Our third quarter-final – and the last two European teams left in the competition. Croatia (managed by intothefireuk) are a team with momentum on their side, sneaking through Group A at the last second and then seeing off the Netherlands in the[…]

The last two African teams remaining in the tournament clash in our second quarter-final. Ghana (managed by Jonathan Bogart) made it here by beating Algeria, while defending champions Nigeria (managed by Cis) saw off France. The winner faces either J[…]

Welcome back to the Pop World Cup, and to the first of our four quarter finals. Chile (managed by lartsaegis) reached here via what turned out to be the narrowest Round of 16 win, against Cameroon. Japan (gaffer: Patrick St Michel) saw off Uruguay mo[…]

The Quarter-Finals of the Pop World Cup are now all decided.
Chile v Japan
Croatia v England
Nigeria v Ghana
Iran v South Korea
Well done all the managers – that’s a pretty wide selection of global pop there, and some very intriguing clas[…]

We’re on the home stretch now with only a handful of episodes left. This week was another hour of rapid-fire scenes catching and setting up, with the last thirty minutes focussed on the Story A proper. I thought it worked better than “The Lion an[…]

Prisoner of Azkaban, the third Harry Potter book, is also the third I’ve read to my 7-year old. The rule has been “one a year”, mostly because I know the series ramps up the level of darkness and anxiety, but also because once we hit the pageco[…]

very quickly (since i am DEFINITELY meant to be doing something else: writing a project proposal on quite a fierce deadline), i just wanted to scribble this about HINTERLAND/Y GWYLL. Much anticipated since it first ran last year on SC4 — round […]

Two heavily fancied pop nations up against each other in the final second round game of the Pop World Cup. South Korea topped Group H with the highest score of any country (8 points). USA took 6 points as runner-up in Group G. Iain Mew and The Lex ar[…]

This week kind of felt like a slog, to be honest, despite zipping back and forth between locations and characters at a rapid pace. I almost felt like nothing happened by the end of the episode, even though clearly many things transpired. I suspect th[…]

The second round heads towards its climax with this intriguing face-off between two veteran gaffers: Wichita Lineman, who has taken charge of Iran, and former Iran boss Mullah Rezmat, now the Switzerland manager. Iran topped group F with 6 points, Sw[…]