First, the usual recommendations:

• Continuum (Showcase/SyFy)
  
• The Daily Show (Comedy Central)
• The Fall (BBC2/Netflix)
• Hannibal (NBC/Sky Living)

Still in the viewing queue: last night's Graceland and I'm toying with watching Channel 4's The Returned, even though I normally can't be arsed with zombie shows, even French zombie shows.

Here's a few thoughts on what I did watch this week, though :

• Continuum (Showcase/SyFy): After last week's improvement, yet more signs of recovery, with the various first-season story arcs starting to come back to life again at last, joining the new ones from this season. As well as some things that made precisely no sense, we did get a whole collection of great moments, mostly involving Carlos and Kiera. I think it's clear where a lot of this is going but there's enough surprises still coming that it still feels quite fresh and exciting.
• The Daily Show (Comedy Central): John Oliver's first week on the job and although he's obviously not as comfortable in the job as Jon Stewart – give him time – it's actually been a pretty good run so far. To a certain extent, he'll need to find his own voice as a host to differentiate himself from Stewart.
• The Fall (BBC2/Netflix): Ah! A notorious finale. Haven't had one of those in a while. Not so much a conclusion as a slight pause in the story. To be honest, the fact it's been renewed for a second series actually makes this a less impressive finale than it should have been, since it's quite an original thing to do (spoiler alert: let the criminal get away). Now it just looks like they were setting everything up oddly for a second series. Maybe they were. Nevertheless, despite this being the least impressive of all the episodes, it was probably the best British drama I've seen in a long time, so yay to a second series.
  
• Family Tree (HBO/BBC2): I think I'm going to give up after this one. It's giving me wry chuckles but that's about it. Well observed, well acted, even Nina Conti and Monkey are tolerable, but it's just not very funny.
• Game of Thrones (HBO/Sky Atlantic): So I finally made it through to the end of the third season. I think most of my comments from last week hold, particularly about the second season, although the nudity did drop off again in the third season, thankfully. I imagine that this is a show that's going to be best appreciated as one massive box set binge one day, because there's a lot going on that's frustratingly close to great but never actually gets there: you can see that everyone's eventual stories are going to end up being great, it's just we're in the middle of them as they head towards that greatness, and it's not going to be for another two to three seasons that we actually get to see it. Still, a lot to commend about it and I'm probably going to be glued to my set when the fourth season comes round. Perhaps Stephen Dillane and Patrick Malahide will meet again. PS The red wedding? What was all the fuss about?
• Hannibal (NBC/Sky Living): My hat's off to Bryan Fuller and co, as always, as the show hits its penultimate episode, revealing just how tightly written and architected this first season has been. What the finale will bring us is anyone's guess, but this has been one of the most consistently excellent first seasons of any show I've watched.
• Up The Women (BBC4): Already renewed for a second series, for which it will transfer over to BBC2, this studio comedy about suffragettes in 1910 features a great cast – Jessica Hynes, Rebecca Front, Adrian Scarborough – and some clever writing. Unfortunately, it doesn't feature any real jokes. Well, not that I found funny. There's probably a few people who'll laugh at a joke in which a man shows he knows less about a light bulb and how it works than a woman does, but they've presumably never seen comedy shows before and this will all be new to them. If, however, you have seen a comedy show before, then the most you can do is hope it does better and wish it well, since its heart is in the right place, at least.

And in movies:

Wreck-It Ralph
Bizarrely, it's Pixar does Tron. A villain in an 80s arcade game decides he wants more from life so goes exploring other video games, messing not only his own game up but those he encounters along the way. Weirdly, the first half is probably going to be unfathomable to anyone under the age of 30, with clever references to Pac Man, Streetfighter and any number of games that a child of the 80s would love and remember. The second half on the other hand is probably going to be unfathomable to anyone over the age of 40, since it's largely references to modern console games, particularly Super Mario Kart on the Wii. It's all very precise and very clever, and there's great vocal work from John C Reilly (Ralph), Alan Tudyk (the evil King Candy), Sarah Silverman (Ralph's new friend in the superbly imagined Sugar Rush) and Jane Lynch (a heroine from a first-person shooter) among others. But the fun-density isn't quite as high as it should be, with big chunks that just sort of amble by. Some of the sexual politics are a little debatable, too, but only a little. Enjoyable but not a true classic.

The Iceman
Given a choice of Michael Shannon movies to watch last night, I chose to watch The Iceman rather than Man Of Steel: I'm watching that tonight. I'm not sure Shannon could be better in the latter though, since he gives a spot-on performance as the real-life Iceman, a mafia hit-man who killed probably more than 100 people from the end of the 60s through to the 80s, somehow managing to keep the terrible truth from his family. Surprisingly, it's a film of good performances from the unexpected likes of Ray Liotta, Winona Ryder, Chris Evans (practically unrecognisable as another, rather hirsute killer) and, incredibly surprisingly, David Schwimmer from Friends. Perhaps a little slower and flatter than in needed to be, it's nevertheless a thoughtful insight into the mind of a sociopath who needs to kill people in order to preserve his marriage. Yes, that does sound weird.

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"What did you watch this week?" is your chance to recommend to friends and fellow blog readers the TV and films that they might be missing or should avoid - and for me to do mini-reviews of everything I've watched. Since we live in the fabulous world of Internet catch-up services like the iPlayer and Hulu, why not tell your fellow readers what you've seen so they can see the good stuff they might have missed?

First, the usual recommendations:

• Continuum (Showcase/SyFy)
  
• The Daily Show (Comedy Central)
• The Fall (BBC2/Netflix)
• Hannibal (NBC/Sky Living)

These are all going to be on in either the UK or the US, perhaps even both, but I can't be sure which.

On Monday, I was somewhat incapacitated with food poisoning (oops), so spent the whole day in bed. Faced with the prospect of an entire day without brain stimulation, I decided to bite the bullet and try watching…

Game of Thrones
Yep, season 1 all in one go. And now I'm halfway through season 2. So no spoilers. On the whole, I'm liking it more than I did on my first attempted viewing a couple of years ago, but that might be because I made a stab at reading the first book to ease me in. I didn't love the first season, but I did enjoy a lot of the elements of it and the potential that it was building. I like the mix of mythic influences - the story's northern stories are more in keeping with Germanic and Scandinavian myth while the eastern stories are more in the style of Middle Eastern stories. I like the fact that a lot of it is about outsiders within a patriarchal system and how they learn to obtain power within that system. I like the fact it's essentially a good excuse to give overlooked British and Irish character actors (and Peter Dinklage) decent, regular, well paying jobs for a change.

Season 2 so far is feeling a bit of a filler season; the amounts of female nudity are ridiculous; and the increased magic quotient is unappealing. There's also no single Nedd Stark figure around which the second season revolves, which makes it feel a little rudderless. But both Patrick Malahide and Stephen Dillane have turned up, which can only be good news, and Charles Dance is marvellous.

Still in the viewing queue: Up The Women, BBC4's suffragette sitcom written by and starring Jessica Hynes, and last night's Graceland, USA's new cop show. My thoughts on those next week, I suspect.

Now, some thoughts on some of the regulars:

• Continuum (Showcase/SyFy): A near return to form this week, with sci-fi fun, some important revelations for both viewers and characters, and hints that all the standalone episodes we've been having actually had an arc in them (spoiler alert)that another corporation from the future is trying to acquire all its competitor companies and their technologies in the present, including Alec's. Still not up there with season 1 and we could do with Liber8 getting its act together, but it slightly restored my faith in the show.
• The Fall (BBC2/Netflix): Less about misogyny, more about Belfast this episode, as well as some expansion on the background of Gillian Anderson's character. The revelation from Archie Punjab was a little too deus ex machina (spoiler alert)she knew someone who went out with the serial killer at university, but I'm hoping they can pull back from that.
• Hannibal (NBC/Sky Living): Last week's saw Ellen Muth (Dead Like Me, another Bryan Fuller show) turn up as someone who thought she was dead, making for an interesting piece of deconstruction. As in previous weeks, the episode ended with an entirely throw-away but stunning moment of horror that'll stick with you. The idea of Lecter and his friend withholding information like that was also ghastly, but in an entirely different way. This week's episode was slightly let down by Eddie Izzard turning up again and was a little low-key, but was also disturbing and affecting in its own way. I'm wondering what's up with Gillian Anderson's character - are they ever going to do anything with her, or is that for later seasons?

And in movies:

The Hangover 3
Not an especially funny film, yet still better than the second. Weirdly, though, it didn't actually feel like they were trying to make a funny movie, more an action drama with the occasional joke. All the regular characters were back plus John Goodman, but unlike 2, this didn't rehash the plot of the first movie, instead sending the 'Wolf Pack' to go looking for gold (literally) because of naughty old Ken Jeong. Weirdly, it's clear they could have made a funny film if they'd wanted to, judging by the end titles.

"What did you watch this week?" is your chance to recommend to friends and fellow blog readers the TV and films that they might be missing or should avoid - and for me to do mini-reviews of everything I've watched. Since we live in the fabulous world of Internet catch-up services like the iPlayer and Hulu, why not tell your fellow readers what you've seen so they can see the good stuff they might have missed?

Time to look back at the first three episodes of Spinal Tap-creator Christopher Guest's gentle new comedy for HBO and BBC2, Family Tree, in which Chris O'Dowd attempts with the help and hindrance of friends and relatives (Michael McKean and Nina Conti and Monkey) to trace his family tree. And very gentle it's been. Partly (or even largely) improvised, so far we've wandered around Britain, meeting English eccentrics of all shapes and sizes, looked at old photos and artefacts, and not laughing very much. There's been the odd chuckle or two, but that's about it.

Episode three at least was a slightly more amusing affair, mainly thanks to Conti finally being allowed to let Monkey off his leash so to speak. But this also led to some cringe comedy at a Greek wedding, making most of the final moments of the episode pretty unwatchable. O'Dowd's side-kick (Tom Bennett) is also pretty hit and miss, heading towards cringe comedy a lot of the time, but not the painful kind at least.

There are a few storylines puttering away beneath the surface that could have potential in the long run and since we should finally be off to America with the next episode there is potential for the show to finally unleash itself. But at the moment, it's more novel than funny, a series of observations and characters that you won't have seen before, although maybe that's for a reason.

Barrometer rating: 3
Rob's prediction: If it lasts more than a season, it'll purely because of Christopher Guest's star pull

First, the usual recommendations, which are somewhat dwindling now 'summer' has arrived:

• Continuum (Showcase/SyFy)
  
• The Daily Show (Comedy Central)
• Don't Trust The B---- (ABC)
• The Fall (BBC2/Netflix)
• Hannibal (NBC/Sky Living)

These are all going to be on in either the UK or the US, perhaps even both, but I can't be sure which.

Now, some thoughts on some of the regulars and some of the shows I'm still trying:

• Arrested Development (Netflix): Well, I watched most of the first episode of the new Netflix series and laughed a couple of times, but that was about it. I wasn't even sure at first I was watching the right episode. But I was. I hear, however, it gets better with episode three.
• Continuum (Showcase/SyFy): Shaping up to be quite a disappointing second season this, after the strong and clever narrative of the first season, but the arrival of Alessandro Juliani as a psychiatrist from the future was an intriguing twist, at least, and the final revelation was unexpected, too.
• The Fall (BBC2/Netflix): A meditation on modern misogyny, with Anderson's cop staying calm under pressure from above and below for the terrible crime of having sex. It's all handled very well, with the media's participation in misogyny flagged up, and the parallels with the misogyny of the serial killer make it an inditement of patriarchy rather than just particular institutions.
• The Goodwin Games (Fox): Gave up in the middle of the second episode. Just not funny.

And in movies:

The Black Dahlia
Ah, the irony – a Brian De Palma film about misogyny! Based on a James McEllroy novel, it's a fictional investigation into the real-life Black Dahlia murder, starring Josh Hartnett and Aaron Eckhart as boxing rivals-cum-police partners. However, most of the interest is in the female cast, with Scarlett Johansson as Eckhart's ex-prostitute girlfriend, Hillary Swank superb as a rich girl Hartnett takes up with and the likes of Mia Kirshner as the murder victim and Fiona Shaw as Swank's mother, with KD Lang, Jemima Rooper and Rose McGowan in bit parts. For the turgid first half it tries to have its cake and eat it, concerning itself with the fates of the women involved. But De Palma can't avoid his exploitative tendencies and the second half is mostly distasteful misogyny, some of it admittedly in keeping with the 1950s time period. But it's in the last 15 minutes that the whole thing falls apart in quite the most insane way – I have literally no idea what Shaw in particular is up to in one particular scene and it consequently veers into unplanned comedy. Steer well clear.

"What did you watch this week?" is your chance to recommend to friends and fellow blog readers the TV and films that they might be missing or should avoid - and for me to do mini-reviews of everything I've watched. Since we live in the fabulous world of Internet catch-up services like the iPlayer and Hulu, why not tell your fellow readers what you've seen so they can see the good stuff they might have missed?

First, the usual recommendations, which are somewhat dwindling now 'summer' has arrived:

• Continuum (Showcase/SyFy)
  
• The Daily Show (Comedy Central)
• Don't Trust The B---- (ABC)
• The Fall (BBC2/Netflix)
• Hannibal (NBC/Sky Living)

These are all going to be on in either the UK or the US, perhaps even both, but I can't be sure which.

I tried a few new shows this week. I'll save my thoughts on NBC's Save Me for a full review, but here's what I thought of the others:

The Fall (BBC2/Netflix)
Gillian Anderson in what is essentially Prime Suspect 20 years on – writer Allan Cubitt also wrote Prime Suspect 2 – and, for my money, almost as good. Anderson plays a Met police detective superintendent who goes to Belfast to audit an investigation into a murder. However, she quickly realises that she's chasing a serial killer (Jamie Dornan). Rather than this being a whodunnit, we know from the beginning of Dornan's culpability – instead, this a dual character piece that examines the equally cool, equally focused killer and cop. The investigation, which also touches on the different and highly political nature of policing in Northern Ireland (the police are all armed and the police station is more like a fort), is handled as realistically and as sensitively as can be, but there are disturbing scenes, despite the overall lack of any blood or violence.

Anderson is great as the cop, who unlike Helen Mirren's Jane Tennison, doesn't need to convince anyone of her abilities and is happy to have casual sex with whomever she pleases without apology, rather than agonise over relationships; Dornan's equally good as the killer, who blends right in and even has a young daughter to care after. The writing's first rate, although there are a few slaps-forehead moments and obviously, it's yet another serial killer show. There's also lots of good roles for both men and women. Weirdly, Archie Punjab from The Good Wife shows up as a motorcycle-riding pathologist.

Definitely one to watch – it's going on the recommended list. American readers – this has been acquired by Netflix and shoot be available from the 28th of this month, but you can watch the first episode below.

Harry (TV3)
A six-part New Zealand series about a widowered cop with a teenage daughter and who's doing his best to hunt down some violent robbers in a poor community. He has to work against the higher-ups, who are more concerned by headlines that the communities they police and against the demands of his job in raising his daughter. So far, so ordinary, you might think, and largely it is, despite the presence of Sam Neill (Jurassic Park) as Harry's boss, complete with his normal NZ/Australian accent. What's more interesting is that Harry is co-written by the star, Oscar Kightley, a Maori actor, and the show is bilingual and set largely in the Maori community. It's got more in common with UK police shows than with US shows, although there are interesting differences, but beyond the cultural issues and twists, there's not much here that you won't have seen before.

Now, some thoughts on some of the regulars and some of the shows I'm still trying:

• Arrested Development (Netflix): In preparation for the fourth Netflix-exclusive season, I'm trying once again to get into the original series. I'm up to about episode 13 and there have been a couple of episodes where I've 'got' what everyone loves about the show, but it's not as funny as it should be.
• Don't Trust The B---- (ABC): The final batch of episodes are now available to stream from the ABC web site. Such a disappointment that the show was cancelled, since there's some real dark originality in these episodes.
• Hannibal (NBC/Sky Living): Superbly featuring a cameo by Lance Henriksen (Millennium), this week's episode minimised the normal body horror slightly in favour of one of its other themes: the horror of madness, with Will becoming increasingly unhinged and worried for his own sanity. However, the most disturbing revelations are another character's and left until last. I'm still deeply impressed by the show, and if NBC cancel it, they deserve everything they're going to get. I've also just realised that Caroline Dhavernas (Dr Bloom) was the star of Bryan Fuller's Wonderfalls, which shows you just what a loyal guy he is.

And in movies:

The Rum Diary
Directed by Bruce Robinson (Withnail and I), based on a novel by Hunter S Thompson, starring Johnny Depp, Amber Heard and Aaron Eckhart, it should all be great, huh? The novel certainly has an interesting story: Thompson wrote it in the 60s but it was never published until Depp found it lying around and persuaded Thompson to unleash it on the world. To be honest, it's not a great novel: set on Puerto Rico, it lacks voice, although you get some of the hints of Thompson's future themes (substance abuse, misogyny), and is really a mood piece about a journalist finding his way on the island.

The film, however, takes all of that and runs with it. Sharing little of the plot or dialogue, and losing a lot of the characters, it's essentially a prequel to Thompson's line, reconstructing the whole story so that it's about how a journalist finds his voice in fighting against rich interests. With minor elements of the novel, Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas and even Withnail and I, it's a whole lot better than the book, too, ditching the misogyny and aimlessness in favour of a much stronger narrative drive, although it still shares some unwelcome elements, including a rape scene (mercifully different from the book's deeply unpleasant version). Johnny Depp returns to form as Paul Kemp, while Heard is clearly a little out of her depth at this stage in her career. There are some funny moments, but it's not a movie to go out of your way to see, and doesn't come close to the best of any of those involved.

"What did you watch this week?" is your chance to recommend to friends and fellow blog readers the TV and films that they might be missing or should avoid - and for me to do mini-reviews of everything I've watched. Since we live in the fabulous world of Internet catch-up services like the iPlayer and Hulu, why not tell your fellow readers what you've seen so they can see the good stuff they might have missed?

There are few better known, more successful sitcom writers than Roy Clarke. The creator of Last of the Summer Wine, Open All Hours, Oh No, It's Selwyn Froggitt! and Keeping Up Appearances, genteel, Northern, comedies of manners and silliness are his forte.

Which makes The Wanderer, a short-lived 1994 series about reincarnated medieval knights in modern times on an eternal quest for one of their graves, somewhat of a surprise. The show starred Bryan Brown (FX: Murder By Illusion, Cocktail) as two twin brothers, the good Adam and the evil Zachary. Originally born in the 10th century, the two are fated to fight each other at the turn of each millennium, the winner influencing whether the next millennium will be 'good' or 'evil'.

Reincarnated in the 20th century, Zachary wants revenge on Adam for killing him a millennium previously, but he also wants to take advantage of the growing superstition arising from the turn of the current millennium, planning to have Adam die in front of witnesses so that he can pose as his dead brother. But for his plan to work, he needs a magic item from his 10th century grave, and only Adam knows the location of that. Or at least the original Adam did – modern day Adam? Not so much, although he's prone to the occasional flashback to his original self, which helps him on his quest to retrieve the artefact first so he can stop Zachary.

Both have helpers in the modern day: Beatrice (Kim Thomson), Zachary's lover in the 10th century, has been reincarnated as well and accompanies him on his journey, helping him with her witchy magic; while Adam's helper, Godbold (Tony Haygarth), was a monk in the 10th century but is now a wrestler and plumber. And then there's Clare (Deborah Moore), Adam's lover in both centuries.

A co-production between YTV and Sky in the UK, ZDF in Germany, and Antena 3 in Spain, the show ran for 13 episodes, with Adam wandering the world each episode looking for Zachary's grave, Zachary occasionally cropping up to be extrovert and annoying in comparison to the introverted and dull Adam. Indeed, the whole show was intensely annoying: as well as Brown's acting and the light entertainment vibe that Clarke apparently couldn't escape adding to the show, The Wanderer had 'Into The Labyrinth syndrome', with the first season concluding with Zachary's grave being found, the two brothers ready for their clash to begin… only for it to be revealed that another artefact needed recovering and a new quest had to begin. Cue the second series that never materialised.

The show hasn't been repeated or released on DVD since it originally aired, but you can at least have its title sequence and some clips, unfortunately mostly dubbed into various foreign languages. The last collection is in English, though, so you can judge the quality of the acting for yourselves.

In the UK: Saturday, 7pm, 18th May 2013, BBC1/BBC1 HD. Available on the iPlayer
In the US: Saturday, 8pm/7c, 18th May 2013, BBC America

Ian: Just open the doors, Doctor Foreman.
The Doctor: [To himself.] Eh? Doctor who? What's he talking about…?

- from Doctor Who - An Unearthly Child

Doctor Who's name has been a subject of considerable interest, ever since the first episode. Whether it was Ian Chesterton's misnaming of him as Doctor Foreman in the very first episode or the more recent Steven Moffat antics regarding River Song, the Doctor and their wedding, everyone's wanted to know what his name really is. Doctor von Wer, Dr John Smith, Theta Sigma - Who knows, ho, ho?

This season has, in fact, been building on this, with Clara mid-runaround…

…stopping off in the TARDIS library to find out the Doctor's real name. So it all looked like we were about to get some big revelation in the appropriately named The Name of Doctor, the season finale, billed as revealing 'his secret'. And revelations we did get, just not the ones we were expecting. Let's go chat about The Trouble with Clara after the jump.

First, the usual recommendations:

• Arrow (The CW/Sky 1)
  
• Continuum (Showcase/SyFy)
  
• The Daily Show (Comedy Central)
• Doctor Who (BBC1/BBC America)
• Elementary (CBS/Sky Living)
• Hannibal (NBC/Sky Living)
• Modern Family (ABC/Sky 1)
• Vegas (CBS/Sky Atlantic)

These are all going to be on in either the UK or the US, perhaps even both, but I can't be sure which.

Still in the viewing queue: new show The Goodwin Games, which I'll be reviewing on Monday, and I'll be playing catch up with New Zealand show Harry, too.

I did give Life of Crime a go, too, in which Hayley Atwell plays a cop in three different time periods at different stages of her career. Entirely fits the template of ITV crime dramas and you could predict virtually everything that happened in each time period, with the corresponding Attitudes written in neon lights all over every character.

Now, some thoughts on some of the regulars and some of the shows I'm still trying:

• Arrow (The CW/Sky 1): No League of Shadows, surprisingly, but everything played out in the finale pretty much as you'd expect, beyond the final twist. Overall, a very decent season, although it started to lost its edge and become a tad more Smallville than Batman Begins by the end. One to look forward to next season, certainly.
• Continuum (Showcase/SyFy): There I was complaining there wasn't enough cool sci-fi in the show, when up it pops in spades. For my next trick, can we have some more intelligent schemes from the terrorists, please. 
  
• Elementary (CBS/Sky Living): Everything played out pretty much as I expected in terms of revelations, but in many ways better than Sherlock's handling of similar Sherlock Holmes facets. I also liked the fact they made Irene Adler and Moriarty one and the same. It'll be great if they bring her back and make her a maths professor, too. A good explanation for an in-story bad accent, too. PS, New York can try to pass itself off as London, but it will always fail.
• Hannibal (NBC/Sky Living): I'm not convinced that Hannibal should be that good in a fight, particularly not up against Demore Barnes who was in The Unit. All the same, another fascinating episode, Gillian Anderson getting more to do this week. What surprises me is that the show, which I'm thinking more and more of as a cross between Touching Evil (US) and David Cronenberg's oeuvre, is actually capable of instilling dread in me, which is a very novel emotion of a TV show to be able to create in its audience. Magnificent, but its fate is in the balance at the moment. Please renew it, NBC.
• Vegas (CBS/Sky Atlantic): And so it's gone, in a somewhat underwhelming finale that mostly just tied up loose threads, left a couple dangling and let everyone pat each other on the back and say goodbye, all while Carrie Anne Moss had nothing to do, which was par for the course. A shame, since it started off with so much fire.

"What did you watch this week?" is your chance to recommend to friends and fellow blog readers the TV and films that they might be missing or should avoid - and for me to do mini-reviews of everything I've watched. Since we live in the fabulous world of Internet catch-up services like the iPlayer and Hulu, why not tell your fellow readers what you've seen so they can see the good stuff they might have missed?

In the UK: Saturday, 7pm, 11th May 2013, BBC1/BBC1 HD. Available on the iPlayer
In the US: Saturday, 8pm/7c, 11th May 2013, BBC America

Well, it's Wednesday so there's probably not much point doing a full review of Saturday's Doctor Who episode - you've probably forgotten it all, already - but for the record and for completeness' sake, so I thought I'd jot down a few thoughts. Spoilers after the jump…

In the US: Sundays, 10.30pm, HBO
In the UK: Will air on BBC2 this year

Christopher Guest is a god, of course. One of the originators of Spinal Tap, he is the premier maker of the improvised 'mockumentary', with films like Best in Class that are cuttingly funny social observations. He is America's Mike Leigh.

Except, of course, Guest is half-British, the son of a UN diplomat, and shared his childhood between London and New York. Which is why we shouldn't be surprised that BBC2's latest co-production with HBO - following on from the likes of Rome and Parade's End - is set predominantly in Britain. Family Tree follows Chris O'Dowd's (The IT Crowd, Bridesmaids) attempts to trace various members of his family after his great aunt dies, leaving him a box of memorabilia. Along the way, he's helped and hindered by his sister (Nina Conti, best known for her stand-up act, but also from Guest's For Your Consideration), who still uses the therapy monkey she had when she was a child to say things that would otherwise be unsayable, and his dad (long-time Guest collaborator Michael McKean from Spinal Tap).

Again, largely improvised by the cast, it's well observed and engrossing, flirting with British stereotypes while undermining them and having far more depth than a whole load of US shows I could name. But is it funny? Well…

Here's a trailer:

First, the usual recommendations:

• Arrow (The CW/Sky 1)
  
• Continuum (Showcase/SyFy)
  
• The Daily Show (Comedy Central)
• Doctor Who (BBC1/BBC America)
• Elementary (CBS/Sky Living)
• Endeavour (ITV1)
• Hannibal (NBC/Sky Living)
  
• Modern Family (ABC/Sky 1)
• Vegas (CBS/Sky Atlantic)

These are all going to be on in either the UK or the US, perhaps even both, but I can't be sure which.

Still in the viewing queue: Netflix's Hemlock Grove, which still doesn't look appealing and last night's Elementary.

I have tried a couple of new shows, though:

Vicious
Ian McKellen and Derek Jacobi camp it up something as a pair of 'vicious old queens' (that was the working title of the show, anyway). They've been living together for years, when a fit but clueless young man (Iwan Rheon from Misfits) moves into their building. If you're in your 60s, this would probably be entertaining, since it's the kind of studio-shot show that used to be made in the 70s and entirely consists of obvious and somewhat feeble jokes - it's almost "call and response" TV - lightened by how the cast perform them. Rheon is wasted as the straight man to the jokes (ho, ho), but it's entirely awful for anyone under 60.

The Job Lot
ITV's other new sitcom, this is more in the modern vein of comedy, with single camera shooting and no laugh track. Starring Russell Tovey and Sarah Hadland, it's set in a West Midlands job centre and is a combination of The Office and any of the interactions with support desk customers in The IT Crowd. It's also about as funny as unemployment.

Now, some thoughts on some of the regulars and some of the shows I'm still trying

• The Americans (FX/ITV): Not an entirely surprising finale, but it's interesting how you can find yourself rooting for the KGB, this episode being an inversion of the usual "staff back at HQ come up with desperate last ditch plan to help the agents in the field". Looking forward to the next season.
• Arrow (The CW/Sky 1): A definite pick-up this week, although the show is now not just tonally Batman Begins, it actually is Batman Begins. If it doesn't turn out next week that The Dark Archer was trained by Ra's al Ghul and the League of Shadows, I'll be very surprised. Didn't quite buy John Barrowman as King Karate, but hey ho.
• Continuum (Showcase/SyFy): Starting to meander a bit, now. Despite the occasional shoot out to try to lift the pace, this is more about setting up ideas than plot. Basically, more budget, needs to be bigger and more cool things need to happen.
  
• Elementary (CBS/Sky Living): Excellent episode last week, as we once more return to the serial plot involving Moriarty, and Vinnie Jones returns. I think they're now torturing him deliberately by getting him to sing Arsenal chants.
  
• Endeavour (ITV1): All very nicely done, and the break away from pure murder-mystery procedural to look at 1960s London gangsterism and the somewhat "making it up as we go along" approach to policing violent crime was welcome. But the whodunnit was somewhat daft.
• Hannibal (NBC/Sky Living): Last week, we got into the strange situation of a prequel to Silence of the Lambs actually mining most of the plot of Silence of the Lambs to the extent that Silence of the Lambs couldn't really happen as a movie without someone in-story wondering about cosmic coincidences. It also took on a vital scene from Red Dragon and gave it to another character, to the extent that the back story will have to change significantly by the time season 3 rolls round (season 4 being Red Dragon). Nice to see Veep's Anna Chlumsky and The X-Files' Gillian Anderson back on US TV, not so nice to see Eddie Izzard trying to be a serial killer.
• Vegas (CBS/Sky Atlantic): It's all gearing up well for the finale, but this clearly isn't the show it was when it started and all the life seems to have drained out of it. Looking forward to a big confrontation with Michael Ironside tonight.

And in movies:

Syrup
Based on the cult Max Barry novel of the same name, this sees Shiloh Fernandez come up with the idea for a marketing-driven soft drink called Fukk, which he pitches to young marketing executive Amber Heard, who promptly tries to steal his idea. He stops her, but they're both outsmarted by Fernandez's pal Kellan Lutz. Cue a battle of the cola companies. Unfortunately, while the book had a kind of young energy and largely revolved around Heard's character guiding Fernandez's through the moves and counter-moves of office politics, this becomes a more conventional romance with few funny moments and almost no real wit, beyond demonstrating the emptiness of marketing. Indeed, the filmmakers (including Barry who co-scripted it) unfortunately decided that the movie's message had to be "Marketing Bad" and the entire plot, right down to the conclusion, is switched to reflect that. Obviously they were never going to be able to adapt the book 100% faithfully (not unless Tom Cruise, Gwyneth Paltrow, Coke and others had jumped on board to create a sci-fi blockbuster within the movie), but in the adaption, too much was ripped out.

Fernandez is a bit too fey for 'Scat', Amber Heard gives one of her best performances as '6' but lacks confidence in some scenes, while Lutz is silent for the majority of the movie. Weirdly, Kate Nash cameos as a receptionist.

Iron Man 3
Weirdly, a better movie than both of its predecessors, particularly Iron Man 2, but I didn't love it as much. It's a strange amalgam of the Extremis comic strip, James Bond and Kiss Kiss Bang Bang, with Robert Downey Jr running around by himself, almost like a secret agent, for big chunks of the movie. Gwyneth Paltrow and Don Cheadle get less screen time, but what they do get gives them more to do than before. As well as a lot of wit and laugh out loud scenes, the story also features top racist Iron Man villain (Ben Kingsley), yet cleverly manages to flip the character around to play on that (no, no spoilers). Despite the inevitable descent into a CGI finale, the film still managed largely to retain its humanity throughout, and the ending serves as a good potential ending for the whole Iron Man franchise, if necessary. Yet, somehow, despite all this - and perhaps because of its more adult themes of - it just wasn't as much fun or as enjoyable as the first.

Star Trek: Into Darkness
Can't say too much without spoiling it, but it's actually very good. Drags a bit in the middle, there's a tragic death, and there's a clever inversion of a previous movie - as well as an entertaining moment where (spoiler) Spock calls up his older self and asks for spoilers. Benedict Cumberbatch edges over into hammy in a couple of places and doesn't look as buff as he needs to be for the role, the leery male gaze of the first movie is slightly downplayed but still present, and everybody gets something to do, although largely individually rather than together. Some very cool moments too, and the movie does diverge from its predecessor in saying that vengeance and warfare aren't things that Starfleet should be involved in. Worth seeing, even if again, it doesn't quite have the energy of the first movie.

"What did you watch this fortnight?" is your chance to recommend to friends and fellow blog readers the TV and films that they might be missing or should avoid - and for me to do mini-reviews of everything I've watched. Since we live in the fabulous world of Internet catch-up services like the iPlayer and Hulu, why not tell your fellow readers what you've seen so they can see the good stuff they might have missed?

Paganism, while not exactly featuring heavily in the more secular and Christian-influenced television drama schedules of Western societies, hasn't been completely invisible over the past few decades. As we're shortly to discover (ie either on Thursday or Friday when I write about it in much greater detail), British writers, particularly those who were working in the 70s, have occasionally taken time out to examine other religions in drama.

Despite coming from a family of strict evangelical Christians, one of the main writers to do so is David Rudkin. As well as translating Greek pagan works, such as those of Aeschylus and Euripides, Rudkin examined British paganism in plays and long-form series such as The Stone Dance, The Sons of Light and ultimately Artemis 81.

One of his major works was a Play For Today: Penda's Fen. Directed by Alan Clarke, who normally was a strictly realist director and who admits he didn't really understand it, the play is an evocation of the conflicting forces within England, both past and present. These include authority, tradition, hypocrisy, landscape, art, sexuality, and most of all, its mystical, ancient pagan past. In the play, all of this comes together in the growing pains of the adolescent Stephen, a vicar's son, who encounters angels, Edward Elgar and King Penda, the last pagan king of England, during the play.

Since its broadcast, Penda's Fen has gone on to be regarded as a minor classic. Leonard Buckley (no relation) of The Times wrote: "Make no mistake. We had a major work of television last night. Rudkin gave us something that had beauty, imagination and depth." In 2006, Vertigo magazine described it as “One of the great visionary works of English film” while in 2011, it was chosen by Time Out London magazine as one of the 100 best British films, describing it as:

"A multi-layered reading of contemporary society and its personal, social, sexual, psychic and metaphysical fault lines. Fusing Elgar’s ‘Dream of Gerontius’ with a heightened socialism of vibrantly localist empathy, and pagan belief systems with pre-Norman histories and a seriously committed - and prescient - ecological awareness, ‘Penda’s Fen’ is a unique and important statement."

And it's your Wednesday Play - enjoy!

Further reading: Sparks in Electric Jelly

In the UK: Saturday, 6.15pm, 4th May 2013, BBC1/BBC1 HD. Available on the iPlayer
In the US: Saturday, 8pm/7c, 4th May 2013, BBC America

Not worth a full review, more a mini-review this, I think, since despite the presence of Diana Rigg (and daughter) in the cast, a reference to Tegan and a nice joke about Tom Tom (the sat nav, not the fourth Doctor), this was a pretty meh episode. It started off well enough, going for northern comedy and Victoriana, which are writer Mark Gatiss's real strengths. Rigg was good, everyone was acting fine, and despite being Doctor-and-Clara-lite, it was engrossing, right down to Murray Gold's Sherlock-riffs in the soundtrack.

But then it just sort of carried on, progressively becoming thinner, more predictable and less interesting as it tried to deport itself not as merely a comedy, but as a proper Doctor Who story, complete with evil, incredibly shit-looking beastie (we're talking Invisible Enemy shit, here). Not even an Avengers joke, more references to Clara's significance and a certain Sontaran getting to shoot people for a change could lift it from the "When's this going to end, again?" Which is a shame, because as a comedy, it would have been a really good episode, I reckon.

Oh well, it's Neil Gaiman doing Cybermen next week, albeit with the addition of a couple of kids to the companion line-up. Fingers crossed, it should be better.

In the UK: Saturday, 6.15pm, 27th April 2013, BBC1/BBC1 HD. Available on the iPlayer
In the US: Saturday, 8pm/7c, 27th April 2013, BBC America

Ever since the TARDIS showed up and proved itself to be bigger on the inside than on the outside, there have been several burning questions in the minds of viewers: how much bigger? What's in there? And will the BBC budget ever stretch to allowing us to find out?

Over the years, we've had references to the many rooms within the TARDIS, as well as stories that have given us brief glimpses of the infinite interior, including Edge of Destruction…

…Castrovalva…

…the TV movie…

…The Doctor's Wife and, of course, The Invasion of Time:

But these glimpses have been very few and far between, usually quite brief, and either subordinate to the rest of the plot or mind-numbingly dull (Castrovalva). What we've been waiting for is a proper adventure set in the TARDIS that combines everything we've learnt about it but goes on to show off as much as possible of the interior, while giving us new and exciting additions, all while avoiding the Castrovalva "Maths is Fun!" syndrome.

Did Journey to the Centre of the TARDIS give us that? Well, let's discuss it all after this lovely trailer and the jump.

First, the usual recommendations:

• The Americans (FX/ITV)
• Arrow (The CW/Sky 1)
• Being Human (US) (SyFy)
• Continuum (Showcase/SyFy)
• The Daily Show (Comedy Central)
• Doctor Who (BBC1/BBC America)
• Elementary (CBS/Sky Living)
• Endeavour (ITV1)
• Go On (NBC)
• Hannibal (NBC/Sky Living)
• Modern Family (ABC/Sky 1)
• Vegas (CBS/Sky Atlantic)

These are all going to be on in either the UK or the US, perhaps even both, but I can't be sure which.

Still in the viewing queue: Netflix's Hemlock Grove, which still doesn't look appealing; BBC2's The Politician's Husband; and Sundance's 'difficult' Rectify.

Now, some thoughts on some of the regulars and some of the shows I'm still trying

• The Americans (FX/ITV): The first good episode not written by Joe Weisberg, although the parallels between 'the oaths' were crude. But the end twist shows how quickly things can turn round in this spying game.
• Arrow (The CW/Sky 1): Feels like it's going round in circles, covering old storylines it's already covered. The stunts are still good though.
• Bates Motel (A&E/Universal): I'm not actually watching this, merely reading updates on episode guides. Turns out that there are some interesting twists to it, but those twists are more interesting to read about than to watch.
• Continuum (Showcase/SyFy): A pleasing series of double-bluffs. Just as you think you can see where the episode us going, it goes in a completely different direction. Not quite the slam dunk of the first episode - you'd have thought with it being the most popular drama in Canada, Shaw might sink some cash into the show - but full of good moments.
• Defiance (SyFy): Precisely as conventional as you'd have expected the second episode to be, focusing more on the cultures of the aliens than on giving the aliens interesting personalities. Also horrifically patriarchal as before, with even the 'strong' women and female aliens deferring to the men or needing the support of men for their decisions.
• Elementary (CBS/Sky Living): Notable mainly for the arrival of master blackmailer Charles Augustus Milverton from the Holmes stories, rather than any aspects of the plot itself.
• Endeavour (ITV1): Much better than the previous episode, although I had for a moment hoped it was going to be a prequel to my favourite Inspector Morse episode, Masonic Mysteries. However, it was pretty obvious what was going on and the denouement was glacially slow and silly.
• Hannibal (NBC/Sky Living): Despite episode four having been dropped and then cut down into US-only webisodes, episode five carries on pretty well from previous episodes, but feels like a cross between Millennium and Touching Evil. Actually quite moving in the scenes between Jack Crawford and his wife, it's an excellent show that's definitively worth watching.
• Plebs (ITV2): A good way to end the series. Here's hoping for more!
• Vegas (CBS/Sky Atlantic): Quite liking the additional of Mia's mother to the story and Carrie-Anne Moss is finally getting some good things to do. But the rest of the plot feels like it's treading water, and Dennis Quaid has stopped putting the effort in. On the other hand, it did treat the domestic abuse storyline with tact and sensitivity, despite the era in which the show is set.

"What did you watch this week?" is your chance to recommend to friends and fellow blog readers the TV and films that they might be missing or should avoid - and for me to do mini-reviews of everything I've watched. Since we live in the fabulous world of Internet catch-up services like the iPlayer and Hulu, why not tell your fellow readers what you've seen so they can see the good stuff they might have missed?