@rob

Sterling work mate. Excellent suggestion from @whisht for call signs.

Good luck with it!

@JimTheFish

You know, even though @bluesqueakpip had clearly put The Avengers (UK) I spent most of yesterday thinking she meant the Joss Whedon movie. It only occurred to me this morning that it was Ralph Fiennes, Uma Thurman and Sean Connery with a bloody great weather machine. D’oh! Apologies to @bluesqueakpip.

Yes, of course you are both…[Read more]

@TheKrynoidMan (from Rose & Crown)

That’s interesting about the Horror Channel showing films like Twisted Nerve. I don’t have access to it unfortunately.

I guess at 20 you probably missed the last great series of retrospectives on BBC, which went between 1988 and 2000?

It was a strand on BBC2 called Moviedrome. Basically Alex Cox (or lat…[Read more]

@craig

Oh, that’s excellent detective work on Konga. I’m going to have to bookmark that in case I’m ever in the mood for trying something that may be really awful. 😀

@Blenkinsopthebrave

I’d forgotten that bit from the end of series 3 of Fringe. I know at the time some people thought it may be related to the same FX company that did the Fan…[Read more]

@bluesqueakpip

You could well be right, because I’ve not seen the Avengers movie, and only caught the end of Silver Surfer on TV. I just remembered the climax had the heroes in London saving the London Eye after it starts to topple over, and the storm clouds gathering as Galactus is summoned, and made a guess at that one.

Weirdly – the mov…[Read more]

@blenkinsopthebrave

I love The Bed Sitting Room.

Well, that’s me and thee. Now to convince the rest of the Earth!

I saw it as a teenager in the early years of Channel 4, and just couldn’t get over the cast. C4 used to do great retrospectives of films that can only be described as “odd” – so stuff like Britannia Hospital (which was probably…[Read more]

@bluesqueakpip @janetteB

That is a really well put together promo. I love it!

I think for 9 days later, you probably meant 28 days later? (the shot of Cillian Murphy in hospital gown in front of Parliament?).

A lot of the ‘tac displays and the overhead shots of the napalming of the streets come from its sequel 28 weeks later.

I think the s…[Read more]

@blenkinsopthebrave

The Young Ones was possibly the sole topic of conversation at school when it started (I was just turning 13). Such a big thing, and later I was lucky enough to be robustly told to f**k off by Rik at no less than 7 great theatres in the UK for various live shows (mainly Bottom and New Statesman).

I don’t know if you ever saw a…[Read more]

As you get older you can get used to deaths of people you like and, in many cases, it doesn’t come as a surprise. This isn’t one of them, and I’m gutted to say Rik Mayall died today.

Anyway, here he is, making an entrance like nobody else could. You had to be good to scene steal from this crowd:

@arbutus – It’s one hell of a story to be introduced to Doctor Who through, isn’t it? I think in DWM it topped the old series in a poll to find the story you’d recommend to actually get people into it.

I think @JimTheFish mentioned the ratings. There was a strike over at ITV at the time, which certainly helped, but the ratings were something…[Read more]

@bluesqueakpip @JimTheFish @wolfweed

Le-definitely-not-taking-Romana-on-a-date, honestly. It was the randomiser. Really, it was the randomiser.

it’s almost palpable that the two of them are on the verge of knocking each other off at this point

A ‘dirty’ weekend in Paris.

Yep – it passed me by as a nipper, but rewatching the episodes with La…[Read more]

Ahhh. The story of a book. Or is it the overall story of the film of the graphic novel of the computer game of the TV series of stage show of the book of the record of the radio screenplay? There are so many versions of Hitchhikers.

Even though I heard most of the first radio broadcast (I missed the first part, and it was a big…[Read more]

@craig

Just on Julian Glover, did you see the “In search of Beowulf” documentary on BBC4 a year or so ago? It featured extracts with Julian performing it (which I think he does regularly). There is a link to it here if anyone’s interested.

Personally, I’m on the side of “absolute classic” when it comes to City of Death. I think it’s great.

A lot of it is down to the chemistry between the Doctor and Romana. While I enjoyed Mary Tamms Romana I, I don’t think she may have worked in the overall scheme of her “arc”, which was to convert Romana from the cold, haughty Time Lady to somet…[Read more]