Time well spent? A look back at 2017

I don't wish to alarm you but we have already burnt through a full half of 2017. Can you believe that? I certainly couldn't when I realised.

In fact, I needed a cup of tea and a bit of a lie-down. When I got back up a short while later another two weeks had gone by. Time is no longer fleeting, it's f**king hotfooting it right out of here.

Surely, I can't be alone in wondering where in blazes this year's gone? It feels like only yesterday that I was slip-slop-slapping before heading out for a leisurely summer's stroll under the glorious sunshine at the Mount.

Now I'm fighting the winter wet, all huddled up, suffering constant snivelling flu and getting rained on every bloody time I leave the house.

The fact of the matter is that we've all spent six months in this leaky boat of a year and the scary thing is that it just doesn't feel like it.

On a day like today - the very last day of the halfway point of 2017 - when it feels like time isn't just slipping away but is actually pouring away in an unstoppable deluge of days and months, it's good to slam on the brakes, stop for a second and take a look back at the year that was so far.

At best it'll help make sense of it all and de-blur the last six months. At worst it'll waste a little bit of time you'll barely even remember having six months from now ...

This is exactly what the entertainment squad has been doing all this week on the Herald's website.

As a way to reclaim the time we all feel we haven't had, we decided to issue 2017 a Mid-Term Report. To check in, see how things have been going and highlight the very best in entertainment this year so far.

I found it surprisingly tricky. It really has been a bumper year for all facets of entertainment and it's easy to forget that when you're waiting for the bus and you've forgotten your umbrella and those deep, dark clouds are beginning to spit at you.

Of course with any committee approved and compiled list there's going to have to be lee-way and compromise to reach a consensus. We decided to bypass all that nonsense and instead just all pick our one or two favourite entertainment in each genre and call it a day.

While it saved a lot of tears, arguments and heartache it did mean that things that usually would have been a shoe-in did, unfortunately, get shuffled off to the side.

There's movies, albums, games and TV shows that you'd absolutely expect to see on our lists that just didn't make the cut.

As it turns out that's one of the things that I like most about the week's mid-term reports.

They're wild and loose and unexpected. There were no concessions made because no one had to make any concession's.

They're completely skewered to the writers personal preferences and not at all bothered at ensuring any sort of genre balance or by any lofty ambitions of "getting it right".

That last one's an impossible task anyway, but is absolutely a condition that the more worthy "End of the Year" lists have to struggle under. With all those concerns out of the way the hardest part was narrowing down my selections.

Which, in the end, didn't prove that hard at all. Because I am a super cool guy I keep a log and assign a star rating to every film I see. This made choosing the remarkable and surprisingly poignant T2 Trainspotting as best film incredibly easy. Games was simple as well; Zelda: Breath of the Wild on the Nintendo Switch is an astonishingly good time.

Music was tricky. There's just no accounting for taste, which is great because I wasn't trying to. It was in that spirit that I selected Iteration, by retro-futurist producer Com Truise and the incredibly niche but wonderfully creepy A Murder Collection by French producer Lucas Giorgni, a terror-synth soundtrack for an 80s horror film that doesn't actually exist.

But it was television that caused the most problems. It really has been a helluva year on the box. I ruled out shows that were still screening, sorry Twin Peaks, and all the comedies that I love dearly, sorry Veep, because week after week Better Call Saul continued to blow me away. Thank gawd they just got their fourth season confirmed.

But even after all this reflection and assesment I still don't really know where the last six months went. But it's pleasing to know that at least I didn't waste it.

* Read our best movies here, best music here, best games here, best TV here, and the best podcasts here.