#8 Like a sudoku and a crossword had a baby
Issue #8 Like a sudoku and a crossword had a baby
May the 4th Be With You 2022
Greetings from the Surrey Hills! I am still Chris Mead.
It's been a very exciting week. Lots of new projects on the horizon and I'm working hard to get them all up and running (one launches in this very newsletter).
Still really enjoying using my standing desk which means I can work downstairs with Laura and Radio. It's so lovely to be together during the day and I'm noticing the difference in my energy levels from habitually standing to do my admin tasks too.
Now onto the recommendations...
Rule of three
[Game] Knotwords
Discovered this ingenious word puzzle recently and can confidently say I now enjoy it more than Wordle (which I also enjoy very much). It's like a sudoku and a crossword had a baby.
[Sketch] John Finnemore's Souvenir Programme
For my money this is the most consistently funny sketch show ever written. There's 8 seasons of audio gold but during the pandemic Finnemore (who writes and stars) seized the opportunity to do something a little different. Season 9, which is stand alone and doesn't require knowledge of the previous seasons, tracks the fortunes of a large family over several generations. Each episode centres on a different family member and each sketch is a snapshot of their life in reverse. It's by turns hilarious, elegiac, thoughtful and profound. I absolutely adored it. UK-based humans can find it on the BBC Sounds app, everyone else can listen here.
[TV] Severance
I finished Severance this week and it's the best show I've watched this year. I was literally SCREAMING at the TV during the finale. The less you know about it going in, the better (which is ironic given the subject matter) but I really can't recommend it strongly enough.
Spotlight
I was deeply honoured to be asked to teach for Queen City Comedy. I think Karla and her team are an exemplary improv company and so smart and intentional in everything they do. I've created a new online course for them based on 1990s point & click adventure games (of course I have) - including the Monkey Island games I talked about a few weeks ago. There are only 10 places and all the normal Queen's City tiered-ticketing and bursary options are available. Doing an improv course about computer games, using a computer-based environment was just too cute an idea.
Longform thoughts
And lo, did the god of improv smite the house team with seven plagues: a plague of empty brains; a plague of audience members looking at their phones; plagues of drunken hecklers, bad edits, shallow characters and slightly racist accents. And in our final moments, verily she did dispatch the angel of comedy death and we simply died on stage.
And no one will mourn our passing.
Read The good show & the bad show: a parable.
Radio days
Time for sleeps, Radio.