TV

Eurovision Song Contest: Liverpool 2023
Grand Final
A great show on the whole, even if I didn't understand the winner at all (it was a perfectly adequate song, but there were so many other better or more interesting ones, so I don't get why it was such a runaway hit). On the bright side, it means a return to Sweden, who last time they hosted gave us one of the greatest Eurovision moments of all time. No pressure for 2024, guys...
[Watch it (again) on iPlayer.]


The One Show at Eurovision
9/5/2023 edition
10/5/2023 edition
11/5/2023 edition
12/5/2023 edition
13/5/2023 edition: Eurovision Countdown

As you might guess from the title, BBC One's early evening magazine programme The One Show has been in Liverpool all week to cover Eurovision. I didn't realise how much coverage they'd given it — I assumed it would be little bits here and there, but actually it dominated each episode, with only an interview or short feature per episode deviating. So I caught up on all of that earlier today.

It's not just me who's spent most of the day in a Eurovision bubble, though: the actual BBC One schedule dedicated 8 hours to Eurovision-related programming throughout the afternoon & evening! It began with a repeat of last week's Ultimate Guide, there was then a repeat of last year's Weakest Link tie-in special, followed by new tie-in editions of Pointless Celebrities and The Hit List. So, mostly themed specials of game shows, then. I decided to skip all of that (I did have some other things to do), but joined for The One Show countdown to the main event.

[Watch the countdown (again) on iPlayer.]

Audio Drama

Hell Cats
1x13 The Final Show
[Listen to it (again) on Audible.]

Collection Count

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

Another more-than-healthy pile of new arrivals this week, almost all brand-new releases (to be exact, almost half of these titles have been out for a while, but they were bundled in a preorder with something that's out next week, so my copies have only just turned up).

Also in this batch: 4K releases of the two 1970s Musketeers films, upgrading a BD doublepack. I massively enjoyed those films when I first saw them a few years ago (I checked: it was 2011. Twelve years ago is my idea of "recently"), so looking forward to revisiting them in 4K.

Number of titles in collection: 3,086 [up 7]
Of which DVDs: 1,029 [no change]
Of which Blu-rays: 2,057 [up 7]
— of which Ultra HD Blu-rays: 257 [up 2]

Number of discs in collection: 7,583 [up 11]
Number of films: 3,783 [up 9]
Number of additional cuts: 315 [up 1]
Number of TV episodes: 9,589 [no change]
Number of short films: 1,052 [up 1]

See you next week, faithful reader, when it's time for a running time update — but I'm massively behind in adding all my recent acquisitions to my database, so it's gonna require a rather large amount of work on my part to get that figure ready. Don't be surprised if the post is delayed...