More good stuff on the British television fall schedule – the first air date for Brian Cox’ new science series Human Universe has been announced by the BBC on Twitter and on the Program’s website for Tuesday October 7th at 21:00 British time on BBC2. The five-part series, which was filmed over the course of the year, will tackle the question how humanity became what it is today. Brian Cox has frequently been dropping hints about the shooting of the series on his website Apollo’s Children and on his Twitter stream like posting photos from the Soyuz landing in the snowy Kazakhstan steppe this March. Like his previous three series, Wonders of the Solar System, Wonders of the Universe and Wonders of Life (of which I wrote a full review here), this is going to be fascinating to watch and not to be missed.

[Update: A trailer has been airing in the last few days and is also available on Youtube together with a preview clip!]

Okay, fingers on buzzers everyone, I’ve just noticed that Stephen Fry’s and John Llody’s amazing television quiz show QI is returning soon! This year it’s a bit later than usual, but starting on Friday, October 3rd at 22:00 GMT / 23:00 CEST the twelfth series with the letter L is going to start broadcasting on BBC2. As in previous years, the half-hour versions will apparently be shown on Fridays and the 45-minute XL edits will follow on Sundays. Wikipedia already has a preliminary episode list and judging from the guests it should be again a lot of fun even for the 12th time.

You can read more about QI on the official website, the Facebook-Page and the Twitter-Stream. Since this spring there has also been the podcast No Such Thing as a Fish by the QI research elves which already has spawned 25 episodes and is an amazing audio companion for the series. The QI radio sister series Museum of Curiosity will also be back this fall with more episodes on Radio 4 with John Lloyd and his new co-host Phil Jupitus, but no air dates have been announced yet, so keep watching their Curiositwitty stream!

First an apology – I had plans for some new reviews, but I just don’t have the time to sit down and write at the moment, so I’ll have to postpone that a little bit. But I assure you that I have something cooking with some discs lying around which really desperately need to be written about, and I’m going to do it sooner or later. Instead, I can only urge you to wander over to DVD Savant, where Glenn Erickson is always writing up a storm with two sets of reviews each week – I don’t know how he does it! But meanwhile a quick little news update, because I really want to keep up with what’s going on: Dreamworks’ two 2014 movies are coming to home video in the very near future, but first there’s a surprising announcement about one of my favourite musicals (plus another update from Criterion!)…