You're a beautiful woman probably...

With the announcement that the new Doctor Who is definitely to start this Easter, I thought it was time to express my hope that Steven Moffat will give us a better programme than Russell T Davies did. Don't get me wrong - I am grateful to RTD for reviving the programme after a long hiatus, and letting us see brilliant stories like The empty child/The Doctor dances, Human nature/The family of blood, Blink and Silence in the library/Forest of the dead. It's no coincidence that none of these were written by RTD - he just isn't a very good writer and, with his light entertainment propensities threatening to kill the show in the same way as the appalling 80s version, his departure in January was long overdue. The "Christmas Specials" in particular seemed to be pandering shamelessly to the lowest common denominator. Do we really need to have it hammered home that it's Christmas with references to the season or snow every few minutes? In The runaway bride we ha...

We went to see the new film A single man at the Tyneside Cinema today. Based on a book by Christopher Isherwood and directed by fashion designer Tom Ford, it's a melancholy story set in 1962 about a middle-aged gay man about to take his own life after the death of his partner in an accident. The story follows him through the day when he has planned to kill himself. Having heard of Isherwood in connection with the brilliant film Cabaret , I remember browsing the book in a bookshop many years ago but deciding that it was too depressing for my taste. Although the film was sometimes self-consciously "arty", it was beautifully shot, impeccably acted and emotionally quite affecting. The very well-chosen cast including Colin Firth, Julianne Moore and Nicholas Hoult ironically has a Brit playing an American and an American playing a Brit, although you wouldn't know this from the accents. The novel may well have been of only marginal interest to my younger self. I seem to r...

I've recently been re-watching the stunning TV series Rome on DVD and was sad to remember that, after two seasons, it was considered too expensive to keep going. Visually it's absolutely magnificent - there aren't many TV programmes that can transport the viewer so completely into a different time and place. The beautiful interiors of some of the villas take the visual side of the story a big step beyond earlier depictions like the otherwise excellent I, Claudius. I have both seasons of Rome , but not on HD discs. Such is the quality of the lighting and the DVD transfers that, on my Sony S-350 Blu-ray player and 40W5500 TV, it's hard to tell the difference between the upscaled DVD image and a Blu-ray. Performances are generally excellent, particularly Kenneth Cranham as Pompey, David Bamber as Cicero, Polly Walker as Atia and Lindsay Duncan as Servilia. For me, this portrayal of Rome works much better than, say, the film Gladiator because it isn't so "po-fa...