Last year I did what I called a Traditional End of the Arbitrary Calendar Year Roundup, and I thought it would be a good tradition to keep going in the same format. The end of 2025 is looming very close, so I guess it's a good time to look back on the veritable tish-show that was the year.
Looking back on what I'd hoped 2025 would be, it certainly didn't deliver what I'd hoped. I still feel like a hamster on a wheel going around and around, still not getting anywhere. And once more, just when I thought something was going to change, life punched me in the guts again. There were some high points, and some very, very low points.
High points were going to Scotland, staying in a castle, going to see Twenty One Pilots and Nine Inch Nails.
Low points were definitely yet another (very unexpected) funeral. Miss you dude.
So, like last year, let's break the year down into what I watched, played, and read.
TV & Movies
I realised a couple of years ago that I watched a lot of TV and movies to the point of not remembering if I'd watched them before. Mortal Engines is one of those movies that I'm convinced I haven't seen, but when I start to watch it, I realise I have. Weird. Anyway, I started keeping track last year, and this year I continued to make notes of what I'd watched. I also started adding them to Letterboxd, and you can follow me on there if you like. I'm also on Serializd, but haven't really got to grips with that one yet.
Here goes...
January 2025
| Scene from the episode "Forks" in Season 2 of The Bear |
Top Watch: The Bear (Season 2). You know, I had no interest in watching The Bear. Not really interested in the high stress world of running a restaurant. However, we watched season one, and everyone was shouting at each other, and there was this big revelation at the end of the season that kinda hooked you into the next... Episode six, with the Christmas dinner, "Fishes", is often called an hour of perfect television - and it is completely masterful in its writing and acting, simply brilliant. BUT, episode seven, "Forks", is my favourite. Richie was such a complete pain in the first season, just antagonistic and confrontational, and (again) brilliantly acted, but in Forks he is sent off to learn how to work behind the scenes in a top restaurant, and he changes. He finds his motivation, his drive, and bonds with the team even though he's only there a short time. It's just so SO masterful, it makes me fill up just thinking about how brilliant it is. Richie quickly became my favourite character.
Honourable Mentions: Slow Horses (Season 4), Star Wars: Skeleton Crew (Season 1)
February 2025
| Still from I Saw The TV Glow |
Top Watch: I Saw The TV Glow (2024). I saw a lot of people raving about this, about how it discussed obsession, identity, and paranoia. It had that creepypasta vibe of the Candle Cove season of Channel Zero, but I wasn't expecting it to have such a great David Lynch vibe. Excellent performances, fantastic cinematography, and just creepy and refuses to explain everything. Great stuff.
Honourable Mentions: Cobra Kai (Season 6), The Night Agent (Season 2)
March 2025
| Promotional still from Season One of the series Paradise |
Top Watch: Paradise (Season 1). Okay, full disclaimer here, this technically shares the top spot of the month with Severance (Season 2), but Paradise really surprised me. Admittedly, I was spoiled for the biggest surprise, and without that I probably wouldn't have watched it. I mean, it's a murder mystery of who killed the President of the USA, following Sterling K. Brown (who's always excellent) as the Secret Service agent assigned to protect him. Simple enough... but (and I'm not going to spoil it) trust me. Watch this. Go in without any knowledge of what's to come, and by the end of the first episode you will be hooked.
Severance (Season 2) was excellent as well, and just as intriguing as the first season. Sure, it had some slow episodes, but the seventh episode "Chikhai Bardo" was masterfully shot and acted.
Honourable Mentions: Mrs Davis (mini series), The Atypical Family (S. Korean series)
April 2025
| Promotional image for the Netflix series, The Residence |
Top Watch: The Residence (Season 1... the only flippin' season). I love a good murder mystery. Even more, I love a quirky, slightly weird, murder mystery. You'd think I'd love the Knives Out movies (they're okay, but I preferred Poker Face). However, one of the best in my opinion was the short lived series The Residence on Netflix. Super consultant Cordelia Cupp is called in when there is a murder in the White House, and every episode will leave you thinking someone different committed the crime. Really clever the way its structured and filmed, keeps you guessing. Why Netflix had to go and cancel it, I dunno. Would easily watch another heap of Cupp mysteries.
Honourable Mentions: Love Next Door (S. Korean series), Smile 2 (2024)
May 2025
| Promotional image for Andor Season 2 |
Top Watch: Andor Season 2. I mean, what else could there be? Flippin' phenomenal season, and particularly timely. Stunning performances again, and we finished the final episode and went straight on to Rogue One, then A New Hope... it's powerful stuff.
Honourable Mentions: House of the Dragon (Season 2), The Fountain Of Youth (2025)
June 2025
| Still from Season Four of The Bear |
Top Watch: The Bear (Season 4). Yeah, had to be. Sure, season four wasn't quite as jaw-droppingly amazing as the previous three seasons, but it was still fantastic television.
Honourable Mentions: Will Trent (Season 3), The Accountant (2016)
July 2025
| Promotional still from K-Pop Demon Hunters |
Top Watch: K-Pop Demon Hunters (2025). Simply from the trailer I kinda knew this was going to be a blast. Fantastic animation, great music, and some really cool quirky moments that felt a bit like the Spider-verse movies, it was just really good fun. I can see why it has become a global phenomena, and Derpy does steal every scene it's in.
Honourable Mentions: Poker Face (Season 2), Department Q (Season 1)
August 2025
Top Watch: Resident Alien (Season 4). I hardly watched anything in August. I don't know what happened. I think I was just really busy or in such a funk I just continued my constant rewatch of The X-Files. So, Resident Alien (Season 4) was my top NEW watch of the month. Alan Tudyk was amazing as always, and the rest of the cast were really cool. Wrapped it up nicely, with the potential for more, but it's likely that's the last we get of his weird alien-ness.
Honourable Mentions: blurg... not much to choose from this month. Heart Eyes was pretty good, but I also watched In The Lost Lands which had to be one of the worst films I've ever seen in my life.
September 2025
| Still from Alice In Borderland Season 3 |
Top Watch: Alice in Borderland (Season 3). I must admit, when they said there was going to be a third season, I didn't think it should happen. Season 2 was great, and rounded everything off perfectly. It didn't need another season, but it happened, and I'm really glad it did. Returning to the Borderland, it all makes sense, works brilliantly, and is really darn epic. Very pleasantly surprised. Should I say it was better than the final season of Squid Game?
Honourable Mentions: Alien: Earth (Season 1), Wednesday (Season 2)
October 2025
| Promotion still of the TV series 'Revival' |
Top Watch: Revival (Season 1?). Not sure if there will be another season of Revival, and it doesn't need one, because it was a really excellent story completely wrapped up by the end. A great twist on a 'zombie' series, and some awesome twists. Really good!
Honourable Mentions: The Burning Girls (Series), Slow Horses (Season 5)
November 2025
| Still from The Accountant 2 |
Top Watch: The Accountant 2 (2025). This is a weird month, because I rate everything I watch so I can work out what my 'top watch' is of the month, and The Accountant 2 rates just as highly as High Potential (Season 1), and the new Netflix version of Frankenstein. I know, I've weird tastes. However, in my notes, what I enjoyed even more than all of these was my marathon rewatch of the first four seasons of Stranger Things. Sure, I've seen the first season five times now, but I enjoy it every time. Just really cool. Season three was great rewatching it, and everyone is fantastic in all of the seasons (though my fave has to be Steve Harrington. Absolute legend.)
Honourable Mentions: I guess High Potential (Season 1) and Frankenstein.
December 2025
| Promotional still for IT: Welcome to Derry |
Top Watch: IT - Welcome to Derry (Season One). Another strange one, as I was really looking forward to this series. I'd read the book when I was a (late) teenager, and very much a 'loser' and it's the book that got me reading for pleasure. Stephen King, I owe you for that one. I loved the recent movies, and when the announced the prequel series I was very keen. However, those first two episodes felt like they were just trying too hard to be over-the-top and a bit gross. I wasn't sure. Debs gave up watching after those two, but I kept going, and the series calmed down and the characters really came into their own. There's an amazing episode explaining the origins of 'IT', and the indigenous people's efforts to trap it within the woods outside Derry. And by the time Marge realises she's being a right cliquey cow and switches sides, and Richie's moment in episode seven (oh my god, the tears)...
The way it ties into the future of IT, and into The Shining, and more of the Stephen King universe, is great, and the plan to set season two a generation before, and three before that, going backwards in chronology is brilliant. Has to be one of my watches of the year.
Honourable Mentions: Pluribus (season one), Sinners (2025)
Gaming
Most of the people who read my rambling thoughts are here because of gaming and tabletop RPGs. This year, I continued the long running D&D game, though playing once a month can mean there's a lot of me being confused as to what's going on, and not having the time to read the full recaps.
My other group played a load of Mothership (which was good, scary, and incredibly dangerous), playtested Harrowhill Point, and we're in the middle of a Mythic Bastionland game.
Next year? I have no idea. My lovely wife bought me the Delta Green campaign Impossible Landscapes, so maybe that's on the cards, though I think our usual GM is keen to get us back to playing The One Ring.
In May, we went to UK Games Expo, and for the first time we did all three days! It was great, and exhausting, and we got to catch up with some cool people. It was our first stay at a hotel in Birmingham, and really getting the chance to take everything in rather than doing everything in an afternoon. It was far too warm, and Debs came out of the con at the end of the weekend saying 'Never again', but as the days passed, her tone quickly changed to 'we should definitely do that again next year'. So, hopefully, that'll be on the cards for the end of May.
Also in May, I joined Eleanor Hingley on hosting a short presentation about getting into the tabletop industry. I wasn't great, as always. But if you want to see it, you can find it here:
It was part of the Norwich Gaming Festival, which has branched out to include tabletop gaming as well as video gaming, and shouldn't be confused with the Norwich Games Convention that takes place in August. That was held in yet another temporary location, and was okay. Next year it's in another location (Norwich showground) so we'll have to see how that goes!
September was Tabletop Scotland in Edinburgh, and once again we shared a stand with the lovely folk at We-Evolve, so Debs could sell her goth-geek Misery Makes wares.
| Debs at the Misery Makes stand at Tabletop Scotland 2025 |
Financially it was better than the rather poor 2024 Tabletop Scotland, and thankfully it wasn't as cold, but the lack of options for a cup of tea was frustrating, and it felt just as quiet as the previous year. Still, it's on the calendar for next year... who knows...
And then, finally, it was Dragonmeet. Which I had tickets for, but didn't end up going to as I had a rotten headcold... which seems to still be lingering four weeks later... uggg.
Gaming Experience of the Year
Is it really sad to say that it's probably getting my old collection of Star Frontiers back after a few decades? It was the first game I bought when I started tabletop gaming back in the early 1980s, and when the group disbanded and I went off to University I didn't think I'd ever play it again, and sold the lot to a very good friend of mine. He kept playing with a very, VERY small group, but it had sat in his loft for many, many, many years and he was happy to simply hand it all back to me. Sure, all those years in the loft hadn't been too kind to it, but I was ecstatic to see those pages once more. The illustrations took me back to my teens, and all those (probably terrible) games of Star Frontiers I played over those years.
| My original Star Frontiers books from the 80s |
Other Media
Otherwise I've been continuing my read of Charles Stross' "The Laundry Files", though sometimes it does feel like homework as it's for the day-job. At least the books are good and fun! I also read the first few of the Chronicles of Narnia... I had this weird urge to read them for research for the game I'd been thinking about writing, but I was only four books in when I needed to catch up with The Laundry for work.
I also blasted my way through Season 10 of The X-Files comics (the IDW alternate universe version of season 10, that is...) which were pretty good. I need to track down the out of print Season 11 collection...
Music-wise, I've been listening to the usual stuff. We went to see Twenty One Pilots in London (which was covered in a lengthy blogpost), so that inspired lots of listening to their albums. And the same went for Nine Inch Nails, as we went to see them in London as well - and the new Tron: Ares soundtrack is flipping awesome (still haven't seen the film though)...
We also went to see Wet Leg, who were great! Though I think we stood too close to the speakers and made ourselves temporarily impaired for a bit.
Big discovery of the year musically - there's usually one artist I'd never heard of that makes a lasting impression (last year it was Night Club) - was a weird band called Princess Goes To The Butterfly Museum (though they often just go by Princess Goes these days). Ketamine is a great track...
...yes, Michael C. Hall (Dexter himself) is the lead singer of the band. Seriously, check out their other stuff. I'd highly recommend 'Eat An Eraser' and 'Nevertheless'. Love it all.
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And that's it. The end of a mostly crappy year. What does 2026 have in store? I said it last year, and I've said it many time before... something better change.
Last year I had a Substack which I have since deleted. Now, if you want to keep up with my posts and what I'm up to, feel free to join my Patreon. Free being the operative word! It costs nothing and you'll get these updates and ramblings straight into your inbox if you pardon the expression. Click the linkage and sign up!
Above all, may I wish you all the very best for the new year, and let's hope it's a better one.
DFC