• Behind the scenes of the new series [spoilers]
• An interview with Karen Gillan

Film

• Orlando Bloom and Jonathan Rhys Meyers join Albert Nobbs
• Paul Bettany and Rufus Sewell join The Tourist

• Trailer for Pride and Prejudice and Zombies: Dawn of the Dreadfuls

British TV

• BBC to launch second Freeview HD service because Five can't?
• BBC shouldn't have bid on Harper's Island [subscribers only]
• Sci Fi HD coming to Virgin
• ITV1 HD also coming to Sky

US TV

• SyFy working on Three Inches, Alphas and another BSG spin-off
• Mia Maestro to star in Cutthroat + more pilot casting
• Actor leaving True Blood for The Good Wife?

Authors:

Writing's not easy. It's very hard. Ask a writer. Go on. Any writer. They'll tell you about it at length. Really quite absurd length.

Journalist Benjamin Cook asked Russell T Davies how hard writing is, some time just before the launch of the third series of Doctor Who in February 2007, and the resulting email and text correspondence lasted, well, years. But in a radical move, Cook and Davies decided to turn all that correspondence into a book, and thus Doctor Who: The Writer's Tale was born.

Since then, Russell T Davies has continued to tell Benjamin Cook just how hard writing is, and the additional 300 pages or so of correspondence have been collected together and added to the original book to produce Doctor Who: The Writer's Tale – The Final Chapter. This not only continues Davies' insights into writing for Doctor Who, as well as Torchwood, The Sarah Jane Adventures and indeed television in general, but also looks at the politics of television, the nature of television production, how PR and the press work, and more.

And if you keep reading this exciting review, you'll be able to win a copy of it. How's that for fun?

But on p662, I found these exciting nuggets on information that should help clarify a few things in The End of Time that are causing controversy.

Euros has just been on the phone to Timothy Dalton, about playing the Lord President! TIMOTHY DALTON!!! AS RASSILON!!! Early days, of course – it's still not a definite booking – but it's as close as it can be. (I wanted the bloke from The Five Doctors, but apparently he was banned from acting ever again.)

Then, in a footnote, "In 1983 Doctor Who Special The Five Doctors, Rassilon was played by the late actor Richard Matthews."

So definitely the same Rassilon then.

And then

Oh, and Claire Bloom is playing the Doctor's mum! (Yes, that's what she's been told, too.)

That looks reasonably definite to me.

• New trailer for The End of Time, complete with Brian Cox voiceover
• Pictures of John Simm in The End of Time [spoilers]

• Ivor the Engine returns

Film

• Laurence Fishburne joins Predators

British TV

• Misfits gets a second series
• 2.9m watch David Tennant's Never Mind the Buzzcocks
• Press pack for series two of Survivors
• UK television watching up 3.2%

US TV

• SyFy president says Warehouse 13 better than The Lost Room
• Someone's leaving Big Love [spoilers]
• Boris Kodjoe to star in Undercovers
• Showtime turning Sunshine Cleaning into TV series

• Fourth series of Torchwood to be 13 episodes

Film

• John Madden to direct My Fair Lady remake?
• I Spit on Your Grave to be remade?
• Paul Greengrass quits Bourne 4
• Tron: Legacy team to remake Black Hole?

• Kelsey Grammer to star in Broadway version of La Cage aux Folles

• Jonathan Littell wins the Bad Sex in Fiction award

British TV

• Casting on BBC1's Five Daughters

Canadian TV

• Canada looking for more sitcoms
• Molly Parker joins Shattered

• ProSievenSat. 1 to sell N24 news channel?

US TV

• Barry Sonnenfeld to direct pilot for ABC's Funny in Farsi
• SyFy to make a series based (loosely) on Stephen King's Colorado Kid
• Nicole Richie getting a comedy on ABC
• Raising the Bar and Three Rivers cancelled
• Heroes' Sendhil Ramamurthy and Jane Curtin join Rex is Not Your Lawyer
• Prison Break's Marshall Allman to join True Blood

• The End of Time to air on Christmas Day and New Year's Day

• Borders and Books Etc to close all branches after going into administration

Film

• Another remake of The Amityville Horror?
• Jim Sheridan talks about I, Claudius and Dreamhouse
• Carla Bruni-Sarkozy to appear in Woody Allen's next movie

• Christopher Eccleston to play John Lennon in BBC4 drama
• Sky to launch 3D TV channel next spring? (subscription required)
• Gavin & Stacey gets 5.63m viewers
• BBC looking to cut US shows
• Joanna Lumley joins Mistresses

• Callum Keith Rennie to star as MPD cop in Showcase's Shattered

• The life of Matthew McConaughey's brother to become a Fox cartoon
• Ryan Devlin to recur on Cougar Town
• Aunjanue Ellis joins The Mentalist [spoilers]
• Lucas Black and Cary Elwes join Epix

Doctor Who

• Michael Moorcock talks about writing a Who novel
• Karen Gillan's cousin gets cast

Film

• Trailer for new Universal Soldier movie with Dolph and Jean Claude
• Dirk Benedict to cameo in The A-Team

• Touring version of When Harry Met Sally

British TV

• ITV Player coming to Freesat
• Paradox gets 4.1m viewers

US TV

• Ratings on FlashForward at new low, production suspended
• Curb Your Enthusiasm finale best rated for five seasons
• Lie to Me picked up for a full season
• Psych gets a fifth season
• Burn Notice gets a fourth season
• V ratings stabilise

Maybe this hatred is rational; maybe it's completely irrational. At the very least, it caused The Vampire Diaries to be made, and I had to sit through at least an episode of that, so maybe I do have some cause.

But my veins course with hate whenever there's even a hint of Twilight around. How about you?

Is there a movie, TV or book franchise whose mere existence fills you with hate?

Maybe it's Stargate. Maybe it's those rubbish David Eddings books. Maybe it's Only Fools and Horses and its numerous spin-offs. Maybe it's even Spiderman and his amazing cash-ins.

Whatever it is, fess up: it's good for the soul.

As always, leave a comment with your answer or a link to your answer on your own blog.

• Michael Moorcock to write Doctor Who novel?

Film

• Aaron Sorkin to write movie about the founding of Greenpeace?
• Butch Cassidy legend to be shot as Blackthorn
• Independence Day to get two sequels?
• Helena Bonham Carter, Jennifer Ehle, Derek Jacobi, Guy Pearce, Timothy Spall and Michael Gambon join The King's Speech
  
• Trailer for Ed Norton in Leaves of Grass
• Trailer for Steve Carell and Tina Fey's Date Night
• Silent Hill 2?

British TV

• Ricky Gervais to script edit PhoneShop for E4
• New iPlayer channel for Wii
• STV calls for changes in ITV
• E4 gets 447,000 viewers
• Big Top press pack

Canadian TV

• Broadcasters petitioning to avoid simultaneous transmission of US shows

US TV

• FlashForward still at all-time low, but CSI up in ratings
• Larry Charles developing fanboy sitcom for NBC
• Alyssa Milano to guest on Castle
• George Segal to star in Retired at 35 for TV Land
• Order for Romantically Challenged cut
• Friday's ratings
• Lost producers abandon Dark Tower adaptation
• Exorcist to be remade as mini-series by William Friedkin and William Peter Blatty
• Gina Torres joins The Vampire Diaries

• New trailer for Waters of Mars

Books

• Fiction sales in the UK soar 90% as non-fiction sales fall

Film

• Woo hoo! Elizabeth Mitchell to star in Answers to Nothing with Julie Benz
• Bradley Cooper to star in Dark Fields
• Dan Aykroyd to star in Burke and Hare
• Anna Faris, Dan Aykroyd and Justin Timberlake in talks to star in Yogi Bear
  
• Isla Fisher to star in Desperados?
• Trailer for Angelina Jolie's CIA action-flick Salt

British TV

• Lord Burns to become chair of Channel 4
• Spooks gets 6m

US TV

• JJ Abrams to direct NBC secret agents pilot Undercovers?
• HBO developing transgender T
• A&E greenlights Sugarloaf pilot, adds Jeffrey Nordling, John Heard and Michael Arden to The Quickening
• Doctor Suresh's research on Heroes unearthed [videos, spoilers]
• V does well in the ratings
• Comedy Central orders Onion TV pilot
• Extended trailer for the CSI crossover

What's your favourite book sequel?

It can be part of a range, it can be by someone other than the original author, it can be authorised or unauthorised. It's up to you. Anyone saying Eric van Lustbader's Bourne books will be shot, however.

If you can't do books, you can always do sequel TV shows (eg Ashes to Ashes). Or you can say which book sequel you really hated.

As always, leave a comment with your answer or a link to your answer on your own blog.

• It's the new logo
• Full length K9 trailer

Awards

• Hilary Mantel wins the Booker prize

Film

• Universal acquires two projects for Isla Fisher
• Adrien Brody to star in Predators
• Ryan Reynolds to star in Motorcade?
• Samuel L Jackson to star in adaptation of Same Kind of Different As Me
• Prepare yourself for National Lampoon's new vacation

Theatre

• Kelly Brook, Jan Leeming and Julie Goodyear to join Calendar Girls

British TV

• Blue Murder beats Criminal Justice in the ratings
• Sebastian Faulks to present The Secret Life of the Novel

French TV

• Canal+ acquires The Prisoner

US TV

• PBS acquires The Diary of Anne Frank
• Heroes ratings drop slightly again
• Lauren Graham to join Parenthood?
• Kim Raver joins Grey's Anatomy
• What? Bored to Death gets a second season?
• Kenny Rogers and Tim Gunn to appear on How I Met Your Mother
• Showtime offers free episodes on iPhone
• TNT orders a pilot based on Tess Gerritsen's Jane Rizzoli novels

• An actor talks about David Tennant's finale [big spoiler]

• Trailer for Fantastic Mr Fox

Books

• An otter to join Winnie the Pooh in new book
• Clip of David Simon reading from The Wire: Truth Be Told

• Roald Dahl's Matilda to be adapted as a musical

British TV

• Five drops 30 Rock, Comedy Central picks it up
• Armstrong and Miller to make Have I Got News For You companion show
• Sky Movies Indie goes HD
• Matt LeBlanc to star in BBC/Showtime sitcom spoof
• Sky 1 acquires NCIS: LA, Channel 4 acquires The Good Wife

US TV

• ABC Family greenlights two comedy pilots, including one starring Melissa Joan Hart
• USA orders pilot of Facing Kate
• Bidding war over JJ Abrams husband-and-wife spy script
• FX picks up Terriers and Lights Out
• NBC ratings drop in three time slots
• Reiko Aylesworth joins Damages

This year, however, I managed to get through an inordinate number of non-fiction books, but a mere two works of fiction. I'm thinking the hot weather knocked my brains out or that I took too many high-brow fictional books with me, so fingers crossed, I'll be able to get through more when I go to Norfolk in a couple of weeks.

But here, for your delectation are a couple of brief reviews of those books I read:

Secret Servant: The Moneypenny Diaries
These are kind of like the Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead of James Bond books, with Moneypenny going out and about doing her own thing and then coming back into the office to neatly intersect with bits from the real James Bond books – in this case, You Only Live Twice and The Man With The Golden Gun. Unlike its predecessor, this one is quite Bond-lite, with the great man making only the occasional appearance, usually only to guffaw a bit and be guffawed at by Moneypenny.

It's a bit more sophisticated than that – and the book cover – suggest. Moneypenny is no Jane Bond and is mostly involved in the real, unglamorous side of spy work, rather than the commando daring-do of 007. It's actually very well written and intelligent. The only trouble is that without the James Bond side of things, not much would be happening here, since it mostly concerns Moneypenny making friends with Kim Philby's wife and going to Moscow to try to persuade her (and Philby) to return after he's defected. There's also the ongoing story arc of Moneypenny's not desperately involving attempts to find out what happened to her father during and after the war. But that's really not enough for the book as a whole, so it's for dyed-in-the-wool Bond fans only, I'd say.

Breaking The Rules: Confessions of a Bad Girl
This is a sequel to Sleeping Around and is written by journalist Catherine Townsend, who works for The Independent as a sex writer among other things. Basically, 'Cat' is trying to work out whether she wants a monogamous relationship with a man that involves settling down, getting a house, having kids, etc, or whether she wants to have lots of casual sex instead. After a break-up with her boyfriend at the beginning of the book, she devises her own set of 'anti-Rules' to counter the notorious 'passive female' dating advice of The Rules, attends classes in masturbation, buys a pelvic exerciser and generally experiments a lot with men, women, men and women, men and men or just herself, in between working out whether she wants to be with her ex-, take up with the adventurous Jamie, or just stay polygamous.

Surprisingly, it's not a great read. It feels like so many columns for a newspaper strung together as separate chapters. The sex isn't as frequent as you'd think/hope it might be and when it comes, it's more like "and then tab A was inserted in slot B" rather than anything literary or artistic. Cat is smart and likeable (unless you have a misogynistic dislike of 'bad girls'), yet surprisingly for an American seems clueless about her own emotional make-up, requiring a few in-book visits to a sex therapist to spot what seems obvious to the reader at least. The ending is at least relatively surprising, but it lacks enough self-insight or in-depth analysis to really make it as a diary and a little too prosaic to make it as a piece of titillation.