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Michael Portillo has more than one recent episode where he visits eastern Scotland.. It is all very interesting, especially Edinburgh. In his trip though geological regions near Dunbar, he unfortunately repeats the mistaken belief that the Bible teaches the world is only 6,000 years old. It does not, that timeline was added to the margins of the contemporaneous Bibles by a medieval clergyman (it was long known to be incorrect because when studied carefully it was shown to have made Noah and Abraham roughly contemporaries which they were obviously not). The Bible suggests the earth and universe are much, much older.

The Father Brown mysteries are enjoyable to watch, and the cast very likable. Of particular note is Jack Deam, who plays the grumpy but competent Inspector Mallory. Father Brown is an excellent foil for the grimacing Mallory. If the Pink Panther films are ever redone, Jack Deam would be an excellent Chief Inspector to the Inspector Clouseau character; he would be very entertaining.

The show takes the viewer around some interesting rivers, such as the Yangtze in China. It is fast moving and includes some unusual sights like a mega church in Nanjing, China. But the narrator betrays a consistent anti-western bias, and a 1960s-style ignorance of economic development. His comments implying that greed is unique to a capitalist system are remarkably ignorant. He also understands little about the countries he visits. When visiting Nanjing, the WW2 Nanjing massacre merited barely 5 seconds, though it was and is a defining event in the lives of Chinese people (but the Opium war merited a major segment, and he just labelled it as "from the West" and not some greedy politicians and monopolists In 19th century Britain). BBC needs to drop the dated 1950s and 60s style economics from their shows.

This episode on the North American West is one of the more inaccurate of this series. The point that cowboys didn't spend their time gun-fighting is a good one (much like knights and samurai didn't dual and joust all the time either -- they would have wiped one another out). Yet the vast majority of North American Indians were not killed by governments as stated in the show, but died of disease. The author of Guns, Germs and Steel estimates that over 95% died of disease during the 1700s and 1800s (Diamond, 1997). Massive government spending did not make the West either. The railroads were a minor part of the West's history, as was air conditioning. Adam shows the typical intellectual's bias toward easy-to-explain capital investment and government intervention in economic growth and development. And many of the citations provided in the show are newspaper and website citations. Economic history is a lot more complicated than a few newspaper articles and anti-growth biases make it seem.

I was always surprised this film did so well at the box office. If you are a baseball fan it is almost unwatchable. I like Tom Hanks but he mostly snarls and growls in the film. Madonna is a complete anachronism and painful to watch. Most of the other women are simply irritating. Only Genna Davis is worth watching. Completely fails to capture the spirit of the wartime America. Don't waste your time with this turkey of a film.

I by Day, You by Night (Ich bei tag und du bei nacht) is an enjoyable black and white Germany musical comedy -- fully subtitled, even the songs. It was filmed in the spring of 1932 and released in November of that year (this was the year before Hitler became Chancellor and Goebbels started exerting authority over German cinema). There are some great songs in the movie and the Director takes the audience to some nice exterior shots around old Berlin and Potsdam, a beautiful suburb of Berlin where the Sanssouci Palace and other estates of Germany's House of Hohenzollern are located. The film also seemed to have some subtle pokes at Hitler, as there is a character in the film called "Wolf" who is a sort of a hanger on, sponging off of the wealthy executive's daughter in the film (Wolf was Hitler's nickname that some old friends and comrades called him). But the film is not overtly political, and is filmed with good humor. Much German cinema of that period, when it wasn't political (and not all of it was, even in the '30s and '40s), is enjoyable and well-acted. Fans of TCM and the old films should rediscover classic European cinema of the interwar period like this one. Käthe von Nagy is delightful and Willy Fritsch is funny as always. Longtime stage actress Elisabeth Lennartz is also very good, though underused. The Comedian Harmonists also make an appearance.

Command Decision is a superb WW2 film. It is about the plans to attack Germany's jet fighter factories in the early stage of the attempt of the US and British airforces to take the war to Germany and build air superiority over at least portions of Europe. The explanations of both theater-level and grand strategies are the finest I have ever seen in the movies (especially by the film's generals, very ably portrayed by Clark Gable, Walter Pigeon, and Brian Donlevy). The conflict between the strategic imperatives and the operational realities and are also very well examined. Even the importance of legitimacy-building with the press and the government are there. A brilliantly written and acted film and an excellent teaching tool also for both WW2 and strategy in general.