It differs country by country, but I think that our monarchy does have its uses. The first is that I think it helps enormously to have a head of state who stands apart from the elected government. This way our national identity is never fully bound up in politics. Look at the difference in the US between Bush and…

Are you Dutch or were you just excited on our behalf? Regardless there's a wonderful irony in someone going by the handle of La Comtesse complaining about the aristocracy.

Just from a cursory look at Qi Baishi's work and that image above I'm inclined to say it's a fake. Baishi's brushwork is completely different than the xenomorph painting. Frankly that picture screams photoshop to me. When you look at a real Baishi you can see the ink doing things on the paper that you can't really…

Yeah, the last change was kind of terrible. They seem to have instagrammed the time vortex. I did think the tunnel looked better in the Tennant days.

Actually I keep thinking that the line in the trailer about protecting 'your family' isn't about Cumberbatch but about Kirk.

As opposed to the gritty realism of Legolas taking out a giant war elephant through the medium of ballet and a bow and arrow?

Good god, yes. I completely agree with the comment I was responding to.

For real, I read that and just thought 'you pathetic wanker.' What the hell happens to someone to make them turn out this way?

I loved him as lord Groan. He would have been a great Dumbledore too.

Utter fantasy casting: Mr. Norrell - Nigel Hawthorne.

Seeing how the perfect choice has been dead for eleven years, I think that if Nigel Hawthorne can't be reanimated then Ian Holm would be a fine second choice.

My first thought exactly. You have to wonder though what it would have looked like if the designers had gotten their way and gave it a gimballed drive section. (Apparently the spinning section meant that it would have steered the ship completely of course if it tried to go forward)

To me it's mainly the way the design seems so literal. Nothing seems to be left to the imagination and everything looks like monomaniacally busy. Basically the whole thing is commercially approved Windsor McCay. William Joyce is a fine illustrator, and I think the character design in the movie is mostly quite good,…

It's not Melisande, Carice van Houten has a different voice and a far more notable accent.

It's not exactly the best introduction to the score, but I think it's mainly so jarring because the track is made up of different bits of score. I imagine that within the film it flows much better. I do like all these different pieces quite a bit though, from the somewhat Benjamin Brittenish choir to that wonderfully…

Actually there quite a few science fiction operas, Philip Glass composed one called The Making of the Representative of Planet 8, based on a libretto by Doris Lessing, about a civilisation that, guided by an extraterrestrial intelligence, learns to accept mortality and evolve into a 'collective universal soul'.

I imagine the production crew does the best job they can under the circumstances, but it's the writing that really ruins Grimm. The whole concept of it is lazy, the human-animal hybrid look is hard to pull of convincingly and a better team of writers could have developed a show that wouldn't have had to reduce the…