• An interview with Matt Smith
• Bus with Matt Smith and Karen Gillan to tour the UK

Film

• Liam Hemsworth joins Arabian Nights
• Proper trailer for Tron: Legacy
• The Book of Genesis: 3D
• Trailer for American: The Bill Hicks Story

Theatre

• Laurence Fishburne's Riff Raff coming to the Arcola Theatre

British TV

• Bravo acquires Spartacus: Blood and Sand
• Film4 HD and E4 HD to launch only on Virgin [subscription required]
• Men outnumber women two to one on TV
• True Blood gets 206k
• Benidorm back for fourth series – one ep possibly live

Canadian TV

• Canadian viewers prefer really bad sitcoms to drama

US TV

• Brittany Snow and 24's Sarah Wynter join pilots
• Lennie James joins Hung + more
• Nick Nolte to join Lucky?
• Heroes' Sendhil Ramamurthy joins Covert Affairs
• Jean Smart joins Hawaii Five-O, Tom Cavanagh joins Edgar Floats
• Numb3rs' Rob Morrow joins The Whole Truth
• Coby Bell joins Burn Notice as a regular [spoilers]
• Brothers and Sisters gets a fifth season [spoilers for Lost]
• American Idol's Katherine McPhee turns down Trauma in favour of Community

• David Tennant to do Karate Kids narration
• Billie Piper and David Tennant to star in Love On The Murder Mile

Awards

• The results of the Oscars
• The results of the Razzies – surprising overlap with Oscars

Film

• Midnight Run 2 will happen
• New Iron Man 2 trailer  

• Sleepless in Seattle: the musical

US TV

• Scott Foley joins True Blue, plus other pilot casting
• Kathy Bates to star in Kindreds?
• Breckin Meyer and Mark-Paul Gosselaar to star in Franklin & Bash
• Worst Week's Kyle Bornheimer joins CBS pilot
• Fringe gets a third season
• The Office, Community and 30 Rock all get another season each
• NBC to pick up 24 if Fox doesn't?
• House re-runs to include extra footage

But while watching it, I finally realised what the shooting style reminded me of: Peter Brook's adaptation of 'The Mahabharata'. Shown on Channel 4 in 1989, this was a six-hour mini-series version of his nine-hour stage play and focused on the epic battle between the Pandavas (representing the good side) and the Kauravas (representing the bad side) depicted in the Hindu epic poem.

See if you agree: here's a trailer for Spartacus: Blood and Sand – ignore the fight scenes, since they belong to a completely different aesthetic

…and here's a few clips from The Mahabharata. You can get it on DVD from Amazon, by the way.

• James Corden to guest star

Awards

• Results of the Writers' Guild Awards
• Results of the Berlin Film Festival awards
• Results of the BAFTAs
  

Film

• Stephen Merchant joins Hall Pass

Theatre

• Derek Jacobi to play Lear at the Donmar

• Erica Jonge's Fear of Flying to be adapted by ITV

US TV

• Men in Trees' Jenny Bicks to showrun The Big C
• Katee Sackhoff to star in ABC crime drama
• Rachael Leigh Cook, Jere Burns and Lea Thompson all land pilots
• Ugly Betty's Becki Newton to star in Love Bites
• William Shatner to star in Shit My Dad Says
• Bill Pullman joins Nathan vs Nurture
• Greek gets a fourth season
• Women are Crazy, Men are Stupid gets shelved
• Past Life gets cancelled
• Kristin Kreuk and Jack Carpenter to star in Hitched
• Adam Rodriguez returning full-time to CSI: Miami
• Will Arnett pilot close to getting a green light

• David Tennant to star in Single Father
• Doctor Who to get a 3D trailer

Film

• Amanda Seyfried to star in The Girl in the Red Riding Hood?
• Laurence Fishburne joins Contagion
• Ben Stiller to star in Brett Ratner's Tower Heist
• Ethan Hawke and Kristen Scott Thomas to star in The Woman in the Fifth
• Trailer for Wall Street 2
• Matt Damon and Ben Affleck up for wife swapping
• Julian McMahon to star with Milla Jovovich in Faces in the Crowd

• Yes, Prime Minster: the play

British TV

• Another series of Taggart commissioned
• Rufus Sewell to star as Aurelio Zen for BBC
• BBC Worldwide looking to create drama franchises like 24 and Heroes [subscription required]
• Alibi acquires Castle [subscription required]

US TV

• Maggie Q to star in La Femme Nikita, Roselyn Sanchez in Cutthroat
• Rita Moreno and Allison Janney to guest on In Plain Sight
• The Deep End/Life on Mars's Rachelle Lefevre joins John Wells' new medical drama
• Lost's Harold Perrineau to guest on CSI:NY
• Smallville/The Dukes of Hazzard's John Schneider to star in Back Nine for Spike
• Heroes does well in DVR ratings

Film

• Doug Liman to direct film about Attica uprising
• Al Pacino to replace Robert De Niro on Son of No One
• BBC making a movie about Seb Coe and Steve Ovett
• Jeffrey Wright joins Duncan Jones' Source Code
• Gwyneth Paltrow joins Contagion

• Joanna Lumley, David Hyde Pierece and Mark Rylance to star in La Bête

British TV

• BBC to launch mobile phone apps
• Merlin gets an iPhone app…
• …as does Freeview
• One-stop video on demand service SeeSaw launches with BBC, C4 and Five content

• Pilot casting, including Scrubs' Donald Faison on The Odds
• Steven Spielberg's Nine Lives moves from SyFy to NBC after four years in limbo
• History Channel to make its own version of Top Gear?
• Better Off Ted's Jay Harrington joins Nathan vs Nurture
• Courtney Thorne-Smith to recur on Two and a Half Men
• The CW goes action with Nomads from Numb3rs producer Ken Sanzel
• NBC picks up Friends… with Benefits
• More pilot casting, including Primeval's James Murray on Chaos
• Eugene Levy joins Hitched
• Poppy Montgomery and Marc Blucas join True Blood
• Taryn Manning joins Hawaii Five-O
• Vampire Diaries, Gossip Girl and Supernatural get renewed
• Lost ratings down to 9.8m
• 24 hits series low
• Paul Blackthorne to recur on CSI: Miami
• Elisabetta Canalis to recur on Leverage

• MacGyver creator threatens to sue MacGruber
• Danny Glover and Vinnie Jones to star in Dragon Fire
• Hugh Jackman joins Snow Flower and the Secret Fan
• Asterix in Britain to be adapted

Theatre

• Billy Bragg to star in a stage show

British TV

• Getting On gets a second series
• Scarlet TV goes into administration [subscription required]
• Trevor Eve highest paid TV actor

US TV

• Russell Mulcahy to direct Teen Wolf pilot
• Zooey Deschanel to star in HBO pilot I'm With The Band
• Entourage team developing political drama for HBO
• Heroes ratings up a bit again
• More pilot casting
• Virginia Madsen to star in ABC's Scoundrels
• The CW picks up three pilots, including shows produced by Tom Welling and Hayden Panettierre

• Lee Mead joins Wicked
• Hairspray to close at the Shaftesbury

British TV

• Royal Mail boss Adam Crozier appointed ITV chief executive
• Mad Men gets 370,000 viewers

US TV

• TNT working on animated version of David Spade's Joe Dirt
• TBS picks up Glory Daze
• Chuck's Tony Hale and Eli Stone's Matt Letscher join Danny Wallace's Awkward Situations for Men, plus casting on Criminal Minds spin-off and 187 Detroit
• Maria Bello teams up with Simon Beaufoy and Russell Crowe for HBO's Emergency Sex
• NBC picks up The Cape and Outsourced
• Heroes' Leonard Roberts joins Castle [spoilers]
• Worst pilot season in a decade for women
• Steve Carell wants to be Del Boy in US Only Fools and Horses?

• Tom Wilkinson and Isla Fisher join Burke & Hare
• Stargate Atlantis's Jason Momoa to play Conan, Mickey Rourke to play his dad
• New trailer for Hot Tub Time Machine
• Sam Jackson and Josh Duhamel sign up for Sympathy for the Devil
• Robert Pattinson joins Reese Witherspoon in Water For Elephants

Theatre

• Danny Boyle to direct Frankenstein at the National Theatre

British TV

• All-star cast for second series of Moving On, including John Simm and Roy Marsden, with Dominic West directing an episode
• BSkyB forced to sell most of its stake in ITV [subscription required]
• BBC Wales tries to attract indies to its new drama hub [subscription required]
• Fiver picks up Melrose Place, Archer and Burn Notice
• What everyone's been waiting for: the Dragons' Den/Hustle crossover [spoilers]
• The InBetweeners to end after series three?
• More4 picks up The Increasingly Poor Decisions of Todd Margaret
• BBC to work on iPhone, Wii et al games for Top Gear and Doctor Who?

• Someone's leaving Brothers and Sisters [spoilers]
• ABC picks up Matadors and True Blue
• TNT picks up all three of its pilots
• Robot Chicken gets two more seasons

• The results of the National Television Awards

Film

• Sony picks up movie rights to sci-fi novels by Jeff Somers
• Trailer for Ryan Reynolds in Buried
• Clive Owen to replace Paul Walker on Protection
• Peter Dinklage joins The Knights of Badassdom
• Andy Serkis replaces David Tennant on Burke and Hare

• Young Sherlock Holmes' Nicholas Rowe and Alan Cox to reunite on stage

British TV

• BBC head of drama in Northern Ireland steps down
• Online viewing continues to rise [subscription required]
• BBC2 and BBC4 avoid merger, but more sport on BBC3?

US TV

• Mädchen Amick joins CSI: NY as a recurring character
• Carter MacIntyre joins Undercovers
• NBC asks for even more episodes of Law & Order, Law & Order: SVU, Trauma, Community, and Parks & Recreation to fill Leno-shaped hole in schedules
• ABC picks up Cutthroat, Generation Y and The Whole Truth
• AMC picks up Walking Dead and The Killing
• Michael McKean to return to Smallville [spoilers]
• Grey's Anatomy flashback to feature Sarah Paulson and J August Richards
• Gene Roddenberry's The Questor Tapes to be remade
• CNN to expand into entertainment programming

• The A-Team teaser trailer
• Gossip Girl's Blake Lively to co-star in Green Lantern
• Another trailer for Kick Ass
• Trailer for From Paris With Love
• Remakes of Robocop and Conquest of the Planet of the Apes shelved
• John Malkovich joins Red

Theatre

• Jeremy Irons returning to the RSC for The Gods Weep

US TV

• Jeremy Irons to star in The Borgias
• Maz Jobrani to star in Funny in Farsi
• Day One cut back to a two-hour movie
• NBC greenlights six drama pilots…
• …considers Law and Order: Los Angeles…
• …after moving Jay Leno from primetime…
• …but what's going to happen to Heroes, Chuck, Trauma, Mercy et al?
• ABC greenlights Scoundrels based on NZ series Outrageous Fortune
• CBS cancels Three Rivers
• A sixth season for Supernatural?
• …and a tenth for Smallville?
• Someone's coming back to Chuck [spoilers]
• Dana Carvey to develop and star in new Fox comedy show
• Alexis Denisof discusses his supernatural pilot for ABC/ABC Family
• Moonlight to return?

Doctor Who

• End of Time - Part 2 most loved by women and older men
• Murray Gold to write series five music and theme
• 10.4m people watch End of Time - Part 2

Film

• English language trailer for Christopher Nolan's Inception
• Trailer for Shrek: How To Train Your Dragon
• James McAvoy to play Ian Fleming?
• The Thing prequel to begin shooting in March
• Trailer for Rhys Ifans's Howard Marks biopic, Mr Nice
• Pics from The Eagle of the Ninth

• Life on Mars (US)'s Jason O'Mara to star in Serenading Louie at the Donmar

• Jam and Jerusalem cancelled
• Top Gear most watched programme on the iPlayer
• Day of the Triffids gets 5.6m viewers
• New Year's Eve ratings
• STV to start showing ITV1 dramas again
• BBC claims to generate £7.6bn for Britain
• Beeb in talks to bring back Gavin & Stacey next Christmas…
• …after 8.7m viewers watch the finale
• Hamlet only gets 896,000 viewers

US TV

• Julie Benz to join Desperate Housewives for at least three episodes [spoilers for Dexter]
• Year-end ratings for the cable networks: USA grows audience 15%
• Law & Order gets a 21st season
• Kevin Alejandro joins True Blood
• Casting on Retired at 35
• Catherine McCormack and Stacy Keach to co-star on FX's Lights Out
• Luke Wilson and Diane Ladd to co-star in Laura Dern's Enlightened
• Kim Raver joins Grey's Anatomy full-time

Doctor Who

• Waters of Mars gets highest ratings ever for the show
• Pic of David Tennant and Catherine Tate in Catherine Tate: Nan's Christmas Carol
• Pic of David Tennant and June Whitfield in The End of Time - Part 1

Film

• Trailer for Knight and Day with Tom Cruise, Cameron Diaz and some of the supporting cast of Buffy
• Trailer for The Wushu Karate Kid
• Trailer for Robin Hood
• Trailer for Kick Ass
• Teaser trailer for Sex and the City 2
• Trailer for Gerard Butler/Jennifer Aniston's Bounty Hunter

Theatre

• Legally Blonde musical is a hit

British TV

• Tales of Beatrix Potter to be animated
• Season four of Heroes to start January 9th on BBC2
• Top Gear team urged to lose 'cartoon characters' [registration required]

• Heartland gets a fourth season

• Apple considering TV subscription service with CBS and Disney [registration required]
• Nurse Jackie drops a recurring character
• Former HBO programming president Chris Albrecht to run Starz
• Trailer for Chuck season 3

• An interview with Steven Moffat [audio, spoiler]

Film

• 300 prequel to be called Xerxes
• David O Russell to direct, Natalie Portman to produce and star in Pride and Prejudice and Zombies
• The Brood to be remade

Theatre

• Richard Coyle and Jodhi May to star in premiere of Polar Bears

British TV

• Patrick Stewart's Macbeth to be filmed for BBC2
• Miranda gets a second series
• Not Going Out gets a fourth series

US TV

• Modern Family's Jesse Tyler Ferguson to guest on Ugly Betty again
• Jenny Wade to co-star in Jack and Dan
• Gerald McRaney to star in JJ Abrams' Undercovers
• Joe Manganiello joins True Blood [spoilers]
• Trailer for FX's Justified
• Jack Black to guest star on Community
• Men of a Certain Age's ratings drop 19%

• Results of the British Comedy Awards

Film

• Tobey Maguire to play Bilbo Baggins?
• Mel Gibson to star in How I Spent My Summer Vacation

Theater

• Jennifer Morrison to make Broadway debut in The Miracle Worker [spoilers]

British TV

• Second series for Charlie Brooker's You Have Been Watching
• 19m watch The X Factor finale
• BSkyB and MGM to launch HD film channel

US TV

• James Frain joins True Blood…
• …and Alfre Woodard to guest
• Dexter's showrunner leaves…
• …just as show gets best Showtime ratings ever
• Watch the extended pilot for Caprica [US only]