Edinburgh Fringe reviews: August 2004–2010 (not 2006)

Despite not being a performer, showing up at the Edinburgh Fringe every August was a very formative part of my young adulthood as I kept up with the latest work of some of my adolescent idols. My path through life would have forked unrecognisably without its influence.

The 2004 Fringe was my first solo excursion, a valuable taste of independence right before university. I popped up again briefly the next year, missed 2006 for financial reasons, then when I had to decide what the hell I was going to do with myself after graduating in the summer of 2007, pre-festival Edinburgh seemed as good a place as any to relocate to. No, it seemed like the best and only option.

After leaving the UK and travelling for almost a year, I felt particularly homesick in August 2011 knowing that I was missing it, but Reekie was a bit too extreme a pilgrimage from Indonesia. Every year since it's affected me less, and this year I forgot all about it until near the end of the month, probably because Richard Herring isn't banging on about it and neither he nor Stewart Lee are even there.

Since I haven't done this in one place before, here are my Fringe diaries, mostly processed through the filter of paid or free-ticket review sites that have all expired now and had to be dug up through the Internet Archive.

Ranking the John Cleese films

We'll take those four as read, if you don't mind, dear. Besides, he's only responsible for a sixth of them. Here are the other films he didn't direct either, but can claim at least a quarter of creative responsibility for, sometimes more. Any excuse for some archive digging.

Ranking the Terry Jones films

The other Terry may have gone on to become the more acclaimed director, but he didn't make as many probably-interesting history documentaries, did he? Not that I know much about that, I'm not that interested in the real world. So here are The Top 7 Terry Jones Films.

Ranking the Terry Gilliam films

Monty Python's animator graduated to director when he helmed their first proper film in collaboration with the other Terry. I can't say what kind of impression Holy Grail would have made if I was watching it for the first time today (besides belatedly getting decades' worth of references), but when I first saw it at 10 years of age, taped off the telly and incomplete, it blew my mind and was watched on repeat for the best part of several weeks.

I was never under the delusion that Terry G's solo efforts would come anywhere close, but I've enjoyed most of what I've seen, so might as well check out the rest. Here are my The Top 18 Terry Gilliam Films.

The X-Files, part 3: seasons 10–11

I wasn't foolish enough to be optimistic about The X-Files' 2016 'event' series (it indisputably was a thing that happened), but I was excited all the same. It wasn't the worst of the hasbeen revivals, but it didn't offer much to justify its existence either.

I was less enthusiastic when they brought it back again again at the beginning of this year, but figured I'd be in the mood eventually. A mere eight months is a glowing endorsement, considering how our last close encounter went.

Part 3: The Vancouver years, again.