This week's telly

Enjoyed Gatiss' History of Horror on Monday much more than the previous week, possibly because he sees the value in Hammer films, whereas many people just seem to laugh at them. I think for me the stalk-and-slash of the 1980s films, coupled with the shift towards splatterpunk in 1980s horror fiction, is what turned a lot of people off the genre - it's certainly not my favourite aspect of horror, although the current 'misunderstood monsters only want twoo wuv' style comes extremely close, and if you gave me the choice between watching all the Friday 13th films and all the Twilight ones, I'd be in for the long haul with Mr Vorhees... Anyway, returning to the 1950s-1970s, I really loved the amount of attention Gatiss gave to Peter Cushing, and only wish there had been more time for Christopher Lee and Vincent Price. I hope someone does a documentary on Hammer's sets and costuming one day; Victoriana was out of fashion and so a lot of what you see on screen is authentic.

I had meant to watch The First Men in the Moon last night, and did manage the first half and then fell asleep. Mr Robot reckons I missed the best bits. It's not as bad as the time I went through a phase of falling asleep at the cinema, but annoying nonetheless. (The worst time was dropping off just before the end of Hitchcock's The Lodger, which I'd wanted to see for years and was the third film in a Hitchcock triple bill at the local tiny cinema, although struggling to keep awake during Terry Jones' presentation of Life of Brian was quite embarrassing as we were in the front row and he must've noticed.) Thank goodness for BBC iPlayer!