Shows of the Year 2022

As is tradition, listed below are all the films and TV shows I’ve watched this year.  The ones that surpassed my expectations are marked with *, and any that I thought were overrated with !

Standalone films

Elvis

KungFu Panda

Four Lions*

Sorry We Missed You

Encanto

Stuck Together

Still Life*

West Side Story

House of Gucci

The Thirteenth Floor

Death on the Nile

The Most Unknown

TV series

Dead to Me, season 1

Happy Valley, seasons 1 and 2*

Harry & Meghan

Agatha Christie, Lucy Worsley

The Capture, season 2*

We Were Four

Love is Blind

The Crown, season 5

Unsolved Mysteries, season 3

KaDaWe

Inside Man

Never Have I Ever, season 3*

Le Bureau, season 1*

Tehran, season 1

Slow Horses, season 1*

Stalking Pete Doherty

Ozark, seasons 1-4*

Three Identical Strangers

The Pursuit of Love*

Chernobyl*

The Split

7Up: Millennials

House of Maxwell

Prisoners of War, season 1

Our House

Blackfish*

Ridley Road

Steps of Freedom

Jeremy Kyle: Death on Daytime

Married at First Sight Australia, season 9

Britain’s Forgotten Wars

Young Wallander, season 2

Carmel: Who Killed Maria Marta?

Caroline: The Murder that Fooled the World

Puppet Master

Chloe*

Showtrial

The Apprentice 2022

The English Game

Alice in Borderland, season 1

The Tinder Swindler

Challenger: The Final Flight*

Trigger Point

The Detectorists, seasons 1, 2, 3

The Pharmacist

The Tourist

House of Secrets: The Burari Deaths

Podcasts

The Lady Vanishes*

Up and Vanished

Paradise

Joanna Rubery: prize-winning writer

Read my prize-winning short stories, travel writing, and articles on language (for the OxfordWords blog). I’m also a songwriter and pianist.

Short stories and microfiction

Right of Way (first prize, 1000 Word Challenge) (“a beautifully-written story, focusing on the relationship between a driving instructor and his pupil. The characters are skilfully built, with genuine ambiguity.”)

Date with a Sociopath (published as a Narrative magazine iStory)

Fallout (finalist, Gotham Writers ‘Be a Hero’ competition)

The Photograph (highly placed, Grindstone Literary Academy) (“you tread that fine line between vagueness and giving just enough away to piece together a backstory. My first reactions were very strong for this piece and I championed it”)

Trapped (shortlisted for Writers Online)

Rewired (shortlisted for the Limnisa Short Short Competition)

Gooseberry (longlisted for the Irish Fish Flash Fiction Prize)

Travel writing

Europe

Lost in Translation…so I was: adventures in Irish English (published in New Zealand’s Christchurch Press)

Is Polish the most difficult European language to learn? (published on the OxfordWords blog)

Zucchini Flowers (Greece)

Fallen Angel (Belgium)

Why learn Italian? (published on the OxfordWords blog)

Jèrriais, the language of Jersey (published on the OxfordWords blog)

Paris in the spring? (published on the OxfordWords blog)

Americas

Loving Latin (Peru, Chile, Bolivia) (published on the OxfordWords blog)

Peruvian Blues

Niagara Flaws (Canada)

Asia

Vis-à-visa (published in Wanderlust magazine) (Cambodia)

Stranded in Sihanoukville (Cambodia)

Pacific

The First Tomorrow (New Zealand)

Articles on language (for the OxfordWords blog) include:

Foreign languages

Let’s just “call a cat a cat”: cat idioms in foreign languages

Can the Académie française stop the rise of Anglicisms in French?

From pralines to pasteurized milk: everyday things named after French people

From silhouette to leotard: more everyday things named after French people

This blog is a he: gender in foreign languages

TEFL and EFL ((Teaching) English as a Foreign Language)

 

10 British animal idioms and expressions (Advanced/Proficient)

10 common mistakes with prepositions made by learners of English (Beginner/Elementary)

10 mistakes made by learners of English (for teachers)

Other articles include

Flash fiction: short stories with a long lifespan

From room to zoom: a short history of the camera

Chasing the rainbow connection

The language of leap years

Relational language: the language of cousins

Songs

Favourites (Best of 2015-2019)

Latest album: Glass Heart (2020)

More publishing news!

Library

In a surprise move, another one of my flash fiction stories from last year has been selected for publication in an anthology of writing from 2017. Again, I’ll update you with more details when it’s ready.  Meanwhile, from Galicia at Carnival time, íhasta luego!

Publishing news – update

Magazine

**In an update to the post below, here’s a link to the (very short) story, Date with a Sociopath, which has now been published in Narrative magazine.**

I’m delighted to say that one of my flash fiction stories has been accepted for publication in an online magazine! I’ll update you with more details when it comes out. Until then, from here in Spain, ¡buenos días!