FBTP End of Year Awards: Part I...

Fuck the Oscars, the Brits or Sports Personality of the Year. It's time for the From to Paternity 2015 Awards!


Best Thing Always on Telly 

Emmerdale is a peak-time soap opera set in rural Yorkshire. It screens six 30-minute episodes every week and it's been the best thing on TV by an absolute mile this year. The storylines all hang together and are utterly credible, the ensemble cast is excellent, and it's delivered cracking plot after cracking plot again and again. Its executive producer, Kate Oates, takes over the helm at Coronation Street next year so it will be interesting to see if this loss affects the overall quality of the show. I hope not. It's been excellent this year. 


The runner-up prize goes to Coronation Street. It may not always be brilliant but it never drops below pretty excellent.


Best Thing Not Always on Telly 

I've written about series three of The Bridge recently and it still totally wows me. It has been the best thing on TV this year. By some considerable way.


Honourable mentions go to the last series of Peep Show, which was a real return to form; Game of Thrones, which was enjoyably violent and dirty nonsense; Netflix comic-book action adventure series, Jessica Jones and Daredevil; historical blood and bonk-fest Vikings on Amazon; and Gotham, which is a pretty splendid mix of superhero actioner and police procedural. Endeavour, ITV's Morse prequel, is also worth a look.


Worst Thing Always on Telly 

The paucity of the writing on EastEnders is a huge problem, but the key issue remains the smashing of Albert Square characters into totally unsuitable plotholes. There have been a couple of high points in Walford this year, notably the episodes dealing with Shabnam Masood's stillborn son, and the first meeting of Sharon Mitchell and the back-from-the-dead Kathy Beale. But it's largely been badly developed stories with one eye on grabbing headlines rather than building a long-term story that makes sense and is credible and stays true to the characters. 


If anything, I have massive sympathy for the writers, who are left to make sense and do their best job with the shabby and non-sensical storylines they are presented with. 


Worst Thing Not Always on Telly 

A seven-word review on the appalling sub-Love-Thy-Neighbour comedy that is Citizen Khan, which got its fourth series the year: How the fuck did this get recommissioned?

Best Gig 

The Unthanks, Newcastle's folk music wunderkids, held their own boutique festival, which they also headlined, and it was a wonderful. The venue was the Stevenson Boilerworks in Newcastle and it was a small-scale and intimate affair. The Unthanks' gig at London's Union Chapel was also ace. 


Honourable mentions go to Gaslight Anthem and Arcade Fire, who remain two of the best live acts out there, and former Supergrass singer Gaz Coombes, who produced a charming and utterly astonishing set.


Best Album 

My favourite album of the year may not have actually come out this year because I've been retro-buying as well as purchasing new releases. The two new albums that have wowed me have been: In Dreams by The Editors, which sees Birmingham's finest continue their delve into moody electronica; and Mount the Air by The Unthanks, which may be a more produced and polished album than their previous output but it still has much to treasure. 


Other things I've fallen in love with in 2015 include: One-Eyed Jacks and Outlands by Spear of Destiny; The Idiot by Iggy Pop; The Circus by Erasure; In Your Room by Yazoo; 12 Deadly Cyns by Cyndi Lauper; The Glare by Michael Nyman and David McAlmont. I've probably missed many more.

Favourite Fighter

Polish MMA fighter and UFC Women’s Straw-weight Champion Joanna Jedrzejczyk has utterly wowed me this year. Her striking is off-the-chart, in its volume, its power and its accuracy, and her grappling looks pretty solid, too. In a year dominated by the in-your-face publicity machine that is new UFC Featherweight Champion Conor McGregor, who can walk the walk and talk the talk, and the seemingly unstoppable rise then dramatic fall of the hardly shy and now dethroned UFC Bantamweight Champion, Rhonda Rousey, Jedrzejczyk has quietly gone about her business with under-stated and, at time, under-the-radar efficiency.


Twat of the Year 

I'm lucky. Apart from a couple of run-ins with largely inconsequential cloth-heads at work and a couple of other fuckwits outside of it, it's been a relatively twat-free year in both my professional and personal life.


Hero of the Year

Jeremy Corbyn's surprise elevation to Labour Leader has reminded everyone that politics should be about caring for people, not about kow-towing to multinationals or ensuring the rich stay rich and the poor get poorer. It's a timely victory and it's brought 380,000 back to the Labour Party.


Not Enough Bullets in the World Award 

Pretty much any member of the Tory Party. They are deplorable people and their lack of compassion should be a source of national shame. I genuinely have no idea how any of the fuckers sleep at night.

From Russia with Love...

I have attracted the attention of a new admirer. She has even sent me an email.

'How are you?? Im Aleksandra! I want a man. I enjoy fitness and drawing. I am 31 years old. I am from Russia. Bye bye, Aleksandra...'

It's genuinely heart-warming to know that I haven't lost it! I can only hope that it's not some sort of elaborate scam preying on my vanity and need for sexual validation.

The Bridge: Season Three...

Goodbye Saga Noren. I am a huge fan and I hope we meet again. But, if not, thanks to you and your police colleagues for keeping me entertained, enthralled and thrilled for three seasons. Even better, for a show whose central characters teeter on the brink of personal disaster and terrible tragedy virtually every week, we even had a sort of happy ending. This, of course, could just be a happy ending and that's it... or it could be the springboard for a possible fourth season. Here’s hoping!

The Bridge is Noridc Noir, a generic description for the spate of superb thrillers such as The Killing and Borgen that came out of Denmark and won deserved worldwide acclaim. The Bridge is a Swedish and Danish co-production and, like the excellent The Killing, it's essentially a superior and intelligent police thriller that operates at its own pace and doesn't feel the need to explain every single thing or pander to its audience. 

The opening two series followed the chalk-and-cheese relationship between strait-laced, OCD-suffering and high-functioning autistic Swedish detective Saga Noren, played by the astonishingly brilliant Sofia Helin, and her Danish detective counterpart, the flawed Martin Rohde (Kim Bodnia).

The third season sees Saga work alongside a new partner, haunted drug-user Henrik Sabroe, played by Thure Lindhardt, as they hunt a serial killer who's targeting victims connected to a multi-millionaire and using his art collection for inspiration when committing the murders.

We also gradually meet the supporting cast of characters. Many of these, such as Saga's boss, Hans Petterson, and IT expert John Lundqvist, we've met before, but others, such as millionaire Freddie Holst and Saga's mother, Marie-Louise Norén, are new. 

I could wax lyrical about how the complex plot perfectly hangs together, or how the intrigue is consistently and tautly maintained, or how brilliant the scriptwriting is, or how excellent the whole cast are, or how the black humour is pointed and beautiful, or how the third season is every bit as good as the first.. But I’d probably end up boring myself and anyone else who chances on this and reads this.

Instead, give it a whirl. It’s ten one-hour-long episodes and it’s probably the best thing you’ll see on TV this year. I genuinely haven’t seen better. It has no weak points. 

A word of warning, though. The only problem with watching something as good as The Bridge is that it may raise the bar too high for pretty much anything you watch again ever. 

It is that good. 

Other Woman News...

The Other Woman is slightly annoyed. Not that this is new. This is often her default position. Usually followed by sarcasm. And barely-contained-if-at-all aggression. 

We've both recently graded at Hapkido and passed and we are now the same level. Apparently, however, I am the senior belt because I've been at the school longer. 

This has prompted her ire. 
'Essentially you're a slow learner,' is her most recent comment on the matter. 'We're the same level and I've learnt faster, and dealt with a seriously broken arm. But it now looks like you're better than me because you're the martial arts equivalent of a special needs child.'

It's hard not to love her generosity of spirit.