Kermode and Mayo's Film Review · BBC Radio 5 Live

Edgar Wright & Sparks, The World to Come, Riders of Justice and Off the Rails

·1 hr 39 min·5 clips

Edgar Wright explains how Sparks following him on Twitter sparked a three-year documentary journey.

This episode of Kermode and Mayo's Film Review features hosts Mark Kermode and Simon Mayo discussing new releases and interviewing director Edgar Wright and musicians Ron and Russell Mael of Sparks. The hosts open with a lengthy, humorous digression about Mayo moving to a smaller home office and the acoustics of "dead" rooms. They debate the validity of the word "deader" in Scrabble, prompted by this acoustic discussion. A listener email corrects Kermode's frequent misuse of "denouement" for "climax," leading to a tangent about the novel *The Siege of Trencher's Farm*. Another listener shares a medical report describing his "grossly unremarkable testicles," which the hosts dissect for its phrasing. The box office top ten includes *Summer of Soul*, which Kermode praises as a profound documentary and one of the best concert films ever, and *Space Jam: A New Legacy*, which Mayo admits he avoided seeing. Kermode reviews *Werewolves Within*, a comedy-horror whodunit he finds genuinely funny with strong performances from Sam Richardson and Milana Vayntrub. The most interesting insights include the historical reclamation in *Summer of Soul*, with Kermode astonished the Harlem Cultural Festival was nearly lost to history. The analysis of "grossly unremarkable" in a medical context reveals it means "to the naked eye." The hosts' debate on language, from "denouement" to "deader," highlights their playful pedantry. The tone is consistently conversational, witty, and digressive, filled with in-jokes and listener correspondence. Film enthusiasts who enjoy detailed reviews, cultural tangents, and the hosts' comedic chemistry will love this episode. Listeners preferring a tightly structured show focused solely on films might find the extended off-topic banter frustrating.

As heard by us

A wandering film-chat piece that turns domestic chaos and a food-ordering clip into the main comic engine.

It pivots on two hosts moving between film talk and domestic gripes, with listener mail, pedantry, and a food-ordering clip carrying most of the comic lift.

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Why you'd press play

Film chat, listener chaos, and food-ordering arguments in one loose ride.

Read the full recommendation in PlayNext →

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