2.22 Paint It Black Paint It Black shunted Mycroft’s story a distance along the tracks and allowed us plenty of time with the always-good-value Holmes siblings. After Mycroft spent the episode clumsily blundering his way through the Pierce Norman investigation while his brother made deductions from Ficus trees and fly larvae, it was a relief to find out that the character wasn’t the lumpen buffoon Sherlock saw him as. Nor, it seems, is Mycroft quite as criminal and shady as Elementary would have had us believe....

5.3 Passenger The disappearance of Frances Porter (Lydea Perkins) seems at first to be a run-of-the-mill missing persons case; as Morse reassures her concerned husband, Noel (Edwin Thomas) and sister, Jilly (Rosalie Craig), most such incidents are resolved quickly. Mrs Porter proves elusive, however, and Morse’s visit to the rather fabulous boutique she works at – Alice’s Marmalade Cat, which is the sort of thing Granny might have seen on her famous trip – turns up no clues apart from the identity of the vanished woman’s lover, a man named Don....

1.2 So Close, Yet So Far Think about the first episode; the school is half-empty thanks to the flu going around, and everyone’s staying home. When someone stays home from a work situation, it creates more problems for the folks that have to cover for them. That creates more stress, which weakens the immune system, which leads to being susceptible to illnesses like, you guessed it, this mystery illness that’s debilitating Los Angeles....

Back to the list, though. Which of these would any hi-def enthusiast want or need to see in 1080p? We’re all for having a broad catalogue of films out there, but surely the weighting of HD delights to HD fillers is way, way off right now. After all, it takes a real enthusiast to have sat through the format wars, invested in the technology and paid a premium for the discs....

When Professor Stoddart was bumped off way back at the beginning of this series, it seemed a fairly transparent ploy. In a cast list of recognisable names and faces, Christopher Eccleston still stood out as one of the leading performers, as well known for the high profile of his roles as for the intensity of his characterisations. Killing him off so soon suggested that his sole purpose here was to shock and to underline the point that while no one can die in Fortitude the town, in Fortitude the series no one is truly safe....

Hi Lisa, could you tell us in as long and detailed a way as possible who you are and what you do? In case you don’t know, the price of the average festival show in Edinburgh has been going up and up and up. It got to the point where you were paying £9 or £10 to see people that are really good and putting on great work, but you don’t know who they are....

After watching Over There (Part 1), I was left with an almost overwhelming sense of both awe at the quality of the writing in this show and more than mild frustration that they didn’t show part 2 immediately afterwards. As is hinted at in the title, we’ve reached the point in proceedings where many of the plot points from the first two seasons must converge, and their intersection point is in the alternate dimension....

5.2 In Absentia Returning to Walter’s Harvard lab, the team discover the partly amber-encased remains of his work, and in the process develop a deeper understanding of how mankind has split into those who oppose the Observers and those who choose instead to comply with them. The inspiration for this, I’d suggest, was what happened in France after the German occupation in WWII, and some of that nation formed the resistance and others collaborated against their own countrymen....

If we missed any of your favourites, please have a ho-ho-ho in the comments section, with our thanks and best wishes for a happy holiday. Terry Pratchett’s Hogfather Part 1 4:00pm Sky1 (repeats through 1st Jan) 24 series 8 6:00am Sky 2 (marathon consecutive run of the series’ episodes) Christmas Eve Friday December 24th Terry Pratchett’s Hogfather Part 2 4:00pm Sky1 (repeats through 1st Jan)Wallace and Gromit: A Grand Day Out 4:50pm Gold (and 1:15pm 28th Dec BBC1)Wallace and Gromit: The Wrong Trousers 5:25pm Gold (and 1:40pm 30th Dec BBC1)Wallace and Gromit: A Close Shave 6:05pm Gold (and 1:05pm 29th Dec BBC1)Peep Show And Tell 9:00pm Channel 4 (repeats 11:05pm 25th Dec) Christmas Day Saturday December 25th Terry Pratchett’s The Colour Of Magic 2:00pm Sky 1 (followed by part 2 at 4:00pm, then repeats through 1st Jan) The Gruffalo 4:40pm BBC1 (repeats 10:10pm 29th Dec BBC3) The One Ronnie 5:10pm BBC1 Doctor Who: A Christmas Carol 6:00pm BBC1 (repeats 7:00pm 26th Dec BBC3) See our spoiler-free review here....

But that doesn’t mean I don’t spend a disproportionate amount of my time trying to feel like I belong to something. Don’t we all? To get a sense of the importance of belonging, you’ve only got to glance at geek culture. As geeks, we all loosely fit the stereotype of not really belonging in mainstream culture (even though you could argue that much of mainstream culture these days is dominated by geeks), so we cling to smaller subcultures instead....

This week, we’re looking at passing snap judgements on people. Don’t worry if this one’s not your bag. There’s lots of Star Wars articles on the site and stuff! A friend of mine told me a story last week. They were watching a performance, and come the end, the audience erupted with applause. She didn’t. She sat there, not clapping. She’d loved what she’s seen, and she’d found the show quite wonderful, but she still didn’t clap....

Behind the scenes of two relatively big US websites – their names aren’t hard to find, but this piece isn’t directly about them – have come horrible stories of what at best could be called sexual harassment, and at worst outright sexual assault. That two men, working on two different sites, have abused their positions. They both held – and hopefully the past tense applies – a power in their respective communities that meant the women – the victims – were either afraid to speak out, or not listened to....

That’s not how Get On Up opens, but it’s close enough to the first line from 2007’s Walk Hard: The Dewey Cox Story, a woefully under-appreciated comedy that should really be required viewing as a “What Not To Do” guide for anyone attempting a biopic of a musician. Alas, this film about Godfather of Soul James Brown walks into every cliché lampooned in the Apatow spoof one by one, although not necessarily in the right order....

Three episodes. Three episodes is usually where my grace period for a new TV show ends. By the end of that third episode, you’re done “finding your feet” and you are now a full-blown TV show, not a glorified mini-series, and your faults are your own. Well, “Arkham” is the fourth episode of Gotham, and things don’t look bright for the future if this is anything to go on. “Arkham” picks up right where last week’s episode, “The Balloonman” left off....

2.18: Pinewood Holy chipolatas for breakfast, Batman! Now that Jim Gordon has cleared his name with impressive speed, he’s decided to press ahead with his Wayne murders investigation. And with Thomas Wayne’s old computer finally waking up, Bruce Wayne, Alfred and Lucius Fox are helping out as well. Of all of the Gotham episodes we’ve seen so far, this is probably the one that has felt most like a Batman story....

This week, Gotham features the conclusion of the gang war between Sofia Falcone and Oswald Cobblepot. Early on, it looks like Penguin holds all the cards as Cobblepot calls in Carmine Falcone back to Gotham to rein in his daughter dearest. You see, Carmine does not want to see dear Sofia fall down the same rabbit hole of a lifetime of murder, violence, and corruption that he plunged down for thirty five years as Gotham City’s father of the mob....

4.21 Headache We thought last week’s episode was a little darker than usual for our favourite fairytale-based detectives, but this episode is includes mass murder, demonic possession and a Se7en-style beheading that no-one saw coming. Headache is the first episode directed by co-showrunner Jim Kouf, which may help to explain the faster pace and blood lust. Well they weren’t going to kill off fan-favourite Monroe, right? While that’s almost certainly true, this episode might lead you to feel a little less comfortable with such assumptions....

In Halloween II, Zombie basically picks up where he left off in the first one. Instead of probing Myers’ mind as a child, and what drove him to kill, the movie probes Myers’ mind in the present, as he hacks and slashes his way through the fornicating teenagers of Haddonfield, Illinois, once more. Of course, the movie doesn’t explain how Michael Myers comes back to life, but it does explain why he comes after his dear sister Laurie Strode (Scout Taylor-Compton)....

In her scathing series one finale speech about the knock-on effects of the valley being flooded with drugs by the top level of the dealing food-chain, Catherine told the Gallaghers, “It never stops. It just never stops”. You can understand her fatalism after this week’s episode. Too right it never stops. It gets worse and worse. And yet it doesn’t. Not because fictional suffering is supposed to make us feel relatively better about our own problems (does it ever?...

This was the most highly anticipated book release of the year, and rightly so. Harry Potter is a worldwide phenomenon, and the books and films have earned some serious cash. To recap: poor Dumbledore has been murdered by Snape, leaving Harry with a monstrous task – he must destroy the remaining Horcruxes (parts of Voldemort’s soul hidden in objects to make him immortal) and only then would he be able to kill the Dark Lord once and for all....