Bewitched, Bothered, Bewildered

I can’t remember much of Dougie Howser M.D. beyond the fact that I used to watch it regularly and that even my mother remembers it. However I do remember enjoying it immensely, then being rather surprised when Neil Patrick Harris (whose name I didn’t know back then) popped up on Starship Troopers years after Dougie Howser had finished.

Then he reappeared as Barnie and I saw that he was awesome. It seems everyone else has seen the light too, as recently we had him being cast as Dr. Horrible, an excellent short musical in three acts that was absolutely hilarious before hitting you with the kind of unexpected ending I should have expected from Joss Whedon.
Since then he’s also turned up on Sesame Street doing an excellent skit as a shoe fairy and quite frankly showing up Sesame Street’s regular talent with far superior dancing and acting.

Now…an old spice advert! You think that’s an unimpressive addition to the list?

Watch it, you won’t regret it.

Saturday saw one of the most ambitious Doctor Who episodes since the anniversary Five Doctors special all those decades ago and what a stunning episode The Stolen Earth turned out to be!

I’ll be honest, there were flaws in the episode which I will come to in the spoilery segment and yet I’m still going to do that one thing that many people hate about me…I will say that this has well and truly lodged itself into my list of favourite episodes, despite it’s flaws. I know, I’m illogical but there’s the truth.

So without further ado…
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Around seventeen years ago I remember watching a Children’s BBC show called ‘Dark Season‘ which revolved around the investigation of a young schoolgirl’s into her school’s strange benefactor. Bleached blonde and mysterious, the man who I now know is called Mr Eldritch turns up one day and begins to distribute computers to all of the pupils, apparently out of the goodness of his heart.

It was a short two series show, each series comprising only three episodes yet I still remember it quite well. It seems my subconscious does as well, as I just discovered after all these years that the show was written by Russell T. Davies and starred a very young Kate Winslet.

It really is a small world.

In the second half of Steven Moffat’s two parter we finally got a full on tour de force of the kind of psychological horror he’s famous for but which was sadly lacking in last week’s episode. I have to say this episode left me feeling disturbed in ways that his previous stories haven’t and this time I loved every minute of it.

So here we go again, spoilers beyond the cut.
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