2016. What a bummer, eh? If there was ever a year where we needed a merry Christmas and some happy holidays it'd have to be this one.
Where to even begin? The end, I think. Let's not drudge through the miseries and catastrophes of the year that was yet again. I don't think I have the stomach for it.
On the flip side, despite it all, some genuine artistic triumphs and absolutely fantastic releases bubbled up through the quagmire. Yet an unbridled celebration of 2016 feels somehow... misplaced.
It's all good, he wrote, as the room burned down around him.
Still, some reflection on the year is warranted. This is my final dispatch of 2016 after all. Even the ostrich has to pull his head out of the warm and comforting safety of the sand at some point to check if the coast is clear.
So let's wipe the sand from our faces and look back at this middling, meh of a year, safe in the knowledge that it's almost, finally, thankfully, done.
In that spirit let's herald 2016's unheralded middle of the road. The stuff that was merely okay. Good enough. Deece. The entertainment we reached for when we'd finished applauding the excellent stuff or ripping apart the terrible.
On the box the average show I enjoyed most was, once again, Wayward Pines, which screened on Sky's The Zone channel. I had expectations. The first season was just wonderfully pure B-movie schlock and I wanted more. The problem was they'd lost star Matt Dillon's incredibly bizarro screen presence.
I needn't have fretted. The show delivered on its original intriguing premise, doubling down on the splatter and fire fights, and ending on a wholly satisfying and ambiguous season finale.
This show will never make any best of the year lists, but it's a lot of fun.
Netflix's true crime drama Narcos was another show that I liked but didn't make any best of the year lists.
Narcos, tv, supplied. NZH 09Sep16 - Wagner Moura is so great as Escobar that you can't help but find yourself rooting for the guy. NZH 01Oct16 - The Netflix series Narcos will now come w
In a lot of ways the second season was better than the first, the voiceover, previously persistent and annoying, was reined in, the story fast-paced and tense, and Wagner Moura's portrayal of Colombian drug kingpin Pablo Escobar was right up there with James Gandolfini's Tony Soprano for gripping, watchable, screen presence.
Over on 2016's big screen there was a lot of average going on. The biggest, of course, has to be Star Wars: Rogue One, an average war movie dressed in Star Wars cosplay.
Across the galaxy Star Trek: Beyond was the first of the new Trek films to properly capture the spirit of the franchise, warping the series back from the disaster zone where 2013's Star Trek: Into Darkness, had left it.
Karl Urban plays Bones in Star Trek Beyond from Paramount Pictures, Skydance, Bad Robot, Sneaky Shark and Perfect Storm Entertainment. For TimeOut use NZH 21Jul16 - Leonard McCoy and Mr Spock team
Another entry onto this average list is the enjoyable throwback action-comedy The Nice Guys. Stars Russell Crowe & Ryan Gosling are both individually excellent but bizarrely have little chemistry working together. Still, ya know, worth a look.
Café Society was Woody Allen's annual Woody Allen film. A lightish comedy that felt very Woody Allen.
Viva October 19. Right Now. Cafe Society film still
Musically, 2016 was as up and down as everything else. No one really talked about it but the new Vangelis album, Rosetta was a spacey, synth driven tour through the cosmos that saw the old maestro returning to his influential and seminal Blade Runner sound. It was so damn great that sadly it doesn't qualify for me to talk about on this list.
Pete Doherty's Hamburg Demonstrations however does. The newly clean livin' libertine released a chaotically solid album of strummy, English whimsy that's really very good, but not great enough to make the cut elsewhere.
For something a bit more riotous Crystal Castles Amnesty (I) was a calamitously enjoyable burst of edgy electro-pop. While Childish Gambino's Awaken, My Love! tripped out on the nostalgic sounds of warped p-funk in a mostly successful fashion.
Keith Stanfield, Donald Glover, and Brian Tyree Henry star in Atlanta. picture supplied
Gambino is the alter-ego of actor Donald Glover who's new sitcom Atlanta started on Soho last night. Sadly, it's not worthy of placement on this list. It's far too excellent and topped just about every international best of list going.
Down here we've had to wait a while to watch it but, on the bright side, it ensures that televisually at least 2016 - that most average of years - goes out on a genuine high.
