32 on E4

It has been a weird, strange, sick, twisted, eerie, godless, evil time to be a British fan of The Simpsons over the last few months, and I want in. The first clue something was up was when we hit mid-November and there was still no sign of Season 32 making its premiere on Channel 4, but nobody could have guessed the multitude of bombshells that would come our way in December. Disney+ would become the exclusive home for new episode premieres in the UK beginning with Season 36. Sky would be cut out of the picture entirely as far as new episodes were concerned, although they retain repeat rights for now. Channel 4 would move their airings of the show to E4 in the New Year, becoming the only place to see new episodes on linear television, beginning with the long-awaited arrival of the 2020-21 season on free-to-air TV.

Any fears that this would be a sideways move or demotion were quelled when we finally got a look at how the show would be scheduled in its new home: episodes were plentiful, with up to seven a day running between 4pm and 9pm, and the newbies were given a prominent slot not dissimilar to how Sky used to schedule them (and, it must be said, a far more convenient one for me): a double-bill every Sunday at 8pm, starting on the 12th January (with 7pm repeats on Thursday and Friday) and running until the Sunday before this post was published. The show also retains a presence on C4 with the daytime repeat block on weekends.

With the new episodes airing later than usual, you might expect them to be more lenient with regards to censorship (Season 31 having already been significantly less cut on C4 compared to the previous few years). Some things I'd warned about in my preview of the season back in September suddenly seemed like they might not be issues at all. (For effect, try reading back the fourth paragraph of that post with "The Eve of the War" playing in the background.) Was that to be the case?

Who Killed Harlowe Thrombey?

Who Killed Harlowe Thrombey? was the ninth title in the Choose Your Own Adventure series, authored by the range's creator Edward Packard and first published in 1981. Its premise is exactly what the title implies: millionaire Harlowe Thrombey (president of Thrombey Plastics Company) is scared that someone is out to murder him and hires you (despite the fact the text heavily implies you're still a teenager), but before he can explain things further, he is fatally poisoned, leaving you to interrogate the four suspects -- his wife Jane, nephew Chartwell, niece Angela, and Angela's fiancé Robert.

Robot Wares

The images in this article are all nicked from eBay listings, I'm afraid to say.

At the height of its powers at the turn of the millennium, Robot Wars was one of the most merchandising-friendly shows on television, and shortly after the third series concluded in early 2000 the BBC duly obliged fans with a set of action figures -- generally referred to as "pullbacks", after the friction motors they used which meant the toys would move forwards on their own when pulled back then released (which would also allow for rotary weapons to really spin as they did so).

These toys came in three distinct waves or phases, but just to be confusing, the first wave was in two halves released over 2000 and 2001. Phase 1A, as we'll refer to it, featured all the House Robots with Hypno-Disc as the sole competitor robot. Each toy came with an accessory, and for these first figures the accessories were based on the popular Pinball trial -- the intention being that when you collected all six toys, you could recreate the entire Pinball arena and have Hypno-Disc run it against all of the House Robots (the accessories were, respectively, a stack of barrels with Dead Metal, a breezeblock wall with Hypno-Disc, the car door with Matilda, tyre targets with Sgt. Bash, the multiball release with Shunt and the see-saw ramp and sphere with Sir Killalot). These figures also featured swappable components not found on the real-life machines -- for example, Killalot's lance could be switched for a hammer. (The spiked back featured on Hypno-Disc from Series 4 onwards was specifically inspired by the interchangeable one included with the toy!)