Doctor Who is one of the better-preserved BBC drama series of that period.

In what may or may be considered ominous timing, this debuts in the UK exactly ten years to the day after 'Torchwood' first blighted our lives.

*cough* 'The Feast of Steven' (1965) *cough*

The most dispiriting thing for me was watching the Oscar ceremony live on the BBC. In the absence of adverts, the commercial breaks were filled with pundits led by the estimable Barry Norman. Quite late on they were discussing the possibility that 'Titanic' - looking like a sweep - might not win the big prize, and the…

While I agree that Cronenberg's 'Fly' is the vastly superior film, I really like the first twenty minutes or so of the original. It feels like a fairly lavish Simenon knock-off about a woman who may be mad or feigning madness to beat a murder rap, with a dignified Vincent Price on the sidelines visibly aching with…

He's not an academic though - he's a professional writer. When we first meet him Grady remarks on how he completes a new novel every 18 months; he's everything stuck-in-academia Grady wants to be - and hates.

I love Wonder Boys.
And, much as I love the book too, the movie's resolution to the "Vernon Hardapple" subplot is a big improvement.

Though bear in mind that the character who said that is supposed to be insufferably smug.

Children of Earth feels like it was pitched to the BBC as a sold stand-alone pulp-sf thriller serial in the Quatermass/A for Andromeda mode. Then someone thought "but we already have an sf show for adults" (yes, the BBC seemed to have believed this of Torchwood, in spite of everything) and arranged a shotgun wedding.

Moffat didn't have anything to do with Torchwood, so he doesn't need to "admit" anything!

So, not a sequel to 'Monsters Inc.' then?

Arrival: "sci-fi for grown-ups". I love that there's now this mini-sub-genre of middlebrow Oscar-baiting sf: see Gravity, Interstellar, The Martian and District 9 - the latter the granddaddy of films who want to convince the Academy that they're "worthy" despite half the film being about an insect-man in a battle suit…

So, not readers of the venerable film mag responding to yet another bafflingly ugly "new look"?

Only stooges of the elite pretend that FDR and Chaplin-lookin' dude aren't morally and politicaly equivalent. Stooges like Orwell and Trotsky, who I totally blocked on my Twitter feed.

Yeah, and what about all of FDR's mistakes no one talks about because everyone's so hung up on that Chaplin-lookin' dude?

I really just think we should serve at least one lager.

I'm easy either way. They have Cumberbatch doing Ditko Fingers on the poster and that's good enough for me.

Dude takes 115 years to notice that Hollywood is a commercial operation. Thousands flee!

PG-13 despite frequent use of the oath "by the hoary hosts of Hoggoth!"

Vyvyan from The Young Ones doesn't. Neither did Hitler.