TV

Doctor Who
27x12 Bad Wolf [4th watch]

With less than a fortnight until the anniversary, #bbbDW50 reaches the revived series. NuWho makes up exactly 20% of my viewing for this. That feels like it's disproportionately large, right? Wrong. From a grand total of 33 seasons of Doctor Who, the seven modern-era ones make up just over 21%. Pretty much bang on, then. The viewing rate will also step up to squeeze all the episodes in: rather than three per week, it'll be 10 episodes over the next 12 days.

First up, then, is the Ninth Doctor (of course). Although he only stuck around for one season -- a total of 10 stories -- there are several classics to choose from. His season finale seems a natural choice to sum up his era -- Daleks, Captain Jack, the regeneration... and Bad Wolf, which looks like it will factor in to the 50th special.

The most remarkable thing, watching this now, is how old it looks. It's only been eight years, but somehow it looks... not dated, necessarily, but not the same as TV drama now. I mean, what the hell cameras were they using to make every single light source glow to three times its size?! And all the Big Brother / Weakest Link stuff has dated terribly. Even at the time we knew it would, but (again) it's only been eight years -- how bad is it going to look in another five, ten, twenty? Future viewers will not just benefit from some contextual notes, they'll need them.

Still, not a bad story. A lot of the biggest bestest stuff is in Part Two though.


Friends
4x19 The One with All the Haste [4th or so watch]


Never Mind the Buzzcocks
27x06 Episode 6

Films

Lawrence of Arabia (1962)
[#100 in 100 Films in a Year 2013]

For the first time in almost 23 months, 100 Films has a #100!

I was going to label this "first half", but that's not true: Lawrence has an intermission, but it cuts the film up as a 139-minute first 'half' and an 83-minute second 'half' -- almost an hour different.

But anyway, I watched everything up to the intermission, and will watch the remainder tomorrow. I was very tempted to watch it all in one go*, but I was watching late at night and another hour-and-a-half was pushing it.


* as I did with Once Upon a Time in America in the end, which is only 7 minutes shorter (and that's only because I have OUaTiA on PAL DVD and Lawrence on Blu-ray)