Things that brought me joy, part 2

• WandaVision, which is both a charming love letter to sitcoms of yore like I Love Lucy or I Dream of Jeannie and also a serious mindfuck – although it looks like questions are being answered from episode 4. It is early days… and I’ve gone off every other Marvel TV show after a season, but I am enjoying this a lot more than almost everything else that’s come out of the MCU for a long time.
• Macarons from Thibault Courtoisier, a baker who has been known in Cardiff for years but became famous throughout the UK when he won Bake Off: The Professionals 2020 together with Laurian Veaudour. Fresh off that win, he’s gone solo to launch his pâtisserie verte and sell delicious vegan goods.
• Speaking of food: fudge from Fwdge is the best. Always and forever. Handmade in a kitchen in South Wales but delivered throughout the UK.
• The Cut‘s podcast, relaunched last year after Avery Trufelman joined from 99% Invisible. It was a great loss to 99PI, but clearly a significant win for The Cut. The website markets itself towards women, but the podcast really is for everyone who likes well-researched journalism. I’ve been powering through the back catalogue – favourites include the pseudoscience of false memories, an immigration activist finding common ground with a border patrol agent, consent in the modelling industry, an interview with Ijeoma Oluo (who wrote So You Want to Talk About Race) on white male privilege, and an exploration of what makes nudes good.
• Staged, a BBC show starring Michael Sheen and David Tennant (or should it be David Tennant and Michael Sheen?) filmed over Zoom during the pandemic. It sounds tired, but the two have fantastic chemistry and more often than not I’ve found myself crying with laughter. A show of our times, for our times – and where else would you ever see Samuel L. Jackson exclaiming “who the fuck is Michael Sheen”?
• Wild Target, which – and there really is no other way of putting it – is utter trash. But it’s fun trash. And to have Bill Nighy, Rupert Grint, Martin Freeman and Emily Blunt all together on screen is a treat whichever way you put it. Good for wasting away an hour and a half.

_{Photo by Serghei Savchiuc}