Inside Man is a four-part murder mystery miniseries available on Netflix, starring David Tennant, Stanley Tucci, Dolly Wells, Lydia West, and Lyndsey Marshal. It’s also written by Steven Moffat of Doctor Who and Sherlock fame.

We watched it over the weekend and it is… extremely Moffat-y. Whoo, boy. All Moffat’s tropes are here in spades.

It’s not bad. I mean, look at the cast up there. You could have those folks read your grocery list and it would be riveting. There are a couple of just stand-out supporting roles, like Atkins Estimond’s Dillon, who stole just about every scene he was in, and Kate Dickie’s Morag, who was also delightful. There’s a handful of clever twists. It’s pretty funny.

But the whole thing relies on a small handful of people being just farcically stupid. To be fair, the cast does a spectacular job trying to sell some of this stupidity, and the plot whizzes briskly past the idiocy, trying to cover it up with a lot of style and amusing one-liners.

It’s also a deeply cynical four hours. It’s a lot like Moffat read The Killing Joke one time and was like “Yeah, it really does only take one bad day to turn you into a nutball killer!” despite the fact that the whole point of that book was that the Joker was wrong. Then he went and wrote a four-hour miniseries based on that and the fact that no one will let him make anymore Sherlock episodes.

It wasn’t terrible – definitely not the worst four hours of TV I’ve ever watched. It was funny and a fair amount of fun, and David Tennant, Stanley Tucci, and Dolly Wells were amazing. If you’re willing to overlook the idiot-ball plot, you’ll enjoy it. And it looks like it’s being set up for further series, probably with Stanley Tucci’s “detective” character making a return, so that might be interesting.

We watched Wakanda Forever over the past weekend and I have to say, I was disappointed. There was just too much happening, too much trying to get crammed into the movie. You could see the bones of a really good movie in there, something about grief and the terrible decisions it can drive you to, maybe.

It seems like the studio must have got their fingers into the movie, though, jamming in extra plot threads as setup for future movies and TV shows. Except none of that was compelling or interesting. The CIA plotline and the Riri plotline just muddied up the film, obscuring whatever deeper message it might have offered.

I think about the best thing I can say for Wakanda Forever is that the next movie, if there is one, should be more interesting, since they seemed to have set it up for M’Baku to be king and possibly also Black Panther.

I spent Thanksgiving week watching movies (and reading books). The book list – which is, so far, entirely mysteries – will be up in a couple of days, but here’s a look at some of the movies we caught.

Slumberland

Slumberland (a Netflix Original) features Jason Momoa and some other folks. It was fun and occasionally funny, which I was expecting, and both sweet and sad, which I was not. It was extremely a kids’ movie and it shows, so adult viewers might need to cut it a bit of slack, but over all, it was a decent enough movie. Also, Jason Momoa was clearly having an absolute ball.

The Guardians of the Galaxy Holiday Special

The GotG Holiday Special (Disney+) was 45 minutes of Christmasy fluff and gags and laugh-out-loud moments (“You can’t run from me, Bacon!”), with a sweet ending. It was also a bit of set-up for GotG 3, which I think comes out sometime next year? But not like, wildly necessary set-up, so don’t sweat it too much if you miss it. I’m sure the movie will catch you up on things. Overall, it was a hoot, and if you have access (or can get access, yarrr!), definitely give it a watch some night.

Black Adam

Black Adam (streaming and in theaters) was so disappointing. I mean, I didn’t go into it with high hopes, but I figured that even the Rock’s crappy movies are usually at least mildly entertaining because the Rock is in them. But man, even he couldn’t save this thing. Like, Dwayne Johnson’s whole thing is his charisma, which is such a palpable force that they just went ahead and made it into a super power in the Jumanji movies. And yet, somehow, Black Adam sucked all the life out of him and turned him into something about as compelling as wet toilet paper. Like, damn. That’s actually kind of impressive, now that I think about it. Pair that with a hot mess of a plot, absolutely painful dialogue, and the complete waste of both Peirce Brosnan and Aldis Hodge, and you’ve got a seriously tedious two hours on your hands.