TV

The A to Z of Crime
Episode 1 ABCD (of 6)
Or The A-Z of Crime with Specsavers, as the title card would have it.
[Watch it (again) on ITV Player.]

Pointless
5x05 (2/9/11 edition)
[Watch it (again) on iPlayer.]

TV

Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy
Part One (of 7)
Part Two (of 7)
With the film imminent, finally got round to starting the much-acclaimed 1979 miniseries starring Alec Guinness. Very good it is too; very different to your ordinary TV drama, I think, even of its period.

Articles

Face/Off poster for Picturehouse Stratford by Sam Gilbey
(from Sam Gilbey illustrates)
Title pretty much covers it. Good poster, though. In fact, here it is:

Click to enlarge.

It must be great having a 'passion' for sport. Which is why I'm going to develop one by Charlie Brooker
(from Comment is free at guardian.co.uk)
Brooker on, essentially, why BBC Four is better than sport. Obviously he's right.

TV

Pointless
5x04 (1/9/11 edition)
[Watch it (again) on iPlayer.]

Yep, that's it for today. Where'd the day go? No idea.

TV

Grand Designs Australia
1x08 Cottage Point House
As I post this I notice the bastards decided to end the series with a double bill, meaning the final episode will have been deleted from Virgin Media catch up now. Grr. Guess I'll have to suffer the quality of it on 4oD online...
[Watch episode 8 (again) on 4oD.]

Ocean Giants
Part 3 Voices of the Sea (of 3)

Pointless
5x03 (31/8/11 edition)
[Watch it (again) on iPlayer.]

Ruth Jones' Summer Holiday
After her previous seasonal specials (I don't remember her Easter one, so I must have either missed it or have it sat around recorded somewhere), now she gets a 'summer' one, which is the weakest excuse yet. It'll be a full-blown series next at this rate -- no bad thing.
[Watch it (again) on iPlayer.]

Comics

2000 AD #1747—#1749
Judge Dredd: Day of Chaos - Nadia, Parts 5-8 by John Wagner & Ben Willsher

Normally I of course read Progs the sensible way, but what with events in Dredd being so monumental at the minute (and, as a subscriber, having the post-monumental-events Prog land on my doormat yesterday), I decided to skip ahead by reading just the Dredd strips from the relevant issues. (Naturally I'll return to the rest later.) Shame to race through the story like this (as you can see, it's half of it in the period of time I previously spent on an eighth), but hey-ho.

So, the end of Part 7 was indeed suitably dramatic... though perhaps lessened by the fact it's wrapped up later in the same Prog, and in the way I imagine everyone guessed it would be (or I did, anyway). Still, nice try, especially with an additional twist in Part 8.

Articles

Day 3875: Torchwood: Molecule Day: Frying Tonight! by Millennium Dome
(from The Very Fluffy Diary of Millennium Dome, Elephant)
A lengthy but very accurate assessment of Torchwood: Miracle Day at the halfway point (ish).

this week on 100 Films

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

The Locket (1946)

The story is, largely, a passable melodrama. We’re presented with plenty of evidence that Nancy is definitely a tricksy operator, but then is the man telling the tale an unreliable narrator? I don’t know if the filmmakers were even aware of such a concept. Maybe that’s unkind; maybe they just didn’t want him to be one; but the ending we do get is very pat, and I’m not sure it quite makes sense.

Nirvana (1997)

The most obvious point of reference is Blade Runner... Writer/director Salvatores introduces themes of what it means to be human and a lead character one might like to decide isn’t after all, and sets it in a perma-night, dystopian, multi-cultural future... running us through locations named after Marrakech and Bombay City, which may or may not be part of the same sprawling metropolis, and which all exhibit appropriately specific cultural stylings. These aren’t just pretty backgrounds, but in some ways reflect the film’s use of video games as a metaphor for reincarnation.

Also this week, the monthly update for August. You've missed your chance to buy the thing it's selling, but hey-ho.

More next Sunday.

TV

Doctor Who
32x09 Night Terrors
Gatiss' best episode since his first, I'd say. Brilliantly creepy, with a bit of a classic Who feel despite it being undoubtedly nuWho. Beautifully directed by Richard Clark, too. I'd say who knew a glum tower block could look so good, but I think Let the Right One In sort of got there first in a similar way. But hey, if you're going to take inspiration from anywhere, take it from the best.
[Watch it (again) in HD on iPlayer.]

Doctor Who Confidential
6x09 About a Boy
[Watch it (again) in HD on iPlayer.]

Pointless
5x02 (30/8/11 edition)
[Watch it (again) on iPlayer.]

Fiction

Torchwood: Long Time Dead by Sarah Pinborough
Chapters 12-14
People are investigating things... problem is, we know what they're investigating. Oh, there are still mysteries -- what can't Cutler remember; what exactly is in Suzie, what does it want and how can it be stopped? -- but, for the minute, Suzie's up to something-and-nothing and Cutler's trying to find out stuff we already know.

Comics

Justice League #1 by Geoff Johns & Jim Lee

DC's New 52 starts here. It's come in for a lot of criticism in the fanboy reviews, but personally I enjoyed it. Could it have moved faster? Probably, in places, but crucially you don't notice while reading. Maybe it's a personal preference, but I'd rather have a story told in the time it needs, with space for characterisation, humour and action, than have it rushed through so everyone can feel they got a done-in-one starring all their favourite characters.

I think it strikes the right level for newbies, too, starting with the ever-popular Batman, in a world where these heroes have yet to meet each other (perfect for newcomers), featuring plenty of action and humour to keep it engrossing, and getting some plot in there too. I don't think it moves any slower than people would expect from TV or films these days either. It certainly left me wanting to read the next issue, and for a serialised comic that's surely the aim.

So maybe it isn't the greatest comic ever published, but it's an entertaining start to a new order.

Doctor Who theme... with lyrics

Started out thinking this was stupid and ridiculous... then, a little way in, I realised it's actually completely awesome.

TV

Miranda
2x05 Just Act Normal [2nd watch]
One of Miranda's best episodes, I think. Must be odd for Mark Heap to be playing the most normal person in the room...
[Watch it (again) on iPlayer.]

Outnumbered
4x01 Episode 1
The Radio Times are wondering if this is beginning to get tired. On the evidence of this episode, not quite yet.
[Watch it (again) in HD on iPlayer.]

Pointless
5x01 (29/8/11 edition)
It's a new series! So new, you'd never know if the episode guide didn't say it was. Quite why it is I have no idea. Well, it's presumably a production thing (note how Richard now says "up to the start of April 2011" whereas previously it was "to the start of January 2011", but... yeah...)
[Watch it (again) on iPlayer.]

The Rob Brydon Show
2x06 Episode 6
[Watch it (again) on iPlayer.]

Fiction

Torchwood: Long Time Dead by Sarah Pinborough
Chapters 10-11
I read the first of these Torchwood tie-ins in just under a fortnight; this second one's taken me two weeks already and I'm only a third of the way through. Oops.

Comics

2000 AD #1746
At least being behind on this means I can read the ECBT 2000AD reviews as soon as I'm done with the issue, rather than a couple of weeks later when they post them. This issue's lot can be read here, here, here, here and here. I disagree with their summaries, though -- didn't enjoy quite a lot of this Prog, even the stuff I normally like. Ho hum.

Collection Count

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

A last-minute pile of post (literally, a few minutes ago) gives a decent boost to this week's numbers. Might get quieter for a bit now... but then, Star Wars is out soon...

Number of titles in collection: 1,375 [up 5]
Of which DVDs: 1,135 [up 3]
Of which Blu-rays: 240 [up 2]

Number of discs in collection: 3,405 [up 13]
Number of films in collection: 1,452 [up 8]
Number of TV episodes in collection: 5,112 [up 12]

See you next week, faithful reader.

TV

Doctor Who Confidential
6x08 River Runs Wild
Very nicely done "previously on Doctor Who" bit... but surely something like that would've made more sense on the episode itself?
[Watch it (again) in HD on iPlayer.]

Epic Win
1x02 Episode 2
[Watch it (again) in HD on iPlayer.]

Pointless
4x60 (26/8/11 edition) [season finale]
I say season finale -- tad arbitrary, as the next one started the day after.
[Watch it (again) on iPlayer.]

Torchwood: Miracle Day
4x08 End of the Road
Are we really supposed to believe a mother who's had her children taken away because she's incapable of looking after them, and is being monitored in a special facility because of this, would be allowed access to the internet to sign herself and those already-taken-away kids up for, effectively, an assisted suicide programme? Even in Torchwood's pessimistic new world that's ridiculously implausible.
Still, only two more episodes to go. There better be a good finale.
[Watch it (again) in HD on iPlayer.]

Articles

New 52 Pickup | And so it begins! by Steve Sunu
(from Robot 6 at Comic Book Resources)
Unsurprisingly the net's been flooded with reviews of Justice League #1, the first title in DC's New 52, but this is most interesting because it's the first in a series that intends to review every last one of the New 52 first issues and whittle them down to the best books over the coming months. One to keep looking out for, then.

TV

The Great British Bake Off
2x03 Episode 3
[Watch it (again) on iPlayer.]

My Favourite Joke
Episode 5 (of 6)
[Watch it (again) on iPlayer.]

Penn & Teller: Fool Us
1x08 Episode 8 [season finale]
For some reason shown three weeks after the last episode, it's nice to have an extra burst of this super show. And apparently there's a Christmas special too. Grand.
And, in a case so rare it may break the whole internet, the review I've linked to above is dreadful but the comment section (OK, the only comment there) is rather good. That's not right at all.
[Watch it (again) on ITV Player.]

Pointless
4x59 (25/8/11 edition)
[Watch it (again) on iPlayer.]

Articles

8 awesome sci-fi movie skins that mess with your MacBook Apple by Scott Edelman
(from blastr)
Does what it says on the tin. Most are film inspired, of course.

The IT Crowd creator: 'Twitter put TV back in the crowd' by Andrew Laughlin
(from Digital Spy)
The headline makes it sound like a quick quote spun out into a news article, but it's actually a slightly longer piece on the relevance and usefulness of twitter.