show centre around a different type of game – Tag, Connect Four, Capture The Flag, that sort of thing. These are played out over different geographical areas, so Connect Four involved capturing four American states in a diagonal or row as per the game, Tag involves trying to tag one of the other players while they each try to make their way to an end point somewhere in Europe. You get the idea. Tag has been done twice, actually – Tag Across Europe – but every other season has been unique in its gameplay. Sometimes the play area is a country, with the most recent series at time of writing playing out across Australia, sometimes it’s the whole planet, as with Race Around The World. Most seasons feature a guest of some description (except for the Tag seasons and Hide and Seek, which just feature the boys), with Ben and Adam comprising one team and Sam and whoever the guest is making up the other. The show is shot on iPhones, giving it an immediate, reportage, feel. In every iteration of the game, though, teams or individuals must complete tasks in order to earn money to allow them to travel. Thus it becomes a strategy of what you can earn and where you can go to secure the ultimate victory.

Star Trek: Discovery – Season 5

Star Trek: Discovey bows out with a fifth, final, season. But can it manage a late-in-the-day turnaround?

What’s the Show? Star Trek: Discovery and it’s fifth and final season.

What’s It All About, JG? Well, it’s a quest, innit? The crew of the Discovery are sent on a “red directive” to investigate a Romulan science vessel from 800 years in the past, where they chance upon two couriers, Moll and L’ak, who find a journal. This relates to the Progenitors tech from the TNG episode “The Chase”. The journal provides clues and whoever can track down all of them gets the technology they used. This is, of course, awesomely powerful. Book gets roped back in because he’s on the show, the Breen get involved as the Big Bad and want to use it as a weapon, and the Federation want it to stop it being misused and also cuz they’re da best. The rest of the season is a runaround to establish who will get all the bits and thus the tech. After a lot of episodes of “find the thing”, Michael Burnham (who else?) manages to secure the tech but decides nobody should have it so casts it away. Then Saru gets married. Then we get a flash-forward to Burnam and Book being married with a son, and Burnam taking the Discovery to a new location and leaving it there for a long time to await a new red directive.

Doctor Who Season 14, Episode 7 – “The Legend of Ruby Sunday” / Episode 8 “Empire of Death”

After a wobbly season, can Russell T Davies manage to at least stick the landing?

What’s The Episode? The two-part season finale The Legend of Ruby Sunday and Empire of Death.

What’s It All About, JG? The Doctor returns to UNIT and meets up with Kate Lethbridge-Stewart (Jenna Redgrave), Mel (Our Bonnie), and assorted other UNIT bods. Kate wants help finding out who the mysterious Susan Triad, head of S Triad Technology, is – someone the Doctor and Ruby have been encountering in various different forms on their travels together. Mel’s undercover and investigating and while she does that, Mrs Flood (Anita Dobson) pops into take over caring for Cherry while Ruby’s Mum Carla (Michelle Greenidge) joins the shenanigans at UNIT. Turns out they have a Time Window, a device that lets them look back in time and they use a VHS of the night of Ruby’s abandonment to try and figure out who her biological Mum is. This overloads the Time Window, taking a UNIT Colonel with it. Susan (Not That One, despite the play) prepares to give a speech to the UN but before she can, a UNIT employee – the perfetctly-dreadfully named Harriet Arbinger – announces that The One Who Waits has in fact stop waiting and it’s Sutekh, who turns up for a nice end-of-episode reveal. Which is nice.

Doctor Who Season 14, Episode 6 – “Rogue”

Time for a historical romp! But can the Doctor’s romance right a struggling season?

What’s The Episode? Rogue

What’s It All About, JG? The Doctor and Ruby travel back to Regency England where they say the word “Bridgerton” a lot, in case the audience don’t get it. There they encounter mysterious bounty-hunter Rogue (Jonathan Groff) who is there to… er, stop the Chulder? They’re shape-shifting aliens who enjoy cosplaying but also suddenly decide they want to destroy the world for a bit of added jeopardy. The Doctor and Rogue have a bit of a romance while Ruby largely gets lost in a typical love-plot of the era. Eventually (very eventually) the Chulda are defeated, the world is saved, Rogue sacrifices himself to save Ruby, and that’s pretty much that.

Doctor Who Season 14, Episode 5 – “Dot And Bubble”

Can the fifth episode of the season manage to land its satire? Is it satire?

What’s the Episode? Dot and Bubble

What’s It All About, JG? Lindy Pepper-Bean, an insufferable rich brat, is a resident of the town (?) of Finetime, a chintzy, dayglo residence where she lives within a literal bubble of social media and friends, projected round her by a floating “dot”. First Ruby, then the Doctor, try to break into her feed because the residents are slowly (very slowly, actually) being eaten by slug-like creatures. Lindy, unable to even walk in a straight line without guidance from her dot, manages to escape her place of work with the Doctor and Ruby’s help and encounters Ricky, a vacuous singer who turns out to actually be fairly smart underneath it all. They’re directed to the basement by the Doctor to try and escape. While trying to open a door to let them out into the Wild Woods beyond, the Doctor realises the dot is responsible for all the deaths and it turns violent and tries to kill Lindy. She sacrifices Ricky so she can escape, then finally meets the Doctor and Ruby in real life, where other members of the Finetime community are waiting. But rather than allow the Doctor to rescue them, they sail off into the Wild Woods, presumably to die terrible deaths, while the Doctor rages against his inability to save them.

Season 14, Episode 4 – 73 Yards

Third time was the charm for this season but can the fourth episode keep up the winning streak?

What’s It All About, JG? Good question. The Doctor steps on a fairy circle after exiting the TARDIS and vanishes. Ruby then spends the rest of the episode haunted by a figure she can’t quite focus on that stays the titular 73 yards away. And whenever anyone encounters the out-of-focus figure, they treat Ruby with contempt and turn away from her, whether random figures in a village, family members, or UNIT. This haunts Ruby throughout her life until she figures out how to use this “power” and takes down a fascist UK prime minister who wants to use a nuke just coz. Eventually, on Ruby’s deathbed, the mysterious figure is revealed to be Ruby herself, smeared across her own timeline. She can then go back in time and is able to stop the Doctor from breaking the charm and it’s all over. Erm. Something like that, anyway…

Season 14, Episode 3 – Boom

Stephen Moffat returns to the world of Doctor Who. But has he managed a classic or will it blow up in his face?

What’s the Episode? Boom

What’s It All About? The Doctor and Ruby visit a war-torn planet where the Doctor accidentally stands on a land mine then spends the next forty-five minutes trying not to do that. That’s pretty much it. Oh, there’s a war on, and people are reduced to flesh tubes when they die, and ambulances that assess whether it’s worth spending money keeping you alive, and a Dad’s love for his child saves the day, and Ruby is shot (but gets better) and plenty more besides but that’s what it comes down to. The Doctor. On a mine. For an episode.