TV, radio and film are not really media which I enjoy for their own sake - if there is nothing on the box, I would usually rather turn the damned thing off than have extra noise in the way - but there are some programmes and movies which are worth actually paying attention to.

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I watch precious little television these days. Even when I lived in Britain, I didn't watch much - I would be playing "Dodge the East Ender" in the early evening, and only watched a handful of programmes the rest of the time.

I watch far less telly than that now I live in the States.

This page is more a snapshot of the programmes I would like to watch rather than those I actually do right now.

• Star Trek - perhaps rather too stereotypical for a geek to like Trek, but being stereotypical doesn't stop it being true. Obviously it's science fiction, but more to the point it is a profoundly optimistic vision of mankind's future.

  I'm particularly fond of The Next Generation and Voyager, but the later Deep Space 9 is jolly good too. I'm less enthusiastic about the original series and certain of the films - ground-breaking in their day, yes, but really rather dated now.

  The current Trek incarnation, Enterprise, is the only show I watch with any regularity at the moment. I hope that its third season is not its last, but the current behaviour of network television in the States does not give me much cause for optimism here.

• Buffy the Vampire Slayer - again, perhaps rather stereotypical, but not for the usual reasons; I am rather fond (in a somewhat out-of-character way) of the film Clueless and Buffy is reminiscent of that American high school setting with the added bonus of hideous monsters thrown in.

  Besides, I've always been keen on vampires as a class of nasty.

• Red Dwarf - sitcom in space! OK, so the seventh and eighth series were deeply ropy (particularly the seventh... gah) and the whole enterprise was rather overshadowed for a while by Craig Charles' trial (hence the large gap between the sixth and seventh series), but it is still funny.

• University Challenge - since the demise of Mastermind, the only really intellectual quiz left on British TV. Even if it were 'dumbed down' though (as someone I know insists it has been) it would still be worth watching in this incarnation because of Jeremy "Tetchy" Paxman.

  Come on, come on.

  There is nothing like this on broadcast US television. There are no intellectual quizzes at all, in fact - Jeopardy is the closest thing.

• geek contests - there used to be several of these on in Britain, what with the The Great Egg Race, The Adventure Game, and others (there was an 'outward bound' one called Now Get Out of That): clever people being set tasks against other teams of clever people.

  Recently though, these splendid bits of telly have been creeping back onto British screens. Two current programmes are:

  • Robot Wars - the name says it all, really: geeks build robots and set them on each other.

    It is perhaps a little disappointing that the robots themselves are radio-controlled rather than truly autonomous, but still...

    The closest analogue to Robot Wars in the US is Battle Bots on The Comedy Channel, which is close but the presentation is far more annoying.

  • Scrapheap Challenge - teams of engineering folk build machines from components found on a (ridiculously well-stocked) scrapheap, then pit them against each other. Bikers seem to do disproportionately well, but that is proabably no bad thing. Watching an artillery piece blow its barrel off (thus bringing a whole new meaning to the term 'muzzle velocity') is a particular favourite moment.

    This show is known in the US as Junkyard Wars, and is apparently filmed in the same scrapheap in Wiltshire even for US teams.

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Actually trogging along to the cinema is just too much like hard work most of the time, but that doesn't mean there aren't films I enjoy:

• Highlander - oo, what fun! Immortal warriors sword-fighting for a fabulous prize!

  Oh, I know it's a silly film... the Scottish hero is played by a Frenchman, whilst the most famous Scotsman in the world plays a Spanish prince (by way of Japan and Egypt, naturally). The constant cuts between flashback and modern New York are almost deliberately confusing, and the plot is... well, a bit arcane.

  But somehow it works - on some level, and in some weird way, I just really enjoy watching this film. I suppose it could be because it's the first film I saw where I was consciously aware of the vocabulary of cinema, or it could be because I like picking apart impenetrable action, or it could be the effects (which are rather good...), or it could be the swords.

  It's probably the swords.

  (incidentally, avoid the film sequels at all costs - the third film is alright at a push I suppose, but Highlander 2 is atrocious)

• The Mask of Zorro - this is definitely the swords.

  As a fencer I wanted to see this film to criticise the swordsmanship, but this really is a dazzling adventure film. And of course it features another well known Celtic actor not bothering with a Spanish accent.

• Bond movies - and not just the actual James Bond ones, either. True Lies is a Bond movie really, and Mission Impossible (although obviously based on the old TV show) could at a stretch be lumped in with Bond.

  I just think they're good, escapist, fun - obviously the misogyny of the earlier Bonds is unpleasant to modern eyes, but that doesn't stop them being little capsules of filmic splendour.

  My very small claim to fame in thos department is that I saw Tom Cruise while he was filming a part of Mission Impossible. It's amazing how many takes it took, how frequently those poor pigeons were scattered by the diminutive Tom walking through them... and despite all that, the scene still ended up on the cutting room floor.

  Roger Moore should have been shot at birth, though.

• Clueless - strange one, this. I'm not normally given to really liking romantic comedies, but somehow the whole situation just hangs together for me. And this is very much the prototype for Buffy, of course.

• Interview With The Vampire - as I've already said, I am rather fond of the book this film is based upon. The thing with this film, though, is that every time I watch it I'm amazed at just how good Tom Cruise actually is as Lestat.

• The Matrix - a seminal hacker movie, whose position of informing geek culture has been greatly damaged by the weakness of the second film (Reloaded) and the, well, badness of the third (Revolutions). I still think the mythos has great power, and I enjoy all of the first film and parts of the second, but somehow I doubt I will sit down and watch the third very often.

  Something I have been told is that the original idea behind the Matrix was that humans were subjugated for the purpose of using their brains as hardware to run AI programs on, rather than for the rather bizarre power plant reason. This simple change makes almost everything in the films make more sense, but apparently the Warchowski brothers changed this detail because it was too hard to explain in the context of the film. Hmmph.

• superhero films - this goes back to Superman and Batman, but there has been a rash of high production value superhero films over the last few years which have been mostly fairly entertaining: Spiderman, X Men, even The Incredible Hulk (Daredevil wasn't very good though).

  One note about X Men - I saw this film before any of my friends in Britain because I was in the States a week before it opened in the UK. However, I couldn't tell anyone about it because I wasn't supposed to be in the States... I was supposed to be decorating, I was not supposed to be being interviewed for a job in America.

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The only radio station I listened to with any regularity in Britain was BBC Radio 4, and this has not really changed since I moved out of broadcast range. I listen to my local NPR affiliate in the car, but the programmes I listen to most are:

• I'm Sorry I Haven't A Clue - obviously. See the relevant page under the MC section...

• The News Quiz - the precursor of the more famous TV incarnation of Have I Got News For You, this half hour of seditious comedy concentrates far more on being funny than on inviting celebrity guests seeking publicity and an opportunity to gurn for the amusement of a baying audience.

  I also listen avidly to Wait Wait Don't Tell Me, the closest equivalent in the States, but although it is an hour long and is on all year round (even during elections), it just isn't as funny.

• science programmes - I look forward to The Material World each week, but there are usually three or four programmes I like to listen to if I have time.

• In Our Time - I didn't like Melvyn Bragg much when I lived in the UK, but this is a consistently interesting programme which I look forward to hearing no matter what the subject matter. Sometimes it doesn't quite work, but overall it's an absolute treasure.

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