The Week in Entertainment

DVD: Judge John Deed: Exacting Justice, the pilot for what looks like a very good BBC series about a judge who's - one hesitates to use the word "maverick" nowadays, so shall we say "independent minded"?

TV: Caught up on some things I halfway expected to just chuck. Flash Forward - I was really about ready to lose interest in this, but the first ep back had Dominic Monaghan in a tour de force performance that has (perhaps temporarily) caused me to reconsider. I still get powerfully bored by Mark & Olivia, and the whole Afghanistan subplot is too incoherent as yet ... but Simon is now really interesting. V on the other hand is totally boring. I might stick around one more week to see if the secret Erika is hiding from her son is interesting, though. However, I feel the odds that it's anything at all surprising or interesting are quite slim, given the utter predictability of the rest of this show... Anna killed her mate after sex? Ooo, I totally did not see that coming. (sarcasm off...) On the other hand, The Mentalist continues to be quite entertaining, and I must say the story in TV Guide led me to believe the new boss would be (realistically) down on Jane. The show is built on a premise of (a) Jane won't change and (b) Jane can't be fired or there'd be no show, so trying to build up suspense like that just irritates me. But this approach - Jane, you're golden; Lisbon, you're at risk - this approach is intriguing.

Read: More Thorndyke - which is interesting chiefly for the period details, including the remarkably unabashed anti-Semitism. Harry Potter and the Philospher's Stone in Ukrainian.