Films
The films I most loved this year, I loved unconditionally. Though I saw it all the way back in January, Bird (Andrea Arnold, 2024) has stuck with me. The dreamy, fantastical imagery works perfectly against the background of Arnold’s usual gritty realism, it’s become my favourite of the director’s films (above the stellar Red Road, Fish Tank and American Honey) – and it’s fair to say I now think of it as one of my favourite films of this century.
As is The Mastermind (Kelly Reichardt, 2025). I’d been looking forward to this art-heist-gone-wrong film for ages, and it didn’t disappoint. Josh O’Connor has never been better, and what strikes me most is Reichardt’s patience in watching him perform the most trivial of acts. Meticulous observation is an important aspect of heist films, but in this film we’re forced to watch the post-heist actions of O’Connor’s character, JB, with equal scrutiny. The excruciating scene in which he tries to lift the stolen paintings up a ladder into a hayloft is probably my favourite sequence in any film this year.
The Ballad of Wallis Island (James Griffiths, 2025) is also excruciating, but due to strained social interactions. It’s the most wonderful British comedy, and it elevates Tim Key to national-treasure status, and it deserves to be seen by far more people. I think it’s close to perfect, and I’m pretty sure it’s the film that made me well up the most this year.
Other recent films I thoroughly enjoyed were The Delinquents (Rodrigo Moreno, 2023), a heist drama that sits comfortably alongside The Mastermind in its consideration of the aftermath of a crime; One Battle After Another (Paul Thomas Anderson, 2025) – I loved this perhaps less than other people did, but some sequences such as the final car chase tickled me; A Real Pain (Jesse Eisenberg, 2025), a modest and carefully-observed comedy about the strained relationship between two brothers, with a terrific performance by Kieran Culkin; similarly wry and ultimately warm The Holdovers (Alexander Payne, 2023); delightful and surprisingly motivational behind-the-scenes comedy Nouvelle Vague (Richard Linklater, 2026); two meticulous account of different sorts of grief in Anatomy of a Fall (Justine Triet, 2023) and Sound of Metal (Darius Marder, 2019); the ambitious and equal parts annoying and startling 28 Years Later (Danny Boyle, 2025); the unexpectedly funny remake The Roses (Jay Roach, 2025); the ultimately life-affirming account of friendship during lockdown, Grand Theft Hamlet (Sam Crane & Pinny Grylls, 2024).
This year I finally watched the films of Jacques Tati (all of them), and was totally overwhelmed by Playtime (Jacques Tati, 1967) and Mon Oncle (Jacques Tati, 1958) in particular. I’ve never seen comedy treated in such a meticulous manner; Playtime is one of the most beautifully staged films I’ve ever seen.
A totally unexpected favourite was Mademoiselle (Tony Richardson, 1966), a peculiar French–British production from Woodfall Productions, starring Jeanne Moreau. It’s wildly melodramatic, veering so far from realism that it becomes fantastical.
Other discoveries from cinema history included time-travel-relationship-murder-mystery Je t’aime, je t’aime (Alain Resnais, 1968), which I’ve been trying to hunt down for years; low-budget British thriller Eclipse (Simon Perry, 1977), with a wonderful central performance by Tom Conti; and Panic in Year Zero (Ray Milland, 1962), a post-apocalyptic B-movie that’s low on subtlety but is nonetheless arresting throughout.
TV
My household’s TV viewing has been dismal this year, mainly due to exhaustion once we relax each evening. We watched and enjoyed the obvious stuff – Adolescence was excellent, The Celebrity Traitors was as good as it needed to be, Last One Laughing was a brief delight, The Paper was a reasonable attempt to channel the successful formula of The Office.
One show that stood above the standard fare was the second series of Nathan Fielder’s The Rehearsal, which was even more bewildering (in a good way) than the first series, and perhaps more enjoyable to chew over afterwards than as a viewing experience. I loved Long Story Short, a carefully constructed animated family drama from Bojack Horseman creator Raphael Bob-Waksberg. A final surprise was that How Are You? It’s Alan (Partridge) pushes the greatest modern British comedy character into new territory, the broadness of its remit a perfect fit for Partridge’s meandering mind.
Videogames
I can’t begin to describe how much I love Blue Prince (Dogubomb, 2025). I spent two months obsessed with uncovering every mystery of the Mt. Holly Estate. Unlike most cerebral puzzle games, the central mechanism of Blue Prince is as satisfying as the meta-mystery, so even on runs that resulted in no new clues, the simple act of opening doors and determining which room lay beyond absorbed me… again and again and again.
Almost as absorbing in a game-by-game sense is Balatro (LocalThunk, 2024), a poker roguelite in which you progressively stack the deck by adding cards and powers in the form of jokers. This year I effectively abandoned narrative games, preferring this sort of one-more-go arcade game.
Up there with the best in this vein was Kenny Sun’s Ball x Pit (2025), a mixture of bullet hell and Breakout, with insane powerups and constant accumulating progression. It’s the sort of game you get fiercely involved in, then complete, then put aside.
Wordless, gentle 3D puzzler Cocoon (Geometric Interactive, 2023) was an absolute delight, gradually training the brain to reach convoluted solutions to puzzles that initially appear impossible.
I did play some of this year’s huge successes such as Hollow Knight: Silksong and Clair Obscur: Expedition 33, but didn’t particularly chime with them. Instead, my final recommendation is Another Crab’s Treasure (Aggro Crab, 2024), a 3D action adventure with an ugly cartoonish style that disguises the fact that it’s actually a hard-as-nails Soulslike that will punish you endlessly. You know, for fun.
Of more recent films (i.e. from the last decade), my absolute favourite was The Souvenir (Joanna Hogg, 2019), which I couldn’t stop thinking about for all sorts of reasons, and the knowledge that there’s an upcoming second part is tantalising. Bait (Mark Jenkin, 2019) was delightful in all respects, the best film about film that I’ve seen for a while. I found Pain and Glory (Pedro Almodovar, 2019) surprisingly affecting, particularly Antonio Banderas’ performance. The Personal History of David Copperfield (Armando Iannucci, 2019) was the most fun I’ve had with a recent film, in part due to the pleasure of spotting favourite TV character actors. I loved Aniara (Pella Kågerman & Hugo Lilja, 2018) – exactly my sort of setup, about a Mars migration that turns into an endless voyage – the intertitles signalling greater and greater timescales alone were powerful. And though I loved A Bigger Splash (Luca Guadagnino, 2015) in every respect, Ralph Fiennes’ creepy dancing remains its most memorable moment.
I watched a lot of classic films this year, partly as a response to lockdown, but also partly because I’ve developed new habits: I no longer fret about not finishing a film in a single session, and I’ve been watching them via BFI Player and MUBI on my (admittedly large-screened) phone, often starting at 5.30am after being woken by my youngest son. Watching films like this, with chunky headphones, in bed in the dark, has been the closest simulation of a cinema setting.
My immediate response to the announcement of the first lockdown was to panic-read substantial classic novels I’d always intended to read. Middlemarch (George Eliot, 1872) worked as intended: I found it totally absorbing and entirely reassuring. I suspect that Candide (Voltaire, 1759), Mrs Dalloway (Virginia Woolf, 1925) and Lanark (Alasdair Gray, 1981) and The Third Policeman (Flann O’Brien, 1967) will each be influential on my own writing in the coming years. My favourite horror novel was Thérèse Raquin (Émile Zola, 1867), which packed a punch partly because I didn’t realise it was going to be a horror novel. My most important reading discoveries in 2020 were the novels of Richard Yates, my favourites so far being The Easter Parade (1976) and Revolutionary Road (1961), the latter being as great a Great American Novel as The Great Gatsby. My most exciting discovery of 2020 was the Jorge Luis Borges-endorsed, proto-SF novella The Invention of Morel (Adolfo Bioy Casares, 1940).
In terms of more recent works, my favourites were A Cosmology of Monsters (Shaun Hamill, 2019), which has one of the most absorbing first chapters of any book I’ve read, Annihilation (Jeff VanderMeer, 2014) which I can’t believe it took me so long to get around to reading, and The Wall (John Lanchester, 2019) which made me seethe with envy. I read a lot of non-fiction for writing research purposes, but the factual books I enjoyed most for ‘fun’ were High Static, Dead Lines: Sonic Spectres & the Object Hereafter by Kristen Gallerneaux (2018) and Deep Fakes and the Infocalypse: What You Urgently Need To Know (Nina Schick, 2020).
It’s been a great year for TV drama. My wife and I binged both series of the hysterical (in all senses) Succession, I was entirely won over by the calm pace of Normal People, and the decidedly more frenetic I May Destroy You seemed to redefine the possibilities of TV drama with every episode. Staged was an impressively comprehensive and complex response to the first coronavirus lockdown, and was very funny to boot. Upright was the TV show that most upset me, offset by all the tremendous joy, and was probably my favourite TV show of the year. Armando Iannucci’s space workplace comedy Avenue 5 turned out to be far better than expected, and I hope there’ll be more to come. The most exhilarating TV I saw this year was World’s Toughest Race: Eco-Challenge Fiji, closely followed by the meticulous, gorgeous and subversive Anaïs Nin adaptation Little Birds. And, likeeveryone else, I thought The Queen’s Gambit was staggeringly good all round.
After around eight years without videogames, purchasing a half-decent laptop this autumn has allowed me to dabble in games I’ve missed in the interim period, though anything particularly open-world or particularly recent stutters like crazy – for which I’m grateful, as I’m terrified of losing too much time to gaming at the expense of work. Still, I managed to work through Portal-esque puzzle game The Talos Principle (2014), Tomb Raider (2013) and Rise of the Tomb Raider (2015) (the latter better than the first in the new trilogy but representing an almost unsurmountable graphical challenge for my PC). I enjoyed Sherlock Holmes: Crimes and Punishments (2014) far more than expected, appreciating the slow pace. I admired a huge amount of What Remains of Edith Finch (2017), which as well as providing a compelling story, acted as a showcase for the possibilities of videogames – particularly the scene involving slicing the heads off fish on a production line whilst simultaneously guiding a prince around a kingdom whilst also learning about the fragile mental health of the factory worker in question. But the only game that I truly loved was Firewatch (2016), in which the player fulfils a patient role as a lookout in a Wyoming forest, whilst developing a relationship with your supervisor over walkie-talkie. The landscape is stunning, the nudges along the path of the narrative subtle, and the story is deeply affecting, perhaps partly because the game is over within three hours or so.
2010 was a year in which I noticed a change in my attitude to videogames: I became more interested in the principles and mechanics behind videogames rather than particular titles themselves. Increasingly, I used games as time-fillers, distractions and OCD tasks rather than as prime-time entertainment. Also, I completely tired of game narratives.
Far from the expansion pack that many expected, this is the definitive Assassin’s Creed game so far. It’s as beautiful as the series has always been, and the character animation is superb – but this time Ubisoft have layered dozens of game types on top of the basic quests. As many reviewers have noted, it’s easy to become happily waylaid in sidequests, en route to main story locations – in fact, this is the only game I can remember where I’ve begun to rinse the remaining sidequests immediately after completing the main story.
I already posted about this game on my 
Tim Major 
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