Traitors UK Series 1 Rankings (Spoilers)

 This was up on Reddit in 2022 and I stumbled across it there. Even though the series is nearly four years old, and was watched by seemingly half the UK at the time, consider spoiler warnings for the rest of this.

The Stranger Left No Card (1952) / Carnival of Souls (1962) / Tales from the Crypt (1972)

 THE STRANGER LEFT NO CARD (1952)

Alan Badel gets off a train, in full Gandalf outfit, to bamboozle and entertain the locals in a sleepy town. As a semi-regular to this tradition, Badel’s talents are well documented. Before his untimely death in the 1980s, his piercing eyes haunted viewers of The Medusa Touch, Children of the Damned and The Three Cases of Murder. Even in less horrific roles, such as Day of the Jackal, or his shades of grey in This Sporting Life, he’s got a hundred mile stare that works so well, it is little wonder he was so often cast as ghosts or ghouls or, as in the case of Will Any Gentleman?, a hypnotist. He was still creating nightmare fuel by his mere presence on TV and film before his death of a heart attack in 1982, aged 58, and can now be summoned by repeating his name five times.

X-Files Season 2 Ranked from Worst to Best

Last time on Michael's blog:

Recently Channel 5 in the UK nabbed the rights to put 90s SF classic The X-Files for their On Demand collection. To celebrate, one of their off-shoot channels, Five Action, have been repeating the series from The Pilot onwards. My mum (and dad, and grandparents) were huge X-Files fans at the time, and me and Cat watched a bunch of them. Too many, in fact, as Eugene Victor Tooms was a bit too much for my 8 year old mind. Some my parents deemed too scary, some I saw trailers and ran a mile, so overall I've only seen about half the first few seasons and from Season 4 or so onwards it's a blur.

Well, if it is on TV...

World Cup 2026 Power Rankings

 World Cup 2026 power rankings

Instead of a group stage preview, here is a power ranking as they seem in vogue. My attempt to rank the 48 teams at the World Cup based on likelihood to win the Cup. Or do well. Or even advance in some cases. I like lists. Some teams suffer from being in bad groups, some teams suffer from being bad teams. I tried to be fair to everyone, and look forward to being proved utterly wrong within a fortnight! Onwards!

X-Files Season 1 Ranked From Worst to Best

 Recently Channel 5 in the UK nabbed the rights to put 90s SF classic The X-Files for their On Demand collection. To celebrate, one of their off-shoot channels, Five Action, have been repeating the series from The Pilot onwards.

My mum (and dad, and grandparents) were huge X-Files fans at the time, and me and Cat watched a bunch of them. Too many, in fact, as Eugene Victor Tooms was a bit too much for my 8 year old mind. Some my parents deemed too scary, some I saw trailers and ran a mile, so overall I've only seen about half the first few seasons and from Season 4 or so onwards it's a blur.

Well, if it is on TV...

Ozzy

 

Announcing: Dragon Queen

 If you think end stage online capitalism killing our old website means Other Side Books can't continue to publish new books and promote authors, you've never met a Scot. 

Introducing: Dragon Queen, the third book in the Greenwood Forest trilogy by Jo M. Thomas

Cover by Mark Hetherington.

You can find out more about Other Side Books here, and you can find the ebook of Dragon Queen on Amazon here, with a paperback to follow.

US Presidents Rankings (Part 4)

 After a lengthy health related absence, here, finally are the top ten ranked Presidents on my list. I managed not to make this 7000 words of "Noooo Trump" somehow.

US Presidents Rankings (Part 3)

 

We are now into the top twenty so let's look at a list of people who could have been a contender...

US Presidents Rankings (Part 2)

 Well I figure this list of people who didn't make top twenty is going to be controversial for some, so let's start with a biggie...

US Presidents Ranking (Part 1)

No sooner had I finished my ranking of the UK Prime Ministers (which was only in 2022, but three Prime Ministers ago) than people were suggesting I do the same for the US Presidents. Had they no idea of the research time, or the worry over who should rank higher of Millard Fillmore and John Tyler, or the hours spent looking for a positive of the Buchanan administration. In vain, I might add. List making is a very serious agenda in my book, and after two years, here is a ranking that will probably change tomorrow. I was taken aback by how many US Presidents I thought were a bit awful. As with the Prime Ministers, I have made a list of the achievements under their administration (the buck does stop here after all), and added and deducted points for my opinion on those policies. So, the Civil Rights Act would gain a lot of positive points (+150) whereas attempting genocide would score a vast number of penalty points. All of these points were added together to produce a rough list, before personal bias came in. Obviously, there’s a lot of personal bias. However, I was taken aback by the points differentials. In the UK version, there was 700 points separating top from bottom. Here? Over 2000. It may have been even more if not for the racism penalty clause, which kicks in with every different policy, and badly hurt a few Presidents, but to be fair, that’s their own damn fault.