Blackpool is a strange 6 (8) part series. The distinguishing feature of this production is that it’s a musical. Sort of. It’s also a procedural. Sort of. The characters occasionally break into song but it’s not really them singing even though they do. Confusing, eh?

The first thing your Tennant-Who fan needs to track down is Casanova: written by RTD, produced by Gardner, scored by Gold (much of the crew behind the first four seasons of nuWho) and featuring Tennant as the young Casanova. The story is framed by an old Casanova played by Peter O’Toole reminiscing about his youthful exploits. The biggest problem here is that O’Toole and Tennant look nothing alike. Their accents are completely different and they don’t even bother faking a shared mannerism or two despite playing the same character at different ages. Similarly, the last actor to play Casanova’s son has a harelip that none of the other kids did. That aside, Tennant’s Casanova is mischievous, opportunistic, cheerful, roguish, sexy, clever, mostly good hearted guy if slightly careless and strangely naive.

I had long heard good things about Torchwood and since it was playing on a cable channel I had already paid for I set up the PVR to record it. Also, I had seen the Tennant/Barrowman kissing at Comic-Con clip on YouTube which was intriguing. But, because I’m that kind of person, knowing that Captain Jack got started on Doctor Who made it difficult to just dive into Torchwood. Then because I’m a Merlin fan I had tracked down Midnight.

Merlin was all done on the 19th (December 2009) or so, so… Nothing to do but download the entire modern Doctor Who seasons 1-4 and as many specials as were available at the time (End of Time was just about to air).

So, we just got an environmental upgrade to the windows in our house. Replacing 60 year old single pane windows with high tech double pane. I watched the workers removing the old windows. They would score the windows with glass cutters and then tap, tap, tap

I love retold fairy tales. They’re like my literary equivalent of comfort food. Of course, the story of Hua Mulan is not a fairy tale (there are no fairies or other supernatural elements) but a folk tale. Still for the purposes of this discussion we’ll lump folk tales along with fairy tales, legends and myths.

Every girl, not just those of Chinese heritage, should love Hua Mulan. She’s the ultimate girl power figure, saving not only her family but the whole country, by being brave, skilled and simply better than any boy. To share the story with my anglophone kids, I need an English source (I get by with Mandarin movies, but alas I read Chinese slowly and painfully with a dictionary in my hand).