The Best of 2020

We're finally approaching the end of this very long year so the time has come for my annual 'best of' post where I share the things I've enjoyed this year.

TV

There's actually been some decent TV on this year and it's been impressive how many TV productions have managed to adapt to working safely during the pandemic. I'm not generally a huge viewer of reality TV shows but I do love Masterchef and have enjoyed the amateur, celebrity and professional versions of the show this year a lot. A pandemic-TV highlight was Staged where fictionalised versions David Tennant and Martin Sheen rehearsed a play over Zoom, complete with massive special guests like Samuel L. Jackson and Dame Judi Dench. It was utterly hilarious and I'm looking forward to the new series coming in the new year. 

It's been a decent year for genre TV. On the whole I enjoyed series 12 of Doctor Who though I wasn't really sold on the massive re-writing of the show's canon at the end of the series. His Dark Materials returned for Series 2 and I love this one even more- it's properly sophisticated fantasy with superb characters and looks amazing. 

My favourite this year though is the Star Wars TV show The Mandalorian. I've never really been into Star Wars but I watched all the films during lockdown and then started series 1 of the show. I came for Baby Yoda but stayed for the brilliant action sequences and Western style. Series 2 launched later in the year and turned out to be even better, upping the stakes and developing the relationship between Mando and the Child to give us a father/son vibe. I'd have never have thought I would be obsessed with a Star Wars show at the beginning of the year but this has very much been a year of surprises. 

Film

I had high hopes at the beginning of the year to visit the cinema a lot and saw Jojo Rabbit, 1917 and The Personal History of David Copperfield before lockdown closed the cinemas. I managed to also see Tenet later in the year but COVID has caused most big films to delay release. This doesn't really mean it was a bad year for film though as it meant lots of smaller, independent films were released online which got much more attention than they might normally have done. 

I mostly stream films on Amazon Prime which has seen such indie delights as The Vast of Night, 7500, Dating Amber, Get Duked! and my favourtie Prime release of the year Uncle Frank. I've dipped into other streaming services- some of my favourites were: The Platform, Extraction and The Lovebirds on Netflix, On the Rocks on Apple TV+ and The One and Only Ivan on Disney+.

I've never watched as many films in a calendar year as I have this year thanks to it being one of the main things to occupy my time when I've been stuck at home. I'm tempted to list Hamilton as my film of the year but it's not technically a film, rather a filmed stage performance. Instead I'm going to go with Da 5 Bloods, Spike Lee's film about black Vietnam war veterans returning to the country to retrieve a stash of gold. It's funny and powerful and generally brilliant, plus it features one of the final performances of the late Chadwick Boseman. I thoroughly recommend it (it's on Netflix).

Book

I haven't actually read a massive amount this year, especially since lockdown ended, but I've read some brilliant books. There was the new book from Rachel Joyce, Miss Benson's Beetle, which like the author's previous books was so easy to read and full of joy. Richard Osman released his first novel this year, a crime novel with a group of pensioners as the detectives called The Thursday Murder Club which quite rightfully ended up being a huge success. I also loved the latest Comoran Strike novel by 'Robert Galbraith' aka JK Rowling, a superb detective story with some of the best characterisation I've read in a long time. 

My favourite of the year is a little more obscure though. Susanna Clarke released her previous novel Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norell back in 2004 and it wasn't until this year that she finally released another novel. It's called Piranesi and I thought it was stunning. It starts off as extremely weird and fantastical but gradually becomes more and more linked to the real world. Everything about the book is beautiful from the artwork to the story to the style of writing. I really hope Clarke starts releasing books a bit more regularly because her two novels so far have been up there with my favourites of all time.

Podcast

I became a bit obsessed with podcasts during the summer and was getting through an extraordinary amount. I've still loved long-standing favourites like No Such Thing as a Fish and The Empire Podcast this week, both teams forced to record from their homes via the internet and managed to produce excellent shows nonetheless. A new highlight was Grounded with Louis Theroux where the respected journalist interviews a range of people. In other interview focused podcasts I tend to get bored when I don't really know the person being interviewed by Theroux was excellent with all his guests- I never thought I'd enjoy interviews with YouTuber KSI and footballer Troy Deeney but both were fascinating. 

My podcast of the year comes from The Guardian newspaper and is called Today in Focus. Every weekday journalists from the paper discuss a news story for about half an hour. It's the perfect length of time that it goes deep enough into a subject for you to get a good understanding of it but it doesn't become boring either. They've covered major stories like Covid and the US election but I've generally preferred it when they've discussed less obvious subjects like the dire economic situation in Lebanon (that was before the horrific explosion) and smoking in Jordan (it turns out a huge proportion of the country's population smoke). Since I've returned to work I've been listening to it on the way to work each day and have found it really informative and interesting. 

Game

I wrote earlier in the year about Animal Crossing. It was the perfect game for lockdown, a gentle game setting up a new life on a tropical island and spending time catching fish and bugs. I played it for a short while every day until I returned to work and found I didn't really have the time to play. My island is probably full of weeds right now. 

For the second year in a row though I'm going to say my game of the year is Mario Kart Tour. I have loved Mario Kart since I was quite young anyway but this mobile version has kept things fresh my unveiling new events and characters every two weeks throughout the year. It introduced an online multiplayer option this year too, experimented with a team event and recently has released it's first completely original track. Though the app does offer in-app purchases, unlike most games you don't feel you have to spent money to enjoy the game nor does it bombard you with adverts. 

So there you have it, some of my favourtie things from this most unusual of years. I'll be back with one final blog post for 2020 where I'm going to tackle the challenging task of reflecting on the year.

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