The More Obscure The Better

Afternoon telly has never been so good. I've even started to not worry about missing The Chase. Why? Because Pointless is back on. For the last few weeks the show that everyone loves to play along with at home has had me loving playing along at home. Part of the reason I love it so much is because I'm good at it.

If you've never seen it - if you have a job, in other words - then I'll break it down for you here. The game works like this: 100 people are asked a question - name as many Eurovision Song Contest Host Countries as you can, or something - and their answers are logged. Then, the studio contestants have to give their own answers with an aim to offering the LEAST popular answer given. However many people, from the 100 asked, gave the same answer as the contestant, that's the number of "points" they get - high scoring answers are bad - you're aiming for a "Pointless Answer" - an answer that nobody from the 100 gave.

It's a sort of reverse Family Fortunes. Only much, much better. Hosted by Alexander Armstrong and overseen by brainy know-all Richard Osman - both hilarious - this show is a now, for me, simply unmissable. Because it's such an easy game to "play along with" it works well as a social pastime - how sad, haha! If you've never seen it, watch it next week! BBC Two, 4:30pm. You won't regret it!

Christopher And His Kind

Matt Smith, best known as the Eleventh Doctor is a bloody fine little actor! I think a lot of people forget this, writing him off an "a relatively unknown actor" - which, to most people, I suppose he is. 

But if you know your telly, if you know what to look out for, he's a valued and talented actor. And once again, in the BBC adaptation of Christopher Isherwood's memoir, 'Christopher and his Kind' Smith shines once more. Chronicling Isherwood's time in Berlin, as a gay man in the years leading up to the war, this drama - at just an hour and a half - is one of the best things to have landed on our screens in a long while. 

Once more, the BBC proves it puts out the best drama with the best actors. There isn't a bad cast member in this programme. A credit list of almost unknown faces, instantly recognisable by the strength of their performances in this and other shows. Oh, and Lindsay Duncan. She's in it too, also brilliant.

It's quite a leap from what we usually see Smith doing - but since we usually see him running through time and space fighting monsters and aliens, that's hardly surprising. This is an intelligent, adult, heartbreaking tale - and true. Well worth an hour and a half of anyone's life. I'd urge you to read the book first though. :)

Twenty Twelve (BBC Four)

Take a pinch of The Office, some Green Wing staff, a teaspoonful of The Thick Of It, the hot frumpy one off Spaced and the voice of one Ex-Doctor and what do you get? That's right - new BBC Four comedy "Twenty Twelve", a mockumentary series following the fictional goings on in the offices of those responsible for making sure the 2012 Olympic Games go to plan - "with hilarious consequences".

Starring some of the best comedy actors in Britain, including Hugh Bonneville (Downton Abbey), Olivia Coleman (Peep Show), Karl Theobald (Green Wing), Jessica Hynes (Spaced), Vincent Franklin (The Thick Of It) and Amelia Bullmore (I'm Alan Partridge) - and with a tongue in cheek voice over from Tenth Doctor David Tennant - Twenty Twelve almost shines as brightly as all of the shows whose cast it seems to have stolen. Almost. But not quite.

Monday's first episode, of six, began rather cautiously. Some of the jokes were signposted so clearly that the laughs just couldn't be tickled out of me, while other laughs came from things I thought should have happened as the episode went on, but didn't. It's something I will definitely stick with - if nothing else, it's another three hours of Theobald and Coleman! That's never something a proud comedy fan should ever turn down.

I have a feeling that, like so many things lately, this one will grow on me as the series progresses. By week five I shall no doubt be singing its praises to all who find themselves unlucky enough to encounter me. But we'll see. It's worth a look. BBC Four, Mondays at 10.30pm, or catch up on iPlayer. Go on! You know you want to!

Paul (Contains Mild Spoilers)

Part sci fi, part comedy caper, part old-fashioned American road-trip buddy movie - Paul has something for everyone! Before I go into it in detail (or whatever) I want to highlight a few coincidental similarities between this movie and the game I've been playing all week, Destroy All Humans: There's the wise-cracking alien, the thought-implants, the female villain overseeing events - all of which have been staples of a decent alien movie for years. The fact that these similarities stood out to me may be because I've over-saturated myself with alien stuff recently. 

But anyway, on to the movie itself!Paul follows two British nerds, Graeme and Clive, as they trek across the most famous UFO hotspots in the States while visiting Comic-Con. 

Just outside Area 51 they encounter foul-mouthed alien slacker Paul. Paul has escaped from military custody and just wants to go home. As they set out on a road trip like no other the trio face threats from Men In Black, state police and gun-toting Christians. It's an hour and a half of pure cheeky laughs and some very tender moments, along with lashings of sci fi nerd in-jokes - some blatant, some so niche that you'd be forgiven for not noticing them at all! 

It's a great little movie which satisfies to the last minute. Pegg and Frost are on top form, both as actors and as writers. There's a pretty smart supporting cast, especially Jason Bateman's MIB Agent Zoil (look out for a joke about his name that went over the heads of many).

But the stand-out performance in the film is the title character himself. Paul, voiced by Seth Rogen, is wonderful. He's rude, disgusting, sweary - a perfect interpretation of what an alien being might be like having spent sixty years socialising with American soldiers.

What makes this movie so charming is how it manages to throw away the obvious joke in favour of some little reference to an oft-little-known sci fi movie from yesteryear. It's laugh-out-loud funny on the surface, with all the best lines coming from our hero, but filled to the brim with plenty to keep the nerds happy too. And it's just short enough not to begin dragging on.

More than any of the other movies penned by Pegg and Frost, Paul is the most "America-friendly" (hardly surprisingly), yet still manages to feel British to its bones. Think Men In Black meets Dumb And Dumber with swearing and you're almost there. A perfect date movie for a couple of comic book nerds - that's if we can ever get a date.