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Making Money by Terry Pratchett

Moist von Lipwig has whipped the Ankh-Morpork postal service into shape and is enjoying the fruits of his success...or rather he is bored out of his mind and in danger of falling into bad old habits as he tries to stave off boredom. The Patrician hits on the idea of giving Lipwig a new task: rescuing Ankh-Morpork's Royal Mint and associated bank, and turning them into a lean, dynamic operation fit for the Century of the Fruitbat. Unfortunately, the ossified staff and lunatic members of the family that owns the bank have other ideas, as does Lipwig's own girlfriend (or person adjacent to that position), whose quest to find golems and bring them to Ankh-Morpork may have succeeded rather more than she was expecting.

Making Money is the thirty-sixth Discworld novel, originally published in 2007. The book is also the sequel to an earlier Discworld novel, Going Postal. In that book, conman Moist von Lipwig was rescued from the gallows by the Patrician of Ankh-Morpork, Lord Vetinari, and set to work restoring the Post Office to its former glory. He succeeded handsomely.

Making Money opens a year later. The Post Office is a roaring success, but Moist is feeling a little bored, and has taken to breaking into his own bedroom to keep his skills fresh. The Patrician seems to have concluded that Moist would make an excellent troubleshooter to sort out Ankh-Morpork's other failing public services and tasks him with getting the Ankh-Morpork Bank back on its feet after the former chairwoman passed away, leaving her dog, Mr. Fusspot, to inherit the role of chairman. Moist is initially reluctant, but soon relishes the new challenge. Unfortunately, a family who own a share in the bank, the Lavishes, are not so keen on Moist's appointment and are soon digging into his dirty past to find something to use against him. Thrown into the mix are lots of golems, an undead necromancer with an eye for the ladies, a very dedicated bank clerk and a lot of clockwork items of an intimate nature.

As usual, the book is an effortless read. Pratchett's prose sparkles and flows as easily as ever, although careful reading is required to catch every observation and piece of satire as it flies past. Pratchett's typical approach of standing back, putting a mirror in front of something we take for granted (banking, in this case) and saying, "Look, this is a really daft system on quite a few levels," is again quite successful here. As with the other later Discworld novels, the broad out-and-out humour takes a back seat to more wry observations, although a comical interlude involving a dog becoming attached to a new "rubber chew toy" that in this case has fallen out of a cupboard of erotica, and then playing with it in polite company, shows that Pratchett still has time for a good old-fashioned piece of outrageous farce. That said, as with a number of other Pratchett novels the ending is somewhat contrived and the characters get out of the various fixes they're in with some fast-talk, handwaving and a nod from the Patrician, which is a resolution that has perhaps been used a few too many times in this series.

On the other hand, the book does feature Pratchett providing a wonderful take on how the advent of AI (or here, the golems) will impact the standard capitalist model of Ankh-Morpork, which is presented in both a funny and thought-provoking way. One could perhaps accuse Pratchett of jumping on the bandwagon, save he was doing this sixteen years before the release of the first commercial LLM models. Pratchett's prescience is, not for the first time, impressive.

Whilst it's not up there with the series at its best, and the tendency for characters who are intelligent and forthright in their own books to come across a bit as bumbling when appearing in cameos outside them (in this case various members of the City Watch) is a bit overdone, Making Money is a solid addition to the series and adds a lot to the evolution of Discworld and Ankh-Morpork (which is now starting to get its own underground rail network, the Undertaking), which by this point is firmly establishing itself as the most well-explored and established city in the entire fantasy canon (or at least up there with Lankhmar, Waterdeep, Sigil and Minas Tirith).

Unusually for the series, the book also has an ending setting up a future Lipwig adventure, Raising Taxes...though Pratchett could never figure out how to make a book about taxes funny, so instead pivoted to the railways with Raising Steam later on. Perhaps more regrettably, this was the last book Pratchett completed before received his medical diagnosis of early onset Alzheimer's, the shadow of which would hang over all the subsequent books he wrote.

Making Money (****) is an enjoyable addition to the Discworld mythos, even if it doesn't do anything too spectacularly new.

A previous version of this review was published in 2008.

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Star Wars: The Mandalorian & Grogu

Din Djarin, famed as "The Mandalorian," and his diminutive ward Grogu are working for the New Republic, bringing down Imperial warlords and war criminals in the lawless Outer Rim. His latest commission sees him reluctantly working with the Hutts to rescue the lost son of Jabba the Hutt so he can get information on an Imperial fugitive. Several reversals of fortune see Djarin with a bounty on his head from the most powerful crime lords in the galaxy.

The Mandalorian & Grogu is the first Star Wars movie in seven years, since the critical misfire of The Rise of Skywalker, despite multiple attempts to bring different projects to the screen in the interim. The film started as the fourth season of The Mandalorian, the hit TV show that established Disney+ as a serious player in the streaming wars, but was condensed down by director-writer Jon Favreau and writer-producer Dave Filoni at the behest of Lucasfilm and Disney, who were rather desperate to get a new Star Wars project on the screen, no matter the cost.

I suspect that as the fourth season of The Mandalorian, we'd have seen more extensive tie-ins with the established lore, a return for key characters and a furtherance of the show's main story arcs. As a stand-alone movie that cannot assume anyone watching it has seen even a single minute of The Mandalorian, the film has to jettison anything that even risks being vaguely confusing to create a perfectly stand-alone adventure. The result is a film that takes no risks and, more than once, made me ponder if some of the dialogue, visuals and pacing had been created by AI.

The Mandalorian & Grogu is the safest of safe choices, a perfectly adequate succession of action set-pieces, daring captures and escapes, and choice deployment of nostalgia bombs to make viewers giggle because a character has dropped a key catchphrase or deployed a fan-favourite vehicle. The amount of bombast on display is sometimes impressive, and those complaining the movie feels like an episode of the TV series may need to revisit the TV show to realise just how relatively constrained its action set pieces could be. Here, unshackled by such budgetary considerations (though this is still the cheapest Star Wars movie since Return of the Jedi, adjusted for inflation), we get an at-times exhausting succession of gun battles, fights with creatures, fights with droids and, er, WWE-style pro-wrestling scenes with Hutts.

The sheer volume of action and CGI set pieces is there to disguise the thinness of the plot. The Mando goes to one place to rescue one guy and then goes somewhere else to capture someone else, but annoys some other guys who try to capture him etc etc. To mimic the TV show, dialogue is stripped-back but the writers confuse minimalism with triteness, with the film featuring some of the weakest dialogue of any Star Wars movie to date. Rotta the Hutt gives almost the exact same speech about being his "own man" (despite being a giant space slug, albeit an absolute ripped one, guy is shredded) twice, for no apparent reason. Virtually every utterance in the movie is either an intended zinger (landing with the accuracy of a drunk stormtrooper) or rote exposition. This may be the least-quotable Star Wars movie to date...which given the competition includes the prequel and sequel trilogies, and Solo, is really saying something. The lack of good dialogue is also a problem for the actors: Pedro Pascal is at least used to being taciturn and Sigourney Weaver is too much experience to let it throw her, but Jeremy Allen White has nothing to work with as Rotta and turns in such a flat performance it feels like placeholder dialogue. The colour grading is also poor, making this easily the flattest and least-dynamic-looking Star Wars movie of them all.

Still, there's something to be said for the straightforwardness of the film at a time when a lot of films seem to get tripped up on convoluted storytelling or lore density. There are some nods at other media - a bunch of the X-wing pilots from The Mandalorian show up, alongside Zeb from Star Wars: Rebels and Rotta himself from the Clone Wars TV show - but nothing too outrageous, and the film does not outsay its welcome, even if a couple of action set-pieces and an overlong recuperation sequence could have been jettisoned to make for a tighter movie. One thing the film does do well is further the characterisation of Grogu, who here is shown to be more capable of understanding the Mandalorian's instructions and is a lot more capable of undertaking his own solo adventures. He has more to do here than simply stand around looking cute, which is a relief.

Watched as a standalone Mandalorian adventure, this is perfectly serviceable. As the next great hope for Star Wars in the cinema, it whelms at best. But maybe after the commercial and creative misfires of Solo and The Rise of Skywalker, that's just what Disney wanted.

The Mandalorian & Grogu (***) might be the most serviceable slice of Star Wars yet made, a perfectly adequate way of wasting two hours that is rarely outstanding, occasionally mediocre, but mostly inoffensive. Young children may enjoy the film more for Grogu's antics. I would definitely wait on Disney+ for this one.

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The world's most expensive video game - Star Citizen - crosses the billion dollar mark

The world's most expensive video game has gotten even richer. Star Citizen's funding yesterday crossed $1 billion, making it the first video game in history to - formally - accomplish the feat.

Star Citizen commenced development in 2011 and was revealed to the public via a Kickstarter campaign in the autumn of 2012. The initial Kickstarter campaign drew in $2 million, but Cloud Imperium Games kept their own crowdfunding page open and allowed fans to directly back the game in return for in-game rewards like new ships. Funding reaching $65 million in late 2014, $127 million in September 2016 and $500 million in September 2022.

Star Citizen is a massive, online space simulator video game designed by Chris Roberts, the noted British creator of video games like the Wing Commander, Privateer and Freelancer series, as well as having worked in the movie industry. Roberts' funding scheme has allowed him to pursue the space game of his dreams, unencumbered by stifling corporate oversight, release windows, marketing synergies or - his harsher critics might say - common sense and disciplined design.

The game, originally mooted as a tight trade/combat experience similar to Elite: Dangerous or the X series, has since sprawled to a huge behemoth of a title where players can walk around densely-populated cities with an ingame avatar that can also pilot multiple ships, crew larger vessels, take part in boarding actions or engage in zero-gee combat. A recent common saying is that Star Citizen is actually trying to be the game that Bethesda's Starfield promised it was going to be but fell short. It's also showing why that's incredibly difficult, complex and expensive (Star Citizen has easily raised at least four times Starfield's production budget, probably more).

Star Citizen can actually be played right now as an early build which shows a lot that is extremely impressive has been accomplished, but a lot remains to be done in terms of optimisation, bug-fixing and creating a less daunting introduction to the game.

The main focus of Cloud Imperium Games is now releasing Star Citizen's single-player component, Squadron 42, a story-driven space opera epic featuring actors like Gillian Anderson, Mark Hamill and Gary Oldman. Squadron 42, which has been helmed by Chris's brother Erin (noted for StarLancer and the various Lego video games). CIG is hoping to release Squadron 42, which they declared feature-complete three years ago, in the near(ish) future.

Star Citizen is now the most expensive video game ever made - at least officially - and has been in continuous development almost the longest, with only Beyond Good & Evil 2 (officially announced in 2008, and apparently in development before that, with recent updates confirming the game is still being worked on) shading it. Half-Life 3 has technically been in development longer, but that game was internally cancelled and later remounted several times as two distinct projects (Half-Life 2: Episode Three and now Half-Life 3).

The only game to challenge Star Citizen's budget is Grand Theft Auto VI, which has been in development at Rockstar Games since around 2018. The game has a much larger, international staff with a development budget at least in the high hundreds of millions. Some industry analysts have suggested that with marketing included, the game will likely top $2 billion in total costs, though others think this is too high. GTAVI is currently scheduled for release on 19 November this year.

No release date has been set for Star Citizen or its Squadron 42 component, though apparently the hope is the latter launches before the end of 2027 (apparently a 2026 release date has been nixed by GTAVI's impending arrival).

Brandon Sanderson & Joe Abercrombie talk fantasy in London

I travelled down to London this evening to see fantasy authors Joe Abercrombie and Brandon Sanderson in conversation. I don't get out to these events as much as I used to, but this was too interesting an opportunity to pass up. Waterstones hosted the event at the Emmanuel Centre in Westminster.

Joe and Brandon are a similar age and launched their careers relatively close together, with Brandon's debut novel Elantris released in 2005 and Joe's debut The Blade Itself following a year later. Both have been highly successful, with Joe moving close to 10 million books and selling his latest novel The Devils to James Cameron for a movie adaptation, whilst Brandon has sold over 50 million books and is writing the screenplay for a Mistborn movie for Apple.

Brandon went over his career in some detail, such as writing thirteen novels before he got published, a good way of getting acquainted with failure and honing his skills of characterisation before hitting the big time. They contrasted their different takes on writing, with Brandon's big picture, pre-planned approach versus Joe's more instinctive approach.

Sanderson confirmed that he is deep in writing the first draft of the Mistborn movie and after that is completed, will work on a pilot script for Stormlight Archive, which Apple wants to adapt as series of 10-episode seasons. He also briefly discussed the adaptation of Skyward, but notes he may only be able to write some scenes or a single episode for that, as he doesn't have the time to be more directly involved.

There was also discussion on how Brandon has expanded his writing career into owning a publishing company that now has 65 staffmembers, more than some moderately-sized "proper" SFF publishers. Sanderson noted that many of the ideas he suggested 10+ years ago in terms of special editions, merchandise, extras etc are now commonplace in the field but it took a long time to get traditional publishers on board. 

There was also a Q&A and some interesting answers. Brandon noted he has his own private wiki, maintained by a full-time continuity editor, to keep all the lore straight. He notes his own memory is pretty good, but one weakness is that he sometimes forgets to remember the "new" version of lore he develops in rewrites, meaning that in writing the sequels he can sometimes use outdated terms (in his example he noted using silver instead of tin in writing the new Mistborn books and had to change that when he realised). Both authors had advice for a 16-year-old in the audience working on his first novel: Brandon's key advice was don't be afraid to throw things out that aren't working and starting again (including the whole thing if necessary).

The authors also discussed the cycles of the industry, with Brandon noting a 20-year nostalgia effect in the field, which made Joe excited to realise the pendulum was about to swing back towards sword-based gritty fantasy. We'll see if that happens!

It was a fun evening, Joe and Brandon made for great conversationalists and the audience got some interesting questions in.

ETA: Skyward is not in development with Netflix directly, but with the production company who handled One Piece for Netflix.

RIP Michael Keating

British actor Michael Keating has sadly passed away at the age of 79. Keating was best-known for playing the fan-favourite character of Vila in classic British science fiction series Blake's 7.

Michael Keating (far right) as Vila Restal in Blake's 7, alongside fellow late castmembers Paul Darrow (far left) as Kerr Avon and Gareth Thomas (centre) as Roj Blake

Born in Edmonton, Middlesex in 1947, Keating started acting as a teenager. After some early stage appearances, his screen debut was in a 1969 episode of Special Branch and he made occasional guest appearances in British dramas through the 1970s. At the end of 1977, he appeared in Doctor Who, playing the role of Goudry in the memorable serial The Sun Makers, alongside Tom Baker.

He was near-simultaneously cast in the role of Vila Restal in Blake's 7. Vila was a shrewdly conniving conman and thief, a petty criminal who is rescued more by default than design and becomes a founding member of Roj Blake's crew of freedom fighters on the starship Liberator. Vila is arguably the most reluctant crewman and initially held in disdain by his fellows (especially the ruthless Kerr Avon) until his supreme skill with computerised lock systems and his handiness in a fight (even if only in ambushes or attacking from behind) becomes apparent. Vila is, despite himself, inspired by Blake's cause and becomes a loyal member of the crew. He ultimately becomes the only character to appear in all fifty-two episodes of the series, airing from 1978 to 1981. Ironically, Vila was nearly killed off several times as the producers pondered which character was for the chop next, but was saved by other actors choosing to leave of their own accord and the growing sense he was one of the more popular characters for his mordant wit. 

Keating went on to make guest appearances in other British shows through the 1980s and 1990s until he was finally cast as Reverend George Stevens in popular British soap opera EastEnders, a recurring role from 2005 to 2017.

Keating returned to the role of Vila for Big Finish's line of Blake's 7 audio dramas, appearing in intermittent releases from 1998 to 2022.

News of Keating's passing elicited a large amount of sympathy from the Blake's 7 fanbase, as well as friends and fans of his work on other projects. The show had recently received a burst of new publicity with well-received HD remasters and Blu-Ray releases of the original show, and news that a possible reboot was in development.

Peter Jackson hints that films based on Tolkien's SILMARILLION may be possible

Peter Jackson has suggested that, for the first time, the Tolkien Estate may be amenable to allowing films based on J.R.R. Tolkien's The Silmarillion to be made. The Silmarillion tells nothing less than the entire epic prehistory of Middle-earth, spanning thousands of years of history and backstory, setting the scene for the better-known events of The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings.

This marks a substantial shift in the Tolkien Estate's position. J.R.R. Tolkien himself sold the film rights to The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings in 1969 to generate funds for his grandchildren's education. Tolkien had despaired after earlier approaches for a film version of varying degrees of daftness, adopting a "cash or kudos" approach: either a highly respectable, artistic film or a huge amount of money. The animated Hobbit and Lord of the Rings adaptations, and Peter Jackson's two movie trilogies, were derived from these rights. He did not sell the rights to The Silmarillion since it was unfinished and unpublished; in the event, it was not published until 1977, four years after Tolkien's passing.

However, the Estate, under the stewardship of Tolkien's youngest son Christopher, stridently opposed approaches for additional rights, meaning that The Silmarillion and later books using Tolkien's hitherto unpublished writings, like Unfinished Tales and the twelve-volume History of Middle-earth series, were off-limits. Back in 2017, Christopher Tolkien retired and the Estate relented enough to allow additional, small rights (such as material related to the island kingdom of Númenor) to be licensed by Amazon for their Rings of Power TV series. Since Christopher Tolkien's passing in 2020, it appears that the Estate may have become more amenable to discussions.

To be clear, no new deal has been signed and Peter Jackson has only committed to saying that discussions have and will continue to happen, with the new composition of the Estate (including family members who actually appeared in Jackson's movie trilogy in cameo roles, earning some ire from the older members in the process) more open to at least discussing ideas. Warner Brothers have also gotten involved in some of those discussions.

The Silmarillion is unlikely to ever be adapted in full itself, being too dense and vast in scope, but one can easily imagine pulling episodes out and expanding them into films. Indeed, Tolkien himself did this with several narratives that his son Christopher later published as discrete books, resulting in the volumes The Children of Húrin, Beren and Lúthien and The Fall of Gondolin.

If it came to pass, it might address a major problem for Warner Brothers in trying to create more Middle-earth films. The Lord of the Rings is, by far, the meatiest thing Tolkien ever wrote. Splitting the far slimmer Hobbit into three big movies resulted in an overlong and tedious work lacking much of the charm of the original book. The in-development movies The Hunt for Gollum and The Shadow of the Past sound mildly ridiculous, taking very short episodes from Lord of the Rings (one mostly occurring off-page as well) and trying to make full movies out of them. And Amazon have likewise found with Rings of Power that trying to fill a lot of screen-time with a paucity of source material can easily backfire on you.

The Silmarillion wouldn't necessarily be a slam-dunk success either. The work is tragic and bittersweet, with the "good" guys frequently losing battles against the evil, original Dark Lord Morgoth (of whom Sauron is a middling-at-best servant), and the "good guys" often riven by internal conflicts against one another rather than the true foe. There are also, very strictly, no Hobbits in the work, and humans do not play a major role until halfway or more through the narrative. This might be a harder sell than the original Lord of the Rings. Still, at least it would be a more sensible idea than some of the other attempts to make more Middle-earth material. More developments as they are reported.

Warhorse Studios confirm they are making an open-world Middle-earth video game

Warhorse Studios have confirmed long-bubbling rumours that they are working on an open-world, single-player RPG set in J.R.R. Tolkien's Middle-earth legendarium.

Er, that's about it. Aside from confirming the game is on its way, Warhorse haven't shown anything else from the game. However, for the announcement they showed a classic map of Middle-earth depicting Gondor, Mordor and Rohan, hinting that the game will be set during the War of the Ring or perhaps the centuries leading up to it.

Warhorse also confirmed that they will also be releasing a new Kingdom Come "adventure," which isn't as firm a commitment to a full-scale Kingdom Come: Deliverance III. Warhorse isn't the largest studio in the world, so perhaps making two full-scale RPGs is a bit much. Warhorse may also be teasing further expansions or spin-offs from its bestselling, critically-acclaimed 2025 RPG Kingdom Come: Deliverance II.

Expect more information on both titles in the future.

Tempest Rising

1997. In this world, things have gone differently. The Cuban Missile Crisis exploded into a "restrained" World War III, which devastated parts of the world but did not end humanity completely. In some of the more irradiated parts of Earth, a strange substance called Tempest rose to the surface. Incredibly energy-rich and easy to mine, it led to a technological renaissance for the Global Defence Force, a pact between the surviving western nations, and the Tempest Dynasty, an alliance of eastern nations desperate to recover from the depredations of war. The two sides reignite old conflicts whilst both striving to seize full control of Tempest, and unlock its secrets.

We are now deep in the era of "spiritual successors," where game franchises which were hugely popular back in the day but left to rot by their official licence-holders are continued through legally-distinct-but-still-pretty-much-direct sequels. Tempest Rising proudly presents itself as the heir to the Command & Conquer franchise, playing, looking and sounding almost exactly like you'd imagine a new official C&C game to. I can only conclude that either Danish developers Slipgate Ironworks have the best legal team on the planet, or Electronic Arts have completely forgotten they even own a franchise called Command & Conquer in the first place.

Tempest Rising casts you as a new commander for both the GDI GDF and the Brotherhood of Nod Tempest Dynasty. Through a set of linear missions for both sides, you have to guide the two factions through increasingly challenging missions with a likewise expanding roster of ground and air vehicles (naval assets are firmly off-screen, perhaps being saved for an expansion or sequel). You harvest Tiberium Tempest, which is both useful but hazardous (units crossing Tempest fields take damage and eventually die), unlock upgrades by building more structures in your base, and have to carefully keep an eye on your energy supplies. You then unleash your armies into battle, all accompanied by a solid Frank Klepacki soundtrack

It's all executed pretty well. The game isn't quite nailing the more rapid-fire gameplay of the original game or its spin off, Red Alert, but it compares favourably in graphics style, UI and tone to its 3D variants, particularly Command & Conquer: Generals and Command & Conquer III: Tiberium Wars, arguably two of the strongest games in the franchise. The RTS genre's central appeal of mining resources, building up a base, establishing defences and then going on the attack is as compelling in 2026 as it was in 1995 with the original Command & Conquer (not to mention 1992's Dune II).

The game also benefits from arguably its core focal decision to, if in doubt, go with the original RTS paradigm. Many recent RTS games have stumbled due to a hesitance about embracing old-skool design or trying to do something modern and "streamlined" (usually meaning "soulless"), perhaps with an eye to Twitch streaming, leading to misfires like Homeworld 3 and Dawn of War III. Tempest Rising gleefully embraces a more classic RTS design, including clunky interface choices and mission briefing cutscenes that go on just a little bit too long.

In that sense Tempest Rising's greatest strength - its embracing of old-skool design leading to fun gameplay - can also be its greatest weakness. It feels like there's a little bit too micromanagement of units to stop them walking through radiation and Tempest zones when they should really be doing that themselves. The interface can feel a little laborious as you click through different tabs to do something basic like keep the power on. Formations are a concept neither army has ever even remotely heard of. Both units have devastatingly powerful units or unit combos and just building an infinity blob of those and storming around the map will win every mission, with the AI just unable to cope with that. It's all true to the late 1990s, early 2000s classic design, but it can also end up reminding you of why games moved on. In particular, the utter lack of using buildings, walls or sandbags as cover for infantry, something standard in almost every RTS since 2004's Dawn of War (which had a recent, superb remaster), feels completely jarring. For a near-future game, it also feels like it half-arses drones. Either don't have drones at all, using Tempest interference as an excuse, or maybe develop them a bit more. As it stands, the game's use of drones feels about as interesting as Generals, and Generals had the excuse of being released in 2003 when the full potential of the technology was still not clear.

But, it's hard to impossible to argue against the core appeal of building a base, harvesting resources and sending a truly ridiculous number of tanks towards an enemy base. Tempest Rising may play it safer than houses made of cotton wool, but it's also tickling the nostalgia nerve just right. Also, at around 20 hours for a single-player run-through (not even looking at skirmish or multiplayer), the game's length and amount of content is positively generous compared to many of the classics without outstaying its welcome.

Tempest Rising (***½) is available on PC right now. It won't surprise you in the least, but it's a solid time for anyone missing the RTS genre.

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Person of Interest: Season 4

A powerful new AI has been created and allied with the United States government. However, Samaritan has its own agenda and no interest in being shackled by human control. Meanwhile, the Machine has gone undercover, trying to resist Samaritan or align its goals with humanity. With this becoming less likely, the Machine's operatives - living incognito for fear of discovery - have to take the fight to Samaritan where they can, whilst also dealing with a burgeoning gang war in New York.

Person of Interest's fourth season marks a significant shift in the show's format. Our erstwhile heroes are living under cover identities they cannot endanger without immediately being detected and eliminated by the Samaritan AI and its operatives. This forces them to have to act within the normal confines of their job at all times, even when dealing with their regular "persons of interest." This adds an interesting new tension to the show.

This tension means our characters can't go in all guns blazing as much as they did in previous seasons, and helps with the problem last season that our team was too overpowered, between Finch's elite hacker skills, Reese's formidable military abilities, Shaw's exceptional infiltration skills and Root as an even eliter hacker and competent combatant and AI-assisted assassin, not to mention access to two highly competent police officers (before one of them was killed off). Our crew have to be more circumspect in Season 4, forcing the writers to be more creative.

The result is probably the strongest run of episodes in the show's history. The already exemplary cast is expanded by the addition of some pretty big names (either at the time or in the years since) including Cara Buono (Stranger Things), Winston Duke (Black Panther), Wrenn Schmidt (For All Mankind) and Jamie Hector (The Wire), who are all superb. John Nolan (uncle of showrunner Jonathan and his director brother Christopher) continues to impress as semi-antagonist John Greer, and Enrico Colantoni has a bigger role as recurring frenemy gangster Carl Elias. Camryn Manheim also continues to be superb as "Control," this season moving from enemy to extremely reluctant, situationally-dependent ally.

What is interesting is that format encourages both greater serialisation and a renewed focus on the person-of-interest-of-the-week cases, an unusual move in a show with a continuing storyline in its penultimate storyline, when you'd expect the serialisation to have completely taken over. Instead, the threat of Control or the growing war on the streets between Elias and new kingpin Dominic often take a backseat to whomever the person of interest is.

This has several benefits, most notably it encourages the main storyline to be less convoluted than if it had had to fill 22 episodes. The show notably eliminates several factions this season to make the main storyline much clearer: The Machine versus Samaritan, who is allied to the US government, but some government officials are very uneasy about the deal they've made.

The gang war storyline could threaten to be formulaic, but it is elevated immensely by Winston Duke and Jamie Hector (here playing the right-hand-man rather than the boss, which prevents too many comparisons with his epochal turn as Marlo on The Wire), whose formidable charisma makes the Brotherhood are force to be reckoned with. The show also cleverly integrates the gang war into the main storyline with Samaritan, in a way it never managed with the HR storyline which dominated the first two-and-a-half seasons and threatened to become tedious. This storyline is better-handled and better-paced, being wholly contained within this one season. There's also a number of short arcs revolving around new recurring characters, and some PoIs from previous seasons return in clever ways.

The season also features several of the show's very best episodes: The Cold War features the first direct confrontation between the Machine and Samaritan, whilst If-Then-Else has the team trapped and the Machine has to run tens of thousands of simulations on their best way of escaping. The what-if nature of the episode is tremendous fun, allowing the characters to have several moving/dumb-as-hell death scenes. One sequence, where the Machine cuts the detail of the simulation to move things along faster, resulting in the characters becoming paper-thin descriptions of themselves, is the funniest thing the show has done so far. A twist ending prevents the episode from being too lightweight.

The back half of the season suffers a little from losing one of the regular castmembers due to behind-the-scenes circumstances beyond their control, which makes some episodes feel a bit clunky, with the introduction of some recurring characters clearly meant to just stand in for the missing one. It's not a major problem and some of the new characters are interesting, but it is a slight bump in the road. As we get to the end of the season it throws up another one of the show's best-ever episodes with Terra Incognita, where Reese has to investigate one of Carter's cold cases, resulting in the return of Taraji P. Henson in flashback sequences. The two-part season finale is also huge, packed with big plot twists and revelations that are quite satisfying.

Person of Interest's fourth season (*****) is potentially its very best, with excellent ideas and plot twists being undertaken by a cast at the top of its game. 

Thank you for reading The Wertzone. To help me provide better content, please consider contributing to my Patreon page and other funding methods.