A couple of years ago I convinced my teenaged son to give it a go, and he loved it, and has watched it several times since. It gets quoted a lot in this house; I'm partial to Sam Diamond's 'That can only mean one thing; and I don't know what that is', which comes in fairly handy in day-to-day life.

Two other trifling, but hugely enjoyable (for me), Maggie Smith performances are as Dora Charleston in Murder by Death and as Miss Bowers, Bette Davis's henpecked assistant, in Death on the Nile. She and David Niven are perfectly matched in the former, and the barbed interplay between her and Davis in the latter is a…

That's a brilliant, and underrated, film, and darkly, bitingly funny (hardly surprising; it's by Alan Bennett). I love the bit where Denholm Elliott's character is trying to figure out where to get food for the banquet, and someone says 'I can put my hand on two turkeys in Bradford.' To which Elliott replies…

Saw a brilliant staging of Cymbeline at the Stratford (Ontario) Festival back in the 1980s. It was updated to the 1930s, which made a lot of sense (Europe on the brink of war, the heir to the British throne in love with a commoner), and led to some interesting touches: one of the songs was heard via a scratchy…

Lots of film scores. Anything with lyrics tends to distract me when I'm writing, but film scores are perfect.

Either #10, or a corollary to #2 ('Gamble on performance): Make the characters interesting. Give them some back story so we know who they are, where they're coming from, some idea of their life and how they see the world. I don't mean info dump time; just drop some hints, and trust that the audience will be smart…

The Changeling is such a terrifically creepy film, and Scott is great in it. That scene with the rubber ball bouncing down the steps - terrifying.

And not very well, judging by how that gun was shaking.

I was terrified. As has been pointed out, she couldn't do anything to him then and there, but there were moments I thought he was a goner, just as soon as Carol figured out how to get rid of the body.

I'm sure I've been to more hideously awful and boring parties than that 'welcome to the community' one, but I can't think of them right now.

It's a good thing Carol's got a job working with older people in Alexandria, because she sure as hell isn't going to be given a job as a childminder. And whatever you do, don't ask her to read the kids a bedtime story.

That's when we get the gritty reboot and it becomes a horror franchise.

It was a holiday special, and aired in November.

Well, yes; a colourised version of any black and white film is an offence against nature.

I’ve loved Alun Armstrong since I first saw him as the villainous schoolmaster Wackford Squeers in the Royal Shakespeare Company’s epic nine-hour version of Dickens’ Nicholas Nickleby in 1982 (and then saw him as Sweeney Todd in a National Theatre production in the 1990s). So glad to see him in tonight’s episode,…

The whole idea of a ‘Christmas episode’ of a popular show was so weird to me, before I moved from Canada to England in 1992. Here in North America the idea of a popular TV show producing a one-off special Christmas Day episode is so odd that it’s laughable – ‘What, do a Christmas Day episode of The Good Wife? You’re…

Please, please, please let Molesley and Baxter be spun off into their own series, as a domestic couple who investigates/solves crimes and thereby lets their clueless employers (and their friends) off the hook. Think a downstairs version of Agatha Christie’s Tommy and Tuppence Beresford, and you’re there. Make it…

Say what you will about Chandler Riggs - Carl - but he's really stepping it up. He was cast as Carl when he was 11, and the show's casting department must have realised they were taking a huge gamble at the time; what if the actor couldn't make the leap? Happily, the gamble seems to have paid off. Riggs really sold…

Yeah, Carol's playing a long game. Fit in, be the Stepford Wife they're looking for and expecting, and all the while keep her eyes and ears open. Her rose-tinted story about her life with (abusive/potentially daughter-abusing husband) Ed tells us that.

Golly, what a day.