Tag Archives: Soccer

Ted Lasso: Mom City – TV Review

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TL;DR – A beautiful penultimate episode, full of touching moments and set up towards the end.

Rating: 4.5 out of 5.

Disclosure – I paid for the Apple TV+ service that viewed this episode.

The match ball.

Ted Lasso Review –

If there has been one show that has constantly broken my heart while being ultimately uplifting, it has been Ted Lasso. After a triumphant First and Second season, the Third and probably/possibly/maybe final season has still been hitting it out of the park. But as we draw to the penultimate episode, there is a fear not of what has come but of whether it could stick the landing after everything that has happened so far.   

So to set the scene, Ted (Jason Sudeikis) and the team are on a 15-match winning streak, so his morning walk through the neighbourhood had a certain bounce in his step. That is until he comes to a bus stop and suddenly discovers his mum (Becky Ann Baker) sitting there. She comes with her stories which is a blast to everyone else, but also memories of the past for Ted. While the team gets ready for their big match against Manchester United, there is a feeling of excitement, but for Jamie Tartt (Phil Dunster), there is a collapse of confidence on the eve of his most significant match. Now from here, we will be looking at the episode as a whole, so there will be some [SPOILERS] ahead.         

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How Ted Lasso Perfected the Nothing/Everything Episode with Sunflowers – Article

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TL;DR – This article explores how a show can have an episode focused on nothing, yet still be everything.  

Disclosure – I paid for the Apple TV+ service that viewed this show.  

Van Gogh's Sunflowers.

How Ted Lasso Perfected the Nothing/Everything Episode with Sunflowers –

One of the significant shifts in the Television landscape was the move from more episodic episodes to more serialised outings. It started taking steam in the 1990s with shows like Babylon 5 and Deep Space Nine. But this would explode in the streaming era, with nearly every show you watch having some serialised component. Whether the show works with the serialised content does not matter. With the insertion of boilerplate narrative arcs becoming more of the norm, looking at you Wednesday. In this world, can you have a stand-alone, nothing episode anymore?

There was a time when shows like Seinfeld built themselves around being the show about nothing, where there was no character growth. However, today if you have an episode, let alone a series, where nothing happens, you will get a chorus of comments claiming condensation over there being filler. I have seen a claim championed time after time, whether the show was filler. But can you still have an engaging episode of TV that does not move the plot along in the current landscape? Well, you must trust your audience to come along with you if you want to attempt something like this. Trust which is something that is earned, not given.

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The Match (La Partita) – Movie Review

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TL;DR – An interesting proposition; however, the narrative gets muddled and does not recover.      

Rating: 3 out of 5.

Post-Credit Scene – There is no post-credit scene

The Match (La Partita). Image Credit: Netflix.

Review –

If there is one genre of films that you can count on to bring the tension, it is the sporting genre, even more so if we are focusing on a single match. This is because there is an in-built timer to all the chaos, you only have 90 minutes in a game, and then there is a winner. You can feel that timer counting down, and will your team win or lose, who knows. The rise of success, the fear of failure, it is a potent combination. Well, today we look at a film that captures all of that.  

So to set the scene, we open in the suburbs of Rome with a local football team Sporting Roma that is the heart of the community even though it has never won a ‘bleeping’ thing. On a football pitch that is just dirt, two teams fight a contest that the referee has a very one-sided view of while a coach Claudio Bulla (Francesco Pannofino) screams from the side-line. It is the final with the team facing off against their main rivals from Milan and star player Antonio ‘Anto’ (Gabriele Fiore) is having a bad game. However, as we soon find out, there is more riding on this game than first realise.

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Movie Review – Ultras

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TL;DR – An interesting film, exploring interesting issues, but does not quite come together   

Score – 3 out of 5 stars

Post-Credit Scene – There is no post-credit scene

Warning – There is a lot of strobe lighting used in a sequence towards the end.

Ultras. Image Credit: Netflix.

Review –

For me, sports, particularly football is something that I have only really gotten into recently. So it is something that I have tried to explore more, with what makes it tick, what drives it, and what drives people to love it. Well, today we have a film from Italy that explores all of this, but from a different perspective, that of the hardened supporters of the Italian football league.

To set the scene, we open in as a man walk through a crowd where everyone knows his name, as we wander through the town we arrive at a wedding, where flares are lit and everyone is having a good time. Which is of course when we cut to a montage of the more colourful moments in Italian football history, full of riots, flares, and a long rivalry between teams from Naples and Rome, or Napoli and Roma. It here where we see that behind the bravado is a sadness, a sadness of time gone by.  

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