Far be it from me to second-guess the opinion of somebody more notable than myself and employ that opinion for my own purposes, but if I was Ed Brubaker I don’t think I’d be overly impressed with the last few issues of ‘Catwoman’.

Paul Levitz is a smart writer of comic books and, on this form, he’s been away from that game for far, far too long…

It’s ‘One Year Later’ in Gotham, and everything new is old again…

If ‘Snuff Box’, the brilliant new semi-narrative sketch show from Matt Berry and Rich Fulcher, had a high concept it would be something along the lines of ‘What if The Persuaders were a pair of depraved hangmen?’

‘Shaft 2000′ director John Singleton returned to his spiritual home, the reasonably affluent, largely African-American neighbourhoods of Southern California for this thematic sequel to his seminal ‘Boyz N The Hood’.

‘Abschied Aus Buckow’ is about the last days of the life of Bertolt Brecht.

Between them these two CDs release into the wild the last episodes of twentieth century ‘Doctor Who’ never made available to the general public in a mass market edition.

‘The Beginning’ is a handy box set which contains the first thirteen episodes of ‘Doctor Who’ plus two separate versions of the series unbroadcast (indeed judged ‘unboradcastable’) pilot episode and assorted extras.

Alan Moore did what almost no British comic creator had done before, and what almost every British comic creator would do from that point, and started working for American comics companies.

It’s strange but encouraging that the script which was intended to be an ‘X-Files’ episode has grown into a beast of a brand successful enough to give Jason and Freddy a run for their money…

When the ‘Justice League’ cartoon started a few years ago, it was a good show, but not a great one…

‘Batman Year 100’ and ‘Supermarket’ take us back to the (near) future, and make it cool again…

Weapons Grade Cheese. Do Not Handle Without Proper Protection…

Clearly taking a leaf out of the BBC’s design bible, each ITV channel is now colour coded instead of the school uniform ugly bright blue and yellow of old…

For a project constructed of little else than pure high concept, ‘24’ has enjoyed a long lifespan…

Hollywood’s remake machine spews out another ‘re-imagining’ of a landmark horror tale, this time John Carpenter’s seminal ghost story, surely one of the creepiest films in existence. So why bother?

With the spread of broadband internet access, music and video piracy boomed.

A comic that’s authentically best of British.

(Printed in Canada.)

A true story, swear to God…

It’s a peculiar state of affairs when the most noteworthy thing about a new Channel 4 comedy is considered to be that it takes place largely on one set and is performed in front of a studio audience…

Okay, it’s ‘nail your colours to the mast by typing out your stupid theory’ time.

An admittedly slightly belated entry into our series rounding-up the state of British TV in 2005…

There’s something about ITV’s talent/reality/celebrity shows which always smells faintly of desperation. In the case of ‘Dancing on Ice’, it is ITV’s desperation to catch the early Saturday evening audience’s loyalty before ‘Doctor Who’ returns…

New ‘Hellblazer’ writer Denise Mina has an unenviable task in following the very popular Mike Carey…

This tagline is about as long as the actual review…

There are some things about ‘Hyperdrive’ that are rather objectionable…

Time-travel is the new reality TV…

Even by BBC4 standards, Andrew Graham-Dixon’s ‘I, Samurai’ is self indulgent…

ITV is making a bold step into the new year by changing its idents…

Can a Kevin Sorbo clone with bright green hair really carry his own Marvel comic? The answer may shock you, true believers…

The icing on the cake of frustratingly watered-down teen-horror productions from our buddies across the pond. One must assume there is a boardroom of execs somewhere who genuinely believe these movies to be pleasing people…

The beginning of a new series of ‘Just A Minute’ is always a cause for small celebrations.

Yes, we should have reviewed this earlier but frankly who has their best critical faculties working on Christmas Day?

I miss, I’ll confess, the pseudo art deco title sequence which accompanied the one hour episodes (especially the bit with the train).

Our series on how 2005 went for the major players in British terrestrial TV continues with an overview of ITV’s 50th year…

As 2006 begins, now is the last chance we’ll have to round-up all those things that Shiny Shelf should have reviewed in 2005 but, due to the constraints of time and competence, didn’t get around to. ..