TV

Episodes
1x03 Episode Three
[Watch it (again) in HD on iPlayer.]

Wallander [film series]
One Step Behind (aka Steget efter)
Having given us the sixth and eighth Swedish Wallander adaptations, BBC Four now jump back to the seventh. Who said scheduling had to make any sense? As with the previous two, this was also filmed for the British series, as the final episode of the first series.

Yes Minister
1x05 The Writing on the Wall

Articles

In which we discover reasons to dislike Ridley Scott...

Ridley Scott’s Prometheus will have Aliens in it
(from Live for Films)
Turns out Ridley Scott's Alien prequel that isn't an Alien prequel is actually an Alien prequel. Typical.

Robbing From The Poor (Writer) by William Martell
(from Sex in a Submarine)
How Ridley Scott turned Robin Hood from an excellent, unique screenplay into a predictable, lacklustre rehash. Liable to make any film fan irritated and upset (that we'll never get to see what sounds like a potentially great film) in equal measure.

TV

Due South
2x08 One Good Man (aka Thank You Kindly, Mr. Capra) [2nd watch]
[Watch it (again) on iPlayer.]

How I Met Your Mother
6x05 Architect of Destruction
[Watch it (again) on 4oD.]

The Magicians
1x04 Episode 4
[Watch it (again) in HD on iPlayer.]

No Ordinary Family
1x03 No Ordinary Ring

Radio

Afternoon Play
Haunted
Radio drama... it's a funny thing. This one comes well-recommended, for instance, but even the able cast often sound stilted and false. But maybe it's a genre thing -- theatre acting doesn't work well out of context, for instance; it's stylised in its own way. I'm sure the same would be true of TV/film acting if transferred, it's just we're more used to it. Still, nice sound design. The music was flat-out awful though.
The tale itself was a neat one, if a little slow to get moving. Gavin & Stacey's Steffan Rhodri takes on a very different role as a thinly-veiled version of Derren Brown, who encounters a medium (Zoe Tapper, who's around 10 years older than her character and sounds it) who really might be the real thing. A couple of decent twists at the end really make the play -- they're original, the kind of twist on the whole mediums thing that you wish you'd thought of -- though the final lines of dialogue, an attempt at one final twist I think, don't seem to make much sense.

Articles

Doctor Who Character Building
(from doctorwhotoys.net)
Remember the Doctor Who not-LEGO-honest? Well, it was unveiled at the London Toy Fair this week, and here's a bunch of snaps of what was on display. Some of it looks quite cool.

TV

Battlestar Galactica [2004]
3x05 Collaborators

Fast and Loose
1x02 Episode 2
[Watch it (again) on iPlayer.]

The Killing [aka Forbrydelsen]
1x02 Day 2
This is rather good y'know. If you missed it, you've got two months to catch up on iPlayer... but I'd recommend getting a head start, what with it being 20 episodes longer. Quite how the story will stretch that far is yet to become clear, but it'll be interesting finding out.
[Watch it (again) on iPlayer.]

Top Gear
16x01 (23/1/11 edition)
Ah, here we are: the proper return of Top Gear. Lovely.
Also, we love the 'back-up dog'.

Aww, bless!
[Watch it (again) in HD on iPlayer.]

Radio

Life at 24 Frames a Second
Part 3 Wired for Sound
Part 4 The Big Kill Off
[Listen to Wired for Sound and The Big Kill Off (again) on iPlayer.]

Articles

Oscar Nominations 2011!
and
Those Oscar Nominations Explained!
by Helen O'Hara (from Empire)
You've quite likely heard the Oscar noms already -- or, at least, the headlines. But in case not, here's the headlines (British film The King's Speech most with 12! Yay! etc) as well as the full list.
And also that second article, which looks at some of the oddities that have baffled (why is Toy Story 3 in Best Adapted Screenplay?) or annoyed (why isn't Nolan up for Best Director?)

Skins Creator Defends the MTV Show's Morals, But What About the Edgy Drama's Other Problems? by Maureen Ryan
(from Stay Tuned with Maureen Ryan on TV Squad)
Or, "why you can't just remake a UK TV show as a US TV show without changing anything", with reference also to the new versions of Being Human and Shameless.

TV

10 O'Clock Live
1x01 (20/1/11 edition)
Despite all the controversy, I thought it was rather good. It'll benefit from time to bed in and by giving longer slots to debates and interviews, but it's a decent start.
For two slightly conflicting, interesting views on its quality, have a read of this pair of deliberately paired articles from the Guardian.
And when it comes to sites I link to in episode titles (for any series), I do try to find the most useful from the three or four (or more, of course) different options you can readily come up with. Channel 4's own episode page is fine, but doesn't bother linking on to the useful content they provide elsewhere on the series' minisite -- namely, further information on the episode's guests and external links on the episode's topics. Potentially handy stuff, that.
[Watch it (again) on 4oD.]

Just Good Friends
2x04 Caught on a Shoulder Strap

The Killing [aka Forbrydelsen]
1x01 Day 1
BBC Four's latest Nordic crime offering, a 20-part Danish thriller from 2007, showing in Saturday night double bills ahead of the US remake's Stateside premiere in April -- and, on the strength of this, hopefully it'll be here soon after.
[Watch it (again) on iPlayer.]

Not Going Out
4x03 Movie
[Watch it (again) in HD on iPlayer.]

Radio

As regular readers will easily notice, I don't listen to much radio. Radio 4 are having a film season, however (a film season on the radio? How barmy!), so I've managed to tune in for some of that. I say "tune in" -- iPlayer is our friend...

Hollywood
Part 1 The Prequel
Two-part documentary. Last week's first part (i.e. this one) looks at the rise of Hollywood, and how many of the genres and styles we associate with it actually come from other, more-powerful-in-their-day, countries' film outputs. Part two, The Sequel, on tonight (by the time you're probably reading this) looks at Hollywood's potential future.
[Listen (again) on iPlayer.]

Life at 24 Frames a Second
Part 1 In the Dark
Part 2 Fear & Desire
David Thomson certainly makes for an... idiosyncratic, shall we say... guide to the movies.
[Listen to Part 2 (again) on iPlayer.]

Articles

Airbender, Eclipse lead Razzie noms by Simon Reynolds
(from Digital Spy)
Ah, the Razzies -- probably the only awards the Twilight films deserve to be nominated for.

Kevin Smith Buys His Own Film At Sundance Auction, Swears Off Distributors, and Announces Full Details for Self-Distribution by David Chen
(from /Film)
Or, to put it another way: Kevin Smith is bonkers... but if this works, it could change everything. Well, some things. A bit.

Spider-Man has a new adversary… the web by Ross McG
(from Ross! v Ross!)
The world wide web and all its spoiler-some websites, that is. Yes, such topics have been discussed many a time before, but this is still a well-put take on what's a continuing issue.

TV

Episodes
1x02 Episode Two
[Watch it (again) in HD on iPlayer.]

James May's Toy Stories
1x02 Plasticine

Films

Aladdin (1992)
[3rd or so watch]
I haven't seen Aladdin in an awfully long time, and with the film oddly absent from Disney's Blu-ray slate, Five airing it (and in HD too) was an apparently-rare chance to catch it.

The Big Heat (1953)
[#8 in 100 Films in a Year 2011]

this week on 100 Films

4 new reviews were posted to 100 Films in a Year this week, and they were...

A Good Woman (2004)

Most reviews, which are largely negative, focus on it being a poor conversion of the play [Oscar Wilde’s Lady Windermere’s Fan]. I’ve never seen nor read the original and thought it slotted seamlessly into its new ’30s setting... It remains a very funny piece

Miracle on 34th Street (1947)

It’s wrong to post a review of such a Christmassy film in the middle of January — though not as wrong as the original release date which, at the insistence of Fox’s head Darryl F. Zanuck, was in May (May!) with promotion that played down the Christmas setting. Which, considering the whole story is about a man who thinks he’s Santa Claus, and whether or not he really is, is an impressively underhand piece of marketing.

Surrogates (2009)

Surrogates exerts too much effort establishing its world. The opening montage covers 14 years of future history to take us from the world we know to the world of the story, but in the process is so crammed with improbabilities I wouldn't know where to begin listing them. The premise is dreadfully implausible; this just serves to highlight it.

Finally this week, a review of the 60-second short film How Long is a Minute?.

Additionally, it's worth noting that this marks the end of reviews from 2010. Much quicker than last year! So from next Sunday, it's all 2011...

TV

The British Comedy Awards 2010
A deserving bunch. Worked fine live on its new home too.
[Watch it (again) on 4oD.]

No Ordinary Family
1x01 Pilot
1x02 No Ordinary Marriage
This has been going since last year in the States (of course), but started over here on Watch a week or two ago. I don't get Watch, so... yeah...
Quite a good start, I thought. Lots of potential. Poor Tate Donovan though -- originally set to be a regular, cut down to so little you didn't even see his face properly, with no proper dialogue. Unless he's set to make a Shocking Return, of course...

Primeval
4x05 Episode 5
[Watch it (again) on ITV Player.]

TV

The Graham Norton Show
8x12 (14/1/11 edition)
Why do the /programmes department of the BBC website (as I believe it is actually called) so often struggle to get things like episode numbers right on their own series?
(I say "so often", I mean "sometimes". But really, with so many semi-OCD people in the world, surely you should be employing them to do stuff like this? People like me, f'rinstance...)
[Watch it (again) in HD on iPlayer.]

The Great Outdoors
1x02 Episode 2
[Watch it (again) on iPlayer.]

The Magicians
1x03 Episode 3
[Watch it (again) in HD on iPlayer.]

Never Mind the Buzzcocks
22x13 (dropped 30/10/08 edition)
Ah-ha! At last! The infamous missing Buzzcocks episode featuring Russell Brand as a team captain, which should have aired in October 2008 but was canned due to the Brand/Ross/Sachs phone call scandal (remember that, eh?) Clearly someone at the Beeb thinks two years (and three months) is an appropriate amount of time to have waited.
Worth it though. It's like a little previously-undiscovered gem to have Amstell back in the host's chair, and just generally new Buzzcocks is always a joy.
[Watch it (again) on iPlayer.]

Films

Heaven Knows, Mr. Allison (1957)
[#7 in 100 Films in a Year 2011]

Articles

Craig Charles: 'New Red Dwarf next year' by Christian Tobin
(from Digital Spy)
Yes, it's true: Red Dwarf is coming back in 2012, and for a proper new six-episode series too. It's taken them long enough -- it's nearly two years since Back to Earth aired, so it'll be three by the time a new series reaches our screens!
A little bit more info -- indeed, all that is currently known -- via the blog of Kryten actor Robert Llewellyn, here. (Nowt on the official Red Dwarf site yet.)
Personally, I enjoyed Back to Earth -- not the greatest Dwarf ever, true, but pretty good -- so fingers crossed series 9/10/whatever-they-call-it can be at least as good.

Robert Webb to host Channel 4 panel show by Catriona Wightman
(from Digital Spy)

The show sees three celebrities nominate their favourite things from Earth, such as landmarks, possessions, guilty pleasures or humans. Webb will consider whether the things deserve to be preserved and will choose whether or not to put them on a spaceship to keep them safe.

So, essentially, it's the exact opposite of Room 101. How has it taken someone 17 years to come up with this idea?

Collection Count

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

Except this week, there's nothing to report. Nowt. Zip. Nada. If you look at last week's edition and imagine "no change" written where it says "up 1", you've got this week's numbers.

Normally there'd be a statistic of the week, but I'm pausing that for good reason. And by the old cycle this would be a running time update week, but as the last one was only a fortnight ago -- and I've only gained one new title since then -- I'm going to continue it as four-weekly from the last update, rather than where it used to be.

So nothing to report here, then. See you next week, faithful reader.

TV

The British Comedy Awards Nominations Show
Because they never seem to have enough time to present the nominations during the show itself, here's a whole hour-long special dedicated to them. Surprisingly, it works. One thing that seems daft, though, is that every category featured an abundance of potential nominees in clip form… but then only three nominees. Why not the standard four, or even five? Daft.
Also, The Inbetweeners still looks dreadful to me. Why do people like it?
[Watch it (again) on 4oD.]

Fast and Loose
1x01 Episode 1
The BBC's new improvisational -- but, as it turns out, not topical -- stand-up comedy show. Quite funny.
[Watch it (again) on iPlayer.]

James May's Toy Stories
1x01 Airfix
These were on in the run up to Christmas-before-last (i.e. in 2009) and at the time I only managed to catch three of the six episodes. Thanks to Dave (where else?), however, I'm now getting a chance to see two I really wanted to see -- first, the one where he built a 1:1 scale Airfix Spitfire. Such fun.

Just Good Friends
2x03 The Evidence/Or His Bottle Went