State of the Blog: catching up, Sherlock, currently watching, Outrageous comment, guest writers

Things are beginning to get back to normal now. I just have one episode of Persons Unknown and two episodes of Spartacus to watch and review, then I'll be caught up with everything I missed while overseas. Phew! It pays to take your holidays when the majority of TV shows are off-air!

To confirm the obvious; I'll definitely be watching and reviewing Sherlock when it starts on Sunday 25 July (BBC1, 9pm), so that'll be quite a major show I'll be following this summer. I hope it's as good as the Mark Gatiss/Steven Moffat partnership would have me expect.

I've still got a few episodes of The Good Wife to watch before embarking on my encapsulating review of the season, and I'm slowly making my way through the Firefly box-set, having just watched "Shindig". Not sure when I'll have that series done and dusted. September? October, at the latest? And I'm still way behind with Justified; just watching the occasional episode whenever I get an hour. It's one of those shows I don't feel any burning desire to watch, but enjoy more than I expect to whenever I get stuck into it.

I watched the third episode of Futurama's sixth season at the weekend (the woeful "Attack Of The Killer App") and that sapped my desire to continue watching at the US-pace. I'll perhaps continue watching when Sky get around to showing it here in the UK.

Oh, I'll also be reviewing the DVD box-set of Breaking Bad's second season in the near-future -- primarily the special features, seeing as I've already done episodic reviews of that series. Similar to how my Misfits and Glee DVD reviews worked.

Awhile back my double-review comparing New Zealand's Outrageous Fortune pilot and the pilot of its US remake Scoundrels attracted the attention of OF's co-creator James Griffin, which was a remarkable and unexpected turn of events! Anyway, it led to a brief but enlightening exchange of thoughts about the original show's tone and intentions, which might be of interest to fans of OF. It's not everyday the brains behind a TV show leaves a comment here, so that was a wonderful surprise.

Also, a big thanks to Chris Howard for his reviews of Desperate Housewives over the past six months or so. He responded to my call for guest reviewers and put in a lot of work writing reviews every week, which attracted a fair amount of page-hits but hardly set the blog alight with comments. It didn't help that the episodes had already been seen in the US many weeks beforehand, and obviously Housewives isn't a show that attracts a huge vocal following these days. If it ever did. I was happy that more comments started to be left towards the end of the 23-episode run, as Chris's efforts deserved the appreciation and feedback. I'm confident that a lot of people were reading and enjoying his opinions, even if they never actually got involved with a response.

I'm not sure I'll be asking for more guest reviewers in the future, owing to the limited response to the two shows that were covered that way this year (Skins and Desperate Housewives), but hopefully you appreciated the trial while it lasted.

Beyond all that, there's obviously a limited number of shows being reviewed at DMD just now because of the summer. This enables me to tackle a wider variety of shows in a one-off capacity (see: Mongrels, Lee Nelson, etc), so expect more random reviews in the weeks to come.

I've been trying to download the '90s series Profit for a few months, but there aren't many seeders out there. Strangely, that all changed yesterday and I snaffled the first two episodes quick-smart. Hopefully I'll get the entire series downloaded at a decent rate now, before taking a look back at that short-lived but influential show starring Adrian Pasdar.

Finally, if you have a great idea for something to fill a gap here, let me know! A review suggestion? Idea for a game/quiz/feature? Don't keep it to yourself. I'm all ears.