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Derry Girls is back for its third and final season on Netflix. Check out the trailer below for the shows long awaited return (from its original home on the UK’s Channel 4).

For those of you who haven’t seen Derry Girls before, it follows a group of teenagers coming of age in ’90s Northern Ireland, their comic adolescent foibles taking the foreground against the backdrop of the sectarian strife of the Troubles.

Created by Lisa McGee, season 3 sees Northern Ireland hopeful that The Troubles are finally over. That doesn’t stop our main gang of loveable eejits from getting up to their usual hijinks.

Derry Girls is incredibly well written by creator McGee, but the quality of the ensemble from the kids to the adults is what makes the show unmissable.

Saoirse-Monica Jackson (The Five, The Flash) gets to flex her dramatic muscles as Erin as well as her comedic ones this season. Louisa Harland (The Deceived) as the “subnormal” Orla is hilarious. Orla may be a bit simple, but she provides a lot of laughs. Nicola Coughlan (Bridgerton) as Clare is chatty, very chatty. Clare is keen to find herself a lesbian lover this season. Jamie-Lee O’Donnell (Screw) as Michelle is a brash character, extremely open about whatever is crossing her mind. Dylan Llewellyn (Big Boys) is James, aka The Wee English Fella. James is the subject of plenty of anti-English jokes, which work very well.

Siobhán McSweeney (The Fall) as Sister Michael is the secret weapon of the show. She may go slightly under the radar but her straight faced interjections are hilarious. McSweeney’s comic timing is perfect.

Storylines in the third season include stress over GCSE results, a talent show, a haunted house, trying to get Fatboy Slim concert tickets and even the disposal of a dead rabbit. The storylines are a little ridiculous but that only adds to the comedy. The wit is very quick and dry. Fans of British comedy will enjoy Derry Girls.

The fifth episode of the season, “The Reunion” focuses on the parents and goes back to 1977 where we see younger versions of the parents at school. This was probably my least favourite episode of the season. It had some decent jokes, and the younger versions of the parents were well cast, but I missed the regular cast members. An average episode of Derry Girls is better than most comedies though.

Derry Girls features a lot of music of the time, including Spice Girls, Fatboy Slim and Jamiroquai. Good memories for anyone who grew up the in 90s, especially those from Britain.

It’s impressive how the show balances its humour with touching on The Troubles and what that meant for the people of Northern Ireland. Derry Girls also features some tough individual moments for the main characters separate to the issues of the time. It’s not all giggles in season 3 and it’s well balanced.

There are six 25-minute episodes and one final extended episode, approx. 50-minutes. The finale was a great way to end it. The extended runtime helped them wrap things up without having to shortchange any of the regular characters.

Derry Girls is absurd but heart-warming. The cast does a great job and it’s well written. It’s one of the best British sitcoms around and season 3 is a great way to end the show. Highly recommend you check it out.

Derry Girls season 3 is available now on Netflix

The post ‘Derry Girls’ Goes Out in Style appeared first on The Nerd Element.

Pets bring so much joy to our lives. It’s hard to replicate in robotic pets, but companies keep trying. For those who are allergic or kids training for a real dog, robotic dogs have been on the market since 1999. The latest is called Dog-E and it comes with a million possible combinations of lights, eye shapes, and sounds. While that mostly includes pastel colors and shapes like hearts and stars, it still somehow looks unsettling. We’re not sure this is a snoot we want to boop.  

Dog-E certainly has some interesting traits though. Its tail conveys written messages through the same optical illusion used in those spinning wands that were popular in the 2010s. The 10-inch-tall pup has sensors that respond to being pet and a tongue that sticks out. Families can create their own profile with one Dog-E. The dog looks and acts differently based on who it’s interacting with. There are four options for the dog’s main personality: licky and loving, sweet and lazy, protective and hungry, or playful and energetic. If you want to add one to your family, it’s available for pre-order. It costs $80, with shipping expected in September 2023. 

Gizmodo reports that the E-Dog is just one of many headed to the market that were shown off at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas. Robo-dogs aren’t the only colorful tech to come out of the convention, BMW also debuted their trippy E Ink concept car.

We’ve seen a lot of variety when it comes to robo-pets. In Japan, there’s stuffed animal robots that nip your fingers and dinosaurs that serve ice cream. One company has developed robotic dolphins intended to replace those in captivity in theme parks. And of course there’s the Boston Dyanimcs robo-dogs, some of which work for NASA. Or people who don’t own pets could simply head to the local dog park or cat café to make a new friend.

Melissa is Nerdist’s science & technology staff writer. She also moderates “science of” panels at conventions and co-hosts Star Warsologies, a podcast about science and Star Wars. Follow her on Twitter @melissatruth. 

The post Dog-E the Colorful Robot Dog Looks Friendly But Also Creepy appeared first on Nerdist.

Many famous names have played little-known Marvel Comics characters in the MCU. One can make the argument that Iron Man himself wasn’t all that well-known before Robert Downey Jr. got the role. But with Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania, we’ve got a legendary actor in the form of Bill Murray playing a character that made literally one appearance in a single comic, over fifty years ago. The character in question is Lord Krylar, whose only appearance was in 1972’s The Incredible Hulk #156. So what’s this guy’s story?

Lord Krylar: A One-and-Done Bad Guy

The green-skinned Krylar lived on planet K’ai, a world within the sub-atomic realm called the Microverse. The Microverse later became a key location for stories centered on the heroes known as the Micronauts. But since those were based on a toy line that Marvel only had temporary rights to, for the MCU, the Micoroverse became the Quantum Realm. Marvel’s love affair with the Microverse began not in any Ant-Man comics, as one would think, but in the pages of The Incredible Hulk.

In the early ’70s, writer Roy Thomas sent the Jade Giant into the subatomic universe. There, he encountered a whole humanoid population living there. And it turned out they were all green-skinned just like him. No longer feeling like an outcast, Hulk became their champion. He even fell in love with their Queen, Jarella. Thus began a long association with the Microverse in the pages of The Incredible Hulk, long before Marvel was publishing the Micronauts comics.

Welcome to Pitll Pawob

On K’ai, Krylar lived on the isle of assassins, Pitll Pawob. (Seriously, don’t ask us to pronounce that). It was home to that world’s oldest civilization where a high level of technology flourished. Much like the kingdom of Atlantis on Earth, Pitll Pawob fell into the sea, and there were almost no survivors. The descendants of the few Ptill Pawob survivors kept their tech to themselves, only sometimes selling them as weapons, and also selling themselves as weapons. This is where we officially met Krylar for the one and only time.

During one of his visits to K’ai to see Jarella, the Hulk finds her kingdom demolished. Turns out, she was taken prisoner by the ruler of another kingdom on K’ai, named Visis. Krylar was one of Visis’ chief scientists. For his master, Krylar invented a machine that can create the physical embodiment of someone’s deepest fears. Of course, Banner’s deepest fear was his inability to control his Hulk persona.

Krylar’s machine created an anti-Hulk to destroy the original. Realizing that creating one Hulk to fight another was maybe not a smart idea, Krylar turned off the machine. For that insolence, Visis stabbed Krylar in the gut, leaving him for dead. Since we haven’t seen him since, we can assume he did indeed die. One of the few Marvel characters to stay six feet under.

Krylar in Name Only?

Will Bill Murray’s Krylar be anything like the one from the comics? Well, for starters, he’s not green. That’s one key difference already. There also doesn’t seem to be a Lord Visis in this film. From the sound of things, aside from being a Marvel villain who lives in a microscopic universe, there are no other similarities we can see. Not that there was much to go on with the comic book version to start with, he literally existed for just a few panels. We would not be surprised if Peyton Reed simply came across the name Krylar while researching the Microverse, and decided he liked the name. If there’s any major takeaway here, it’s that there is no character or name too obscure for an A-list actor to play in the MCU anymore. Maybe one day we’ll see Tom Cruise as Stilt-Man, or Julia Roberts as White Rabbit. Nothing is off the table anymore.

The post Who Is Bill Murray’s Obscure Marvel Character in ANT-MAN 3? Lord Krylar, Explained appeared first on Nerdist.

The first five episodes of the Netflix tennis docuseries BREAK POINT will be released on Friday January 13. Part 2 (episodes 6-10) will be released in June 2023. Below is the official synopsis of BREAK POINT part 1, our review follows:

From the team behind F1: Drive to Survive, BREAK POINT follows a select group of top tennis players on and off the court as they compete in grueling Grand Slams and tournaments all over the world. Their dream: lifting a trophy and becoming number one. As some of tennis’ legends reach the twilight of their careers, this is the chance for a new generation to claim the spotlight. Break Point gets up close and personal with these players over a year competing across the globe in the ATP and WTA tours. From career-threatening injuries and emotional heartbreak, to triumphant victories and personal moments off the court, viewers will get a behind the scenes look at the pressure-tested lives of some of the best tennis players in the world.

The players included in the documentary series include Paula Badosa, Ons Jabeur, Aryna Sabalenka, Maria Sakkari, Sloane Stephens, Iga Swiatek, Ajla Tomljanovic, Felix Auger-Aliassime, Matteo Berrettini, Taylor Fritz, Thanasi Kokkinakis, Nick Kyrgios, Casper Ruud, Frances Tiafoe and Stefanos Tsitsipas. Not all of these players are featured in part 1, presumably they are in part 2 to come later this year.

I haven’t seen F1: Drive to Survive but I can see why this format works and why that series was so popular. You don’t have to be a tennis fan to watch BREAK POINT, they do a good job of explaining the basics of scoring and the importance of the grand slams compared to the rest of the tour. It is aimed at the non-tennis fan rather than hardcore fans. It has to over explain some things in order to appeal to a wide audience. There is a focus on the largest tournaments and no effort is made to explain the rather other complicated tennis tour structure.

BREAK POINT relies a lot on the talking head format, with current and former players as well as coaches appearing on screen often. The highlights of the matches are well edited and presented in as tense a way as possible. There are some scenes showing players after wins and losses that show the highs and lows of being a professional athlete. Episode 2 featuring Berrettini and Tomljanovic is really good at this (the mess in their hotel room is something else though). The behind-the-scenes footage showing the players away from the court was the most interesting to me.

The tennis season is ridiculously long, about 10 to 11 months of the year. Ten episodes isn’t enough to follow that much tennis, especially with the number of players who are followed by the documentary. They need a lot more episodes to adequately cover the season but this should be enough to get more people watching tennis.

They chose good players to follow, many of them had career years. The focus of the docuseries is how the tour is moving forward as we get to the end of the Nadal, Federer, Djokovic and Williams sisters era. Nadal being so dominant in the first half of the season kind of ruins that set up, it feels like it is missing a Nadal interview or two.

There are some important topics covered in BREAK POINT, in particular in episode 4 with Badosa and Jabeur. Mental health, women coming back after having kids and women getting paid less than men are some of the subjects mentioned. However, they can’t discuss them in enough detail due to the length of the episodes (about 50 minutes) and the limited number of episodes in the series. It’s a shame that side of things couldn’t be dealt with more in-depth.

BREAK POINT is an enjoyable watch that can be easily binged. It is a fairly straightforward setup (with an unimaginative title) but it is very well executed. Hardcore tennis fans may find the match recaps a little simple but there is some interesting footage away from the courts. For non-tennis or casual fans, this is a good series to get a little more invested in the tennis tour. I’d recommend BREAK POINT and will be watching part 2 in June.

Watch part 1 of BREAK POINT on Netflix from Friday, January 13

Find BREAK POINT at www.netflix.com/breakpoint

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