TV

Agatha Christie's Marple
5x04 The Mirror Crack'd From Side to Side [season finale]
ITV's glut of Marple comes to an end with perhaps her best-known case (and it feels a rarity to see them adapt a story she's actually meant to be in). A rather good one it was too, with a grand twist; a better adaptation than the other version I've seen, though I did miss that one's excellent opening scene.
[Watch it (again) on ITV Player.]

Due South
2x06 The Mask [2nd watch]

How I Met Your Mother
6x02 Cleaning House
[Watch it (again) on 4oD.]

Upstairs Downstairs [2010]
Part Three The Cuckoo [final episode]
Ultimately, I rather enjoyed that. It's nice to have a drama series that wraps everything up with a proper happy ending these days, too -- the lack of cliffhanger was refreshing. More please!
[Watch it (again) in HD on iPlayer.]

TV

Due South
2x05 The Promise [2nd watch]

Never Mind the Buzzcocks
24x11 Episode 11
[Watch it (again) on iPlayer.]

Primeval
4x02 Episode 2
This episode starts ridiculously (seriously, if you found a lizard that big in your house, would you flush it down the toilet? I wouldn't) and doesn't improve. Business as usual then.
[Watch it (again) on ITV Player.]

Swingin' Christmas
Something a bit different for Christmas, even if only a handful of songs were specifically Christmassy, and (one might argue) most of the others weren't well enough known. Still, a nice idea and an entertaining hour-and-a-half. The website includes a full list of songs performed, including details of what's in the medleys.
[Watch it (again) on iPlayer.]

Wallander [film series]
The Man Who Smiled (aka Mannen som log)
The other Swedish Wallander: between 1994 and 2007, Rolf Lassgård starred in nine TV movies adapting Henning Mankell's novels -- i.e. the stories also being used for the Branagh series (the other Swedish Wallander adapted a Linda Wallander novel followed by original stories).
This, the first BBC Four have brought to the UK, is the sixth film, from 2003, which was adapted by the British series as the second episode of series two. This version is rather different to the British -- the ending is completely changed, for one thing -- and, having already seen two actors portray the role, Lassgård takes some getting used to. He's not bad, though he feels more like your standard TV detective than the more unusual stylings Branagh and Henriksson brought. Plus, although he was the first actor to play the part, he's perhaps come too late to the party for British viewers.

Articles

24 exclusive: Fox nixes movie script by Lynette Rice
(from Inside Movies at EW.com)
Sounds like the movie is still definitely go, just not with this screenplay.

this week on 100 Films

0 new reviews were posted to 100 Films in a Year this week, but there was the December update -- which is different from previous years' end-of-year summaries, in case you wondered. This year's equivalent will be along shortly.

More reviews next Sunday.

TV

2010 Unwrapped with Miranda Hart
This was rather good last year and doesn't disappoint this either.
[Watch it (again) on iPlayer.]

2010 Unwrapped extra
Some deleted sketches, sporadically available by the BBC Red Button service. While last year several of these merited inclusion in the main programme, this year they're more variable. A pair of Springwatch-based clips are quite good -- and can be watched here and here -- but an extended sketch about Lost Land of the Tiger is entirely laugh-free. If you'd like to subject yourself to it anyway, its in three parts here.

Just William [2010]
1x02 Parrots for Ethel
[Watch it (again) on iPlayer.]

Mock the Week
9x13 Christmas Compilation 2010 [special]
The usual MtW Christmas mix of best bits, outtakes and Christmas-themed new bits.
[Watch it (again) on iPlayer.]

Primeval
4x01 Episode 1
Remember Primeval? It got cancelled (quite justly, to be honest) after the last series, then renewed as a complex co-production (the next series will premiere on Watch later this year before airing on ITV around this time in 2012).
So has this cancellation and longer production window (the last series was two years ago) improved the show? In short, no. If anything, it's worse. The writing's as bad as ever, but the new lead cast members are as cheap and tacky as they looked in photographs. Oh dear. Still, at least the CGI dinos are now even prettier in HD.
[Watch it (again) on ITV Player.]

Upstairs Downstairs [2010]
Part Two The Ladybird
More Downton-esque plots emerge -- oh dear. Despite that, Upstairs Downstairs is still enough of its own entity to work and coexist with ITV's rival.
[Watch it (again) in HD on iPlayer.]

Films

Excalibur (1981)
[2nd watch]
John Boorman's full-blooded, gritty, violent, sex-fuelled, beautifully shot, epic retelling of the Arthurian legends.

Lara Croft Tomb Raider: The Cradle of Life (2003)
...sort of. So sort of, in fact, that I'm not counting it in 100 Films despite never having seen it before. It was on in the room while I was doing other things, for most of the length of the film, and while I didn't watch it properly I saw enough to tell it's absolute rubbish.

Collection Count

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

I suggested last time that this update would be a couple of days late. I'm sorry to have worried you throughout all your Christmassy celebrations by delaying it by well over a week. It's mainly laziness.

Naturally, thanks to Christmas, a new clutch of titles have entered my collection. And because there's not likely to be many new additions to cover in the immediate future, this update only covers my Christmas acquisitions -- next week's entry will include the handful of pre-orders I received between Christmas and New Year and so, despite this entry being the one on New Year's Day, it's next week's that will show the state of my collection at the end of 2010.

OK?

So, here's what that Christmas clutch looks like... in numbers, anyway:

Number of titles in collection: 1,254 [up 7]
Of which DVDs: 1,097 [up 2]
Of which Blu-rays: 155 [up 5]

Number of discs in collection: 3,129 [up 35]
Number of films in collection: 1,331 [up 11]
Number of TV episodes in collection: 4,544 [up 72]

Statistic of the week should be the latest running time update, but as next week is all end-of-2010-y, I'll save it for then.

See you next week then, faithful reader.

1111111

It's eleven minutes past one A.M. on the 1st of January 2011 --

-- or, to put it another way,

1:11 1/1/11!

Wow, eh?

Happy New Year!

Welcome to 2011, dear readers!

Today's date -- in case you hadn't noticed -- is 1/1/11. Awesome.

Plus, I have a really special post that'll pop up in an hour or so. Truly, you shan't believe your mind!

TV

Agatha Christie's Marple
5x03 The Blue Geranium
[Watch it (again) on ITV Player.]

The Graham Norton Show
8x09 (24/12/10 edition) [Christmas special]
And tonight, his New Year's special was on. Yup, I'm as up-to-date as ever.
(Though, in fairness, I half watched said special. I shall watch it properly -- and mention it properly -- in the next day or two. Or week. It'll be a week, won't it.)
[Watch it (again) on iPlayer.]

Just William [2010]
1x01 The Sweet Little Girl in White
Well I thought that was jolly good. Wonderfully cast and played, the kind of mischievousness there's not enough of in kids' TV, and with plenty of humour for the adults too. To call it a "children's comedy", as the BBC insist on doing in all their blurbs, undermines its quality... not to mention that, when adapting such an old series of books and setting them in the '50s, there's every chance there are more nostalgia-inspired adults watching than there are target-audience-aged kids. Still, s'fun for all the family.
[Watch it (again) on iPlayer.]

Little Crackers
Episode 5 Bunce
More Daniel Roche! Very different part for him, playing an 11-year-old Stephen Fry, but he was still rather good.

New Year Live
Remember last year, when I said that I liked that the BBC had cut this down to just half an hour, and half of that was the fireworks display, rather than the over-long content-free indulgence that it used to be? Still true. Though it does seem to mean they've lost any recognisable presenters. But I did actually rather like this year's fireworks-to-music. Decent job.
[Watch it (again) on iPlayer.]

TV

A productive day in front of the telly, as you can see...

8 Out of 10 Cats
10x03 Christmas Special
I love it when a 40-minute panel show is comprised of just two rounds; especially when the host declares the second one to be "the final round" rather than just "round two".
[Watch it (again) on 4oD.]

Due South
2x04 Bird in the Hand [2nd watch]

Just Good Friends
1x05 I Don't Want to See You Again

Little Crackers
Episode 1 The Giddy Kipper
Following last year's 10 Minute Tales, Sky1 again offered up a series of seasonal short films, this lot written/directed/starring a selection of famous comedy faces. This first one is written and directed by Victoria Wood and, despite being produced by 'Sky Comedy', isn't exactly a barrel of laughs. Good though.

Live at the Apollo
6x05 (28/12/10 edition)
[Watch it (again) in HD on iPlayer.]

QI
8x14 Hocus-Pocus (extended repeat) [Christmas special]
I like magic tricks, but those two at the end were a bit pathetic for my taste, a mix of too-obvious mirrors and TV editing.
[Watch it (again) in HD on iPlayer.]

Upstairs Downstairs [2010]
Part One The Fledgling
Turns out it isn't quite as good as the competition -- a bit too stuck in its own past at times, for one thing, and a tad wasteful of potentially good plots -- but this is still a highly skilled effort. Eileen Atkins is magnificent, cast in a similar position to Downton's Maggie Smith but a completely different role, and it's beautifully shot too. Shame it's only three parts -- the pace things develop at (for instance, Rose taking the whole episode to officially rejoin the household) feels like the start of a much longer series.
[Watch it (again) in HD on iPlayer.]

TV

Agatha Christie's Marple
5x02 The Secret of Chimneys
This isn't a Marple story originally, apparently, but she seems to slot in perfectly. A rather good tale, I thought. Plus it's a nice change to have a detective who realises Marple's abilities and doesn't just dismiss her as an interfering old fool before being proven wrong.
Despite not having shown a new episode of Marple since August (and before that, January, and so on back in huge leaps), ITV are now -- for whatever reason -- showing three in a week! Another was on tonight, with a third on January 2nd. I think their schedulers might actually be insane... especially as they still haven't broadcast the final episode of the fourth series (shown in the US in July 2009).
[Watch it (again) on ITV Player.]

How I Met Your Mother
6x01 Big Days
Ah, it's good to have this back! OK, it only went away six(-ish) weeks ago, but as E4 showed the first five seasons non-stop it feels like an age.
[Watch it (again) on 4oD.]

The Impressions Show with Culshaw and Stephenson
2x06 Christmas Special [season finale]
This thing of having the last episode also be the Christmas special seems to be taking off...
[Watch it (again) on iPlayer.]

Top Gear
16x00 Middle East Special
Clearly someone at the BBC must've been listening to me (of course they were!), as their episode guide has 'rebranded' these two specials since my previous comments. Yup, that must be down to me.
[Watch it (again) in HD on iPlayer.]

Music

The Christmas Collection by Johnny Cash
I've owned this CD for a few years now, but never actually listened to it all the way through -- I tend to remember around the 3rd or 4th of January, by which time it's of course far too late. A little religious for my usual taste, but still rather good. And who else would begin their Christmas-themed album with a track about being miserable?

Do You Want the Truth or Something Beautiful? by Paloma Faith
[3rd listen]

Articles

Apologies if you already saw these stories days ago -- I had them ready days ago and forgot to post them. Oopsie.

Trowbridge driver lost for three days
(from BBC News)

A Wiltshire grandfather spent three days trying to find his way home from Gatwick Airport after becoming disorientated in snowy conditions... he failed to return to Trowbridge after dropping his wife off for a flight. Police in Oxfordshire eventually... found he had spent from 23 - 25 December driving, trying to get back.

What does 2011 have in store?
(from BBC News)
What does the next year hold for us in the realms of security & foreign policy, transport, tourism, fashion and shopping -- a rather random grab bag of topics, I'm sure you'll agree. Still, I always find it interesting reading these prediction articles... I just wish I remembered to revisit them a year later to see if any of it was right.

TV

Re: Joyce!
Maureen Lipman's one-woman (well, almost) biography-cum-greatest-hits stage show about Joyce Grenfell, filmed for the BBC in 1991.

Music

A Christmas Cornucopia by Annie Lennox
[2nd listen]

Greatest Hits II by Queen
[15th or so listen]

TV

Dirk Gently
I rather enjoyed that. Long time since I read the books so no idea how well they captured the character (the story is, I believe, largely new and/or massively condensed), but it worked by itself. I believe this was acting as a pilot for a series, so fingers crossed one follows.
[Watch it (again) in HD on iPlayer.]

Pointless
3x50 Pointless Celebrities [season finale]
Neat way of naming your celebrity edition. This is actually quite a fun game show, though massively padded in the way daytime game shows are wont to be. Shame, or I might watch it more regularly.
[Watch it (again) on iPlayer.]

Films

Clue (1985)
[2nd watch]
This was #28 in 100 Films for this year, back in March.

Iron Eagle (1986)
[#122 in 100 Films in a Year 2010]
You know how sometimes you end up accidentally watching a film on TV against your better judgement? Yeah...

Music

I often forget about music when it comes to doing these updates, so here I am trying to improve...

Back to the Light by Brian May
[2nd listen]

Do You Want the Truth or Something Beautiful? by Paloma Faith
[2nd listen]

TV

Doctor Who Confidential
6x00 Christmas Special 2010
[Watch it (again) in HD on iPlayer.]

Poirot
12x03 Murder on the Orient Express
This seems to have come in for criticism in some quarters due to its focus on Poirot's religious conundrum. While I agree it didn't need to be made so overtly religious, when you're adapting a mystery where the vast majority of viewers know the answer, it's a good idea to find something else to hold their interest, and Poirot's out-of-character moral decision is certainly an interesting aspect of this tale. Personally, I thought it was all very well done -- hard and cold in story and shooting style, and so maybe not really suitable for Christmas Day (probably why it only managed 14th in the day's ratings) but still good.
(And if you don't know the twist, read the book or watch an adaptation, it's worth it.)
(And relatedly, I watched the famed film version close to this time last year. Coincidencetastic!)
[Watch it (again) on ITV Player.]