We have a nine-and-a-half-month-old daughter, so we’re watching a lot of Hey Duggee on CBeebies, which we love, and also a lot of Biggleton, which is fantastic. Biggleton is a live action show acted by five and six-year-olds. They’ve created a whole town with shops, a vet, a TV station, florist, science lab and town square. It’s like Bugsy Malone for the under-fives without the weaponry. I enjoy watching actors who fiddle with the hems of their shirts and look like they desperately need to go to the toilet. I’d be very interested in directing a Biggleton feature film. I’d do a Die Hard With a Vengeance-style action adventure movie with huge action sequences and car chases and explosions, then at the end they’d all do the Biggle Wiggle.
At nine-ish, I sneak downstairs to the little room I’ve kitted out as a home cinema. The best thing I’ve seen in ages is Bacurau, which is a surprising, surreal sociopolitical western set in Brazil. It’s best to watch knowing nothing about it. Just go in cold. As a movie buff, I’ve always got a huge back catalogue of Criterion Blu-rays which I buy to feel intelligent but have never quite got round to watching until the lockdown. I’ve thoroughly enjoyed rewatching Stanley Kubrick’s Dr Strangelove, Orson Welles’ The Magnificent Ambersons and David Byrne’s True Stories.
TV-wise, I’ve really enjoyed Devs, and Better Things, which is all about the everyday life of a mum with three daughters in Los Angeles. As a new father, it seems like a truthful depiction of bringing up girls. It stars an actor called Pamela Adlon, and has a fantastic performance by Celia Imrie as her batty, British mum. Mikey Madison plays the eldest daughter: she also played the Manson girl who was hideously burned to death with a flamethrower in Once Upon a Time in Hollywood. I haven’t shown my own daughter Once Upon a Time in Hollywood yet. I’ll wait until global culture becomes so debased that they’re showing Tarantino movies on CBeebies.
