Ricardo-8

Well, other than The Simpsons. But University Challenge is undoubtedly the best quiz show. No fabulous prizes, celebrity specials (though wouldn't it be cool if the BBC showed the episodes with people like Stephen Fry in?) or tacky formats; just a good, solid series. Yet there is still enough of a 'format' present to endear the show to me - the classic dialogue ("your starter for 10" has actually made it into the Oxford Dictionary of Quotation), the one-team-on-top-of-the-other set (famously parodied in The Young Ones), Roger Tilling's blink-and-you'll-miss-it voiceover that he nevertheless gets credit for, and the fact that every week seems to include Somethingorother College, Oxford playing either the Open University or UMIST.

Most importantly though, where most other quiz shows only seem to point out your ignorance of certain topics and leave you feeling stupid for the questions you can't answer, the ultra-difficult nature of University Challenge means that you don't feel bad about the questions you get wrong, but when you get one (or more!) right it seems as if your whole life spent collecting arcane facts has been validated.

You could also argue that University Challenge is more wholesome than other quiz programmes. The winners don't play for prizes but rather for the honour of their university (and, if I remember rightly, some money and a nice statue too). It was watching this programme that I knew I wanted to go to uni, and someday be able to say to a BBC studio audience "I'm Richard Magrath, and I'm reading English Literature". It was through University Challenge that I learnt that you "read", rather than "study", your course at university, about the Oxbridge collegiate system and that I have a talent at being able to recognise pieces of classical music when played backwards.

Finally, as the icing on the cake, the series is filmed in Manchester. What more could you want?

Yes, I rented this film looking for a bog-standard slasher. Yet I have seen enough genuine horror films (The Haunting (1963), The Shining, something else that has slipped my mind) and thrillers to recognise when something is genuinely good. And this film is genuinely bad.

I've already written one review of this on Amazon.co.uk, so here I'll list the faults in a point-by-point, Wittgensteinian style:

1. Worst portrayal of police procedure ever. At first it is quite interesting to observe how they believe Thora Birch more so than anyone else, because she looks like a victim. By the end you'll be wondering in the police force in this area was intentionally hiring idiots, or were they just incredibly (un)lucky.

2. Plot holes and giant gaps in the logic. If you've seen the film, you know what I mean. I actually thought I'd gone mad, or missed a big piece of the film, until it came to the end and I realised it was everyone else who'd gone completely insane.

3. Which brings me to... the fact that [name removed]'s motives boil down to "I'm mad, me". How rubbish is that?!

4. Bad ending. Chinatown showed that there was more than one kind of justice, and was actually quite satisfying. The Hole just left me really annoyed.

5. Clichéd characters. The Hole might not be a slasher film, yet the unimaginative writers still used the stock slasher characters: weird girl, weird lad, pretty but annoying girl, hunky and slightly mysterious lad, 'funny' jock lad. The more observant of you will have noticed that all these characters were used (and satirised) in Scream.

6. No thrills, chills, or drama of any sort. It's one of those films like the 1993 Invasion of the Body Snatchers that just floats by on a sort of cushion of ennui. This never, ever, ever, ever comes across as anything other than horribly dull, emotionally distant and boring on screen (with the sole exception of Three Colours Blue by Kryzstof Kielowski).

7. Thin story. There *is* a vague twist, but it is clearly signposted, and the 'revelations' that follow are unimaginative and actually quite uninteresting, after the first death. By the time the film has finished, a lot less has happened (and much fewer interesting things) than you would have expected from the trailer, for instance.

8. Unenjoyable. It comes, it goes, it makes no impact on you whatsoever, just a slight numbing misery and a brief burst of annoyance at how it all turns out.

In the end, though The Hole was seen at the time of its release as being a brilliant example of low-budget filmmaking, it suffers from the same problem as most high-concept Hollywood output: it is nothing more than its pitch, and when the film gets past dramatising its pitch (that is, once the setting and characters and McGuffin have been established) the writer and director seem intent on wrapping it all up as quickly as possible.

To me Flash Gordon seems like nothing so much as it does a gay Star Wars, and as such it is the work of genius. Flash is as colourful as any psychedelic album cover of the 1960s but with a tightness and assuredness to it that proves it wasn't the work of misguided, acid-drowned hippies (as some scenes might suggest at first), or indeed, of any contemporary mainstream film director. Flash feels like a labour of love rather than of a committee - it is infused with a loving care and understanding of what it's doing that means the film is never afraid to touch upon sex, violence and gore, yet does not feel it is therefore bound to being adult, and likewise in its technicolour vistas does not shy away from what some would label childish (or camp...), and unlike contemporary mainstream films it doesn't have a cocky or pretentious sense of its own worth (just think of every stupid, stupid film that has actually seriously tried to teach us something), and by its campness Flash actually (and quite charmingly) persuades us to underestimate it as a bit of pulp fun, which is perhaps why those who enjoy it really love it too. It should also be remembered that it has a plot that is authentically pulpy and rollicking good fun at that (even Star Wars dragged a bit, but not Flash Gordon), and I'd even go as far as to say that Flash is a proper epic, with its grand scale, cast of well-known actors (Brian Blessed!) and the fact that it gets so bloody much done (compare with Titanic, the wannabe-epic which got so little done - two people fall in love - in 3 hours).

Flash Gordon is the perfect Bank Holiday film, captivating and enjoyable from start to finish, it is one of a kind and I really don't think we'll ever see anything like it made ever again.