A quick and belated mention that we saw the Nolan Odyssey. I thought it was pretty good.

Now everyone who knows the story has an idea of how it should be told, and no film is ever going to match exactly your personal vision. In general the things people have complained about in terms of faithfulness, historical correctness, and casting don’t bother me. It’s a much-retold legend; this is a version made primarily for a contemporary American audience, and it’s a good job, respectful to both Homer and Hollywood.

Two little defects. First, some scenes are drawn out a bit too much. It’s clever to get tension out of whether the Greeks will manage to open the gates of Troy before the Trojan defenders stop them (after all, we’ve known for thousands of years that they did). You can show the gate mechanism moving with agonising slowness once or twice. Not ten times over fifteen minutes (I might be exaggerating slightly).

Second – so much running away! Pretty much every episode ends with Odysseus and his dwindling band legging it desperately for the ships. After about the fourth occasion it starts to have an unwanted comic edge, a touch of Pirates of the Caribbean, or even Monty Python and the Holy Grail.

Maybe that’s unkind. It really is a good film.