Pomona for Facebook

  It wasn't supposed to be this way. Cinemas should this year have been booming because of releases like 'Tenet,' 'Mulan,' 'No Time To Die,' 'Wonder Woman 1984,' 'A Quiet Place 2,' 'Dune,' 'The French Dispatch' and 'The Many Saints of Newark'. However, multiplexes and arthouse cinemas found themselves shutting their doors at various times throughout the year because of a pandemic. Throughout 2020, Covid-19 upended family life, education, the economy, workplaces, retail, restaurants, bars, sport and all forms of entertainment. With hospitals in many countries struggling to cope with patients who succumbed to Coronavirus and families mourning the loss of loved ones, the closure of cinemas was an inevitable but bitter pill to swallow. Cinemas sadly had to shut their doors at a time when escapism was desperately needed. And when they did reopen, the filmgoing experience just wasn't the same.  It just didn't feel li

Had 2020 been a normal year, I might have been writing about Donald Trump's defeat in the US Presidential Election or his brush with impeachment. I might have led on the UK finally leaving the European Union - one of the most constitutionally significant events to occur in the country since the devolution settlements for Northern Ireland, Scotland and Wales. I could have nosed off on the emergence of streaming services like Apple+, Britbox and Disney+ to challenge Netflix and Amazon Prime. I would almost certainly have raved about the quality of TV drama on both sides of the Atlantic. However 2020 was not a normal year. Everything was simply turned upside down by the Coronavirus. At the start of 2020, as the UK and EU  prepared to formally leave the European Union on January 31, there were rumblings about a deadly virus in Wuhan in China that originated in bats and transferred to humans via a wet market. By March, it had become a full blown public health crisis, with hospitals in