Friday 6 August 2010

TV

The Sandbaggers
3x04 My Name is Anna Wiseman

You Have Been Watching
2x08 Crime Special [season finale]
The episode postponed because of one or other of the shooting sprees the other month. Now first broadcast at the end of a post-midnight repeat run on E4. (For some reason, it's still absent from the official episode guide, but is nonetheless on 4oD. Odd.)
[Watch it (again) on 4oD.]

Articles

Bruce Feirstein interview: James Bond, Blood Stone and modernising GoldenEye by Michael Leader
(from Den of Geek!)
Interesting point in this interview: writing GoldenEye, the film, was all about having to move Bond into a new, post-Cold War world; now, writing the GoldenEye game remake, which updates the story to today, 15 years on from the film, involves updating it to a much-changed world again. Which is kind of interesting. It's also increased my already-quite-high interest in the game. Crap, I'm gonna have to buy a console again, aren't I...

Mark Gatiss interview: writing Sherlock, and where it’s heading next by Simon Brew (from Den of Geek!)
and
Sir Arthur Conan Doyle writes villains like no other by Steven Moffat (from guardian.co.uk)
Just to whet your appetite ahead of this Sunday's Sherlock series finale, here's a pair of articles: the first an interview with co-creator Mark Gatiss about the series' conception and where it may go next; the second by co-creator Steven Moffat on why Holmes' nemesis, Moriarty, is so legendary, plus which are the best screen versions.

And in other Sherlock news...

Sherlock DVD & Blu-ray Cover Art
(from Sherlocking)
Seems like we now have nearly all the details for the DVD/BD release of this excellent series: all three episodes (naturally), commentaries on the first and third, a half-hour making-of, and, perhaps best of all, the unaired one-hour pilot. It could only be better if they'd done commentaries on episode two and the pilot -- hopefully the making-of will cover why the latter was rejected and the series rethought.

Torchwood attracts Buffy, Breaking Bad, House writers by Maureen Ryan
(from The Watcher at Chicago Tribune)
Or, the list of writers for Torchwood's forthcoming fourth season. Only one other UK writer (besides RTD): John Fay, who penned the middling Mobile but also two episodes of the outstanding Children of Earth (aka Torchwood season 3, of course).
Of the three yanks now involved, one is Jane Espenson, of excellent work such as Buffy and Battlestar Galactica, while the other two I've not heard of, but have worked on the likes of The X Files and House. It'll be interesting to see how Americanised this makes a series that obviously started out as very British/Welsh.

Collection Count

Collection Count tracks my DVD/Blu-ray collection via a number of statistics every week.

Absolutely no changes this week, though a few orders should see a pile of nice shiny new titles arriving in the next few weeks. Exciting stuff.

However, as alluded to in the past couple of updates, I do have a special stat of the week this time. 'Special' as in it took some extra effort to compile; this doesn't guarantee it'll be interesting.

Number of titles in collection: 1,194 [no change]
Of which DVDs: 1,096 [no change]
Of which Blu-rays: 98 [no change]

Number of discs in collection: 2,932 [no change]
Number of films in collection: 1,253 [no change]
Number of TV episodes in collection: 4,160 [no change]

Statistic of the week:

Things I'd seen before buying them:

Titles: 347 (29.1%)
Films: 279 (22.3%)
TV episodes: 1323 (31.8%)

Be it at the cinema, on TV, or a rented or borrowed DVD -- or even VHS -- these are all the things I'd actually seen before I invested in the DVD/Blu-ray for myself. As you can see, I buy an awful lot of stuff 'blind'.

I've broken it down into both titles and films for one simple reason: box sets. There are some sets I own where I'd seen some but not all of the films before purchasing; these are only counted in the Titles number if I'd seen more of the set than not before purchasing. Hopefully this way it somehow evens out statistically. The straight Films number, of course, counts all films I'd seen, even if that's just one from a set of six, because… well, that's just accurate, isn't it?

The TV number is different again, in that it's more guesswork (in places). Just how many episodes of The World at War were we shown in school? How many episodes of Bugs did I miss while on holiday over a decade ago? Did I see all of Captain Scarlet when I was little or just some episodes? And so on. As for their inclusion in the titles number, I've also taken some leeway -- I've still not seen the second half of Buffy season 4 (why not you fool?!), never mind seeing it before buying it, but I've counted that set anyway. Angel, on the other hand, I've only watched the first half of season 1 (why not the rest you fool?!) and so not counted it.

Yes, I spend my time concerned with things like this.

See you next week, faithful reader.