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British cinema lost one of its true legends in November with the death of director Ken Russell. Regularly described as an iconoclast and the enfant terrible of the UK film industry, the Southampton-born Russell carved out a niche as one of our most pioneering and controversial filmmakers, yet one who has been mostly overlooked by the majority of DVD labels in his native country. Indeed, the only bright spot surrounding his passing is that UK studios and distributors might finally get their act together.

Regular readers of this column may find it hard to believe that I have gone green. I mean I have heard of being environmentally friendly, I am aware of carbon footprints and CO2 emissions, but I was never going to let any of that get in the way of my lifestyle. Previously, I made Jeremy Clarkson look like a tree-hugging hippie.

Spin-off shows are difficult things to get right. For every Angel that comes along there seems to be about 10 Joeys - and nobody wants any more of them. All of which means that things didn't look too promising when Seth MacFarlane announced that Cleveland Brown would be leaving Family Guy and getting his own animated series.

After success in most other genres, HBO has turned its attention on the fantasy epic with this adaptation of the first of George RR Martin’s acclaimed A Song of Ice and Fire novels. And once again the result is a televisual masterpiece that looks set to live up to its literary source material, which takes the standard fantasy tropes and uses them as the framework for a truly adult fantasy saga of depth and complexity.