Mark Kermode's Secrets of Cinema

Mark Kermode is my favourite film critic: he is passionate about cinema and has an incredible breadth of knowledge to bring to the subject. The first episodes - which he wrote himself - are excellent and I've watched them at least twice.

Sadly he has either run out of new things to say or the BBC tone police's insistence on him providing us with little snippets of wokeness and lectures on diversity, make the third series a complete bore.

I was very disappointed with this series. He seems to only consider genres that are currently hyped as if that were the history of cinema. The most glaring example is nothing on Westerns. One can make a cogent argument for all movies being Westerns. The first frickin' movie was a Western. How can you leave that out of the history of cinema? The biggest stars of the 1950's all had to be in a Western. Romcoms? I don't think so.

Besides that he selects about 5 over hyped films and talks about them for an hour as if nothing else existed. Simple hypotheses from small data sets. And I found him very uninteresting personally and as a presenter. This is only the second BBC documentary series I have not liked in 22 years of watching the BBC.

An essential watch for anyone with an interest in cinema. No gimmicks no tricks, just excellent journalism. Reminiscent of the long forgotten BBC2 series Moviedrome with Alex Cox, and a similar programme introduction by Mark Cousins. It would be nice if it was followed directly by a double bill of examples of the genres covered, but you can't have everything.

In this series film critic Mark Kermode analyses the construction of films in five genres; rom-com, heist, coming of age, Science fiction and horror. In each episode he breaks down the standards of the genre under discussion; illustrating it with examples taken from the days of silent cinema right up to films made within the last year. These include many classic examples as well as a few less familiar works.

I found this to be a really interesting insight into genre cinema; of course he only looked into five genres so some viewers may be disappointed that he didn't look into their particular favourite... of course that means there is plenty for a second series at a later date; I'd love to see a discussion of police/detective films, superheroes, war films, westerns and action movies to suggest just another five possibilities. Mark Kermode certainly knows his subject and his passion for film comes across without getting overly bogged down in technicalities. The choices of films to illustrate key points is interesting; some obvious choices, some interesting choices and inevitably there are some surprising omissions... there are only so many clips you can show in an hour. Overall this is definitely something for film fans to watch.

With full disclosure, I must say that I have followed Mark Kermode and his criticism for many years and have in the large have mostly agreed with him. There have been exceptions. This enterprise is entirely different. By the very nature of the format, this is not criticism but analysis of a specific genre and the myriad possibilities they can present. I have seen issues with the limitations of the subjects thus far but it is early days and given the popularity of the first series and specials I believe it will carry on for some time. And a shout for co-writer Kim Newman, a wonderful writer of ridiculous knowledge of genre cinema.