TV

How I Met Your Mother
1x09 Belly Full of Turkey
1x11 The Limo
As expected, I was right that I'd missed an episode and it was entirely my fault. Ho hum. A run of three very good episodes though -- and, indeed, so were the ones before them. Given a couple of weeks to settle in, How I Met Your Mother has definitely found its feet.

Walk on the Wild Side
1x05 Episode 5
I had been intending to watch this whole series after it was quite well-reviewed by the Radio Times. But then I didn't. The promise of Wildlife on Mars in this edition spurred me on however. Shame it was rubbish. Much of the rest of the programme was quite good though, ironically. Maybe I'll watch it again in future... except the last one was this week.

Articles

BBC3 to make zombie drama In the Flesh
(from RadioTimes)
So BBC Three had to cancel SF/F drama The Fades because (reportedly) they couldn't afford both it and more-established Being Human, but they can afford SF/F drama In the Flesh? Still, supporting new talent is good, and it does sound like it might be a solid twist on the zombie format. Irritating for Fades fans though.
Of even greater interest in this story (in my opinion) is news of BBC One commission The Musketeers, a 10-part modern-day re-working of The Three Musketeers. Be interesting to see how that works out -- it's not as obviously adaptable as Sherlock. If it's a hit too, I can well imagine us seeing a swathe of these modern-set re-imaginings of classic literature.

Downton, Walking Dead, How I Met Your Mother: Tube Talk Q&A
by Morgan Jeffery & Daniel Sperling (from Digital Spy)
A bunch of handy answers/updates to questions I've been curious about on series I'm interested in: Damages season four (and presumably five) will go straight to DVD in the UK; How I Met Your Mother season seven is finally resuming on E4 in a couple of weeks; The Hour season two is on in late June (has it really been a year since the first series? A British series can't be returning in under 12 months, surely); Episodes returns to UK screens nearly two months before the US; and a few other things too.

Sherlock series three details revealed by Mark Gatiss
by Morgan Jeffery (from Digital Spy)
Gatiss confirms that the first episode will be a version of The Adventure of the Empty House. Absolutely no surprise, but exciting to have it confirmed.

TV

Derren Brown: The Events - Live
1x04 How to Take Down a Casino [series finale]
Out by just one! That's really rather incredible.
[Watch it (again) on 4oD.]

House
5x07 The Itch
5x08 Emancipation
Tying one's plot and subplots together thematically may be widely touted as a Good Thing, but it's also possible to do it a little too obviously or a little too much, which seems to be the case with both these episodes. On the other hand, The Itch uses the agoraphobic patient as a metaphor for House's locked-up feelings, whereas Emancipation's brother-accidentally-killing-brother subplot is just a straight-up mirroring of the main plot's eventual reveal.

How I Met Your Mother
1x18 Nothing Good Happens After 2 A.M.
1x19 Mary the Paralegal
How I Met Your Mother messes around with time ever so well. Jumping back 20 hours to show Robin's day in Nothing Good... worked quite well, but the "3 months earlier" thing in Mary the Paralegal is an example of the time-messing-around at its best.

Merlin
2x03 The Nightmare Begins
Nice to see Merlin furthering its arc plots, including bringing back and developing characters from the first season. As well as being good for regular viewers and raising the series above Magician of the Week status, it really gives a feel for the five-year plan the producers have. Even the episode title suggests that things are only just getting under way...
On another note, the music this season seems to have been very heavily influenced by The Dark Knight.
[Watch it (again) on iPlayer.]

TV

Children in Need Rocks the Royal Albert Hall
Star-studded gig in aid of Children in Need. With a line-up full of Today's Hot Pop Acts it's inevitably a mixed bag, dependent on your tastes, but it's all for a good cause so you can't complain too much.
[Watch it (again) on iPlayer.]

How I Met Your Mother
3x05 How I Met Everyone Else
Ah, the semi-inevitable 'how we all met' episode, a staple of any long-running sitcom. Luckily, this ep is worthy of that grand tradition.

The Sarah Jane Adventures
3x11 The Gift Part One
3x12 The Gift Part Two [season finale]
Guest starring (the voices of) big-name actors Miriam Margolyes and Simon Callow! Just goes to show how well SJA does for itself.
It's a relatively low-key season finale, despite the guest stars and a world-threatening plot -- there's very few locations, lots of standing around nattering, and a ton of CGI, which is presumably where the story's budget went. Not the best SJA story then, and feeling more like a low-budget mid-season effort than a grand ending, but entertaining enough.
Fingers crossed for a fourth series...
[Watch part one and part two (again) on iPlayer.]

TV

Gavin & Stacey
2x01 Episode 1 [2nd watch]

How I Met Your Mother
9x16 How Your Mother Met Me
[Watch it (again) on 4oD.]

Person of Interest
2x17 Proteus
As various series reach the end of their seasons, it's time to resume some others and, soon, start some new ones. Which is good, because there's a big pile of stuff I've had saved up for months.

TV

It's "catch up before all that Christmas telly begins" time!

Black Mirror
1x01 The National Anthem
Media-satirising anthology series from the brain of Charlie Brooker, which in fairly typical me fashion has already finished before I'm even starting it (still, at least this was only three episodes -- I'm a series behind with Misfits and I've not even got going on the 15-part Story of Film). Very dark, very good. Anthology series are in short supply so it would be nice if this took off.
[Watch it (again) on 4oD.]

Dave's One Night Stand
3x05 Tommy Tiernan [season finale]

The Graham Norton Show
10x08 (16/12/11 edition)
[Watch it (again) in HD on iPlayer.]

Have I Got News For You
42x09 (16/12/11 edition; extended repeat) [2nd watch]
A particularly good episode, I thought; and, as ever, even better extended.
[Watch the extended version (again) on iPlayer.]

How I Met Your Mother
7x07 Noretta
[Watch it (again) on 4oD.]

Life's Too Short
1x06 Episode 6
Apparently this has been picked up for a second series. Not sure how I feel about that.
[Watch it (again) in HD on iPlayer.]

Live at the Apollo
7x06 Episode 6 [2nd watch]
[Watch it (again) in HD on iPlayer.]

Rev.
2x06 Episode 6
A season finale of an episode, even though there's a Christmas special next week... well, it was on two days ago, but... yeah.
[Watch it (again) in HD on iPlayer.]

TV

Six series today, five of them including the last of the series / last ever. Coincidencetastic!

How I Met Your Mother
6x19 Legendaddy
I know some have been critical of HIMYM in recent seasons, for not getting anywhere with its arc plot, or for not being as clever or funny as it used to be, but I think this season is really hitting new highs. Good for them.
[Watch it (again) on 4oD.]

James May's Things You Need to Know
1x03 The Weather [final episode]
[Watch it (again) on iPlayer.]

Luther
2x03 Episode 3
2x04 Episode 4 [season finale]
The second two-parter in Luther's truncated second series. A good idea in this one, well (and violently) executed, even if it did remind me of one of the Thorne stories. Most surprising, though, was the happy ending. How un-Luther-like. Don't know how this run went down or how it rated, but fingers crossed for a third.
[Watch episodes three and four (again) in HD on iPlayer.]

The Sex Researchers
Episode 3 (of 3)
[Watch it (again) on 4oD.]

$#*! My Dad Says
1x18 Who's Your Daddy? [series finale]
Bleep My Dad Says (as they insist on calling it) wasn't the greatest sitcom ever -- far from it, if we're going to be honest -- but it was decent-enough brain-off watch-once fare. Plus, the longer it went on the more it grew on me, so in those respects it's a shame it was cancelled.
[Watch it (again) on Demand 5.]

Spirit of Wimbledon
Part 4 Splendour on the Grass [final episode]
All-in, it was definitely much better than that other one. I may write to the Radio Times. Why? I dunno. Because.
[Watch it (again) on iPlayer.]

TV

Battlestar Galactica [2004]
2x09 Flight of the Phoenix
2x10 Pegasus [extended version]
The BSG Blu-rays (and some/all of the DVDs) contain a total of seven extended episodes, the first of these being Pegasus. Whereas the creators have labelled some of these episodes "editor's cuts" -- effectively meaning a long, unpolished version of the episode -- the extended Pegasus is a "director's cut" -- meaning the full-length version they would've liked to broadcast were they not stuck with a specific length slot. So, in this case, I've decided to eschew the broadcast version and jump straight to the extended one; quite what I'll do when I get to "editor's cut" episodes is something I'll equally over-think when the time comes.
More pertinently, then: what a frakkin' huge cliffhanger! Glad I don't have to wait months for the resolution -- on I go.

Damages
3x13 The Next One's Gonna Go in Your Throat [season finale]
If this does turn out to be the series finale, it was a great one, wrapping up all the major plot threads from all three seasons once and for all -- at last. But it leaves it open for more, so fingers crossed there'll be another case for Patty Hewes.

Doctor Who Confidential
5x13 Out of Time [season finale]
I often find I miss New York, something this episode was all-too-good at reminding me. As for the two slight hints about next season... reassuring, but disappointingly vague. Which I suppose it what we should expect from Moffat & co.
[Watch it (again) in HD on iPlayer.]

How I Met Your Mother
5x05 Duel Citizenship
[Watch it (again) on 4oD.]

TV

How I Met Your Mother
5x10 The Window
[Watch it (again) on 4oD.]

The Sandbaggers
3x03 Unusual Approach
Excellent as ever, this is a particularly enjoyable episode: Burnside is sent off to Greece to feature in a comedy subplot, while SIS deal with one of their most dangerous missions in his absence. More dramas like this today wouldn't go amiss.

Stand Up for the Week
1x06 (30/7/10 edition) [season finale]
After that brief, bizarre burst of Whitehall-like a few weeks back, he's now sunk to his lowest levels of laughter-lackingness yet. And he seems to have taken the whole show with him. I'm not sure how I've stuck with it to episode six, to be honest, but I certainly didn't make it to the end of this one (in fact, it was so good, I fell asleep).
[Watch it (again) on 4oD.]

That Mitchell and Webb Look
4x03 Episode 3
[Watch it (again) in HD on iPlayer.]

TV

Arrow
2x15 The Promise

Friends
9x15 The One with the Mugging [5th or so watch]
There seem to be an exceptionally high number of Famous Guest Stars in this season. I guess they knew the end was in sight.

How I Met Your Mother
9x09 Platonish
It's episodes like this that prove why people shouldn't've been so surprised when it all ended how it did. (Yeah, E4 are months away from getting there, but I accidentally found out what happens anyway.)
[Watch it (again) on 4oD.]

The Trip to Italy
Part 1 Il Cenobio dei Dogi, Camogli
I didn't bother with the first series of The Trip (way back in 2010 now) because I wasn't sure I could take three hours of Steve Coogan. Some good reviews tempted me in for this sequel, though, and I found it to be quite enjoyable. Mainly thanks to Rob Brydon, but Coogan wasn't so bad.
[Watch it (again) in HD on iPlayer.]

TV

It's Children in Need on Friday, which means there won't be time for me to catch up on last Friday's shows as I usually do; which means today and tomorrow will be filled with all their usual stuff, plus Friday's... hence this long list:

Ask Rhod Gilbert
2x08 Episode 8 [season finale]
[Watch it (again) in HD on iPlayer.]

Frozen Planet
Part 3 Summer
[Watch it (again) in HD on iPlayer.]

How I Met Your Mother
7x02 The Naked Truth
[Watch it (again) on 4oD.]

The Impressions Show with Culshaw and Stephenson
3x03 Episode 3
[Watch it (again) on iPlayer.]

Live at the Apollo
7x02 Episode 2
I am shocked to discover Lee Nelson can actually be funny. I mean, the character is still fundamentally annoying, but some of his material was quite good.
[Watch it (again) in HD on iPlayer.]

The Mentalist
4x01 Scarlet Ribbons
Well, that was fairly obviously what was going to happen. Shame in many ways, it would've been interesting for the show to move on beyond its never-ending Red John constraint. Ah well.
[Watch it (again) on Demand 5.]

Pointless
3x37 (3/11/10 edition)
I love it whenever I get a pointless answer, but particularly when I do it in the final, and I was particularly particularly pleased to do it in the final on a tricky Sherlock Holmes question. Yay for me.
[Watch it (again) on iPlayer.]

Spy
1x03 Codename: Grades
This might be the best comedy on TV right now. And it's on Sky. What?

TV

Doctor Who
33x13 Nightmare in Silver

Author Neil Gaiman returns (after the good-but-overrated The Doctor's Wife) for a second pop at Who, this time attempting to increase the scariness of the Cybermen. And I really liked this episode. It's imperfect, a bit rough round the edges, in need of some polishing of both the script and direction... but, overall, likeable.

Reaction online seems more mixed. I saw a lot of positive comments on twitter, but the Radio Times' Who guy hated it. Unduly, I thought, and a lot of the plot holes his article picked up on were either explained in the episode or easily explicable via things that happened in the episode. It's a double shame the extra polishing I mentioned didn't happen, then, because it would've also led to a more positive reception from critics like that.

[Watch it (again) in HD on iPlayer.]


How I Met Your Mother
8x15 P.S. I Love You
[Watch it (again) on 4oD.]


Star Trek: The Next Generation
3x26 The Best of Both Worlds Part 1 [season finale]
4x01 The Best of Both Worlds Part 2

The two-parter from TNG, with that cliffhanger. And it's great! I mean, it's a little dated now (it is 23 years old), but in kind of a nice way -- its pace is brilliant, neither too slow nor as mad-dash-frantic as a lot of current genre telly.

I watched the recently released Blu-ray, which edits it all together into a movie (ironically thereby losing the famous cliffhanger), and it looks bloody stunning in HD. It's not just an image quality thing, it's the quality of the sets, the lighting, and the wonderful model effects... This stuff, made for TV nearly a quarter of a century ago, is still better than lot of today's big-budget movie CGI.


The Voice UK
2x07 The Battle Rounds 1
[Watch it (again) in HD on iPlayer.]

TV

Dragons' Den
9x06 Episode 6
[Watch it (again) in HD on iPlayer.]

The Jonathan Ross Show
1x01 (3/9/11 edition)
Some have apparently criticised this for being the same as his previous series. Really? What did you expect? I'm glad not too much has changed, as I'm sure are the rest of his numerous fans. Feels like it needs to bed in a little on ITV, but then maybe that was just the quality of the guests.
[Watch it (again) on ITV Player.]

Outnumbered
4x02 Episode 2
Karen vs. a chugger? Brilliant.
[Watch it (again) in HD on iPlayer.]

Perfect Couples
1x01 Perfect Tens
New sitcom from the US... or, at least, new to E4 -- considering how late they began How I Met Your Mother this could be years old for all I know. Decent first episode (very oddly, the pilot airs as episode two), looks promising... though I see it's been cancelled already. Ah well.
[Watch it (again) on 4oD.]

Would I Lie To You?
5x01 Episode 1
[Watch it (again) on iPlayer.]

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.]

TV

Doctor Who
33x08 The Rings of Akhaten

Well that was disappointing. The concept had some potential, and I quite liked the early stuff exploring the alien world, but it all went off-piste...

I like Doctor Who to feel like you're getting a novel in 45 minutes (or, of course, 90 when it's a two-parter); something that could conceivably fill a Target novelisation, if they still did those. Most of the time it manages that, or something approaching it. The Rings of Akhaten was resolutely a short story. And, even then, not a particularly good one, with all the singing saving the world kind of nonsense, and a damp squib of a villain, and a giant head for big monster...

Shame.

[Watch it (again) in HD on iPlayer.]


Game of Thrones
2x07 A Man Without Honor
2x08 The Prince of Winterfell

Both of these episodes are of such tip-top quality that either one would suffice (as per what I was saying the other day)… but next up is Blackwater, which I've been anticipating for ever so long now, and what a splendiferous idea to be able to watch that on Saturday night. (I appreciate this post is going out on Saturday night, but that's because I wind up watching these a little after midnight.)


How I Met Your Mother
8x10 The Over-Correction
[Watch it (again) on 4oD.]


The Voice UK
2x02 The Blind Auditions 2
[Watch it (again) on iPlayer.]

TV

How I Met Your Mother
1x01 Pilot
I'd paid no heed whatsoever to this in the past, but with E4 just commencing on a from-the-beginning every-night-of-the-week run and the Radio Times praising it as a good Friends-a-like (and I've always liked Friends) it seemed worth a shot.
As first episode's go it's a pretty good one -- they're always awkward beasts, but it managed a good number of laughs among all the setting up. I certainly liked the 2030-set framing device, an unusually bold conceit for a sitcom. Signs are good then.
It might be worth noting that E4 are reportedly cutting the show to fit their pre-watershed timeslot, however. There's a late-night repeat but I've no idea if that's uncut.

Wildest Dreams
Part 6 (of 7)
Well well well, I always thought she'd win it.
[Watch it (again) on iPlayer.]

TV

Gilmore Girls
1x04 The Deer-Hunters [2nd watch]

How I Met Your Mother
9x23 Last Forever Part 1
9x24 Last Forever Part 2 [series finale]
As E4 have decided to split the clearly-conceived-as-an-hour series finale into its constituent parts, I downloaded the US version and watched it all in one go. No idea where the split would be, actually; quite tempted to watch Part 1 on catch-up and see (or just read about it on Wikipedia -- it's where I thought it might be).
Anyway, a lot of people seemed to hate it -- some have branded it the worst finale ever. Personally, I quite liked it. Kinda obvious it's been going somewhere like that all along, surely? Not to many/most, it would seem...
[Watch Last Forever Part 1 (again) on 4oD. Part 2 will be available next week.]

Live at the Apollo
9x05 Episode 5
First of two Apollo episodes I missed in the last series -- and I stumbled on it completely by accident on BBC Three, while simply looking for any old (decent-ish) comedy to pass the time! Coincidencetastic.
[Watch it (again) in HD on iPlayer.]

TV

How I Met Your Mother
3x15 The Chain of Screaming

Wallander [British]
2x01 Faceless Killers
It's a little weird going back to 'our' Wallander having seen so many of the Swedish ones -- so much more stylised, moodier, trying to be in some way unique. I guess Sweden don't have the proliferation of police procedurals filling their TV schedules that we do. Both versions are very good, however, just in slightly different ways.
[Watch it (again) in HD on iPlayer.]

We Need Answers
2x06 The Sun
Once again I'm left wondering about BBC's policy to series links on the iPlayer, as I've missed two episodes of this due to the assumption it had one (I swear I saw it on episode one...)
[Watch it (again) on iPlayer.]

TV

The Deep
Part 1 To the Furthest Place
Oh dear. Such a promising idea, wasted with poor writing, unconvincing characters, weak acting, a turgid pace, pointless flashbacks, an implausible set... I laughed out loud several times, usually at the bits that were Deadly Serious. How rubbish. How disappointing. And I'll still watch the rest... all four hours of it... ugh.
[Watch it (again) in HD on iPlayer.]

How I Met Your Mother
5x11 Last Cigarette Ever
[Watch it (again) on 4oD.]

Roger & Val Have Just Got In
1x01 The Guarantee
Conversely (to The Deep), this is beautifully written and acted, both funny and real. Super.
[Watch it (again) in HD on iPlayer.]

TV

Derren Brown: The Events - Live
1x02 How to Control the Nation
A Toy's Story was classic Derren, the kind of stunt I always enjoy (and by "classic" mean "have seen him do before", of course), while The Giveaway certainly provided its share of amusement -- especially the "particularly suggestible" guy who donated his shoes. And Subject 5 -- whose arms mysteriously floated upwards, to Derren's apparent bemusement -- was most amusing
As for the event itself... well, I didn't get stuck, sadly. Did you?
[Watch it (again) on 4oD.]

How I Met Your Mother
1x10 The Pineapple Incident
Either I've missed an episode or E4 have skipped an episode. Either way, "oops".