TV

8 Out of 10 Cats Countdown: The Channel 4 Mash Up
Bits of both shows jumbled together? Ah, a proper mash-up.
[Watch some of it (again) on 4oD.]

Charlie Brooker's 2011 Wipe
Charlie Brooker recaps and satirises the year that was "like an end of season finale for all of mankind".
[Watch it (again) on iPlayer.]

Eternal Law
1x01 Episode 1
New supernatural/legal drama from the creators of Life on Mars. Also from the creators of the reviled Bonekickers, which is unfortunately more relevant. Despite the good writers, a good cast and an interesting high concept, this is the victim of weak writing (a slow start, an implausible courtroom), weak acting and too much unnecessary opacity in the way the premise is presented. Shame.
[Watch it (again) on ITV Player.]

House
8x08 Perils of Paranoia
This episode, aired in November, was the last one until the end of January. On the one hand, "oh America and your crazy scheduling!" On the other, I haven't watched it until now (partly because it was the last one until January), so what does it matter.

How I Met Your Mother
7x09 Disaster Averted
[Watch it (again) on 4oD.]

Paddy's 2011 Show and Telly
I can't stand Paddy McGuinness, but I love TV and a quiz show about it sounded fun. But it's presented by Paddy McGuinness. Ugh. Appalling, for all kinds of reasons.
[Watch it (again) on ITV Player. But I wouldn't if I were you.]

Pointless
5x37 (4/1/12 edition)
[Watch it (again) on iPlayer.]

Collection Count

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

It really ought to be a quiet time in January, post-Christmas, but it's not going to be completely silent -- look, I've started already!

Number of titles in collection: 1,426 [up 3]
Of which DVDs: 1,148 [no change]
Of which Blu-rays: 278 [up 3]

Number of discs in collection: 3,548 [up 11]
Number of films in collection: 1,519 [up 5]
Number of TV episodes in collection: 5,388 [no change]

See you next week, faithful reader.

TV

Absolutely Fabulous
6x01 Identity [Christmas special]
6x02 Job [New Year special]
You assume these kind of revivals are going to be at best pretty weak and at worst hopelessly embarrassing, but I thought these two episodes were actually rather funny. Not sure the mooted movie is a good idea though.
[Watch Identity and Job (again) in HD on iPlayer.]

The Many Faces of
Dame Judi Dench

The Mentalist
4x03 Pretty Red Balloon
US TV should be re-starting before too long, so I ought to catch up on the ones I've not seen... not that The Mentalist seemed to stop over Christmas.

Pointless
5x36 (3/1/12 edition)
Returning post-Christmas, Pointless returns to new episodes (last aired in October). Not that it matters much to me -- I hadn't seen the repeats they'd been showing anyway. Though I was dreadfully behind on them, and now have them all saved up for when they switch to repeating episodes I have seen.
[Watch it (again) on iPlayer.]

QI
9x13 Intelligence (XL edition)
Being the one I missed that I keep going on about.

Articles

Outnumbered to return for fifth series?
by Morgan Jeffery (from Digital Spy)
Fingers crossed for this one. Though I agree the kids are getting a bit too old and they should probably wrap it up soon, I think they should wrap it up soon rather than just stop it, and doing a fifth series this year -- rather than in 2013 as mooted -- seems to the best way to do that.

TV

Earthflight
Part 1 North America (of 6)
[Watch it (again) in HD on iPlayer.]

Black Mirror
1x02 15 Million Merits
That was a bit bleak and depressing... much like the reality TV & app cultures it was satirising, then. That's what all the best sci-fi does: comment on the here & now. Usually such things are more subtle, but where does subtlety get you these days? And I'm sure plenty of people are too dim to get that this is a comment on where things are at now rather than where they might theoretically end up.
[Watch it (again) on 4oD.]

Lee Mack: Going Out
Apparently this was all-new, but as it went on I began to feel like I'd seen some of it before. Maybe just déjà vu, I dunno. (Last time I watched some Lee Mack stand-up, I had seen it before. Coincidencetastic.)
[Watch it (again) on iPlayer.]

Never Mind the Buzzcocks
25x13 Episode 13 [season finale]
Just a best bits show, except for a couple of quite amusing outtakes near the end.
[Watch it (again) on iPlayer.]

TV

Comic Relief 2011: What a Cracker
A poorly-edited (every sketch was truncated! great stuff was missing!) set of highlights from last year's Comic Relief. Oh well.
[Watch it (again) on iPlayer.]

Great Expectations
Part 3 (of 3)
I enjoyed that greatly. Makes me want to watch the David Lean film again to see if the bits I didn't remember were in it or not.
[Watch it (again) in HD on iPlayer.]

Misfits
2x07 Christmas Special [season finale]
3x00 Vegas Baby!
I didn't watch last year's special sooner because it wasn't near enough Christmas when I finished series two proper. Now I'm struggling to justify to myself that it's still Christmas season enough to get away with it. Oops. On the bright side, it is quite separate from the series proper -- set three months later, even -- so in that respect it's been a good gap. Great episode too.
Then there's the amusing, and surprisingly long, series three prequel, explaining the departure of a major character (I'm sure if you care you know who, even if you're as behind as me). As well as 4oD, the prequel's available on iTunes for free -- and in HD too! -- here.
[Watch the Christmas special and Vegas Baby! (again) on 4oD.]

TV

Great Expectations
Part 2 (of 3)
[Watch it (again) in HD on iPlayer.]

Little Crackers
2x01 My First Brassiere

QI
9x15 Ice (XL edition) [Christmas special]
Keeping track of QI has becoming a nightmare over Christmas, where they've shown a mix of old and new episodes in both regular and XL editions. Plus they've apparently put some brand-new stuff in those VG episodes, aside from all the best bits and best-bits-of-episodes-not-yet-shown; and then there's that episode I missed, which it turns out I have recorded.
Is it all just some kind of test for those people who want to see every episode in its fullest form, I wonder?
[Watch QI XL (again) on iPlayer.]

TV

Top Gear
18x00 India Special
This year's Christmas special sees the boys "set off on an epic road trip across India", which doesn't sound quite as iconically Christmas as last year's baby Jesus-themed thing.
[Watch it (again) in HD on iPlayer.]

Films

Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part 1 (2010)
[2nd watch]
This was #70 in 100 Films 2011, and why I watched it again today will become obvious imminently...

Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part 2 (2011)
[#2 in 100 Films in a Year 2012]
That's a little over four-and-a-half hours of Potter today. Epic.

Also, last night...

Kung Fu Panda 2 (2011)
[#1 in 100 Films in a Year 2012]

TV

Great Expectations
Part 1 (of 3)
Love a bit of Gothic, and this is marvellously so.
[Watch it (again) in HD on iPlayer.]

How I Met Your Mother
7x08 The Slutty Pumpkin Returns
[Watch it (again) on 4oD.]

Little Crackers
2x11 I Was a Teenage Santa!

Sherlock
2x01 A Scandal in Belgravia
God that was good. I'd like to say which bits I liked, but they make Sherlock such a densely packed hour-and-a-half that it's difficult to know where to begin. Or end. Absolutely brilliant.
[Watch it (again) in HD on iPlayer.]

this week on 100 Films

Happy New Year!

Anyway...

Just 1 new review was posted to 100 Films in a Year this week... but there was also the December update, being the first in my annual triumvirate looking back at the year (the next two looking back at the year, rather than just the month-and-by-association-of-it-being-the-last-month,-the-year).

Anyway, that review...

Gambit (1966)

Gambit is distinctly underrated. The huge advantage of this is that you’re not very likely to have had all the twists spoiled, which is wonderful news! Indeed, because the biggest twist is near the start, it’s pretty hard to review without giving it away. But I’ll do my best. Honestly though, avoid other reviews, just in case.

More next Sunday.

TV

The Big Fat Quiz of the Year 2011
Last year I did massively well at this; this year, not so much... though 27 out of 38 was still respectable enough to land me second.
[Watch it (again) on 4oD.]

Films

The A-Team: Explosive Extended Edition (2010)
[#100 in 100 Films in a Year 2011]
I did it, so I did! Hurrah!

The Man from Earth (2007)
[#98 in 100 Films in a Year 2011]

Winnie the Pooh (2011)
[#99 in 100 Films in a Year 2011]

DVD Extras

Featurettes on The Man from Earth
Four short interview-based bits, coming to only a little over 12 minutes total, about life On the Set, discussing The Story of the Story, screenwriter Jerome Bixby's Sci Fi Legacy, and the process of taking the film From Script to Screen. Interesting, but it might be nice to have a little more detail on the themes of the piece, which are so central to a tale like this. The disc does include two feature-length commentaries, but that swings the other way and feels somehow excessive.

Winnie the Pooh and His Story Too
Short featurette on the US Blu-ray of Winnie the Pooh briefly explaining the character's history. Nice.

Collection Count

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

So, here's my Christmas haul, and a couple more too. And as it's now New Year's Eve, this is also the final tally for 2011! Whoo! Last year's equivalent post has allowed me to chart how the collection has increased in the past year, alongside the regular weekly increase.

Number of titles in collection: 1,423 [up 9 this week; up 165 in 2011]
Of which DVDs: 1,148 [up 4 this week; up 48 in 2011]
Of which Blu-rays: 275 [up 5 this week; up 117 in 2011]

Number of discs in collection: 3,537 [up 20 this week; up 401 in 2011]
Number of films in collection: 1,514 [up 7 this week; up 180 in 2011]
Number of TV episodes in collection: 5,388 [up 50 this week; up 843 in 2011]

Crikey, that's a lot of TV! Wish I could remember what it all was...

As well as all that, it's also time for a (delayed) running time update...

Total running time of collection (approx.):
256 days, 2 hours, and 26 minutes.
(Up 4 days, 19 hours, and 50 minutes from last month, and 31 days, 20 hours, and 11 minutes from last year)

And that's that for 2011! See you next week, faithful reader.

TV

Dara O Briain: This is the Show
Three stand-up shows in as many days! I guess it's not just the DVD market that likes to pump these out at Christmastime these days.
Ironically, whereas the other two were English comedians filmed in Ireland, here we have an Irish comedian filmed in England! Well I never.
[Watch it (again) on iPlayer.]

Felix & Murdo
One-off sitcom, and/or sitcom pilot, about two Edwardian gentlemen, played by Alexander Armstrong and Ben Miller, written by Men Behaving Badly creator Simon Nye. And that's an indicator of where this went. It was needlessly crass in places -- a list of sexual acts does not constitute a joke -- and slightly uncomfortably old fashioned -- all video-shot and studio-audience-laughter-getting-in-the-way -- but it had its moments. It probably wouldn't have seemed so bad if the Radio Times hadn't gushed about it so heavily.
[Watch it (again) on 4oD.]

Films

Faintheart (2008)
[#97 in 100 Films in a Year 2011]
24 hours to go; three films to go. It's not impossible...

The Spider Woman (1944)
[#96 in 100 Films in a Year 2011]

TV

Bill Bailey: Dandelion Mind
roflysst
[Watch it (again) on 4oD.]

I've Never Seen Star Wars
2x00 Stephen Fry [Christmas special]
Two-and-a-half years since they last tried to bring this Radio 4 series to TV, it's back, with a new host, a new set, the same theme music, and only as a one-off. I enjoyed it first time round and I like it just as much now. More please.
[Watch it (again) on iPlayer.]

Little Crackers
2x09 My First Christmas Number One
2x10 Papaji Saves Christmas

Films

Hotel for Dogs (2009)
[#95 in 100 Films in a Year 2011]
Right down to the wire. Doesn't look like I'll make 100 this year.

TV

Little Crackers
2x06 Shappi 4 Todd
2x07 My First Ton
2x08 The Daltons

Poirot
12x04 The Clocks [season finale]
It seems daft to bung a season finale tag on Poirot, seeing as how ITV seem to show them in whatever order they fancy over the course of several years per series, but hey-ho, technically this is the last in the 12th run.
[Watch it (again) on ITV Player.]

Simon Amstell: Do Nothing Live
Stand-up from the former Buzzcocks host. I identified.
[Watch it (again) on iPlayer.]