Kermode & Mayo’s Take - Take 2 taster: why not join us on Patreon?

Episode Date: February 11, 2026

Hello hello, Take listeners!A quick heads‑up: if you’re not yet part of our brilliant Patreon community, you’re missing out on an entire extra episode every single week.   Take 2 is where Mark & Simon stretch out, go deeper, get sillier, and answer the questions we simply can’t squeeze into the main show. And that’s just the start. Our Patreon subscribers also get polls, behind‑the‑scenes photos and videos, newsletters, video versions of Take 2, and Take Ultra — our fortnightly extra video and audio show packed with even more of the good stuff. Here’s a free taste of this week’s Take 2. If you enjoy it, come join us on Patreon — you’ll instantly unlock a whole world of bonus content and become part of something genuinely special.   Head over to Patreon for more. And here's a code to get 90% off your first month: T90. Just add it at checkout. Join Mark and Simon here: https://www.patreon.com/cw/kermodeandmayo/membership   Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Hey Mark, do you know that apparently some people out there are unaware that on Patreon you get Take 2 in video? Nothing surprises me anymore. What are we going to do about it? Well, we're going to share a little preview of it right now for them to sit back and enjoy. Well, hey, welcome. This is Take 2. And just an unfinished business thing from Take 1. Yes. We got that email from Steve Howe, the bagpipe player. Yes. Who was pledging £50 to a charity of your choosing to review Melania.

And obviously you'd have done it anyway. You didn't go because you were offered money to charity. But he does say a charity of Mark's choosing. Save the children. Okay. Yeah, absolutely. Particularly since there is so much guff from Melanie about, you know, her concern for saving.

Yeah, save the children, a charity that's actually saving children. That was one of those amazing. Truth Social Post, wasn't it, from Trump? They called his wife Melanie. Yeah. He actually said, my amazing wife, Melanie. Yeah, yeah. Because he...

In capital letters. I mean, I say this, honestly, I really did feel genuinely morally compromised watching that film, having paid to watch the film for one thing, but also because it is such a disgraceful cover-up. Yeah, I literally spent the whole thing thinking, I want it to end. And I wasn't just being fractures when I said, I found a Serbian movie an easier watch,

and Cannibal Holocaust, an easier watch than watching that thing. I mean, I did mention this, but if you have seen it for whatever reason, let us know. Correspondence at Cullow. Also, if you're a, you know, a Maga Trump supporter, whatever, if you're somebody who's going to write, why don't you just review the movie instead of the politics? That's not possible. I mean, that is possible sometimes, but it's not possible in this case because the film exists because of the politics. That's why it exists.

please don't even waste your time boring me with it. Into the slightly more uplifting world of the Bone Temple Overflow Carpola. Yes, yes. Matt Gates in Colchester. Mark and Simon, long-term listener, second or third time emailer

with the news that some cinema goers in America are dressing up as the jimmy's to watch Bone Temple. Do you think that using Saville as a cultural reference point in the film was a mistake? As of 50-something, I grew up watching Saville on television, He even met him once. And like everyone else, was shocked by the revelations of his years of abuse.

I was quite happy for him to remain in the past and be forgotten. But now we have a film dredging him up again, albeit for what they think is the right reason. I had read that as well, Matt. I don't know about this, so tell me about this. Some people in America are going to watch Bone Temple dressed in the kind of shiny track suit, which... Because they don't know...

Because they don't know anything about Jimmy Saville or why Jack O'Connell is wearing the... those tracksuits in the first place. Okay. So we got people essentially dressed up as Jimmy Sable going to see the movie in America. And I have to say, I mean, we've discussed this a lot. I do feel uncomfortable about, I think the movies could have existed without it. I think they could have picked on some other reference point, which would have delivered

the same amount of punch. But anyway, that's, you know, a amount of opinion. Can I stick my top of it's worth of here? Yes, yes, yes. I think, firstly, the way in which it plays in America, and particularly with America, as it is at the moment, I don't think you can hold the filmmakers responsible for that. I do think that America at the moment is in a state of such cultural vacuity. So that's the first thing. Second thing is, when Clockwork Orange was out, there was a lot of talk about people dressing up as droogs, okay, because the design of the droogs outfits was kind of weird cool.

and because David Bowie, when he was doing Ziggy Stardust, all that period was very, very influenced by the look of Clockwork Orange, of Alex and the Drugs in Clockwork Orange. And there was a lot of, you know, is this glamorizing, is it giving people a, I'm always very suspicious of those kind of conclusions because it's a very easy thing to leap to. I would say we talked before about how in Joker there is a moment when Joachim Phoenix's,

central character, is it Arthur Fleck, is that is, where he was his name is, is, is at the top of, top of those steps and he starts strutting to Gary Glitter. Now, in the UK, that's Gary Glitter, you know, in America it isn't, apparently, in America, Gary Glitter, that rock and roll part one or part two, whatever it's called, that is a piece of music that gets played at sports matches, and we talked about this, that it doesn't culturally mean the same thing there that it does here, and then there was a discussion about whether or not Gary was going to get any royalties from it. And I think the answer was no, who doesn't anymore.

The reason I say that is because cultural things mean different things in different cultural zones. And I don't think, I don't have a problem with the Jimmy's thing in terms of the way in which it plays to a UK audience. And I think the way American audiences are responding to it, I'm kind of almost beyond attempting to rationalise anything that happens in that country at the moment. I mean, I love 20, I said that in the context. No, of course. Loving 28 years and I love Bone Temple, which I thought was fantastic. It's just one of those moments where you go, I'm just not sure. I remember, as I might have mentioned to you before, the reason why we never played the KLF version of Doctor in the Tardist.

Remember that it was to the tune of rock and roll part two and that the money was going to go to glitter. And so therefore we went, okay, no, we don't want to play that. So we just, so it's just not late. But I think he no, I think we discovered that he no longer does get the royalty from that, that that's, that that catalog was sold. There was definitely some discussion about it. Somebody might write in and correct me on it. But, yeah, I mean, if you, if you, if you are somebody who's going to see that film wearing a Jimmy Saville track suit, you should know better, unless you're in America, in which case, I don't know what's happening in your country. Helen in Leeds, I felt they need to respond to a recent question about whether Bone Temple is.

actually scary and not just horrific. Oh, right. I can say that for me, yes, it was very definitely scary from the start. I was very worried for Spike in the beginning of the film when he's first seen with the jimmies in the disused swimming pool, and I was dreading that they might, what they might do to him. Much more scary than the visceral horror.

My fear for Spike's vulnerability was huge, and it really brought out my protective instinct. This from... Can I just say something about Spike? Yes. Spike, played by Alfie Williams. Alfie Williams won an award at the London Film Critic Circle and I met him and he was lovely.

Excellent. That's very good news. Yeah, and he said to say hello, so I'm doing that. Shintaro Cana Oya says, Dear Duran and Duran, a listener recently wrote in to say how they had had to walk out of Bone Temple after an hour after the charity scene. We should say if you haven't seen it,

that Jack O'Connell's character uses charity as a kind of a code for, we're about to do some very nasty things to you. They mentioned how the violence had crossed into gore porn and that the scene could have been taken out without changing the story. I, says, Shantoro, could not disagree more. For starters, the charity scene reveals so much how sadistic and cowardly Jimmy Crystal is.

He commits almost no acts of violence himself. Throughout the whole film, how the gang terrorise the innocent, how crystals hold over the other Jim is strong but not solid, and how Spike desperately needs to get away. It's a vital scene, which in a movie about the nature of evil sits as its degraded malevolent heart. But the point about the scene being corpored is simply inaccurate.

As a scene about a twisted cult leader, getting off on his followers flaying innocent people to death, it is depicted as responsibly as it could be, something that cannot be said of sore and hostile, which are genuinely pornographic in their sensibilities. In terms of what near DeCosta actually shows on screen, we see a stabbing and the beginning of a flaying, we then see the glee of the participants,

the terror of the victims and the horror of spike. I was looking away at this point. Finally, we see the aftermath, but never in leering detail. The terror and stomach churning awfulness we feel is created through sound and reactions and is so effective that we misremember what we actually saw. Yes. Similar to Texas chainsaw massacre,

it could be a challenge to go back to the scene to cut out the on-screen violence while maintaining the power of the scene. Anyway, that evening, my wife, Danielle, and I watch sinners. I tell you, that Jack O'Connell, he's a proper Roman. Keep up the good work, down with the new Nazis, same as the old Nazis. Thank you, Shintara. I mean, that's certainly true.

I mean, I did say to Jack O'Connell. He's had a year of burning down barns and being thoroughly, thoroughly bad. Dave says a core theme to the film is humanity, the humanity of Dr. Ian, the inhumanity of Jimmy Crystal, and there needed to be absolutely no question over the nature of evil of Crystal's character, hence the violence. and the emerging re-humanising, I think I made that word up, of Samson. Jimmy Crystal has to be both fearsome and charismatic for the children to follow him, and the audience needed to experience just how terrible his behaviour was to understand the power he had. Ian, which is the right fine's character, in contrast, had to demonstrate that no matter

how emotionally and physically battered he was, he still had faith in humanity. Samson, I think, will be central to the redemption in the next film. A conclusion, I think, a lot of people will come to. A film that tells us to be wary of deluded liars using fear and fairy tales to control minds and encourage inhumane acts and buy up Greenland. That's from Dave. Thank you, Dave.

Wow, we're very good, aren't we? Yes, and hopefully that's given people a little taste of T2. Head to Patreon now and sign up with the code T90. That's 90, which gets you 90% off your first month. Blimey, Charlie.