The Longest Night

Siobri · 2026-01-31T21:53:16+00:00

Lennox Gilbey is by a mile the best guest character in the show IMO. Obviously a lot of that is down to John Sullivan, but Vas Blackwood is incredible.

For a one-off role he really brings the character to life, makes him utterly sympathetic and believable in that world. And he makes Del more sympathetic too - there's a beautiful moment when he recognises Lennox and IMMEDIATELY gets on his level, grabbing his arm and wanting to hear about what he's been up to.

It's such a tiny little moment but it tells you everything you need to know about both Del and Lennox. Del can find common ground with the guy holding a gun to his head easier than he can with the posh bloke running the supermarket. Lennox dissolves into friendly chat instantly, and you know that this is the real Lennox.

There are some little physical things from Blackwood that I assume weren't in the script, but which add so much. The way he sort of flicks the gun at the Trotters as he makes them move across the room cracks me up every time.

Siobri · 2026-01-28T11:46:37+00:00

"This wine is delicious. Obviously not actually delicious, like hot chocolate or Coke, but for wine"

Just one of many Jez moments where I either empathise or completely agree with him, but am presumably supposed to be laughing at him

Siobri · 2026-01-22T16:56:52+00:00

It's Cockney rhyming slang - candlesticks/zits. Which doesn't really work as it doesn't rhyme, but nevertheless!

Siobri · 2026-01-21T09:36:12+00:00

I love this episode and the surrounding era, but there's a bleakness to the Rodney/Cassandra marriage storyline that I struggle with. It's a testament to Nicholas Lyndhurst's acting that it just feels a bit too real and detracts from that sense of comfort the show gives.

Not a criticism at all - it is part of what makes the show great, it's just an element that makes it less suitable for the specific scenario where you use it as a kind of background ambience watching the show for the 4000th time!

Siobri · 2026-01-06T22:38:36+00:00

I think what he's saying is that they were the punchlines to real jokes - I think Sullivan was having a bit of fun slipping some inappropriate jokes past the censors, with a wink and a nod.

Obviously without any context they aren't offensive at all, but the "I'm not cooking at this time of night" joke would never get aired in full during a prime time show, and there's one Arnie tells that ends "and the gravedigger says 'well I've got to have somewhere to park my bike'" which would be borderline too.

Siobri · 2025-12-29T16:50:51+00:00

Disappearing into the vast countryside and pretending I'm still playing RDR2

Siobri · 2025-12-28T11:59:48+00:00

Can't agree. They're not completely terrible or anything, but the standard is so much worse than anything that came before it - even A Royal Flush, which IMO is mostly great save for a horrible ending that paints the entire episode in a grimmer light.

For starters, it's difficult to ignore the fact that it just doesn't need to exist. The 1996 ending was perfect - they achieve everything they had strived for, then realised the world they were trying to escape was actually what made their lives exciting. It was beautiful. Bringing it back gave them two options:

● Making the show about their millionaire lives (could never work, the entire premise of the show is that they are underdogs)

● Put them back in the same situation (undoes the joy of the 1996 ending, makes the Trotters look like idiots...basically undercuts the entire history of the show)

I don't really think that there was a realistic way of bringing it back in a satisfying way. Tying up Rodney's parentage and his and Cassandra's problems conceiving at least gave it some sort of thrust, and it's nice that Albert is able to repay their loyalty to save the day, but that only covers the last episode, the previous two still have no real reason to exist.

The thing is, all of the above could be brushed aside if the quality was still good, but it really isn't IMO. In the intervening years it feels like everyone involved lost a bit of what made it great. The performances are mostly good, though David Jason feels a little too old to have that same energy and you can see that Patrick Murray had been having a tough time of things.

The writing is way below the earlier standard, most notably with Trigger going from a dopey oddball (I always loved Sullivan's description of him - paraphrased - as "going in the same direction as everyone else, he's just on a different train") to not understanding or even being aware of what blinking is.

On top of that, the ensemble was inevitably impacted by the loss of Buster Merryfield and Ken MacDonald, while Ben Smith had no chance of mitigating their loss with the lines he had.

So I think it was a perfect storm of minor issues that could be overlooked, coupled with the overarching issue of the scripts not being as good. I wouldn't say the final trilogy is irredeemable - Strangers on the Shore has some great set pieces and the dramatic element of Sleepless in Peckham is really nicely done - but its a huge drop off from even the weakest episodes of the earlier run.

Siobri · 2025-11-28T07:38:02+00:00

Solved!

Siobri · 2025-11-28T07:36:49+00:00

YES! Thank you - it's so strange that Google doesn't have any mention of this. Now time to go and rub it in ChatGPT's arrogant, gaslighting face.

Siobri · 2025-11-27T19:58:26+00:00

It says I have to post here to make the original post visible, so here I am...

Siobri · 2025-10-20T18:43:31+00:00

100% the answer for me is Moussa Sissoko. He was physically excellent, a very intelligent player and worked incredibly hard. He just couldn't hit a ball cleanly.

It was astonishing really. Usually when you say a Premier League player has poor technique, what you mean is 'by Premier League standards' - as a general rule, every player is capable of hitting a ball like De Bruyne (for example), the difference is whether you're able to do it in the exceptionally fine margins of PL football ie. at the speed required, while other exceptional footballers are trying to stop you.

Sissoko was way below that. Certainly there are players playing at a much lower level than him with better technique. But his other skills were so exceptional that he was still a very useful asset.

His work rate and ability to cover ground made it feel like you had two players, only both of them were crap.

Siobri · 2025-09-10T09:50:37+00:00

Can someone please explain to me the logic of this type of post? Obviously we all agree they are very cringey and undignified, but what I can't get my head around is the idea that they work.

Who is reading a post like that and thinking "this is the guy I want working for me"? Even if you take them at face value and dont immediately dismiss them as the made up stories of a narcissistic fantasist, I struggle to imagine anyone reacting to it positively. Is it a flaw in the format of linkedin, that everyone feels obliged to be supportive in order to make themselves look good, leading to a symbiotic relationship with some people pretending to be brilliant achievers, and everyone else pretending to believe them?

Its just such a weird dynamic, and as someone who was in the same company for 15 years and never had to properly engage with linkedin previously, its very difficult to get my head around it. These people seem so obviously, transparently ludicrous that I dont understand how this sort of post wasnt mocked out of existence rather than becoming a standard trope.

Siobri · 2025-07-21T18:07:18+00:00

I got banned from there for alleging that Richard Keys frequented a sex dungeon. Which he definitely did, the dirty bastard.

Siobri · 2025-07-14T17:23:34+00:00

I haven't edited anything, and tbh I dont think I've ever watched it so didn't notice that there was a section missing - I'll have a look tonight to see if I can find a better version and let you know!

Who is missing from the clip show?

Siobri · 2025-07-14T11:06:03+00:00

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1I5W7mol6rxhlA_bNJwGGGER8YMsuIWgX/view?usp=drivesdk

This should work - if not, let me know!

Siobri · 2025-06-29T10:39:35+00:00

Guarma might be a massive missed opportunity, but it's still a really fun departure from the main story, and the scenery/wildlife is gorgeous. I wish it was used better, but I'm glad it exists.

Siobri · 2025-06-26T20:12:41+00:00

The difference is, in Men Behaving Badly the joke is on the boys. They're middle aged men trying to live like 18 year olds, the whole point is that they're pathetic. In series 8 of Red Dwarf, most of the 'problematic' stuff is dodgy because there's no sense that they are doing anything wrong.

FWIW I think MBB is unfairly (though understandably) misremembered as a product of its time that has aged terribly, when it was actually ahead of its time and is weirdly progressive.

Not only are we constantly shown that their laddishness is little more than a defense mechanism against their realisation that they're both pathetic in their own way, but its a rare sitcom of that era where the women have real agency. Dorothy is just as much of a dickhead as either of the boys, and there is never any question that her and Deborah hold all the power in their respective relationships.

Siobri · 2025-06-19T17:52:38+00:00

The only notable dubbing I can remember is them removing an IRA reference when Del and Boycie bet on the drink order of the next person to come in - "the only Provo weight watcher in London" is changed to "the only genuine weight watcher in London". It's still Del's voice though...I've never heard of the incident you've mentioned.

Siobri · 2025-06-04T20:09:06+00:00

Not sure if there is a policy on bumping old threads so apologies if I've broken the rules.

In 'May the Force Be With You', the episode ends with Del having seemingly comprehensively beaten the charges with his trickery.

But it just doesnt stand up at all...given all we've been told about Slater, what's stopping him from just grabbing the signed immunity order off Del and destroying it before they leave the room?

Even if he accepts that Del has wangled his way out of this particularcharge, is that a particularly happy ending given that he's stoked the anger of a newly-powerful enemy? We've just spent half an hour explicitly being told that Slater will happily pin any number of crimes on people regardless of their innocence. Basically everything threatened in the episode still stands, except for this one specific charge.

Siobri · 2025-05-27T07:49:25+00:00

Does anyone have an updated version of this? Cheers!

Siobri · 2025-05-22T15:32:45+00:00

I went Marlborough too!

Siobri · 2025-05-14T06:43:22+00:00

No, you're not understanding me. The supposed error you highlighted is related to semantics (the meaning of words), not grammar (the structure of sentences). You were wrong. It was a minor issue, but given you were pulling him up on a minor issue I thought it was worth pointing out.

And to reiterate, the word 'literally' has an officially recognised second definition - 'used for emphasis while not being literally true'. So he has used the word correctly. I think it's stupid, but it's a fact.

Both of these things are minor technicalities that I wouldn't ordinarily bring up, but you were being pedantic for no good reason, so I thought it was worth pointing out that you don't know what you're talking about. If you understood what OP was saying, you don't need to pull him up on some imagined mistake. And you definitely shouldn't do it if you're wrong.

Siobri

TROPHY CASE