Seconded. Much quoted in this house as well.

That’s good to know - that it holds up - because I loved that film but haven’t watched it in years, in case the Suck Fairy had visited. Midler’s line reading of ‘I’ve been kidnapped by K-Mart!’ when she realizes Reinhold and Slater have been steadily lowering the ransom is brilliant.

Yeah, this subject can be a minefield. My one child arrived pretty quickly after I got to the hospital, with little fuss, bother, or pain, which I was very grateful for. However, I found out very early on that when women are comparing giving birth stories, it’s like the ‘Four Yorkshiremen’ skit the Pythons do, with…

Anyone else see two points of light glowing in a crevice in the ice below Crozier, as he stood looking at what remained of Evans?

Lady Jane proves here to be the true politician of the Franklin family — a born operator who treats her nominally social role, a captain’s wife, like a career in the diplomatic corps.

Had a chance to see Ghost Stories during its initial stage run in London in 2010 (fittingly enough, we were there for the World Horror Convention in Brighton). My son was 12 at the time, and already a ghost story/horror enthusiast (I read him classic ghost stories - M.R. James, H.R. Wakefield, E.F. Benson, and the…

Yes, the halos around the sun called ice dogs are made up of ice crystals.

Yes, I forgot about the famous incident when Shackleton and his two companions were crossing South Georgia Island in the Antarctic to reach the whaling station and get help for themselves and their stranded party, and Shackleton became convinced that there was a fourth man with them. The phenomena is well known among…

The ‘Mr.’ (or today Mrs. or Miss or Ms) for a surgeon still goes on in the U.K. It dates back to when a physician had to get a doctorate (hence was a Dr.), while a surgeon was more like an apprentice to a doctor, and got a diploma rather than a degree when he passed his exam. Nowadays a surgeon in the U.K. is a…

I read the book when it came out, and haven’t re-read it since. I knew that Franklin died sometime in spring 1847 (in real life), and that of course he dies in the book as well, but while I knew it was spring 1847 in the show, I’d forgotten how Franklin died in the book, and didn’t ever think ‘Must be coming to the…

My reaction exactly. It’s one thing, for instance, to read about the (totally inadequate for the Arctic) clothing the men wore; another to see exactly what it looked like, and fully realise how impractical it was.

As someone who’s read more than is probably healthy about the Franklin expedition, I love the way the novel and script make the characters’ actions and dialogue seem entirely plausible. We of course have no idea if Crozier advised Franklin to head south and east in the fall of 1846, to seek shelter, but it’s entirely…

Is Sean going to review episode two of The Terror?

It’s from the 1967-68 British TV show The Prisoner starring Patrick McGoohan.

‘And Confucius say name go in book.’

The movie was originally supposed to contain two more cases: one set on board a ship, and one in an upside-down room, along with flashbacks to when Holmes was a teenager. They were filmed, and I think at least one was made available on laser disc, but other than that they’re not available.

Brett - aided by an amazing and dedicated writing and production team who were devoted to fidelity to the canon - was undoubtedly near-definitive in the Adventures and the Memoirs. Unfortunately, after that the series went downhill for a variety of reasons: Brett’s serious illness, which caused weight gain, mood…

I think part of it is the whole ‘Your personal definitive Holmes is the first one you saw on films or TV’, and a lot of the die-hards were older, so their Holmes is Rathbone (or Douglas Wilmer for the Brits); it was hard for them to see Brett usurping their favourites. Plus the Brett series brought a lot of new…

D.O.A. doing ‘War’. Great version:

Three TV shows that I came to late, and then loved (and a disparate group they are, too):