A History of Horror with Mark Gatiss (BBC4)

The second part focusses almost completely on Hammer and was much better than the first. The story of Hammer is far more interesting and expansive than the story of Bela Lugosi and Boris Karloff for a start. Then there was the excellent section in the middle where we learn about Hammer's influence on Italian horror and Roger Corman, which made me want to watch the Edgar Allan Poe Vincent Price movies.

Gatiss loses most of the creepy paedo when talking about Hammer, although it does creep back in the middle section. My main problem is the style everything is presented. Shots of Gatiss walking around looking thoughtful while we listen to a voice over comes across almost pompous. There's even a protracted shot of Gatiss pouring a cup of tea that holds a good 10 seconds longer than makes any logical sense. It just irks me. I'd rather see footage relevant to the voice over.

A History of Horror with Mark Gatiss (BBC4)

The former star of League of Gentlemen and now novelist and writer on Dr Who and Sherlock brings us a documentary series about Horror movies. This first part looked at the first golden age of Hollywood horror, from the 1920's to the 1950's.

Gatiss openly admits that this series will be about very personal horror movies and he is clearly passionate with the films he discusses, but everything is somehow very dry. You expect such a creative, funny writer to bring some fun to the script, but he doesn't. Instead he delivers information in an overly theatrical way which, I assume, was intended to bring the fun to it, but he came across more like a paedophile museum guide for a school trip. Creepy.

I worried early on that this was just going to be another documentary about the same old films as the first 15 minutes mainly cover Dracula and Frankenstein, but things get more interesting after that with sections on James Whale, Freaks and RKO. By using Darcula and Frankenstein the episode does has an arc as Lugosi and Karloff stories litter the hour and finish it off.

Despite the dry yet perverse delivery this was a pretty interesting hour and I learnt quite a bit; the middle 30 being particularly good. The second episode looks like it's going to cover Hammer although I hope it covers more. And I hope there's more John Carpenter, I want to listen to him talk about Horror, not the (now) 100 year old woman who was in Dracula.

Panorama : The Secrets of Scientology (BBC1)

In this documentary, the follow up to 2007's Scientology and Me, John Sweeney tries again to uncover more about Scientology. This time round several "traitors" who have left the "religion" talk to him about it's inner workings and to add to the credibility all still believe the teachings of Scientology, just not the organisation.

There no Scientology spokesman stalking him this time, so no explosive rants spicing this one up, but it is none the less interesting for it. While it doesn't really uncover anything new about the "religion" itself it does paint a terribly creepy picture of powerful and very paranoid organisation. The extents they go to to protect their secrets are kinda fucking evil.

While not an earth shattering expose this is still a real good watch and well worth checking out on iplayer.