The Music 2016 Writers' Poll: Maxim Boon

top tv show

1. Black Mirror
2. Stranger Things
3. The Circus

top movie

1. Arrival
2. Deadpool
3. The Lobster

2016 highlight of the year

Movies have always been a prolific source of apocalypse porn; film after film imaging the earth wiped out by asteroids or Mayan doomsday prophecies or mega quakes or Sharknados. However, this year (and surely global politics becoming so frighteningly fucked isn't just a coincidence) film and TV-making futurists have side-stepped annihilation for a more poetic and even optimistic vision. Charlie Brooker's third season of Black Mirror was surprisingly hopeful and redemptive, especially in its heartbreakingly poignant queer love story San Junipero. Amy Adams pitted brains over brawn in Denis Villeneuve and Eric Heisserer's Arrival, an alien invasion movie celebrating the cerebral over the explosive. Even The Lobster - easily one of the strangest and inexplicably beautiful films of the year - used a warped speculation of a dystopian future society to talk about the affirming power of love and the myriad of ways humans have to express it. For me (as a card carrying and totally unapologetic sentimentalist) the most stunning quality of Netflix blockbuster Stranger Things was not its achingly cool '80s homage or its stellar performances (although both of those aspects are undoubtedly part of the show's success). It was the hugely affecting expression of friendship, and sacrifice, and selflessness that seemed to speak so presciently about how much stronger we are when we're united, struck a chord. 2016 has been a fucker of a year, there's no denying it. But at least there are some glimmers of a possible silver lining thanks to such incisive and sensitive storytelling on the big and small screen.

prediction for 2017

Apparently The Simpsons is really good at predicting the future... so I reckon Sideshow Bob will become Mayor.