Watching Jericho, I wondered why Skeet Ulrich looks vaguely familiar; nothing in his previous credits rings a bell. Eventually I decided that his mouth sometimes looks like Johnny Depp‘s. That’s what I notice most about faces; how about you?

Fritz Lang’s Das Testament des Dr. Mabuse (1933) is one of the best early movies I’ve seen, considerably advanced in technique over his own previous picture, M (1931).

I tried to remember the title theme of Dexter and all I could summon was that of The Odd Couple. Hmm.

Bela Lugosi was more interesting in a supporting role in The Black Camel (Warner Oland’s second Charlie Chan picture) than in Dracula, made the same year.

Also recently watched: the first disc of season 10 of South Park. The first episode (“The Return of Chef!”) has its moments but the next three (“Smug Alert!” and two-part “Cartoon Wars”) are heavy-handed, mostly unfunny and (of course) coarse. Are earlier seasons any better?

Don’t tell anyone, but I’ve been enjoying the banter of Gilmore Girls.

The Marx Brothers’ first few movies disappoint me. I wonder whether later ones have more plot.

As for more recent movies, we went to see Death at a Funeral, a stinker. My companion remarked that English comedies of this sort rely on straining a convention of civility at all costs, and American directors don’t know how to milk it. Also it shares a scriptwriter with last year’s Caffeine, which she described as disappointing.

I’m watching Dexter. In a flashback, teen Dexter says, “Jesus, Dad, it’s called being on time, did you ever hear of it?”

The actors playing Dexter in the present and in the past were born in 1971 and 1987, so let’s assume the flashback is about 1990, 16 years before the episode was made. Was the sarcastic “it’s called” construction already current then?

“Tooth and Claw”, a recent episode of Doctor Who, features the Koh-i-Noor, a famous diamond: but the shape is wrong, a classic Brilliant cut. The writer missed an opportunity to say that it has its present irregular shape because part of it was vaporised by the events of the episode!

The last episode of series 3 of A Bit of Fry and Laurie had a courtroom skit in which one could be forgiven for thinking the judge represented the present occupant of the White House, as the actor in that role (a Canadian) resembled him physically and mangled words in a way widely parodied — but it was first shown in February 1992, before whatsisname sought the gubernatariat of Texas.