Fan Phenomena: Sherlock Holmes edited by Tom Ue and Jonathan Cranfield

This review also appears on the International Crime Fiction Association blog.

Intellect describes its series Fan Phenomena as being ‘prompted by a growing appetite for books that tap into the fascination we have with what constitutes an iconic or cultish phenomenon’. The series started in 2013 and has continued steadily, with topics including Star Trek (2013), The Lord of the Rings (2015), and Game of Thrones (2017), among others. Sherlock Holmes, who needs no introduction, is such an iconic figure in fandom and popular culture that it is no wonder the character himself has inspired a volume under the Fan Phenomena banner.

In Fan Phenomena: Sherlock Holmes, editors Tom Ue and Jonathan Cranfield bring together thirteen chapters, consisting of eight chapters and five ‘Fan Appreciation’ interviews. Since ‘the figure of Holmes has been constantly refreshed and renewed, adapted […] to new cultural moments’ (6), the editors’ stated aim is to ‘attest […] to the popularity of the characters and fictional world that [Arthur] Conan Doyle created’ (5). It is such a vast aim that no 153-page book could fully do it justice, but Ue and Cranfield have succeeded in providing a comprehensive and attractive introduction to some of the key themes in Holmes fandom.

The volume is beautifully laid out and illustrated. Intellect Books are designed to appeal to students and well-informed enthusiasts as well as scholars and researchers, so it is not surprising that Fan Phenomena: Sherlock Holmes is visually appealing. The front and back inside covers are filled with Sidney Paget’s illustration of Holmes and his arch-nemesis, Professor Moriarty, tumbling down the Reichenbach Falls. The pages are well-spaced and easy to read, with a variety of images, and each contribution is prefaced with what some would call a Conanical quotation: a remark from Conan Doyle’s original texts concerning Holmes.

Particularly strong are the opening and closing essays. Tom Ue’s ‘Sherlock Holmes and Shakespeare’ (8-27) looks at ‘the numerous ways in which Shakespeare’s writing affected Conan Doyle in his creation and writing of Sherlock Holmes and his stories’, and Ue insists that ‘Conan Doyle’s reading of Shakespeare [lies] at the heart of his own writing’ (10). Both authors are authoritative voices in their respective historical contexts, but Ue points out a tradition of adaptation and allusion that positions the Holmes canon itself as a kind of fan fiction. Benjamin Poore, in closing the collection, offers a perspective on presentations of Moriarty on-screen in the twenty-first century (134-147).  From Moriarty’s creation in 1893, ‘as a narrative tool with which to kill of Holmes’, which Poore says ‘backfired spectacularly’ (135), the character and his relationship to Holmes have gripped the public imagination, with a significance both on and off the page that cannot be easily separated. As such, Poore argues, ‘Holmes and Moriarty’s activities suit the porous boundary-crossing tenor of the times, where the Internet has increased the ways in which we commingle reality and fiction’ (142).

While some of the interviews with authors veer into promotional, rather than informative, territory, it is fascinating to see the variety of approaches to often similar concepts: for example, two of the interviews are with co-authors of distinct ‘Young Sherlock Holmes’ graphic novels (80-89; 100-108). The final interview is with Robert Ryan, author of Dead Man’s Land, a 2013 novel set during the First World War and featuring Dr Watson (124-133). The novel is not a conventional Holmesian pastiche, and Ryan is open about not being ‘a Holmesian’, although he admits that ‘nobody who writes crime thrillers […] can escape the long arm of Baker Street’ (128). Ryan’s perspective offers points of contrast to the others, and nicely rounds the overall tone of the volume. The interviews intersperse the essays, two of which are written by authors – Jonathan Barnes (110-117) and Shane Peacock (118-123) – outlining the process of writing new Holmes adventures. This creates something of a slant towards authors-talking-about-their work. Some other essays are written by fans, and some by academics, which creates a welcome sense of variety. The different contributors’ styles may not rest in easy harmony, but the result is a volume with something to suit most tastes.

Jonathan Cranfield’s ‘Sherlock Holmes: Fan Culture and Fan Letters’ (66-79) is a fascinating study of ‘the writing of [real] fan letters to [the fictional] Sherlock Holmes – which has occurred continuously from the 1890s until the present day’, exploring how early letters ‘herald the coming multiverse of Sherlockian fan phenomena’ (67). Cranfield attests that ‘early Sherlock Holmes fan culture […] established a basic pattern for the ways in which later phenomena [such as online fan fiction] would function’ (75), which, as with Ue’s contribution, establishes Conanical links and presages to twenty-first century Sherlockiana. However, the delights of this chapter bring to mind the book’s one notable omission. While several contributors mention fan fiction, which is hugely important in the world of Sherlockiana, and a burgeoning field of study in its own right, no contributor has chosen to focus on it. A chapter on fan fiction would have made this already exciting volume stronger still.

Sherlock Holmes is as important a populist figure today as he was in the late nineteenth century. Fan Phenomena: Sherlock Holmes testifies to this significance, with real-life implications playing out in its contributors’ varied backgrounds. It is undoubtedly a useful resource as studies of fan fiction and of fan phenomena continue to gather momentum. Conan Doyle’s creation continues to provide fertile ground for individuals within and far beyond scholarship. As Holmes himself declares, in ‘The Adventure of the Dancing Men’, ‘What one man can create, another can discover.’ 

Mini Reviews #16

Each of these texts is one I wanted to devote a whole post to, but, unfortunately, time and energy are not on my side.

On Her Majesty's Secret Service (1963) by Ian Fleming. Probably the most palatable of the James Bond novels, but that's not saying much. The second in the Blofield trilogy, this has some genuinely exciting moments and excellent location-building but the whole vibe of these books is something I can't get behind.

The Secret History (1992) by Donna Tartt. Iconic as an inverted mystery story and as a campus novel, I think it's impossible to deny that The Secret History is a masterpiece.

'Old Boys, Old Girls' (2004) by Edward P. Jones. A short story published in The New Yorker, this is everything twenty-first century crime fiction should be. Powerful and evocative, it voices a perspective that mainstream - white - American fiction cannot emulate.

Gaudy Bauble (2017) by Isabel Waidner. I am obsessed with this avant-garde queer crime novella, published by Dostoyevsky Wannabe. Nothing is defined in Socialist Britain in the year 201x: people, objects, events, and language all merge and blend and interact. In its extraordinary humour, the text reveals how far identity politics and crime fiction have yet to come.

Six Degrees of Assassination (2017) by M.J. Arlidge. This is a six-part political crime drama with an all-star cast, available for free on Audible. Arlidge's script is cliche-ridden but slick enough. The performances suffer from Extremely-Talented-Actors-Reading-A-Script-For-The-First-Time Syndrome.

Mini reviews #15

Israel Rank: The Autobiography of a Criminal (1907) by Roy Horniman. The inspiration for Kind Hearts and Coronets (one of the greatest films ever made) which inspired A Gentleman's Guide to Love and Murder (one of the greatest musicals ever made), Israel Rank has a very different tone. I had heard that the book was anti-semitic, which is why I hadn't read it before, but the impression I got was that it exposes and pillories anti-semitism in Edwardian Britain. The 'wit' hasn't all travelled well, but it's better than I expected.

A Murder is Announced (1956, Goodyear Playhouse). Miss Marple's first ever screen outing! Here she is played by an unrepentantly-accented Gracie Fields, and the young Roger Moore makes an early appearance showcasing all the woodenness for which he would become famous. This is an adaptation of a relatively complex novel featuring three murders, and the whole thing runs for one hour including commercials. It shouldn't work, but is surprisingly enjoyable. A Murder is Announced is hard to view, but well worth it if you get a chance.

The Murder Wall (2012) by Mari Hannah. Hannah's debut thriller introduces DCI Kate Daniels, who is remarkable as one of the first high-profile lesbian detectives in fiction. However, Hannah has stated several times that the character's sexuality was never really supposed to be an issue. It is a gripping, intense read from the opening graphic rape scene right up to the end. Although some of the writing irks -- Detached exclamations! Exclamation marks! -- the handling of sensitive issues is chillingly effective.

Writing in an Age of Silence (2007) by Sara Paretsky. A powerful memoir from the creator of V.I. Warshawski. Paretsky explores her political and literary influences. I first read it before I'd read any of Paretsky's fiction and thoroughly enjoyed it then; revisiting, it's even more rewarding.

Mine (2018) by Susi Fox. Another debut thriller, this time by an Australian medical professional. Mine tells the story of a new mother who becomes convinced that her baby is not her baby. It is an extremely readable novel, although I found the conclusion unsettling.

Black Burying by Henry Carstairs

I enjoy Henry Carstairs’ mystery novels immensely, although I wouldn’t recommend them to many people. This is because, objectively, there’s not much to recommend them: they feel longer than they are, and are filled with rambling descriptions and internal dialogue. The investigations go round in circles, although the problems are generally very simple, and none of the characters are particularly interesting. Black Burying (1945) is Carstairs’ third novel to feature Lydford Long, and in this there is not even a dead body until the end of Chapter 15! An additional frustration is that several characters have similar names: Inspector Girdley, Sergeant Godfrey, Mr Gilchrist (who looks like Girdley), Sir Arnold Chevely, Mr Chatterton… I can’t imagine many people in the twenty-first century would bother with a book like this, and I can see why Carstairs remains out of print. However, there’s a certain wonderful escapism in spending time with Lydford Long.

Long (or Lyfdford, in the narrative) is a painfully shy man who wants nothing more in life than to be left alone and to sketch. His full-time job seems to be ‘amateur sleuth’ in that wherever he goes, someone dies and he sets around to solving each case without any prompting. In this book, he is helped by his some-time companion, a young boy called Phillip Bradley who puts some things together but mostly pops up to say ‘Gosh!’ And ‘Smashing!’, and by a dog called Spot. I laughed out loud when, in the second chapter, Lydford decided that he was bored so was going to see ‘his boy-friend’. My favourite thing about Lydford, though, is that he talks to himself. About 50% of the dialogue in Black Burying is Lydford working out the case with himself, alone.

Before summarising the plot, I’m going to quote the blurb because I find it loquacious:

Another absorbing mystery in which Lydford Long figures as investigator. When a party of people, of whom he chances to be one, goes for an autumn afternoon’s innocent picnic on the Downs, and one of the party disappears suddenly, completely and mysteriously, what then?

I bet this was written by the author. It just sounds so boring — and as if, midway through the sentence, he gave up. And there’s a sense throughout the novel that the author would rather not be writing a murder mystery. I know nothing about the author but, because he was writing during the war and everyone talks like an Edwardian, and because the obligatory meta-moments all reference Sherlock Holmes rather than anyone more modern, I’d guess he was elderly. The books stopped in the mid-1950s. The name Henry Carstairs sounds so much like a character in one of these novels that I presume it’s a pseudonym. Lydford is clearly a self-portrait because the workings of a shy mind are about the only thing in the book that are palpably authentic; also the author takes care to remind us that Lydford is tall and handsome, which is not uncommon when someone creates a fictional alter-ego on the sly.

So, Lydford is on holiday, staying in a country with people he doesn’t particularly like. Nearby are a little village and several nature walks. On one of this walks, another holiday-goer, Inspector Girdley, vanishes and several chapters later a body turns up. Without any prompting, for no apparent reason, and to nobody’s surprise, Lydford immediately sets about drawing diagrams and interviewing suspects in order to solve the mystery. Luckily for him, Philip, his ‘little invalid boy’ companion in a previous case (Drifting Death) is ‘spending his summer holiday, solitary, on an adjacent farm’, so Lydford and Philip happily pal up to solve the case.

While the set up is ridiculous and the writing is lazy — Carstairs is blatantly trying to fill space when he recounts a whole phone conversation over four pages that could be summarised in two lines (“Hallo! Is that Paget? Lydford here”, “Hello, this is Paget, who’s speaking please? Lydford, is that you?”, “Yes, it’s me,” and so on) — I was never bored reading. I don’t know why, exactly. Part of it is Lydford himself, who is such an excellent portrait of a shy man with a lot of unwanted attention on him. He is furious that solving the previous two cases in the series have given him a kind of notoriety, and he doesn’t like all the young women casting appreciative glances at him: he just wants to paint and sketch. He has no time for sex: ‘all girls were mysteries, and perhaps the only thing to do was to let it go at that.’ Yes, I really want to know about the author now.

Carstairs also turns some wonderful phrases when he wants to. At one point, he describes ‘a little man with darting eyes’ thus: ‘Everything about him was little except his obvious sense of grievance.’ Servants and locals do not get such sophisticated descriptions, however, and they speak in a painful-to-read vernacular. And I learnt some slang. ‘You have put your finger in the mustard!’ one character exclaims when another stumbles upon a hitherto-elusive truth.

There are eleven Lydford Long mysteries and so far I’ve read three. I have one more ready to read and will try to source the others, although I wouldn’t recommend these unless you’re a proper twentieth-century detective fiction geek.

The Way of All Flesh by Naomi Alderman

Audible subscribers, at least in the UK, get ‘free’ access to selected podcasts and serials. I didn’t know this until I was clearing out my spam folder, and came across some links. There are a few interesting things that we get for free and so far I’ve listened to three. This review is of a six-part drama: The Way of All Flesh (2017) by Naomi Alderman.

The story: Zombies have taken over and won the war against humans. The world is ending.  Nine human strangers seek refuge in a country house. Before long, one of them is murdered…  It soon becomes clear that one of the surviving eight is a murderer… but which one?

The Way of All Flesh is set in the Zombies, Run! universe (Google was my friend here). It turns out that Zombies, Run! (2012) is an iPhone and Android game developed by Naomi Alderman and Six to Start, which combines storytelling with running and other healthy stuff that’s not hugely on my radar. Wikipedia calls it ‘an immersive running game’, wherein players listen to the story — partly written by Margaret Atwood! — and their own music. I might give it a go, but I can’t imagine fleeing zombies to the strains of Ethel Merman and the Spice Girls.

The zombie craze was at its peak in 2012, and it’s still going today in a kind of appropriate dead-but-not-dead way. Two of my Netflix binges are iZombie, an absolutely ridiculous comic-book-inspired programme that’s just stumbled into its fourth series, and Santa Clarita Diet, which is one of the greatest shows ever made. iZombie has maintained its relevance in Series 4 by more or less ditching its police-procedural format (it began as a show about a zombie pathologist who solves the murders of the people whose brains she eats) and turning the whole thing into a not-so-subtle allegory on the topic of multiculturalism: it presents a world where humans and zombies appear to co-exist but persecution and propaganda surge behind the scenes. Meanwhile, Santa Clarita Diet, as the title suggests, satirises white-picket-fence aspirations and the American Dream.

The Way of All Flesh also has a kind of relevance-bid, in that it’s set in the aftermath of an apocalyptic war on zombies (or ‘zoms', in the parlance). Most crime fiction has a genre-referential moment, and in The Way of All Flesh it comes at the mid-way point, when the survivors reflect on Golden Age detective novels. The likes of Christie and Sayers, they agree, were popular in the aftermath of the First World War and the run-up to the Second, because they gave readers a sense of conclusion; of explaining death and disorder. In that scene, Alderman argues for her own story’s relevance in an increasingly unstable political climate.

The idea of a murder mystery set during the apocalypse has always appealed to me. I’ve always wanted to read one. I even attempted to write something vaguely along those lines as my Masters dissertation; a novella set on board the Titanic, in which the crime is explained while the ship is sinking and the passengers have to choose between staying to hear the truth and trying to escape without ever finding out (it divided the examiners). The issue here, though, is not a question of resolution — of whether the truth matters at the very end — but one of motive: why would anyone commit murder when everyone’s days are numbered?

The characters are all humorous archetypes — a journalist, a doctor, an academic, a TV celebrity — and there’s some enjoyable interaction. The egos clash nicely and, of course, hidden connections quickly emerge. However, I felt that the mystery story — which is, frankly weak — had very little to do with the zombie apocalypse. In fact, the question of why you’d kill someone during the end of the world, is quickly resolved: a strong desire for vengeance, and that is that. Vengeance could be a motive for murder in any time and any place. The setting seemed incidental. As the story progressed, I got the feeling that Alderman was not bringing her A-game. She is an absolutely brilliant author, incapable of writing anything bad. However, I got the impression that she wrote The Way of All Flesh quickly. Very quickly. It’s well-written, but I expected something … else. It’s three days since I stopped listening, and I’ve already forgotten all the character’s names. I’ve even forgotten which character died and which character killed them. And the acting is just dire. There is nothing to recommend the acting.

I don’t feel disappointed because this download was free. Based on the author and the idea, I am sure I would have paid for it (I mean, come on! Zombies! Murder mystery! Naomi Alderman!) and, had I done so, I would have been majorly irked. Each episode is 20 minutes long, so if you do choose to give it a go, it’s only 2 hours out of your life.

Six Cases of Murder by Henry Slesar

Cluedo!

You can imagine Young Jamie -- when he was still Disappointing James -- basking in delight at the existence of a murder mystery board game. As I'm sure I don't need to tell you, the long-lasting board game is basically Happy Families with murder, and it's been around for decades. In fact, it was originally pitched as Agatha Christie -- the Game, and my very first blog post (on my personal website) was on the game's subversive potentials.

As an undergraduate, I became semi-famous for my Cluedo parties. Anywhere from 6 to 36 people would roll up, dressed in the various Cluedo colours. We'd drink appropriately coloured drinks, play however many simultaneous games, and watch the film Clue (which, to my mind, is a sub-par version of Murder by Death, but, hey, you can't be choosy when people are finally letting you geek out). It all ended when I moved to Exeter and tried to host one such party. At Chester, my friends were mostly churchy people, who were contractually obliged to enjoy each other's company. At Exeter, my friends were mostly members of the LGBTQ+, who were contractually obliged to sleep with and hate each other. Not the right crowd.

So, as I was writing an MA project on Cluedo (a novella called Anyone's Game... there'll be a revamped version on Amazon later this year), I took a private retreat in the world of the game. I discovered, on YouTube, an old ITV series of the same name. Go and lose several hours ploughing through it, and you'll thank me. The premise is similar to Simon Brett's Radio 4 show, Foul Play, except here we have the same six suspects in various different set-ups. Each episode, a new story was played out, in which a stranger to Tudor Manor is murdered, and the two panellists have to question the suspects to discover whodunit, how, and where. I particularly remember June Whitfield playing Mrs White as a drunk, and Joanna Lumley playing Mrs Peacock as... Joanna Lumley.

Last week, whilst charity shopping with a budget of exactly £1, I came across a big old bin of board games for 10p each. Among these games were several mystery jigsaws. You might know the sort of thing -- a little booklet gives you a mystery, and you piece together a jigsaw which contains a visual clue before reading the solution. There was, in the 1990s, a whole set of Agatha Christie games which were frankly terrible. Oddly, the best one I've ever played was a Murder, She Wrote jigsaw, which was lying around in a holiday barn in Wales. However, two of the jigsaws in the charity shop bore the Cluedo  brand: these were a completely new thing for me, and I was delighted to find them. So, for 20p, I snapped them up and set to work.

In some games, the solution comes in a sealed envelopes, more often it's in mirror writing at the back of the book. However, the Cluedo jigsaws have a unique 'special Cluedo magnifying glass' (effectively, a lump of plastic with a red filter), which turns white things red -- the solution is printed on a mottled red and white surface so that when you run the magnifying glass over it, all becomes clear (see image). Neat.

Opening the box, I was surprised to see that the story was by Henry Slesar, a well-known American genre-writer, whose Enter Murderers (1960) will be reviewed on this blog later in the year. The game is clearly supposed to tie in with the TVseries (either the ITV version or the American one) because the characters all have the same Christian names as on the screen -- Jonathan Green, Vivienne Scarlett -- and photographs of actors are used. The timeframe also adds up: this game was released in 1993.

The mystery is okay, but not great: so, Dr Black owns Tudor Close and invites these six guests, all of whom he loves and all of whom want him dead. Miss Scarlett wants to inherit the property and turn it into a beauty spa; Colonel Mustard wants to inherit it and turn it into an old boys' club, and so on. There are some entertaining bits of dialogue in the brief story, particularly between Mrs Peacock and Miss Scarlett, and Mrs White and... everyone. During the first night of the weekend, Dr Black is murdered, but by whom? Perhaps the six suspects' suitcases hold the answer (... geddit, 'Six Cases of Murder'? Sigh!).

The jigsaw is hard to do. It took me four days -- and I'm currently experiencing a bout of depression, so expected to hurtle through it in two or less -- and there are each of the suitcases has a similar pattern, making the challenge rather wonderful. As for the mystery itself, I think it's silly -- but perhaps that's because I didn't solve it! I spotted the killer (the only character who is described in the booklet in any specific detail; i.e. the only character who has interests beyond those implied by their character description) but not the 'how'. The evidence is there in the picture, but I think that unless you have it explained to you, it's impossible to see that way. In fact, the incriminating item actually looks like part of a suitcase.

All in all, the experience was great fun, but I felt very slightly cheated at the end. Before sampling the other Cluedo jigsaw, I'm going to have a go at one of the marvellously early-90s standalone jigsaws sourced from the same bin (Death by Diet, if I recall correctly. Enjoy picturing the bouffanted models in the photos).

Game Night (Warner Bros)

The trailer for Game Night popped up while I was rabbit-holing through YouTube and it was one of those ads that I couldn’t skip. So, like an obedient puppy, I watched it and thought, ‘That sounds interesting, I wonder when it’s out’. Google told me it would be out on Friday 2 March – the date I’m writing this post.

The last two weeks have been tough for me, both mentally and physically, and the sub-tolerable weather hasn’t helped. Nothing’s happened, I’m just susceptible to depression and had the flu – but, yeah, I felt like something to cheer me up and Alan was getting a bit blue from a weird and unstructured half-day of teaching in the snow. So, we lumbered onto a bus and made our way to the nearest cinema.

I wasn’t expecting much from Game Night, although Googling had revealed that it’s got unusually good reviews for a light escapist comedy. Even the filmmakers seem surprised by how well it’s doing. There were only six people in the cinema, including us, but that was probably because we arrived bang in the middle of a snow blizzard. Over in the States, Game Night grossed $17,000,000 in its opening weekend. That’s more than I make in a month! (Actually, it’s more than I’d make in far too many thousands of months… weep.)

One critic has described Game Night as ‘a comic spin on David Fincher’s The Game’ and I can see that. Personally, I found The Game (1997) interesting but not great – a blatant if unconscious rip-off of an Agatha Christie Parker Pyne story where an elaborately choreographed adventure goes turns into a real criminal escapade which then turns out to have been part of the elaborate choreography all along. Game Night plays whimsically with the fact that we never quite know whether we’re watching a murder mystery game or a ‘real’ crime caper playing out.

Rachel McAdams and Jason Bateman star as a hugely competitive couple, Annie and Max, who host regular game nights for an array of comic stock-figure friends. When Max’s annoyingly successful brother, Brook, decides to host a game night of his own, the couple knows that he’s going to outdo them. And, sure enough, Brook announces that he has enlisted top-notch actors to play out an interactive murder mystery. These actors, he tells them, are so great that they never break character. The next thing anyone knows, armed thugs break in, fight Brook, and kidnap him as the hapless guests laugh and applaud.

While Annie, Max, and the others set about trying to find clues, three actors in masks turn up and scratch their heads at what appears to be a real-life crime scene. So, is the kidnapping real or part of a game?

I don’t want to go into the plot in great detail because part of the fun comes from watching it unfold. That said, the real fun lies in the slapstick comedy and throwaway lines. Game Night feels like a cheap comedy done expensively and every second is wonderfully rewarding. It’s so rare to find light entertainment that doesn’t feature anything problematic, but I’m delighted to say there’s no misogyny, racism, transphobia, homophobia, or antisemitism in this film. There are just some very funny scenes. My favourite part involves Max trying the clean blood off a white dog and making it worse. Another memorable routine concerns Annie trying to perform an ad-hock operation, sterilising a knife and the wound with white wine.

Mark Perez has penned a light and consistently funny script, with excellent lines – ‘You’re a double threat,’ says Billy Magnusson’s ditzy playboy to his date, an out-of-his-league Sharon Hogan. ‘You’ve got brains and you’re British’ – and old school physical comedy – at one point, almost the entire cast chases each other around a country house, passing a Fabergé Egg like a baton. Perez is served well by slick direction from John Francis Daley and Jonathan Goldstein and entertaining cameos from recognisable figures like Michael C. Hall. Jesse Plemons, who recently starred in an amazing episode of Black Mirror, plays the tragicomically needy policeman next door who can’t get over his divorce and who exacts an elaborate revenge when he isn’t invited to play.

If this summary makes the whole thing sound piecemeal and incoherent, that’s because it doesn’t make a whole lot of sense. And this is part of the charm. Although Game Night has an easy-to-follow plot, it isn’t something to analyse or overthink. It is something to sit back and enjoy, to laugh through without splitting your sides. On the journey home, I saw a tweet along the lines of, ‘Game Night is a great reflection of a world in which fake news and real news are becoming interchangeable,’ and I just thought, ‘Ugh. No. It’s funny.’ For context, I more or less think it’s impossible to read too much into a text, and am a staunch defender of the analysis of popular culture. But not Game Night. It’s just entertainment, and it’s bloody well-played.