It only took four weeks to get some Strictly Come controversy but I have to admit I was surprised by the bottom two and the subsequent decision by the judges. However, before we get there, here are some quick notes about the dances as they happened. Chris Ramsay went first, and I quite enjoyed the inside basketball included in the dance. It was good although I’m not totally sure I like the non-pointy-foot option.

This week, I was not very well and had to watch Strictly without a glass of wine in hand which was a different experience. Although I was a bit delirious from the cold meds, so it probably added up to the same thing. It was movie week, of course, and full of drama during the week of build up and on the night itself. Craig and the teeth! Katya falling over many times!

When I go Strictly, I like to go all in and whilst I have drawn the line at listening to the podcast this year, I’m keen to keep up the It Takes Two habit. I only just managed to fit them all in with a couple of hours to spare before we set about watching week 2’s show, but it got done. And what did I make of week 2? Fun and fabulous, as always.

So, we’ve all seen the first episode of this year’s Strictly Come Dancing competition and what an extravaganza it was. Immediately, I have to go back on two things I said in my previous post: That I didn’t know any of the contestants this year and was more likely to want to get on with my life than get to know them. But no, no, one show in and I was obsessed.

If I’m being honest with myself, I’ve already drifted away from Strictly Come Dancing. There was a time where I would blog about my thoughts several times through each series – at one point the BBC included a link to one of my posts on their website. That saw views skyrocketing, let me tell you. But last year, I didn’t watch the show at all. None of the celebrities particularly grabbed my attention, and boy that show eats up a lot of your time if you get invested properly.

The BBC hosted their replacement for the absent Glastonbury festival this weekend, putting on four huge shows across the UK and welcoming the great and the good of the music world to play at them. There was far too much content to enjoy in one weekend, so I’ll be perusing the iPlayer for at least the rest of this week and maybe longer. One performance that did stand out, however, was the Manic Street Preachers on Friday.

Yesterday, I talked about the concept of diving headfirst into a new subject of your choosing and just going for the learning ride. This is something I’ve struggled with before, and particularly when it comes to history. I didn’t enjoy history that much at school, but have since found a fondness for finding out how the world has come to be in the position it is in today. The trouble with history is it is a HUGE SUBJECT.

Recently, I’ve been trying to watch more educational television alongside all the more sensational Netflix stuff or traditional half-hour comedies. This desire has meant checking out a lot of BBC Four and BBC Two, and I really enjoyed the four-part factual show on the latter: World’s Busiest Cities. Presented by Anita Rani, Dan Snow and Ade Adepitan, the show delved into what makes four very different cities across the globe tick.

The format of visiting a subject through a certain number of tangential objects has been done a few times, but I’ve found this recent iteration from the BBC fascinating. Tim Harford, one of the Beeb’s resident economists, covers fifty things that have, in some way, shaped the economy that we know and live with today. If you had to list some things, you’d probably say credit cards, interest rates, banks, etc, etc, but there’s a lot more to it than that.

I quite enjoy the BBC’s seasons, where they focus in on one particular subject across a majority of their platforms. But the latest one, called Sitcom Season, has me scratching my head. I love a good sitcom, new or old, but part of these plans involve bringing back a whole host of classic comedies and revitalising them for the new generation. For example: “Porridge, the classic prison sitcom, returns nearly 40 years after Norman Stanley Fletcher served his time.