Three Things: February '21

February sure came and went, didn’t it? I was going to write a whole thing about the Big Things™ that happened in February but we’re hitting the part where nothing sticks in my mind anymore, so let’s just get to the Three Things.

Drag Race UK, Season 2

TV • BBC iPlayer (UK); WOW Presents Plus (Everywhere Else)

Let's preface this with a reminder that RuPaul is, basically, awful. I can't call Drag Race UK a Three Things Thing without acknowledging his persistent transphobia, the whole fracking thing, and the fact that he's never picked a plus-sized queen as a winner in 13 seasons of Drag Race US1.

It's perhaps no surprise, then, that Drag Race UK is great entirely because of its queens, who spent the last month sending up the Eurovision Song Contest, turning the concept of walking off stage into a meme, and pulling off the world’s greatest Katie Price impression.

This season feels like the format hitting its stride; the queens are fantastic, the looks iconic, and the challenges perfectly suited to British tastes. I'm not saying his sodding catchphrase, but it can definitely stay — especially if we wind up with a Bimini/Laurence Chaney/Tayce finale.

Yakuza 0

Game • PS4, Xbox One, PC • Available on Xbox Game Pass

I fell off Yakuza 0 when I first tried it on PS4 a few years back. I don’t know if it was an inability to focus on it, a general feeling of being overwhelmed by new systems, or my PS4’s fans being louder than the game’s open-world background noise, but it really didn’t click with me.

Now it’s on Xbox Game Pass, though? Hooooo boy do I love this. Its story carries the prestige TV feel of a Walter Presents boxset, yet it’s an open world brawler/mahjong simulator/karaoke game/dominatrix trainer2 at the same time. I’d find myself lost in its real estate and cabaret club minigames, then hooked on its fun punch-the-man-in-the-face action driving the story forward.

It’s worth a shot — and if you like it, almost the entire series of Yakuza games starring Kazuma Kiryu is on Game Pass, with the last one landing on March 26.

Manchester United 9-0 Southampton

Football (Soccer) Match • Highlights on YouTube (probably geo-restricted)

Listen, I’m surprised we’re here too. There’s probably a whole Good Screen piece in me about how I got into football, but it’s not something I talk about that much (unless you follow me on Twitter).

Anyway, this was a lot. I’d forgot when this game was supposed to start, so I turned up and it was already 3-0; I thought I’d missed all the good action and was in for a dull evening. But the score kept creeping up, Southampton wound up with nine men on the pitch, and it all started to feel a bit like a fever dream.

It would have been completely unbelievable had Southampton not also lost 9-0 to Leicester City the previous season, a stroke of incredible bad luck for the team.

United’s performances for the rest of February have been a bit of a mixed bag — an absolutely dire FA Cup performance against West Ham is fresh in the memory as I’m writing this — but this was probably the high watermark of our season so far and just a really fun game to watch. To quote Sir Alex Ferguson: Football, bloody hell.