'Bel Air' Isn't Bad. 'Ted K' is REALLY Good.

Want to get away from the Ukraine war agitprop? Here's a couple of options.

Upon seeing the trailer for the very serious Fresh Prince of Bel Air remake – simply entitled ‘Bel Air’ – I figured it wasn’t going to be my cup of tea. Except actually, it kind of is.

Bel Air is a slightly different telling of that kid “from West Philadelphia born and raised…” and indeed amongst the cast changes (obviously) come changes in the dynamics between certain characters.

Carlton, for instance, is really quite popular at school and nowhere near as much of a dweeb as the Alfonso Ribeiro character from the 1990s. The friction between Carlton (Olly Sholotan) and Will (Jabari Banks) is perhaps the most rewarding narrative of the first season so far.

Then you’ve got Instagram influencer Hillary (Coco Jones) and would-be District Attorney Uncle Phil (Adrian Holmes). The rest of the cast are yet to come into their own.

And yes, like everything on television Bel Air is not without its woke moments. There’s a LOT of Black Lives Matter cap-doffing, but it’s interesting how they struggle with the subject, as Uncle Phil tries to toe the line between moderate and radical in his election bid.

Maybe my expectations were low enough going in, but I haven’t been mortified by this reboot, even if there are a few too many "throw some zoomer language in there” moments. “No cap”. Ahem.

Ted K.

I didn’t even know they were making a new movie about the Unabomber, Theodore (Ted) Kaczynski.

Sharlto Copley performs well as a poised yet oft-disturbed Kaczynski. The movie does a superb job in not strictly demonizing, but rather trying to find the mind and motivations of the man who killed 3 and injured dozens in America in the 90s.

Kaczynski – who will likely never see freedom again – would himself probably enjoy this portrayal, not least due to the audio and visual triggers which set his character off while he tends to his property in Montana.

Helicopters overheard, explosions from the local mines, some noisy jets above, the electric saws from logging, the computer store salesman and the kid playing video games, the dirt bikes, and the payphones stealing his quarters. You name it, Kaczynski endured it. In fact he comes off as far more patient than, say, Michael Douglas’s character in Falling Down.

Ted K was filmed on the same Montana land where Kaczynski’s 10-by-12-foot cabin once stood, and the film absolutely should be seen.

The King’s Man.

Did you enjoy the half-James Bond, half-Johnny English Kingsman: The Secret Service from 2014? Well, if you haven’t seen it, you should. It was excellent. The sequel, entitled The Golden Circle? Meh. This prequel, The King’s Man? Don’t even waste your time on the trailer.

A mish-mash of real and fake history, ending in an extremely silly fight between a Scottish nationalist baddie and a once decrepit pacifist whose leg was healed by Rasputin licking it (seriously) is surely the culmination of someone’s acid trip gone wrong, rather than a real script writing process.

The movie starts semi-light-hearted, moves on to hyper-serious in the trenches of WWI, then deviates into total fantasy while attempting to remain entirely serious. There’s no charm. No wit. And none of the same tongue-in-cheekery than made the first movie so watchable, on repeat.

I don’t even want to waste any more time writing about it. They’ve ruined the franchise before it even really got going.