Asa Butterfield: A dozen "boy meets girl" movies, a dozen nude photos, and a boyfriend

I keep thinking that Asa Butterfield is American due to his old-fashioned name -- maybe Moravian or Amish -- but he's actually British, born in Islington, 30 minutes by underground from the British Museum.  It has pubs called The Earl of Essex, The Duke of Cambridge, and the Pig and the Butcher.  Can't get more British than that.

He got his start in horribly depressing movies like After Thomas and The Boy in the Striped Pajamas, 2007, which of course were on my "run away fast" list.  

Then came Hugo, 2011, a fantasy with an ending that made me cringe -- the photo looks like two boys have the adventure, but it's actually a boy and a girl.  When Hugo announces that he's got a girlfriend, the adults throw confetti, high-five each other, and scream with joy.  That happened to me every time I mentioned a girl, no matter how casually: "A girl in my class did a book report on Finnegan's Wake."  "Hallelujah, he's straight!  He's normal!  We don't have to worry anymore!  Here, have some money and the keys to the car!"

Although it did allow me to get away with anything: "Sorry I left my jacket on the bus.  I was talking to this girl, see..."  "Hah-hah, of course, boys will be boys!  Here, have some money and the keys to the car!"

I didn't see Ender's Game, 2013, because the original novel was written by the horribly homophobic Orson Scott Card, or A Brilliant Young Mind, 2014, because the brilliant young math prodigy gets a brilliant young girlfriend. 

The novel version of Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children contains no heterosexual romance, but in the 2016 movie version, there are three of them. It's boys and girls gazing into each other's eyes all the way down. 

Are you noticing a pattern here?

Then Came You, 2018: A boy falls in love with a dying girl. This seems to be quite a trope.  Why do girls never fall in love with dying boys?  Of course I'm not seeing it.

Time Freak, 2018.  At least Asa has a gay-subtext relationship with Skyler Gisondo en route to winning the Girl of His Dreams.

Your Christmas or Mine?, 2022.  Isn't Asa a little young to graduate to Christmas romcoms?

Asa's biggest role to date is in the tv series Sex Education, 2019-23.  He plays Otis, a boy whose mom is a sex therapist, so he and his friends get the idea of opening a clinic to solve teenagers' sex problems. There are some gay characters, but Otis is straight.  And naked a lot.

More after the break. Caution: Explicit

"Cucumber": Lots of cucumbers on display as gay life in Manchester gets increasingly dark.

 

Cucumber, on Amazon Prime, is like gay Revenge, with plot twists, hidden agendas, and people who are not what they seem.  It starts out as a comedy, but turns darker and darker.  The nonsensical title, by the way, comes from a measure of erectile hardness, from tofu (semi-soft) to cucumber (rigid).  

Instead of scene-by-scene, I'm going to summarize the various cocksploits and tearjerks.

1. Middle-aged Manchester insurance salesman Henry (Vincent Franklin) gets angry when his boyfriend Lance (Cyril Nri, top photo) brings an anonymous guy, left, home for a three-way.  Maybe if you'd asked first, and waited for him instead of just going down?

Henry calls the police and has the two arrested (on what charge? consensual sexual acts are legal in Britain.), 

2. Henry moves out and seeks refuge with a twink couple from work, Dean and Freddie (Fisayo Akinade, Freddie Fox, left).  And starts flirting with Freddie!  Wait -- you get all huffy when your boyfriend wants an open relationship, but it's ok for the twinks?

Freddie the Twink says "No, thank you, we're monogamous."

3. Henry is upset because Freddie the Twink rejected him, but then goes out and hooks up with another old guy, Cliff (Con O'Neill).

4. Meanwhile Ex-Boyfriend Lance tries to hook up with Straight Guy Daniel (James Murray, left).  He refuses: "Sorry, I'm straight."

5. Henry's Sister and her hot teenage son Adam (Ceallach Spellman, right) arrive to stay forever. Henry decides to make some extra money filming his nephew having sex with other guys.

Meanwhile Ex-Boyfriend Lance empties the joint checking account. Never leave much in that joint checking account, buddy. One tiff, and it's gone.



More cucumbers after the break

Dead Boy Detectives: Ghost buddies, one gay, one bi, solve afterlife mysteries. With Luke Gage and WW1 soldier bonus

 

A growling, snarling World War I soldier -- played by Chris Pereira -- chases two teenage boy ghosts through the British Museum.  The intellectual Edwin surmises that his gas mask is cursed: they'll have to destroy it to restore him to wholeness, so he can go on to the afterlife.  They'll need the Minor Arcana, Volume 4, but the athletic Charles can't find it in his magic bookbag.  

With the ghost-monster in hot pursuit, they run through a mirror, but end up in a hotel, not back in the office.  Edwin explains that it's hard to locate the right mirror-dimension when you're being chased by a gas mask monster.  

Flashback to the Dead Boy Detectives office a few days ago: A World War I nurse explains that she's been hanging aroud the British Museum long after her death to help the many lost souls from her era enter the afterlife.  But one has been cursed and turned into a monster.  She hires the boys to help him.

Left: Chris's butt

Back in the present, the boys rush through the hotel, find another mirror, and end up in their office.  The monster follows!   Charles manages to tear his gas mask off -- the snarling monster underneath spews blood all over and tries to stab him. Meanwhile Edwin finds the right book, says the incantation, and the gas mask bursts into flames.  Back in human form, the ghost is calm, but confused.  The boys tell him that he 's dead, still fighting a war that ended over 100 years ago. 

Left: Chris's cock.  I know he only appears in this episode, but where else are you going to see it?

Uh-oh, Death is coming to guide him to the afterlife.  The boys have to hide, or she'll take them, too!

That's a lot of world-building in five minutes, but it comes while the boys are being chased, assaulted, threatened, and zapped about, so it goes down easily.  

The Dead Boy Detectives, a paranormal take on the common British "boy detective" genre, appeared in a number of comics and limited edition graphic novels during the 1990s and 2000s, all taking place in Neil Gaiman's Sandman universe.  Edwin, the intellectual one, died in 1916, when some boarding school bullies tried to scare him by pretending to offer him as a sacrifice to Satan.  The spell worked, and he was sent to hell.  

He stayed until 1989, when some of the residents of hell escaped and laid waste to a boarding school. The athletic Charles was killed in the ruckus.  He would be going to the Sandman-world version of Heaven, but he decided to wait and hang out with his new ghost-buddy.  Now they are detectives, helping lost souls with unfinished business, lost memories, or curses that prevent them from moving on. They must keep a low profile and not perform much magic, to avoid detection from Death and an afterlife "Missing Souls" bureacracy.

Spoiler alert: In the comics, Edwin is gay, and Charles is bisexual.  They don't date each other, however: who said any two random gay/queer dudes must automatically be into each other? 

I watched the first episode of the tv series to see if the pair, now played by the considerably older George Rexstrew and Jayden Revri, were heterosexualized.

The answer after the break

Marcus Hodson: Shape-shifting demon or hyper-masculine Midlands model? With nude merman bonus

On Dead Hot (2024), Marcus Hodson plays a shape-shifting demon, a hermetic Magus who travels between esoteric realms through the Eye of Horus bar and its mysterious Red Phone.  I wanted to know if he plays other mysterious Pucks or Lords of Misreason, but his IMDB listing is rather basic  Five roles, all 2022-2024: 

You Like That, a short about a gay American student in Edinburgh.

The Stand-up Sketch Show, where comedians perform "a surreal reconstruction of their own material."  Marcus is a background player in five episodes.

An episode of Domino Day, about a young witch "haunted by her need to feed on others." In Episode 2, Marcus plays a hookup who smooches with her and is eaten.

Gentleman in Moscow is about a Russian aristocrat placed under house arrest in a hotel for the rest of his life after the 1917 revolution.  He befriends a little girl who also lives in the hotel; Marcus plays her piano teacher.

He also plays one of the mermen in The Little Mermaid.

Only one other paranormal show, and he doesn't even play a supernatural being?

Not many biographical details available. A 2021 article in Pause magazine states that he is 25 years old, from Manchester but living in London. He began modeling at age 18, then started university, but left to go pro.

In spite of the paucity of biographical details, Marcus has a very active social media presence, with hundreds of posts about travel, food, and beefcake. Here he is in Greece

In Rome

On the beach.  Does Marcus have a palsy disorder in his left hand, or is he displaying some magickal gestures?

More after the break

"The People We Hate at Weddings": Two sisters and their mum find love, the gay guy doesn't and there's only one penis

  

The 2017 novel The People We Hate at the Wedding is about a wealthy British girl, Eloise, hoping to reconcile with her two American half-siblings, Alice and Paul, by inviting them to her lavish wedding.  Paul is gay, complete with longsuffering boyfriend. 

 Knowing how much Hollywood loves to straighten gay characters, I watched the 2022 movie version on Amazon Prime to make sure that Paul stays gay.

Scene 1: Various childhood antics of the half-siblings, including a disastrous Santa Claus-sitting with a very cute, harried harried Elf photographer (Brandon Johnston, left).

Scene 2: The young adult Alice, who works at a small desk in a big office, checks her mail: the invitation to her half-sister Eloise's wedding!   She calls her brother, Paul (Ben Platt), who works at some sort of counseling center, to see if he got one.  Yep.  "But We're not going.  We hate her!"  

Scene 3: The siblings' Mom tries on clothes and plot-dumps on the sales clerk: Her husband is dead, so her romantic life is over (she'll find love by Act 2). Also, her kids aren't going to Eloise's wedding because they hate her.

Scene 4: At work, Alice gets summoned by the Boss (Jorma Taccone), to screw in the supply closet, followed by lunch.  Jonathan wonders if she just likes him for his money.  "Of course not.  I like you for your dick."  

Scene 5: Paul is out with a straight guy(Randall Park) and three femme, double-entendre-spouting gay guys (Greg Barnett, Karan Soni, Pedro Minas), who brag about the new guy they've added to their threesome. Wait -- they are already a threesome, aren't they?

Three guys doing gay stuff together!  Paul is sick of gay hypersexuality and flamboyance, so he hangs back to talk to the straight guy. So this Paul is straight, too? 

 Then they all go to see King Lear.  At the line "How sharper than a serpent's tooth it is to have a thankless child!," Mom texts Paul, asking him to please come to the wedding. 

Scene 6:  Alice drops Boss off at his house, pretending to be an Uber driver so his wife doesn't get suspicious.  He wants a permanent relationship, so he's going to ask for a separation -- sometime.  Wife comes out of the house carrying a baby, making Alice feel guilty.

Scene 7:  Paul in bed with his boyfriend, discussing their disapproval of the three-way relationship. Wait -- he was one of the flamboyant three-way guys.  I'm confused.   

All they do is hug and chat, but I guess that's enough to make Paul canonically gay at Minute 14.

Paul explains why he hates his Mom: after his dad died, she threw out all of his stuff, and never mentioned him again.  Boyfriend talks him into the wedding anyway, because it's in London.  Ugh!  London is my least favorite city in Europe. I've visited 5 or 6 times, and never had a positive experience. 

Scene 8:  Alice watches her boss/boyfriend living a public life without her and decides to go to the wedding after all.  Then she goes into his office and slips off her underwear -- just as the housekeeper shows up.  Hey, the housekeeper is D'Arcy Carden, who starred with Kristen Bell in The Good Place!  I wonder who else from that show will appear.  Maybe Ted Danson?

Scene 9:   Paul at work.  He mentioned that he doesn't like scones, so the Boyfriend sent him a scone basket to be mean. Mom calls; he hangs up on her.  

Next, the Counseling Center boss, Dr. Goulding (Tony Goldwyn), found security-cam footage of him hugging a patient after an emotional breakthrough. Inappropriate!  A month of unpaid leave!  Now Paul has no choice but to go to the wedding. 

I'm bored.  I'll fast-forward to the good parts.

On the plane to London, Alice has a meet-cute with Love Interest #1 (Dustin Milligan, left). 

There's an establishing shot that doesn't show the Tower Bridge or the Eye in the Sky!  

We see Rich Sister  Eloise is in bed with her fiancee, Ollie (John Macmillan).  Nice chest shot.

Alice decides to bring Love Interest  to the wedding as her plus-one.  They have sex on the floor of their palatial hotel room, next to the bed. Nice chest shot.

Later he dumps her: "You have everything that any sane man would want, but you don't want a sane man."  So gay men are insane?  Or did you forget that gay men exist?  

More Love Interests and at least one cock after the break

"Am I Being Unreasonable": Disagreeable British lady fights grief, gets a girlfriend, has a dark secret. With bonus husband dick

 

The first thing that popped up on my Hulu recommendations this morning was Am I Being Unreasonable (2022): 

Unfulfilled in her marriage, Nic is grieving a loss that she can’t share with anyone.  But when Jen arrives in town, Nic's life is lit up with laughter and through this kindred soul her dark secret starts to surface.  

It does not sound like my cup of tea at all, but, maybe there's a lesbian subtext, and  Sam Bottomley, who I've met, is in the cast, so let's go.

Scene 1: Nic, a middle aged lady, is waiting for a train outside at night, when her husband Alex( David Flynn) calls her over.  He wrote "Merry Xmas" in the snow with his pee.  Hey, there's a pound on the tracks. Alex wants to climb down and get it, but the train is coming!  He'll kill himself!

Nope.  They get on the train -- well, Nic on the train, Alex on the "mind the gap," They discuss how much they love each other, and kiss.  Uh-oh, when the doors close, his coat is stuck!  No time to pull it off -- he's dragged to...Moral: Boys should only kiss boys.

Scene 2:  Nic watching tv with her son Ollie ( played by Lenny Rush, who has SED, a congenital disorder that results in dwarfism and bone problems).  They're discussing which soap opera character is a tramp, but it's time for school, so Ollie, the responsible one, jumps on his scooter.  The Snooty Neighbor is driving her kid to school, but doesn't offer them a lift: Nic fumes all the way down the lane, while Ollie advises her to let it go. Nice location shots of a quaint British village.

Scene 3: Back home, Nic is playing on her cell phone, when her friend comes in, hysterical because she hit a pheasant in her car. She describes the experience in gruesome detail.  

Scene 4:  Nic watches a soap opera on her phone in the cemetery, flashes back to her husband's death, and screams.  Later, Dan (Dustin Demri-Burns) comes in, says "I'm sorry I'm late," which I dislike: everyone who comes on stage in every tv show always says "Sorry I'm late."  

He hugs Ollie.  His son?  So this is Nic's second husband?  His pants have a wet stain in the front, so while he changes, they discuss their missing cat and a "fat fuck" who isn't using the internet properly.  

We cut to Nic having sex with her first husband, Alex -- no beefcake.  Wait -- he's not a husband, he's a side piece!  So Nic can't tell anyone about her grief over his death.  That happens a lot with LGBT people; you're not out to your family, so when your partner dies, or is sick, or breaks up with you, you can't say a word. 

Cut to Nic glaring at her husband while he sleeps.  She asks on an advice site if anyone else has a husband who "gives her the ick so much that her fanny dries up." Does "fanny" mean something different in Britain?

Scene 5: At some sort of carnival at Ollie's school.  Nic is running a game called Splat the Rat.  She meets one of the other mothers, Jen.  They bond over complaining about people, gaze into each other's eyes, laugh. Lesbian romance?

Ollie's friend doesn't want to play Splat the Rat because he might miss; he just wants the maoam, fruit-flavored candy.  Jen argues that it would be against the rules, but Nic gives him the maoam anyway, just to get rid of him so she and Jen can flirt some more.

Jen produces some booze.  Nic: "I could kiss you!"  Jen: "Don't do that, just make it weird."  If you're not into a lesbian romance, why are you flirting so aggressively?

Scene 6:  Nic introduces Jen to Mr. Graham, the gym teacher: "He's a bit of me," which I think means "He's hot."  She shows him how to Splat the Rat by holding him from behind, but Snooty Neighbor gets jealous and breaks them up.  She announces that they're going give Ollie 20% of the proceeds from the carnival, because he's...um....you know...that way.  This angers Nic, and embarrasses Jen and Mr. Graham. 

Scene 7: Nic and Ollie return home to a drinking-in-the-dark, crying Husband. We are not told why.

Husband frontal after the break

Accident Man: Hitman's Holiday: The hitman gets a boyfriend, not a girlfriend! With two dick pics but no kiss

 

Almost all movies in general, and 100% of action-adventure movies with male leads, feature a heterosexual romance.  It's as if the car chases and ninja fights are just there to distract the teenage boys in the audience while they are being brainwashed with "girls are the meaning of life!"  So when the trailer of Accident Man: Hitman's Holiday showed not a single boy-girl kiss, I knew I had to investigate.

Scene 1: After what happened in London, hitman Mike needs a place to cool off, so he settles in Malta: "the sun always shines, the beer flows freely, and the Middle East, Europe, and North Africa are just a puddle-jump away."  He didn't mention girls!  He didn't mention girls! In 100% of these movies, they tell us that the third thing is "hot girls," but he didn't!   

Scene 2: He returns to his palatial apartment, grabs a beer, and is attacked by a ninja lady.  They fight for quite a long time, destroying his stuff.  Finally he calls a time-out: "You're paid to smash me up, not the apartment."  "Well, say the safe word sooner." If she is his girlfriend, I'm leaving.  Sometimes they trick you by leaving the kisses out of the trailer, but sneaking in a hetero-romance anyway.  

Mike explains: she's the best martial artist in the world.  He saw her working as a waitress ia dive bar., beating up rowdy types, and offered her a job breaking in at random times to beat him up.  No sex scene! 

Scene 3:  Mike muses that he deserves a beating after he what he did to his mates back in England. He deserves to be alone: "no one to let me down or get in my way."

That night, he runs into his friend Fred, who specializes in retrofitting household objects to kill, setting some toughs on fire.  See, he's in love with a girl he met online.  After he sent her 50 grand, she vanished.  But one of his associates spotted her at a bar in Malta, so here he is.

Scene 4: Mike invites Fred back to his place to hide from the cops.  He tries to explain about internet scams.

Scene 5: Mike goes to work on his next job: an old guy who never leaves his apartment.  But he does go out onto his balcony to water his flowers, so.... a bouncing head, and Mike inviting Fred to stay on as his assistant: "there are a lot of people who need killing in this corner of the world."

Montage of the guys playing pool, sleeping in separate rooms, working on a job, and laughing, with the background song telling us: "It's a romance, it's a fine bromance/ It's a beautiful thing, it's a real cool thing/ Buddies won't let you down."

Mike: "For the first time in a long time, if you saw my face, you might actually think I was happy."

Scene 6: The next job involves Fred pretending to be a woman and offering the target a blow job, so he can get into position for the hit.  Wait -- Mike kills him before Fred even gets his cock out of his pants!  "Dang it, Mike, you cut up on a bit of fun!!  He was a good kisser, though."  Maybe Mike will let you suck him, to make up for it.

Scene 7: The guys move into a new headquarters, with space to experiment with new killing techniques. 

Cut to Ninja Lady attacking.  Fred complains that they would get more work done if Mike didn't have to get beat up after every job.  "Couldn't you just crank one out?" Nope, masturbation doesn't alleviate the guilt.  If killing people makes you feel guilty, maybe you chose the wrong carer path. 

Ninja Lady offers to help Fred look for his missing girlfriend, and Mike gets all jealous. "It's a scam, I'm telling you.  Forget about her."

Scene 8: Next job: Fred calls the target on the telephone, so he'll be in the right position for the ceiling to collapse, and the bath tub from the apartment above him to crush him.  His m.o. is making the hits look like accidents!

Scene 9: Uh-oh, the guys are kidnapped by Armando.  Mike insults him, and gets beat up.  Armando: "We made you and your knickyknacky (boyfriend) very wealthy! Show some respect!" Then the big boss, Mrs. Zuuzer, The Wrath of Hades, introduces them to her son Dante:  He was educated in the best schools, but he still turned into a "pathetic drug addled delinquent mess."  

Last week someone tried to kill him, using Mike's m.o. of colorful, weird "accidents."  The guys have an alibi: they were out celebrating Mike's birthday.

Ok, so she wants to Mike find whoever put the contract out, and kill them.  Mike offers to take the job for three times the usual rate, but she has a better idea: if you fail, we'll kill your boyfriend. Saving a boyfriend, not a girlfriend?  I'm in.

More gay subtexts after the break

The Line of Beauty: Thatcher-era gay guy settles in with a conservative MP, dates closeted men

 

Amazon Prime has been pushing The Line of Beauty, a British drama about a poor boy who moves in with his ultra rich, ultra powerful classmate.  The trailer shows him smooching with an old guy, so apparently he seduces the Dad. There are three parts, each an hour long, set in 1983, 1986, and 1987.  I'll review the 1983 episode, "The Love Chord."

Scene 1: Closeup of a huge mansion in the ritzy Notting Hill section of London. Two guys arrive. "Is this where you live?" Nick Guest (Dan Stevens) asks, overwhelmed. Guest, har har.  His classmate Toby (Oliver Coleman): "Well, where my parents live."  Sounds like a Saltburn or Brideshead Revisited coming up.

Nick continues to gawk as Toby leads him through the house. An elderly lady with an Italian accent shows him his room: quite a let down, tiny, with awful wallpaper. Don't worry, you'll be in the master suite as soon as you seduce a few family members. 

Scene 2:  Dinner time.  Dad (Tim McInnerny) has just been elected a Member of Parliament for the Conservative Party.  In the homophobic 1980s!  Their affair is going to cause quite a scandal.   

Left: Tim McInnerny prepares to go down on a bellhop in What the Butler Saw.

Plot dump: Nick has graduated from Oxford with a First in English, and is now is working on his doctorate, researching Henry James. He has agreed to housesit all summer, while Mom and Dad are in France and Toby is traveling through Europe.  Wait, I thought this would be a Nick-Toby romance, or at least Nick seducing Toby first on his way through the family.   "Oh, we forgot to mention that you will be taking care of our mentally ill teenage daughter, Cat."

Cut to Toby shaving in a towel (nice physique!), giving Nick the deets.  Cat used to cut herself, but she's on medication, and feeling better. 

"Does she know...?"  Nick asks.  Sure, and she's fine with it.  Say the Word, idjits!  He gazes at Toby's butt.  Not good enough -- say it!

Scene 3: Mom, Dad, the housekeeper, and Toby say goodbye and drive away.  That night, Nick is reading a Henry James novel, when Cat appears in a bathrobe with booze and two glasses. She lights up a marijuana joint. I thought she knew?  Maybe Girlfriend wants to snag herself some gay cock

"What's it like being gay?" she begins.  "It seems perfectly normal to me."

Next question: "Have you shagged Toby?"  No, he's straight. "But you fancy him."  Of course not. Are we going to get an unrequited love plotline?   Nick isn't dating anyone at present, so Cat decides to find him a guy. 

Scene 4: Nick comes home to find Cat talking to an elderly working-class man, who keeps grinning and gazing lustfully at him.  Ulp, not Nick's type!  Psych: he's not a hookup, he's just visiting.  She has actually been searching the personal ads (remember those?).  "Black guy, late 20s, very good looking."  

Nick calls to make a date with Black Guy, Late 20s, then rushes downstairs to tell Cat.  But she's gone -- and one of the knives is missing from the kitchen!  She's cut herself.  But she was so happy before.   He bandages her wound, then goes to her room and confiscates her knife collection.

Scene 5: As they walk in the garden, Nick asks if Cat knows what causes the urge to cut herself, or if she can tell when it's coming.  She doesn't get any advance warning: her mood has nothing to do with it.  Suddenly everything suddenly goes "black and glittering," and she has to stop living.  He wants to call the parents, but she assures him that it won't happen again. If  she has no control over it, how can she promise that?

Cut to evening. Cat doesn't want to go back to her room, so she sleeps on the couch, while Nick plays the piano. Hey, she's trying to sleep!  

Scene 6: Nick rushes to an outdoor restaurant for his date with Leo (Don Gilet), the personal ad guy.  It's rather awkward.  Leo looks for an excuse to dismiss Nick as racist, is disappointed to discover that he isn't rich, and is annoyed when he misunderstands "Let's get going."  Neither has a place, so they end up kissing and doing anal in the private garden.  Nick is the top.  A little of Leo's butt is shown. 

Scene 7:  Mom and Dad return from France with gifts of foie gras and perfume.  Nick and Cat agree that everything was brilliant, so they suggest that he stay on as Cat's attendant. Shouldn't he have training in mental illness, crisis intervention. and such? Of course he can still work on his degree, and he can bring friends over.  But can we screw in my bedroom?

More closeted guys after the break

"Doctor Who," 2005 Series: Hints, hunks, subtexts, surprise, and off-camera penises

 

Doctor Who has been wildly popular in Britain for 60 years: 26 doctors in 39 seasons (1963-present), plus spin-offs, over 200 novels, and enough tie-in products to rival Star Trek in the U.S.  

I've tried watching at various times, but it's like trying to read a Marvel comic: you're dropped into the middle of a long story, with references to characters and situations from years ago or different series: "But I thought you returned to the sub-galactic empyrion in Episode #1314!  How's Jenna?"  I even bought a history of Doctor Who to try to figure it out, but it was all studio gossip about why this or that doctor was cast.

The 2005-2021 series just dropped on MAX, starring Christopher Eggleston (below) and then David Tennant (top photo and below) as the Doctor (he keeps regenerating). This one is different: most episodes are self-contained, with the occasional call-back to previous series actually explained, instead of assuming that viewers have watched every episode since 1963. We even find out who the doctor is.

The premise: The Doctor is a Time Lord, able to zap through time and space on his Tardis vehicle (which looks like a 1960s British police box from the outside). He has a tragic back story which might be new to this series: he is the only surviving member of his species.  They were all wiped out by the evil ("Exterminate!") Daleks, but he destroyed their species in retaliation (until they return).  

Now he travels around for fun or to seek out and fix time/space anomalies that threaten to destroy London or the universe:

Zombies plague the Victorian London of Charles Dickens.

Evil aliens are masquerading as Members of Parliament

In the year 200,000, an alien is controling the Earth.

The Doctor is in the habit of saying "It's hopeless!  There's no escape!  There's nothing I can do -- we're all going to die!"  Or "the universe will collapse at any moment!  There's no way to stop it!"  Or 'we're stuck forever on this parallel world where Britain has a president instead of a prime minister, and they've invented helicopters but not airplanes!"  Then, after the commercial break: "I've figured it out!  All we have to do is recalibrate the time coordinator and push it backwards through the space-time continnum!"  

I'm reminded of the old Star Trek series, where Captain Kirk says "The odds against us getting out of this jam are a million to one!"  Then he does it easily, and starts deciding what to wear for his promotion to Admiral.

The companion:  In the first episode, the Doctor meets Rose Tyler, a working-class shop girl from 21st century London, and invites her to join him.  Rose has a tragic back story, too: her father was killed in a traffic accident while she was a baby.  Somehow the Doctor's missions often put them in parallel worlds where he's still alive (but she can't see him, or time/space will collapse), or back in time to the moment of the accident (but she can't rescue him, or flying gargoyles will destroy the world).

I don't know if the Doctor fell in love with his previous female companions, or this is a new innovation, but he and Rose are definitely falling in love.  It's a slow burn romance -- we're halfway through Season 2, and they haven't kissed yet.  Of course,  Rose has a boyfriend, and the Doctor is busy falling in love with the lady alien or distant-future babe of the week (even Madame de Pompadour, when he tries to prevent distant-future cyborgs from stealing her brain).   

Occasionally they pick up a second companion, a guy, but the Doctor resents the competition and quickly boots him.

The Guys: While they are in 21st century Utah, investigating an underground museum of alien artifacts, they pick up  "boy genius" Adam Mitchell (Bruno Langley).  He is fired in the next episode, when the Doctor catches him  transmitting technology from the year 200,000 to his Mum's answering machine back home.  Langley also played Todd Grimshaw, the first gay character on the long-running soap Coronation Street, from 2001 to 2003. He is heterosexual in real life.

Next, the Doctor and Rose end up in blitz-besieged World War II London, where alien technology has transformed a dead boy into an "empty boy," wandering around and asking "Are you my Mummy?"  If he touches you, you turn into an "empty boy," too.  During this adventure, they hook up with Captain Jack Harkness (John Barrowman, left and below), a loveable rogue time-traveler, and openly bisexual, flirting with men and women.  Rose is shocked by this -- apparently LGBT people do not exist in 21st century London -- but the Doctor points out that Jack is from the 51st century, when "anything goes."

More hints and hunks after the break

"Saltburn": "Brideshead Revisited" for the post-gay genearation, with kink and penises

Whenever possible, I check out plot synopses, reviews, and trailers before watching a movie. Since Amazon Prime has been pushing Saltburn , I checked the reviews: "a spectacularly crafted masterpiece"; "brilliant"; "sick, savage, and satisfying"; "vibes forward" (I don't know what that means); "a febrile thriller."  Sounds like a mishmash of Brideshead Revisted and The Talented Mr. Ripley, a poor (well, middle class) boy longing for the unstated homoerotic tensions and sybaritic excesses of the Polo Club crowd.  Except set in 2016, not the Georgian Era.

Some of the reviews contained plot synopses, which allowed me to make my decision: don't watch, don't even look at a trailer.  Here's why. 

1.  The focus character, sort of, is decadent Oxford richster Felix, seen here eating a popsicle and reading a Harry Potter book like a modern day Sebastian Flyte.  He's played by Jacob Elordi, a bad boy in Euphoria.

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2, Felix feels sorry for the sob stories of  poor-but-honest classmate Oliver (Barry Keoghan, who has received awards and appeared on a list of the greatest living Irish actors),  So "Come out to Brideshead...um, Saltburn with me."

Oliver doesn't want to date Felix, he wants to be him.  So he does something too disgusting to mention here.  Really, really disgusting.   I'm not kink shaming: probably 3/4ths of the population will get physically sick just by reading about it, but if it's your thing, fine.   Why not just give him a blow job?

3, Felix conquered, it's time to coerce Cousin Farleigh(Archie Madkwe) into sex.  Then Felix's sister, with another really, really disgusting kink.  

4. Felix gets tired of the lies, deceptions, and disgusting kink, and orders Oliver to leave Saltburn.  But Cousin Farleigh ends up dead.  Then Felix!  Now, of course, Oliver has to stay to find more family members to do disgusting kink with. Then Venetia kills herself!

5. Oliver is running out of family members.  He tries to seduce Mom, but she refuses.  Wait, dude, you forgot Dad and the Butler  Then Dad, tired of the lies, deception, and dead family members, bribes Oliver to leave.  He does.

6, But when Dad dies, Oliver returns, forces Mom to sign Saltburn over to him, and kills her.  Now he is the master of Saltburn, so he dances around naked.  

Actually, this looks sort of interesting, an a post-gay, everybody-does-everybody way.  Maybe I'll watch, but skip over the disgusting kink scenes. Or I'll just fast forward to the last scene with Barry Keoghan dancing naked like a sybaritic sycophant.

Dicks after the break