Russian Doll co-creator and star Natasha Lyonne has been working as an actor since the age of six when she appeared in Pee-Wee’s Playhouse. At age 16 she appeared in Woody Allen’s Everyone Says I Love You. She’s been a part of the American Pie, Scary Movie, and Blade franchises before finally popping up in her now most famous role as Nicky Nichols on Orange Is The New Black. 

Still for as long as Lyonne has been working, it’s taken a while to get to this point – where her name and face is displayed prominently over the marketing material for her very own show. In fact, the splash page for Netflix’s Russian Doll currently features Lyonne’s visage no fewer than seven times (though that will change once the show is released and Netflix’s algorithms show you what you want to see as the thumbnail image). The reasons why the year of the Lyonne has taken so long to get here are apparent. The “Personal Life” section on Lyonne’s Wikipedia is about as harrowing a read as you can find on the Internet. But the day is finally here… and thank goodness that day is coming in the form of Russian Doll.

Despite its sci-fi trappings, Russian Doll is very much the “Natasha Lyonne” show in the same way that Louie was the Louis C.K. show and Master Of None was the Aziz Ansari show (Woody Allen, Louis C.K., and Aziz Ansari references this early on – man, our pop cultural landscape is a bit of a mess). This time around, however, Lyonne has created the show alongside Amy Poehler and Leslye Headland (Sleeping With Other People).

Lyonne stars as Nadia, a nicotine-dependent throwback of a boho New Yorker preparing herself to suffer through the party her friend Maxine (Greta Lee) is hosting to celebrate her 36th birthday. Nadia mingles with partygoers, meets a truly awful English professor douche who says things like “it’s all just people voting against their own interests, man,” takes to the streets with him, and then… SURPRISE GROUNDHOG DAY!

Yes, Nadia dies in an unfortunate accident on the streets of East Village and finds herself transported right back to the bathroom at Maxine’s party hours before. Of all the ways to adopt the “reliving past events” trope, Russian Doll hews closer to the Happy Death Day and Edge Of Tomorrow school of thinking than the OG Groundhog Day. Nadia’s ‘reboots’ are not bound by time but rather by mortality. She returns to around 11pm on Sunday night only when she dies… which unfortunately turns out to be a regular occurrence. 

Russian Doll has a lot of fun with its reboot-y premise because how could it not? First, Netflix has to get me the name of their font guy. Between Russian Doll’s Quentin Tarantino spaghetti Western typeface and Stranger Things’ Stephen King book jacket opener, the streamer is quickly becoming the go-to place for font fetishists. Then for added enjoyment, in place of Sunny and Cher’s I Got You Babe that welcomes Phil (Bill Murray) back to February 2nd every morning in Groundhog Day, Russian Doll has Harry Nilsson’s Gotta Get Up. If you plan on watching any or all of Russian Doll’s eight episodes, get used to this song now. To describe it as an earworm is an insult to both ears and worms. This song is nothing short of an auditory nerve hijacker. 

It’s probably best to leave the details of Nadia’s reboots there for now. There is a real marvel to how the show parses out its bits of mythological information and the ‘purpose’ of what’s really going on here. The show understands the correct pace to unveil layers of this paranormal and emotional onion so that you actively look forward to more contexts. Suffice to say, if you start Russian Doll, be prepared to finish it. 

The real paranormal thing at play here though is Lyonne herself, as Russian Doll’s emotional and mystical centre. The appeal of Nadia as a character, and really the show itself, begins with Lyonne’s physicality. Lyonne uses the characters’ big, bright red hair and crimson lips as a kind of frame for her eyes, which are always wide open and expressive. From there she is able to build out Nadia as both the quintessential representation of this brand of hipster intellectual New York and a very real person with hidden pain and disappointments. Because of this Russian Doll has the emotional heft to back up its sci-fi flights of fancy. The show possesses a profound understanding of what trauma can do to the human spirit and how sometimes the goal of life is simply to live. 

As one character says late in the season’s run, “You wanted to live and it was the most beautiful thing in the world. Do you still have that in you?” Russian Doll is kind of a compelling quote machine. Watch with a pen and paper if you’re looking to spice up your Xanga page.

Despite Russian Doll’s obvious comparisons to Groundhog Day and other time-screwing art, the performance at its centre reminds me of something decidedly less sci-fi. When Jon Hamm accepted the role of Don Draper on Mad Men, he was almost the very definition of struggling actor. Terminated as a client by William Morris in 1998, Hamm stuck it out in Hollywood for ten more years, working odd jobs and getting the occasional acting role. Once he got a hold of that first big starring role on a network drama, he had to have felt such a strong internal pressure to absolutely kill it. It must have been so tempting to play Don Draper as a grand, larger than life figure, chewing up scenery and secretaries. 

Rightfully, however, Hamm underplayed it. He found the Don Draper that really existed – the small man living in a more powerful man’s stolen skin. Lyonne’s career has been doing just fine all things considered. Still, it’s remarkable to watch her, in this role that she created, find all the little emotional nooks and crannies in Nadia and believably guide her through such an unbelievable situation. 

That is the real appeal of the show. Lyonne’s performance and the assembled creators’ collective skill of observation have created an unnervingly real depiction of a certain kind of time, place, and people…and then immediately subverted that by digging deeper and deeper into one person’s very powerful subjective experience.

It’s like Russian Doll are Nadia are those wooden dolls that can be opened up to find a series of other, smaller figures nested inside. Can’t remember for the life of me what they’re called.

Russian Doll arrives on Netflix on Friday the 1st of February.

Since it’s picking up 17 years after the nuclear blast at the end of Far Cry 5, it shouldn’t come as too much of a surprise that Far Cry New Dawn will feature some changes from its predecessor (even though they share the same location, Hope County). However, fans may not have been expecting the upcoming spinoff title to feature an injection of RPG mechanics.

That’s exactly what is happening, though, with Ubisoft’s creative director on the game, Jean-Sebastien Decant, promising as much in a new Twitter video. You can watch the clip further down this page, if you fancy watching the tease for yourself with all the game footage that goes with it.

“We pushed what we call the light RPG approach in the game to create more depth,” Decant explains in the vid, “so you’ll be able to craft guns that have ranks, and these ranks they will be useful to fight against enemies that also have ranks.”

Decant went on to reveal that Far Cry New Dawn will also be altering the outpost system to provide fresh experiences for players.

“We have what we call the escalation system for the outposts,” Decant said. “Now, with an outpost, you can take it and take the resources that are in it, but you can also decide to squeeze it, and if you squeeze it you’re going to abandon it. And now that it’s vacant, the enemy is going to come back, put more resources in it, and also more defence, and create a new challenge.”

It may be building on an old map, then, but it sounds like Far Cry New Dawn will have a few more tricks and surprises up its sleeve than many may have initially expected. The game releases on February 15th 2019, and we’ll be sure to bring you more news as we hear it.

One of the best moments of my adult life was when I had my first thing poking up.

Possibly that needs context.

Let’s start at the beginning. About 18 months ago, I turned up at the doctor’s and went “ALL MY TEETH ARE GOING TO FALL OUT!” (Spoiler alert – no they weren’t.) Then I started crying a bit.

My doctor, instead of calling me a “toothless div” like I would have done, came up with the idea that maybe I was a bit highly strung. He gave me a prescription and suggested I do something relaxing.

Relaxing you say? What could be more relaxing than staring at the wall and worrying about everything that could possibly happen in any possible universe? Turns out this wasn’t the best hobby for someone with anxiety.

I had a think about what I could do that might be relaxing. The answer came when my mother in law asked me if I’d mind helping her to do some gardening.

There were a few snags, the main one being that I’d never done any gardening before.

“Will you weed that bed?”

“Which ones are the weeds?”

(Half an hour TED Talk, complete with slideshow, about which ones are the weeds)

“OK”

(Pulls all the flowers out and leaves the weeds)

Luckily my mother in law is nice, and she didn’t mind too much. She let me loose on the rest of the garden, and I’m proud to say it didn’t end up going on fire or exploding.

There’s something engrossing about working outdoors, even if you’re doing great hulking manual labour (lifting a spade). I found that I’d lost myself in my work for an entire afternoon; I only stopped because my mother in law suggested that it might be nice to go inside now that it was dark.

There’s so much going on in a garden, you can’t really help forgetting your problems for a bit. For example, in my mother in law’s garden, you start off digging up a shrub, then you notice some weeds (once you get to the stage of being able to identify any weeds), then you do some mild sweeping. Then – and this is the best bit – you have a cup of tea, stopping to sit and look at all the things you’ve accomplished. You could have a wander round checking all the flowers are still there, or look at the shed and go “that needs some paint” then tut, or maybe your attention will be taken by a sparrow that’s landed near you.

“That’s all very well” I hear you say. “But we don’t have massive huge gardens to knob around in.” Well, neither do I really. Helping the mother in law is only an occasional thing, made even more infrequent by her recent decision to have her garden redone to be as low maintenance as possible. I do, however, have a tiny balcony stuck to my flat. Mostly the balcony had been used for smoking on and not much else, but last spring, having been bitten by the gardening bug, I bought a packet of random flower seeds, and I planted them in a pot. Ignore the fact that I tipped half the entire packet into the pot because I had no idea what I was doing, and that I also had to Google “does soil go off”.

Weeks went by, calendar pages were ripped off by unseen hands, and I kept watering my pot, certain that nothing would grow, and that I’d killed any chance these flowers ever had at life because I was a terrible person.

Then one morning, I checked my pot and saw this:

I woke my other half up by shouting “I’VE GROWN A THING! I’VE GOT A THING!” He was possibly less enthusiastic than I was.

Let me tell you – when you’ve grown a thing, you are proud of your thing, and nothing can take that away from you, not even your own stupid party-pooping brain. I found I had something to focus on other than my worries and perceived failures. I was, after all, responsible for a thing now.

To my amazement, more things kept popping up until I had to move some of them into tin cans and old Quality Street tubs. These flowers were, despite having me as their guardian, determined to grow. And I eagerly studied every millimetre. I was like a woman possessed. I scoured books and gardening websites, learning terms like ‘pricking out’ and ‘loamy soil’. And I forgot to wake up each day feeling like hell, because now I had something new to think about.

It’s only now, looking back, that I realise how much good my little balcony garden did me. At some point over that summer, I discovered a coping technique I didn’t know I’d been missing. Gardening didn’t solve any of my problems, but it did give my mind a much needed holiday. Ask any gardener, and they’ll agree that working with nature has that effect, whether it’s a huge garden or one single plant pot overlooking a main road. Gardening reminds you that there is other stuff out there, that you’re not the centre of the universe, and that, most of the time, the world finds a way to manage. I’ll always be grateful to my thing for helping me to remember that (my thing grew up to be a zinnia, in case you were wondering).

Of course, I always have to take things too far, and now I’ve applied for an allotment, because I am apparently cosplaying as Arthur Fowler. In my mind, I will have rows and rows of fruit and veg. In reality, I will have one growbag with five peas in it. But that’s not the point. I’ll have space where I can grow stuff, where I can dig soil just for the hell of it, and most importantly, somewhere to just go and relax when I need to. Maybe I’ll get a shed so I can sit in it and tut and say things like “I must start chitting my potatoes soon”. And I can’t think of anything more relaxing than that.

If you’re stressed, get a pot and put some seeds in it, even if the pot just lives on your windowsill. You never know where it will lead. Who knows, we might even end up becoming allotment buddies. If we do, I promise to save some tea in my flask for you.

The 10-year anniversary of Demon’s Souls is soon to be upon us: the game originally launched in Japan in February 2009, before hitting the US market in October 2009 and the UK in June 2010. So it shouldn’t come as too much of a surprise that talk of a remastered re-release has begun in earnest amongst the online gaming community. 

And now, Game Informer has gone so far as to ask From Software’s Hidetaka Miyazaki, the director of game, for his thoughts on remastering Demon’s Souls for modern consoles. Interestingly, though, Miyazaki wasn’t as keen on the idea as his followers and fans. 

Although Game Informer notes that Miyazaki believes a remaster is possible, it’s clear that his feelings on the matter are something of a mixed bag. 

“It’s like when you write – when you’re younger, you look back on [previous work] and you think ‘Oh, goodness what was I thinking,'” he explained. “It’s not that I’m embarrassed, I just don’t like to look at my previous works.”

Miyazaki also points out that “You’d have to see what [Sony is] thinking about it”, since the game was originally published in Japan by Sony Computer Entertainment. Also, he said that he wouldn’t be against the idea of another studio putting “their heart and soul into realizing it again” rather than From Software handling a remaster project themselves.

“Thinking about the idea of a remaster gives me kind of butterflies in my stomach and makes me a little nervous,” he added, “so it’s complicated. But I understand there are many users and many players and fans out there who really love Demon’s, so if that’s something they could accomplish with a studio that loved the work, then yeah, I’d be okay with that.” 

If we hear any more on this tantalising topic, we’ll be sure to let you know.

When The LEGO Movie was first released back in 2014, the repetitive song that played on and off throughout the film infected brains everywhere. ‘Everything Is Awesome’, by Tegan and Sara and The Lonely Island, just would not go away. It was stuck inside our heads. Hell, it still is, five years on!

But The LEGO Movie 2 is now just a few weeks away from hitting cinemas everywhere, and there’s a new song in it that’s set to give ‘Everything Is Awesome’ a run for its money. Called ‘Catchy Song’, performed by Dillon Francis, T-Pain and That Girl Lay Lay, it might just be the new best-worst thing you’ve ever heard.

For those of you susceptible to earworms, proceed with caution. Here’s a preview of ‘Catchy Song’…

The LEGO Movie 2: The Second Part will be released here in the UK on 8th February.