TV

The Comic Strip Presents...
Five Go to Rehab
Well that was disappointingly rubbish.

Merlin
5x08 The Hollow Queen
[Watch it (again) in HD on iPlayer.]

Person of Interest
1x16 Risk

QI
10x08 Jumble (XL edition)
The one I said I'd fill in.

Comics

2000 AD #1805-1808
• Low Life: Saudade, Parts 1-4 by Rob Williams & D'Israeli

Remember how I read The Judge Dredd Story Everyone's Been Going On About, only to discover part of the reason for that was, a few parts in, it tied in to the current story in The Simping Detective, so I had to go back and read all of that? Well, turns out it's tying in to the current story in Low Life too, as revealed even further down the line, so I need to go back and re-read all of that too. And this is a case in point of why one should read the whole Prog in one go as it comes, rather than story-by-story -- especially as the surprise of it happening not only once but twice has now been spoiled for me.

But my, have they clearly gone big with this one!

Anyway, I've now caught them all up to the same point (a couple of Progs back) so can proceed in an orderly fashion through the rest of their stories… or story.


2000 AD #1809-1811
• Judge Dredd: The Cold Deck, Parts Four - Six by Al Ewing & Henry Flint
• Low Life: Saudade, Parts 5-7 by Rob Williams & D'Israeli
• The Simping Detective: Jokers to the Right, Parts Six - Eight by Simon Spurrier & Simon Coleby

And here it all gets pretty epic, if occasionally confusing thanks to ties to long-standing continuity and the three strips all lightly playing off each other, not to mention Spurrier's tendency towards purplish verbosity. But in spite of that, it's pretty awesome.

Prog 1811 is with subscribers today and in shops from Wednesday. Looks to be Prog 1812 (in shops Wednesday 5th December) is the final part of all these tales. Can't wait.


Dial H #1 by China Miéville & Mateus Santolouco

This series is quite far through now, but I'm only just getting round to starting it. It's OK, I would've bought all of the first arc anyway. And it's even more OK because I thought it was pretty good, with a promising concept well executed. I've heard not a lot of people like it and perhaps it's been getting low sales, so maybe it takes a downward turn, and even if it doesn't it may turn out to be one for the chop before too long, but I'll keep going for the moment at least.

Collection Count

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

This week's update includes a DVD I actually received a couple of weeks ago, but thought I'd be returning. I imported the Thai DVD of Birth because it was the only one in the world to include a second disc of special features. The website said it had two discs; the packaging boasts about the two discs; but inside was just the film disc. After emailing the retailer, turns out the second disc isn't made any more, so that was a bit of a waste. Luckily it was no more expensive than just buying the UK DVD (especially after I got a compensatory refund) so I'm not ludicrously out of pocket for no reason. Shame about those extras though.

Number of titles in collection: 1,506 [up 2]
Of which DVDs: 1,146 [up 1]
Of which Blu-rays: 360 [up 1]

Number of discs in collection: 3,755 [up 2]
Number of films in collection: 1,547 [up 2]
Number of TV episodes in collection: 5,700 [no change]
Number of short films in collection: 370 [no change]

See you next week, faithful reader.