Round-up Meander March/April '25: Good things to read, watch & listen to 📚📺🎧

And some of my favourite recent Substack posts too

Apr 10, 2025

As promised in my meandering update for March, here's a lovingly crafted round up of cultural goodies for you, for the month just gone and the one to come.

It’s my personal selection box of some things I've enjoyed that you might too and some others I've got in my sights over the next few weeks. Plus a short film to watch at the end (a holdover from the recommendations I used to do in my old newsletter for my film, which I’m bringing back just cos it was always a lovely thing to do!)

If you’ve any thoughts, responses, critiques or otherwise about anything I’m sharing here I would LOVE to hear them, so don’t be shy - just hit reply in your inbox or jump into the comments below:

WHAT I WAS ENJOYING IN MARCH

Reading

Fiction-wise, aside from my continuing, year-long reading project of Malorie Blackman's YA novel series Noughts & Crosses (I'm currently mid-way through the second book, Knife Edge), I picked up one of my son’s books, R.J. Palacio's tear-jerking but life-affirming page-turner about a boy with a severe craniofacial difference, Wonder. And I'm luxuriating in the audio version of Kate Atkinson's witty but intensely human short story collection, Normal Rules Don't Apply.

It wasn’t intentional but my non-fiction reads this month all in their own way speak to some of the uncertainties and frustrations I've been feeling whilst navigating this particular chapter of my work and family life.

Predictably Irrational, published by Duke University social scientist

Dan Ariely

at the outset of the financial crisis in 2008, is a fascinating look at psychology and behavioural economics that’s both addictively thought-provoking and fun to read.

I Didn't Do the Thing Today by

Madeleine Dore

, had me gasping in relief and recognition on practically every page. It’s honestly a balm to the soul if, like me, you read all the productivity books, buy the planners and stickers and pretty coloured pens - but still never quite feel like you're on top of life…

And I've just started Johann Hari's Stolen Focus, which so far is a compelling and alarming look at the collapse in our collective attention spans.

On Substack, I adored this piece by

Rebecca Holden

on the names we give things and this lyrical meditation on connection from

Daisy Tallulah

, taking in the HMRC hold music, a primary school SEND unit and a Tudor child's shoe unearthed from the mud of the River Thames. And I was stopped in my tracks by this raw slice of memoir from

Ros Barber

, prompted by revisiting a street where she once - actually twice - used to live and being flooded with intense recollections from her past.

I try to stay away from too much politics on the platform but this piece by

Joe Cirincione

on the potential dangers of the Trump White House for global nuclear proliferation was sobering and eye-opening. Whilst

David Toke

provided a useful corrective to inflated fears of runaway energy demand from AI in this piece on energy efficiency and the lessons from history.

Finally, if you're in need of a chuckle,

Andy Carter

aka

The Flagging Dad

, takes us back to his chaotic early days of parenting a baby whilst also working as a probation officer (spoiler alert - it's no cake walk!) in a two part series here and here.

Watching

On the telly box I've been enjoying some meaty female-created comedy in the shape of Daisy May Cooper's Am I Being Unreasonable and Bridget Christie's The Change, both on their second series. And like everyone else in the world it seems, I took a deep breath and watched Adolescence on Netflix, a shattering but essential viewing experience and one that sent a particularly chilling shiver through me as the mother of a pre-teen son about to start at secondary school in just a few months' time1.

I also watched some excellent TV documentaries, including the ITV spycops series I mentioned last month and a feature-length BBC doc broadcast last year to mark the 40th anniversary of the IRA bomb detonated during the Conservative Party Conference in 1984, Bombing Brighton: The Plot to Kill Thatcher.

I was also stunned and deeply moved by the extraordinary story - and on-the-ground footage - of a young, British volunteer war rescuer in Ukraine who was killed in a suspected war crime in January 2023, in another BBC feature doc, Hell Jumper.

Movie-wise, it was an eclectic month, leaping around close to a century of cinema. I went back to the 1920s with a fresh-faced Joan Crawford in Our Dancing Daughters (which I’ll be discussing with

Jonathan Ytreberg

soon on

The Oscar Project

podcast), which also led me to watching the 2022 Margot Robbie/Brad Pitt silent movie-era romp Babylon and revisiting a much older Joan Crawford in her classic 1962 face off with nemesis Bette Davis, in Whatever Happened to Baby Jane?.

I revisited the 00s, with Christopher Nolan's Victorian-London-set The Prestige from 2006 and the thoroughly silly, but solidly entertaining Jim Carrey film Yes Man from 2008 (watched with the kids). And I spent a couple of hauntingly unsettling hours in contemporary Japan, immersed in the subtle ecological thriller Evil Does Not Exist, a film that’s lingered in my imagination long after the credits rolled.

Listening

I added a couple of new-to-me podcasts into my rotation this month, both of them strong recommends.

Monstrosities Mon Amour is hosted on Substack by self-styled ‘genial geek’

John Grindrod

, whose book Concretopia was one of my partner's most well-received presents a few Christmases ago.2 John describes it as a place to “celebrate the things that other folk slag off” and so far it’s covered Corby bus station, Junction 3 of the M32 and my own local ‘concrete monstrosity’ Brighton Marina. Marvellous stuff.

And I don't know how I'd managed to miss that the good folk behind the Scarred for Life book series about the traumatising corners of 70s & 80s pop culture (as mentioned in my Threads bonus post) also do a podcast in which they invite their guests to share ‘three terrors from their childhood’. Recent episodes have included actor Michael Sheen discussing UFOs in his home town of Port Talbot and comedian Angela Barnes on nuclear bunkers. Seriously, how could I resist!!

ON MY RADAR IN APRIL

There are new seasons of Doctor Who and Black Mirror coming this month but frankly, it’s the Easter school holidays for most of April, so I expect to be watching a lot of Bluey (new episodes on the iPlayer now - woo!), Bob the Builder (the original, obvs), Horrible Histories and Go, Dog. Go! (yep, Netflix managed to turn a 20 page 1961 children’s board book into 40 episodes of animated canine chaos - and my 5 year old can’t get enough of it😄).

We’ve also got a cinema outing planned to see the Oscar-winning animated film Flow, which I’m really looking forward to. And for our ‘movie nights’ at home, my other half and I have got our eye on the epic new Viktor Kossakovsky essay film Architecton on the BFI Player, Grand Theft Hamlet on Mubi and (if I can persuade him), Pamela Anderson’s apparent tour de force showing in her latest film The Last Showgirl, which is also coming to Mubi this month.

Lastly a quick plug for the sensational autism documentary I’ve mentioned previously, The Stimming Pool, which is now on release in cinemas around the UK (my son and I are going to a relaxed screening in Brighton next week). Why not check and see if there’s a screening near you?

Find a screening

A SHORT FILM TO WATCH

One of the aspects of my son's autism diagnosis that has been helpful for us is realising that he sees and understands things in an extremely literal way. We're working on helping him find ways to think about metaphor that make sense to him and when I came across this short animation, I knew we should watch it together.

We did - and it prompted a nice little conversation afterwards about what we'd seen and what it might mean. Maybe this little woolen man and his bench will spark something in you too? I'd love to hear about it if so.