This week on the show, we've recorded the first in a series of conversations about three of the most ubiquitously discussed, ridiculed, and meme-ified films in the modern pop culture landscape: The Star Wars Prequel Trilogy. For all the attention these films have gotten over the years, how much genuine critical engagement - something deeper than just "LOL JAR JAR!" - have they truly been afforded? What do they tell us about a franchise that has resurged in cultural dominance in recent years, how...
Jan 22, 2018•2 hr 52 min•Ep. 233
It’s time for another monthly bonus episode of The Weekly Stuff Podcast with Jonathan Lack & Sean Chapman, where we will be discussing serials from classic Doctor Who history. After two wonderful months spent chronicling the adventures of the Fourth Doctor, we jump ahead to the strange reign of the Fifth, played by Peter Davison, and the rocky tenure of producer John Nathan Turner. Kinda, the story we discuss here, is the Fifth Doctor’s third-ever serial, and it is one of the weirdest, wilde...
Jan 18, 2018•1 hr 15 min•Ep. 232
It’s a grab-bag style episode this week, as we cover a week’s worth of news items, including Thursday’s Nintendo Direct announcements, Sean reviews the beta for upcoming fighting game Dragon Ball FighterZ, and Jonathan talks about finally catching up on Pokken Tournament DX for Nintendo Switch. And for our main topic, we preview what’s to come in 2018 in terms of video games, looking at the confirmed games for Spring and discussing what we plan to play and review, and speculating about which gam...
Jan 16, 2018•1 hr 47 min•Ep. 231
For our first show back in the new year, we clear the deck with hours of holiday stories, reviews, and chats about games old and new we’ve been playing over the break. Sean talks about his Christmas at sea, with a mini-rant about a library on a cruise ship, while Jonathan reviews some Blu-rays he received as presents, including Twin Peaks: The Return and the new Doctor Who: Shada reconstruction. Sean talks about playing Assassin’s Creed Origins and revisiting Star Wars Jedi Knight II, while Jona...
Jan 08, 2018•3 hr 58 min•Ep. 230
In this special New Year's Eve bonus episode, co-host Jonathan Lack counts down his picks for the Top 10 Films of 2017, and talks a bit about each of them. You can read the written version of this at www.jonathanlack.com. Subscribe to our YouTube Channel! Subscribe for free to 'The Weekly Stuff' in iTunes! Follow Jonathan Lack on Twitter! Follow Sean Chapman on Twitter! Read Jonathan Lack’s movie reviews and stay up to date with all our podcast projects at https://www.jonathanlack.com Subscribe ...
Dec 31, 2017•37 min•Ep. 229
In our final episode of 2017, we look back on a truly special year in video games (albeit a rather horrible year for the world at large) by counting down the Top 10 Games of the Year, with each host presenting their own list. It was a year defined by amazing exclusives, resurgent franchises, and a renaissance for Japanese developers, with the majority of games on both lists coming from Japan. For the second year in a row, there are only four titles that cross over between our two lists, and ther...
Dec 21, 2017•3 hr 23 min•Ep. 228
For the third December in a row, we’ve got a big new Star Wars movie to talk about, and for the first time we agree: The Last Jedi is the real deal, a genuine, beautifully made Star Wars movie with a hell of a lot of meat on its bones. Before our big review, though, we cover a few different topics, including the week’s major news that Disney is buying Fox. We head on over to Sean’s Beta Corner for his thoughts on the Monster Hunter World beta, while Jonathan review the Champions Ballad DLC for T...
Dec 19, 2017•3 hr 39 min•Ep. 227
To do the long reign of the Fourth Doctor justice, we’re sticking with Tom Baker again this month, jumping ahead to 1979, his penultimate season, for one of the greatest Doctor Who stories ever mounted: “City of Death,” credited to the pseudonym ‘David Agnew,’ but which was mainly written by then-script editor and Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy writer Douglas Adams. One of the great humorists of all time, Adams’ voice is apparent throughout this wonderful, zany, insanely compelling story, whic...
Dec 13, 2017•1 hr 31 min•Ep. 226
In the second of three podcasts this week, we continue our in-depth retrospective of the Steven Moffat era of Doctor Who, which will be coming to a close on Christmas day with the final Peter Capaldi adventure, “Twice Upon a Time.” This conversation was so large, we decided to split it into two parts. On today’s episode, we count down all 39 Doctor Who stories written by Steven Moffat, from “The Empty Child” in 2005 to “The Doctor Falls” in 2017. We celebrate every high, scour every low, and occ...
Dec 12, 2017•2 hr 25 min•Ep. 225
In the first of three podcasts this week – yes, we’re crazy – we discuss a week’s worth of movie and gaming news, including all the announcements out of the Game Awards, before diving into a long-promised topic: Our in-depth retrospective of the Steven Moffat era of Doctor Who, which will be coming to a close on Christmas day with the final Peter Capaldi adventure, “Twice Upon a Time.” This conversation was so large, we decided to split it into two parts. On today’s episode, we talk about the Mo...
Dec 11, 2017•1 hr 59 min•Ep. 224
We kick off the last month of this very busy year with a grab-bag style episode in which we review three games, discuss some recent news, swap Thanksgiving stories, and go off on a very long Doctor Who tangent. Before diving into our main topics, we talk about some recent movies and Sean shares his thoughts on recent episode of Dragon Ball Super, while we both gush over the new Avengers: Infinity War trailer and scratch our heads at some crazy news in the entertainment industry. For our main rev...
Dec 05, 2017•2 hr 32 min•Ep. 223
It’s time for another monthly bonus episode of The Weekly Stuff Podcast with Jonathan Lack & Sean Chapman, episodes where we will be discussing serials from classic Doctor Who history. Today, we enter perhaps the most iconic era of Doctor Who, meeting the Fourth Doctor, Tom Baker, for one of his era’s quintessential Gothic Horror stories, “The Brain of Morbius.” Written by Robert Holmes, perhaps the greatest writer in the history of the show, “Morbius” is emblematic of the Fourth Doctor’s fi...
Nov 22, 2017•1 hr 19 min•Ep. 222
The headline topic this week is DC’s disastrously boring Justice League movie, an incomprehensible, empty shell of a movie we spend over an hour of today’s show discussing in spoiler-rich detail. Suffice it to say, the film feels like the nail in the coffin for DC’s ‘shared universe’ film plans, which we’ve been covering on the show for years. But we also discuss two of the week’s big game releases – Skyrim on the Nintendo Switch and Pokemon Ultra Sun for the 3DS – and cover some major news item...
Nov 20, 2017•2 hr 19 min•Ep. 221
In the second episode of the week, we offer a slate of reviews for recent games, giving final thoughts on Wolfenstein II and Super Mario Odyssey, while Sean waxes poetic about the magic of Hatsune Miku: Project DIVA Future Tone on the PS4 and Jonathan discusses the hollow shell of Sonic Forces. But for the main event, we dive into Thor Ragnarok, one of the very best Marvel films to date, devoting a full hour to discussing all the wonderful characters, colorful visuals, and surprisingly poignant ...
Nov 16, 2017•2 hr 5 min•Ep. 220
It’s the first episode of a two-podcast week, as some unforeseen craziness in Sean’s life left us taking last week off. So we’ve split this week’s topics into two episodes. First, in today’s podcast, we cover two weeks’ worth of news, from PlayStation’s big event in Paris, to Universal bailing on their Dark Universe after just one movie, to Amazon potentially making a Lord of the Rings series, to Doctor Who revealing Jodie Whittaker’s 13th Doctor costume. But we also spend the first hour diving ...
Nov 14, 2017•1 hr 51 min•Ep. 219
This week saw some of the biggest video game releases of the year, and we review two of them on today’s show, with Jonathan diving into the wonders of Super Mario Odyssey and Sean throwing hatchets at Nazi heads with Wolfenstein II: The New Colossus. Both reviews are more or less spoiler-free, unless you want to go in completely cold. Before those big topics, though, we also cover a week’s worth of news, including a big cast announcement for the next season of Doctor Who, a bizarre Sonic Forces ...
Oct 30, 2017•2 hr 23 min•Ep. 218
Today, we dive into the incredible and singular run of the Third Doctor, Jon Pertwee, with the wild, wacky, and wonderful 1971 serial “The Daemons,” by Barry Letts and Robert Sloman (writing under the joint pseudonym “Guy Leopold”). The last serial in the season that introduced Roger Delgado’s iconic Master, and featured him in every one of the year’s stories, “The Daemons” closes Season 8 on an action-packed high note, with one of the most thrilling, creative, and straight-up entertaining stori...
Oct 25, 2017•1 hr 34 min•Ep. 217
We have two game reviews and a big piece of gaming news on this week’s show, as we await a flood of film and game releases over the next few weeks. First, we talk a silly Star Wars title reveal and an amazing second trailer for Black Panther, before diving into EA’s closure of Visceral and the ‘redevelopment’ of their long-in-the-making Star Wars game, all of which is perhaps one of the most surprising industry developments in years. And for our reviews, Jonathan talks this week’s Fire Emblem Wa...
Oct 23, 2017•2 hr 1 min•Ep. 216
After a week off, we have a whole lot of stuff to cover, from a bevy of interesting movie trailers – including Justice League and Star Wars: The Last Jedi – to Sean’s experiences with the Star Wars Battlefront II beta, to the horrific revelations about Hollywood mogul and serial sex predator Harvey Weinstein (like all parts of our lives these days, there’s a lot of tonal whiplash to this episode). And for our main topic, we cover one of the year’s most fascinating films, the 35-years-later seque...
Oct 16, 2017•3 hr 20 min•Ep. 215
With Blade Runner 2049 on the horizon, it’s finally time to revisit one of our favorite films of all times by diving deep with Ridley Scott’s original Blade Runner. This is a movie we have both loved for a very long time, and one we’ve wanted to do a podcast about for years, so this episode is a long time coming. It’s a movie that gives us plenty to talk about, but we still find time to share some stories (about classic Doctor Who, indie games, and more), break down the new trailer for Red Dead ...
Oct 02, 2017•3 hr 11 min•Ep. 214
Today, we dive into one of the most iconic Doctor Who stories ever told, “The Tomb of the Cybermen,” by Kit Peddler and Gerry Davis, from 1967. The most infamous Second Doctor (Patrick Troughton) story, “Tomb of the Cybermen” is chilling, wickedly intelligent, surprisingly brutal, and deeply atmospheric, a testament to the show’s ingenuity and creativity, and certainly one of the most thrilling tales in the Doctor Who pantheon. We give the episode our trademark in-depth look, and invite you to w...
Oct 02, 2017•1 hr 20 min•Ep. 213
It’s the grab-bag to end all grab-bags and a real emotional roller coaster on this week’s very loose podcast. The biggest topic this week is something more serious than we usually tackle, and that is the wave of racism in the gaming community (highlighted by PewDiePie’s behavior earlier this month) and sexism in the film scene (the scandal involving Devin Faraci, Tim League, Harry Knowles, and more in Austin). It’s not an easy thing to talk about, but it is crucial to stop and take a deeper look...
Sep 25, 2017•2 hr 24 min•Ep. 212
We’re back after a week off and returning to our old Monday timeslot with a jam-packed episode. After Sean gives some final thoughts on Yakuza Kiwami and we speculate about the possibility of the It cinematic universe, we cover a week-and-a-half worth of news, including the passing of acting legend Harry Dean Stanton, some big movie announcements, and a Nintendo Direct presentation with some very cool surprises. Then it’s time for some game reviews, as Jonathan gives some impressions on the outs...
Sep 18, 2017•3 hr 18 min•Ep. 211
This Sunday, David Lynch’s masterful Twin Peaks: The Return came to an end on Showtime, with Parts 17 and 18, and as one of our favorite things we have ever talked about in six years of this podcast, we had a lot to say on the perfect and provocative ending. As in, almost three hours worth of things to say. But if you don’t watch Twin Peaks, fear not! There’s another hour of content at the top of the show, in which we discuss the re-release of Close Encounters of the Third Kind, go over the news...
Sep 06, 2017•3 hr 47 min•Ep. 210
We have two awesome topics to talk about this week, and that’s on top of an opening hour where we give impressions of Mario + Rabbids Kingdom Battle for Nintendo Switch, give an update on the SNES Classic Preorder Debacle, and reflect on the state of Valve after the reveal of the ultimately unused Half-Life 2 Episode 3 plot synopsis. Those main topics are a spoiler-filled review of Uncharted: The Lost Legacy for the PS4, a ‘bonus’ Uncharted game so good it has us wishing Naughty Dog would keep m...
Aug 30, 2017•3 hr 15 min•Ep. 209
It’s time for the first in a series of monthly bonus episode of The Weekly Stuff Podcast with Jonathan Lack & Sean Chapman, episodes where we will be discussing serials from classic Doctor Who history. Today, we dive into the 6th Doctor Who story ever told, “The Aztecs,” by John Lucarotti. Emblematic of the ‘pure’ historical stories of the First Doctor (William Hartnell) era, devoid of any sci-fi trappings other than the basic conceit of time travel, this is one of the great stories in Docto...
Aug 23, 2017•54 min•Ep. 207
It’s a diverse slate of topics this week as talk movies, games, TV, and so much more. First, Jonathan talks Steven Soderbergh’s wonderful new Logan Lucky and counts down his favorite 5 films of the 2017 summer movie season. Then we move on to discussing the Great Super NES Classic Pre-Order Debacle of 2017, and break down how Nintendo so thoroughly, insultingly botched a launch they should have had ample time and experience to prepare for. After running through some other pieces of film and gami...
Aug 23, 2017•3 hr 19 min•Ep. 208
It’s a game review extravaganza on this week’s show, as we give a short pre-review of the wonderful Sonic Mania (full thoughts coming next week!), Jonathan gives his take on the outstanding and harrowing Hellblade: Senua’s Sacrifice from Ninja Theory, and we both dive into a belated spoiler-filled discussion of Nier: Automata, the game Jonathan foolishly complained about last week. We also, of course, discuss the latest episode of Twin Peaks: The Return, “Part 14,” easily one of the best episode...
Aug 16, 2017•2 hr 53 min•Ep. 206
In this week’s packed episode, we cover a bunch of interesting news, including the announcement of three new Persona spin-off games, while Sean helps Jonathan work through his issues with the first ~15 hours of Nier Automata, and we answer a listener question in our first Patreon Q&A segment. And for our main topics, we review Tacoma, the new game from indie developer Fullbright (of Gone Home fame), and dive into the latest episode of Twin Peaks: The Return, another striking, mournful, zany ...
Aug 09, 2017•2 hr 29 min•Ep. 205
In our second podcast of the week, we clean up some odds and ends by talking about a bunch of recent news – including Nintendo shenanigans, Persona announcements, and more – Jonathan shares some thoughts on the ongoing 7th season of Game of Thrones, and we preview some of the games we’ll be talking about throughout the month of August, including Sonic Mania and Uncharted The Lost Legacy. And for our main topic, we dive into this week’s episode of Twin Peaks, “Part 12,” in which David Lynch gives...
Aug 02, 2017•1 hr 53 min•Ep. 204
