The Metropolitan has been watching the ‘70s TV ‘Paddington’, yet another show in the canon of extraordinary ‘70s kids’ animation, which is a bigger category than you’d expect. open.substack.com/pub/metropol...

This week, The Metropolitan has been watching the amazing ‘70s TV adaptation of ‘Paddington’, from the days before the little bear started his ominous duty of ushering British celebrities into the afterlife. open.substack.com/pub/metropol...

It’s Mixtape week in The Metropolitan, which means it's time for our monthly playlist, which, in honour of our recent holiday, is all French. open.substack.com/pub/metropol...

Crossing Paris on the way to catch the TGV south to our holiday inevitably made us think of Luc Besson’s ‘Subway’ (1985), not least because we longed for a pair of rollerskates to navigate the long tunnels at Gare Montparnasse. open.substack.com/pub/metropol...

We’ve been on holiday to a different part of the Angevin Empire, which led to consider how medieval feudalism modern corporate structures are, and how desperate modern billionaires seem to be to return to those social structures. open.substack.com/pub/metropol...

While on holiday in France, The Metropolitan visited the excellent Musée de Bande Dessinée in Angoulême, and were delighted to see, among other treasures, original pencils by Hergé. open.substack.com/pub/metropol...

The Metropolitan has been on holiday in France, which has meant a lot of time exploring French supermarkets. open.substack.com/pub/metropol...

‘Soft Serve’ is one of the best tracks from Soul Coughing’s ‘Irresistible Bliss’, and also an apt metaphor for ‘90s consumerism. open.substack.com/pub/metropol...

This week we’ve been listening to Soul Coughing’s ‘Irresistible Bliss’, a melange of jazz, hip-hop, rock and beat poetry, not unlike Beck;s contemporaneous ‘Odelay’. open.substack.com/pub/metropol...

Soul Coughing’s M. Doughty apparently always hated the cover of their album ‘Irresistible Bliss’, but, for all its faults, it is very much of its time. open.substack.com/pub/metropol...

Soul Coughing’s ‘deep slacker jazz’ was part of a ‘90s trend for downtempo music, including trip-hop, chill-out, acid jazz and an easy listening revival. open.substack.com/pub/metropol...

This week, we’ve been relistening to Soul Coughing’s album ‘Irresistible Bliss’, which, in 1996, was a blessed alternative to the British charts. open.substack.com/pub/metropol...

‘Taxi Driver’ and ‘Star Wars’ are often seen as two polar opposites of the New Hollywood, but they have more in common can might at first appear. open.substack.com/pub/metropol...

This week we’ve been rewatching ‘Taxi Driver’, a key film of the New Hollywood movement that began with Dennis Hopper’s groundbreaking ‘Easy Rider’ open.substack.com/pub/metropol...

Scorsese has always said that ‘Taxi Driver’ is essentially feminist in intent: a depiction of just how poisonous toxic masculinity can get. open.substack.com/pub/metropol...

We’ve been rewatching ‘Taxi Driver’, but not all the men of the mid ‘70s were as awful as Travis Bickle. Some of them were even fun. www.themetropolitan.uk/p/the-genesi...

The Metropolitan has been re-watching ‘Taxi Driver’, a key film of the New Hollywood of the ‘70s. open.substack.com/pub/metropol...

Time for our monthly playlist of favourite tracks from the last month's listening. www.themetropolitan.uk/p/metropolit...

Metropolitan Mixtape: June 2026

What The Metropolitan has been watching while delirious from the heat

themetropolitan.uk

We’ve been watching a lot of ‘slow cinema’ this month, which has put us in mind of the ‘90s fashion for archly observant documentaries. open.substack.com/pub/metropol...

This week The Metropolitan has finally got round to watching the greatest movie of all time, at least according to the Sight and Sound critics poll. www.themetropolitan.uk/p/metropolit...

This month The Metropolitan has been watching a lot of things set in the USSR, which has reminded us of how weird it was growing up during the Cold War. open.substack.com/pub/metropol...

It's Mixtape week in The Metropolitan, where we round up some of the cultural artifacts that have caught our eye, including, this month, Tina Fey’s sitcom remake of Alan Alda’s movie ‘The Four Seasons’. www.themetropolitan.uk/p/metropolit...

It is tempting to balk at the description of a Batman comic as a ‘graphic novel’, but Frank Miller’s ‘The Dark Knight Returns’ is definitely ‘a narrative that is usually long and complex’, as the dictionary has it. open.substack.com/pub/metropol...

‘The Dark Knight Returns’ was a poster child for the new marketing concept of more adult comics: graphic novels. But beyond superheroes, more grown-up comics were nothing new. www.themetropolitan.uk/p/the-return...

We’ve been re-reading Frank Miller’s Batman comic ‘The Dark Knight Returns’ and marvelling at the dark, angry politics of the late ‘80s. open.substack.com/pub/metropol...

We’ve been reading ‘The Dark Knight Returns’ this week, a hit comic that was a decided – and dark – influence on Tim Burton’s Batman movies of the late ‘80s / early ‘90s. www.themetropolitan.uk/p/batman-ret...

This week in The Metropolitan we’re re-reading Frank Miller’s seminal Batman comic ‘The Dark Knight Returns’, and re-visiting the ‘80s re-invention of the graphic novel. open.substack.com/pub/metropol...

The arrival of reality TV coincided with the mainstreaming of the Internet, both of which unhinged people’s sense of the dividing lines between the public and the private. open.substack.com/pub/metropol...

In many ways, contemporary reality TV evolved out of the explosion of makeover shows in the early ‘90s, like 'Changing Rooms' produced by Peter Bazalgette. open.substack.com/pub/metropol...

The change in British lifestyle TV programming in the ‘90s, from home makeovers to personal ones, was a development that the medium wasn’t quite ready to handle. open.substack.com/pub/metropol...