On Sunday, May 8, the amazing David Attenborough will turn 90 years old. He is the original nature documentary filmmaker who pioneered and practically invented the genre with a multitude of programs and series spanning over sixty years of broadcasting not only in England, but all over the world. His unmistakeable voiceovers, always written by himself, gives countless documentaries something very special even if he does not appear in person while his own documentaries are always even more fascinating, showing his own boundless sense of wonder and enthusiasm.

The BBC has a modest birthday program for David Attenborough with some specially selected archival documentaries, a new hour-long interview program and a new one-off documentary. BBC2 screens Attenborough’s Passion Project on Satuday, May 7 starting at 18:30 (all times UK) with the two reruns A Blank on the Map from 1971 and The Lost Gods of Easter Island from 2000 which are both available on DVD in the collection Attenborough in Paradise and Other Personal Voyages. On Sunday, May 8, BBC1 starts with a re-run of the recent Attenborough and the Giant Dinosaur at 16:35 with the interview special Attenborough at 90 following at 19:00 GMT. The new documentary Attenborough’s Life that Glows is then shown on Monday, May 9 on BBC2 at 21:00.

On Tuesday, May 10 at 23:00, BBC4 will be showing a rerun of the 2012 Natural World Special Attenborough’s Ark and Saturday, May 14 brings a second part of Attenborough’s Passion Project on BBC2 starting at 18:30 with one episode from the Lost Worlds, Vanished Lives from 1989 and Charles Darwin and the Tree of Life from 2009.

Tuesday, May 17 has the most interesting program of them all: BBC4 will be showing the 90-minute documentary David Attenborough’s Zoo Quest in Colour starting at 21:00. Recently, it was discovered that some of the surviving 16mm footage from his early Zoo Quest series was actually filmed in colour, but only printed and broadcast in black and white – this program will showcase this discovery with Attenborough and his camera man Charles Lague remembering their first foray into documentary filmmaking in the 1950s.

This seems to be all the BBC has to offer, but wait – Aardman has made two wonderful Creature Comforts specials which are on Youtube as Lyrebird Meets Attenborough and Penguins Meet Attenborough – Happy Birthday!

It was no secret that Dreamworks had been looking for a prospective buyer recently, but this still came out of the blue: the studio was bought by Comcast for $3.8 Billion Dollars, making it a part of the NBCUniversal empire when the deal is finished at the end of this year. At first it was reported that Jeffrey Katzenberg might leave Dreamworks altogether, which is still sort of happening because Dreamworks Animation will be headed by Illumination’s Chris Meledandri, while Katzenberg will be head of Dreamworks New Media, a new branch of the company focused on streaming and television.

British television continues to surprise, and this time it’s not the BBC but ITV: the Guardian revealed that Rowan Atkinson will be taking over the iconic role of Jules Maigret in two feature-length movies. The first one, titled Maigret sets a Trap, will be aired on March 27, Easter Sunday, at 8pm GMT on ITV1. But can Atkinson, to many viewers primarily known as the bumbling Mr. Bean, pull this off? I believe so, because he is actually a terrific character actor, which you can see in Blackadder or even Johnny English, where he is much less a clown but more serious most of the time. There may be a bit of subtle comedy infused into this new incarnation of the french detective, but I’m confident that this could be Rowan Atkinson’s finest hour. Viewers expecting an Inspector Clouseau clone should probably stay clear of this adaptation, but as the Guardian article remarks, this could fill the gap that David Suchet’s retirement as Hercule Poirot, also an ITV production, has left.

More good news also comes from the BBC: Planet Earth 2 has been announced, to be aired later this year and it will again be presented by David Attenborough, who will also be honoured by an hour-long interview programme for his 90th birthday on May 8th. There is also an interesting remark in this article about Attenborough making a documentary about luminescent lifeforms called Light on Earth for BBC2 which will also air this year.

With only six episodes in the new tenth season of the X-Files, it looked like the small band of writers wanted to include one each of the more common story types of the series. The previos episode made an amusing detour into comedy, but Home Again does a complete 180 degree turn deep into drama mixed with horror – a combination that sometimes worked on previous episodes, but was not so successful this time. The somewhat frustrating second half of the new X-Files series is partly a reason why I’m so hopelessy behind with the reviews and even though all episodes have now aired everywhere, I’m still write about them because my impressions seem to deviate from the overall consensus. Is this the point where the X-Files go off the rails or is it just a one-time blunder? We’ll see…

It’s time to bring the first batch of Matt Groening’s other animated series to a finish, although Futurama Season 4 was not the end of the series by a long shot, even though it looked like it back in Summer 2003 when the ‘final’ episode was broadcast. Even after 72 episodes, the series had only produced a few bad apples and the fourth production season – which was actually partly the fourth and fifth broadcast season – was the best one yet. Futurama had evolved from a science-fiction workplace sitcom to epic storytelling with often complex plots developing an overall mythology of the series’ own universe – combined with the brilliant animation and the indespensable voice acting, this made the series into a classic far ahead of its time. Back in the early 2000s, there was no was to watch it in its original English version here in Germany except from the DVDs, which were thankfully quickly released in the UK and were absolutely indespensable – and a lot of fun because of the great extras. This review is, as usual, primarily about the series itself with a technical DVD review tacked on almost as an afterthought.

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If there’s one thing that The X-Files is not particularly famous for, it’s humour, since the series tends to keep on the suspenseful, mysterious and dramatic side. So it’s easy to forget that there have been more than a dozen episodes with light-hearted stories that often branched into outright comedy – and with only six episodes in the new mini-series, there was no way that the humouristic angle of the show could be ignored. Luckily, Chris Carter thought so as well and enlisted the help of Darin Morgan, who had written some of the more funnier early episodes of the series and came up with the brilliant Mulder and Scully meet the Were-Monster. Yes, we are behind in Europe – while the final episode has already aired in the US, we are only on the third in England and Germany unless you want to pay for the streaming offers from Amazon or iTunes, which are in sync with the American broadcasts.

The X-Files have returned with a limited six-series run and with the second episode called Founder’s Mutation they’re really back – as in business as usual in a very good way. Mulder and Scully are in the FBI again running the good old X-Files department, meaning they are called out to all the strange cases… and that means the Monster of the Week concept is back too. This could have meant a boring, paint-by-numbers affair, but instead this episode is as classic as it gets – even more so than the first one, which now feels more like an introduction. This new season of The X-Files is currently being shown on Channel 5 in England with a three-episode delay compared to the US broadcast, but the episodes are also available on Amazon and iTunes everywhere following the American schedule – although I’m sticking with the UK TV broadcast, so the reviews are a bit delayed as well.

It’s good to have them back on the television screens – fourteen years since the last episode aired and almost eight years since their second movie, Agents Fox Mulder and Dana Scully have returned to open the X-Files once again. For a long time, creator and producer Chris Carter had been looking for a way to continue the series either with a third movie or more episodes – and at the beginning of 2015 a proper compromise was found with a six-episode mini-series, allowing the lead actors the freedom to pursue other projects and the producers to concentrate on quality and not volume. The first episode, which aired in the UK and Germany this Monday, had a lot to promise and mostly delivered the good stuff – it feels like classic X-Files from the early days of the series with all the familiar elements in place.

It’s been over a decade since the final episode was shown, but now Chris Carter’s X-Files are back with a six-part mini-series that has already begun to air in the US for the last two weeks. The first  reviews ranged from ‘meh’ to ‘utterly amazing’, but where can we actually watch it here in Europe, preferably in the original English language?

The British Channel 5 comes to the rescue. The station had already announced a while back that they had acquired the rights, but was silent about a possible airdate. Now several media outlets have confirmed that the first episode will air on Monday, February 8 at 9pm GMT on Channel 5, with an half-hour ‘making of’ called Reopening the X-Files before on 8.30pm GMT. The following parts will presumably air at the same time each week. In Germany, Pro7 is also showing the dubbed version starting on February 8 at 9:10pm CET, which is actually 50 minutes earlier than the UK premiere.

If you want to watch the highly recommended original language version, you should tune in to Channel 5, which is available on the Freesat platform receivable in many parts of Northern Europe – the only drawback is that their high-definition channel is not freely available, but you can get it at least in standard definition from the Astra satellites on 28.2°E  together with all the other UK channels.

I’m not sure if I’m going to write a review myself, but I might possibly do it – although I’ve never mentioned it much here, I actually like the X-Files a lot and it’s going to be exciting to find out if the new concept of a mini-series is going to work.

He is almost 90 years old but by no means a dinosaur himself – but now David Attenborough has made a documentary about one of the biggest dinos ever found. Attenborough and the Giant Dinosaur airs tomorrow on BBC One at 6.30pm GMT and promises to be a fascinatine one-off documentary following on the footsteps of Attenborough and the Giant Egg and his recent Great Barrier Reef three-parter.

Next week marks also the begin of a rerun of David Attenborough’s Natural Curiosities, which has never aired on the BBC before, but now can be seen on BBC Two from next week Monday to Friday from January 25 to 29 at 3.45pm GMT and the week after that again from February 1 to 5 at 4.30pm GMT. It seems that the BBC is going to show the first ten episodes from the first two seasons of the series and hopefully the remaining eleven will be shown too soon.