Diminishing Returns

What is this, a crossover episode? Diminishing Returns are joined by How Didn't This Get Made? (who, confusingly, were going by "Development Hell" when this was recorded), the brand-new podcast from Sol Harris and Conor Murray that examines the history of movie projects that never got made. Why? To examine one of the most infamous cases of a film that nearly never got made, but eventually fought i...

In an effort to make the show more woke, Definitely-Not-Racist Liam Neeson takes a look at some never-before-heard, deleted moments from previous Diminishing Returns recording sessions.

It's finally here: Diminishing Returns doing a Nicolas Cage episode! If you've never seen (or heard) of Vampire's Kiss, don't let that put you off as we're going to hold your hand through what is quite an obscure relic. Audio clips abound, along with a Nic Cage quiz and the birth of a new phrase, destined for the Oxford English Dictionary: "Cinematic Concealism".

Bill & Ted Face the Music is finally upon us, after years (followed by additional months of delay-based) waiting! To mark this most excellent of occasions, Sol and Allen are joined by Gareth to discuss Bill & Ted's Excellent Adventure and Bill & Ted's Bogus Journey.

It's the surprise return of #CalvinsSharks, the poorly named sub-series of Diminishing Returns episode where Calvin makes us cover shark movies! Except this time, it's Allen making Calvin do it. "It" being Jason Statham vehicle The Meg. Why? Well, you name another shark movie worth doing that we haven't already covered...

We're whizzing through the James Bond franchise because what else is there to do in 2020 but watch old movies? This time, it's The World Is Not Enough. Is this finally the film to win over Sol and Allen? Obviously not, but it's a funny journey, we promise.

Christopher Nolan Season comes to a thrilling and much-better-thought-through conclusion than The Dark Knight Rises with this: "The Christopher Nolan Season Rises", a look at the third Nolan Batman movie, Interstellar and an in-depth look at Dunkirk (following us touching on it in our 2018 Oscars episode, where we covered all of the Best Picture nominees). Gareth Allen joins us to lend a third voi...

Diminishing Returns continue their exploration of Christopher Nolan's filmography with the help of Emily Slade, on hand to guide them through The Prestige, The Dark Knight and Inception.

Our hotly anticipated Christopher Nolan Season launches with a look at the first third of his career, comprising of Following, Memento., Insomnia and Batman Begins. Paul Brear joins us for a discussion that also spans the chronological cut of Memento. and the original, 1997 version of Insomnia of which Nolan's film was a remake. Listen, then come back next week for The Prestige, The Dark Knight an...

It's Diminishing Returns' second live show! Presented here for those of you who couldn't join us on the night (and those of you who'd like to listen again). We needed to fill a week in the schedule at the last minute, so we thought we'd cover the new Netflix release Eurovision Song Contest: The Story of Fire Saga. Calvin and Emily join us to defend, while Allen regales with tales of his time spent...

Continuing our two-week discussion of Sacha Baron Cohen, we pick up from the failure of Ali G Indahouse to discuss the relative success of Borat: Cultural Learnings of America for Make Benefit Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan followed by Bruno and a little epilogue touching on Who Is America?.

We're doing another live episode - and this time, it isn't exclusive to Patreon. Anyone can come along and take part in the fun, this coming Tuesday, the 7th of July, at 8pm (BST). We'll be broadcasting over Zoom. Check out social media accounts at Facebook (facebook.com/diminishingreturnspodcast), Twitter (twitter.com/dimreturnspod) and Instagram (instagram.com/dimreturnspod) for the log-in infor...

What started as a throwaway joke: Sacha Baron Cohen Season - posed in one of our Patreon-exclusive Diminisodes - springs into bizarre reality (but not particularly bizarre by 2020 standards). This week, we're covering Ali G from his origins on The 11 O'Clock Show, through Da Ali G Show, Ali G Indahouse and culminating in Ali G in da USAiii. We're also covering The Dictator and Grimsby so that we d...

Diminishing Returns takes a much-needed trip back into zombie territory to coincide with the upcoming (South Korean) release of Peninsula, the sequel to Train to Busan. Sol and Allen are re-joined by Grace Miller and they take a little look at animated prequel Seoul Station, too.

It's another Patreon vote episode... sort of. This week, we asked our Patrons to give us suggestions for an episode and then we held an internal Diminishing Returns vote to select a victor. Our choice was Tom Patten's suggestion to cover the 1996 Kenneth Branagh version of Hamlet, so that we could get into a hot-take debate regarding literature. William Shakespeare: good or rubbish? Joining us, th...

Back on Bond! Calvin is determined to get us through the Brosnan era ahead of No Time to Die's release in November. This is our second step towards that goal, looking at Pierce's second time playing James: Tomorrow Never Dies! Listen for discussion of a wealth of name-actors and even No Time to Die's potential for a Best Picture nomination at the coming Academy Awards.

A rare non-franchise turn for Diminishing Returns - and our first real Martin Scorsese episode: a look at Taxi Driver, complete with Robert De Niro's (madness in the) method and how we'd react if taken to a porno theatre on a date.

You know the drill with these outtakes episodes by now: we needed a week off so we're releasing a load of never-before-heard material (unless you're one of our Patreon subscribers, in which case, you've had access to this episode for almost a year, now). This is all stuff cut from previous episodes for the sake of time or because it went too far off on a tangent. But it still makes for good listen...

After last week's live antics, we're going back to basics with a conventional Diminishing Returns episode looking at Starship Troopers, Starship Troopers 2: Hero of the Federation, Starship Troopers 3: Marauder, Starship Troopers: Invasion and Starship Troopers: Traitor of Mars.

A special live episode of the podcast, originally broadcast exclusively to Patreon subscribers on the 28th of April, 2020! (Please forgive the shaky audio quality - we're normally much better than this, but we're also not normally live). That's right, this whole corona virus lockdown pushed us to hold a special video stream event: a live episode of the podcast. Hopefully the first of many. Listen...

Our epic trilogy comes to its conclusion with this: The Returns of the Diminishings (our third episode covering The Lord of the Rings Trilogy and, this time, looking specifically at The Return of the King). Emily Slade is this week's Lord of the Ringer, ushered in to defend the franchise against haters, Allen and Sol.

The trilogy of episodes covering The Lord of the Rings enters the exciting middle part as we turn our heads to The Two Towers, with the help of Grace Miller.

Diminishing Returns will be broadcasting a special, live episode at patreon.com/dimreturns on Tuesday the 28th of April 2020 at 8pm BST. The episode will be broadcast as a video, so you'll get to see us as well as listening to us, for once. It will involve Sol, Allen, Calvin and a special guest or two, as well as a Q&A section for viewers to get involved.

Corona virus has demolished the slate of movie releases we had episodes planned to tie into, so we scrambled for something else to do and asked Patreon which trilogy they'd like us to cover out of the ones we haven't done yet. The Lord of the Rings was the overwhelming winner, so here we are: the first of three episodes covering the first of three movies (no one mention The Hobbit).

It's a very special week at Diminishing Returns as we welcome the hosts of Overrated Everything podcast for a crossover! Did we mention that the hosts of Overrated Everything are Thomas Turgoose and Andrew Ellis who played Shaun and Gadget in This Is England? We probably should have done, because that's the film we're covering this week... We're also looking at the three miniseries follow-ups This...