Rich Hall returned to the BBC with the latest in his series of films about the movies this week with the eagerly anticipated Continental Drifters. Taking on the American road movie in what my man has dubbed the comedian's, "pre-packaged American culture to be consumed by Brits," Hall's new dissertation follows the same formula as his How The West Was Lost and The Dirty South, albeit with some further refinements.

Beginning with an introduction to the road movie and his somewhat arbitrary definition, Hall argues that a true road movie is not only about a pair of characters going from a to b, but that they are in some way disenfranchised. A selection of key films are up for discussion from Easy Rider to Thelma and Louise and The Grapes of Wrath to Dumb and Dumber. Unlike Hall's earlier forays into film culture, Continental Drifters is less bogged down by constant music video style reel of clips, giving him room to consider and argue the merits of each film and how it fits into the historic and cultural milieu. And, as with all retroactive genres (I'm looking at you, film noir), this link is easy to delineate but endlessly fascinating to watch as it's laid bare. Eisenhower's roads highway project is intrinsically linked with noir films of the road, and the resulting motel culture lent itself to the disenfranchised drifters and grifters that followed.

There's even room for a Gonzo style rant where, in true Hall style, he finds a moment between motels and remakes to insert a rant about Star Wars. I especially enjoyed Hall's inclusion of The Grapes of Wrath - novel and movie versions - and On the Road as major contributors to the Road movie trend.

As we move into another era of shifting cultural values and a new wave of disenfranchised voices, the road movie - which, in Hall's opinion, has been practically dead since the 70s - seems particularly prevalent. Whether the road movie has any place in Occupy culture remains to be seen -- but it seems the road movie has disappeared in its own fashion: it died... or, if Hall's expectant ending suggests, after a sojourn in Australia and Europe, it simply went home.

Rich Hall's Continental Drifters is available to watch on BBC iPlayer until Monday 29 November.

Read more: Rich Hall's How the West Was Lost; Rich Hall's The Dirty South.

The Classic: Silent Running (1971)
Director: Douglas Trumbull
Starring: Bruce Dern

No Excuses:
Douglas Trumbull's hugely influential debut hit Silent Running is a staple sci-fi for those who know their C3POs from their Johnny 5s. Now earning its 40th Anniversary re-release, the film that introduced us to cinema's favourite drones - Huey, Dewey and Louie - is making a triumphant return in Blu-Ray form.

Synopsis:
In the no-longer-distant future, botanist Freeman Lowell orbits the earth on board the Valley Forge - a vast greenhouse dome which cultivates edible crops to be converted into modern space-food. Waiting to be tasked to return home to earth to defoliate the planet, he and his crew are called upon to destroy Valley Forge's greenhouses and return the ships to commercial use.

The Review:
Trumbull's very own space odyssey returns to cinematic form in this Blu-Ray re-release, with lush forests and cure wildlife set against the infinite backdrop of space. Bruce Dern's passionate Lowell seldom raises his voice above a whisper, but becomes the master and commander of his own little corner of the universe and small staff of willing droids. It's a sparse but touching tale that has lent its message to films as recent as Wall-E and Moon.

The Verdict:
On second viewing, Huey and Dewey became by far my favourite characters. The interactions between Lowell and his loyal worker droids is complemented by stunning visual effects, which in this latest Blu-Ray incarnation are crisp and colourful as ever. It's a delightful 3-hander (mostly) with whom you'll be over the moon (a-thank-you) to spend some quality time.

Favourite Quote:
[As Huey and Dewey perform their tree planting actions in the wrong order:]
"Well, that's pitiful. Pitiful! That's exactly the opposite of what it's supposed to be."

Further Reading for Experts:
Almost Human - a discussion of robots on film over at The Big Picture Magazine.
Animation Comes to Life - Huey, Dewey and Louie feature alongside Wall-E and other animated droids in my long essay on anthropomorphised robots on film.

Silent Running will be re-released on Blu-Ray on Monday 19 November. You can .

Aardman studios lays the first claim to the Christmas cinema season with CG-animated Arthur Christmas. Voiced by James McAvoy, he's the hapless young son of Santa (Jim Broadbent) and brother to the head honcho's militaristic heir, Steve (Hugh Laurie). All seems to have gone well this Christmas Eve - Santa Malcolm's 70th hi-tech mission - but after the festivities of the evening's rush present drop are complete, it transpires that a child has been missed.

Co-opting Grandsanta (Bill Nighy) along with his trusty old-school sleigh and reindeer (Dasher, Dancer, Prancer, umm the one with the white ear, and you, and you), the family eccentrics are joined by an enthusiastic gift-wrapping elf, and so begins the treacherous sleigh-ride as the rag-tag amateurs try to reach poor Gwen with her shiny new bicycle before the Christmas magic is lost.

Beautifully animated with some intricate sequences and a dash of Aardman humour, it's a safe family-pleaser with the requisite all-star voice cast and smattering of interesting accents. While it references Aardman's main man Nick Park, however, it channels close to none of his trademark humour or visual idiosyncrasies. Substituting the studio's famed jocular spirit for something far more vanilla, its international aspirations are at the expense of British charm. A cheerful 3D frolic for the family, but not much more.

Arthur Christmas is released in UK cinemas on Friday 11 November.

After winning a Scottish BAFTA for Gary's War, Greg McHugh – the man we all know as Gary: Tank Commander – has gone on to write and star in two series of the titular show. Following in the footsteps of Scottish favourite Rab C. Nesbitt, the show's second series went regional with a run on BBC Three.

The sitcom features Gary, a camp Corporal with a penchant for Cheesey Pasta. Series two is set mostly in Scotland as he and his unit – Charlie (Scott Fletcher), Jacko (Robert Jack) and Adam (Paul-James Corrigan) – get themselves into tangles, from featuring in an army ad to misplacing an army tank, all under the scrutiny of sticky Sergeant Thompson (Stuart Bowman). Interspersed with political pieces to camera from Gary's unique perspective, and a range of YouTube dance parodies, it's an all-round Scots comedy with its own brand of humble humour.

McHugh has also recently appeared as Howard, a creepy second year student sharing a house with a bunch of freshers, in eight-part comedy series Fresh Meat, and is currently working on a third series of Gary's military antics.

As he prepares for series two to hit the shelves in time for Christmas, we caught up with the man behind the permatan and bokes (Baileys and Cokes).


So tell us how Gary was born.

Back in 2005 I was doing a show at the Edinburgh Festival, working with a guy called Will Andrews who was doing a stand-up show in the same venue. He was working with The Comedy Unit who were looking for new characters, so it basically came out of Will and I chatting about rubbish and then filming a little scene in my mum's car. The Comedy Unit saw that and it started about four years of development and various sketch shows and stuff, then – after a lot of work – the BBC offered us a sitcom.

How has the response been for Series Two so far?

It's been great. It's always difficult to know, but it's been well received. I've been asked to start working on the third, so it has done really well so far. It got onto BBC Three and that was an ambition, so I was over the moon about that. If the third series goes well I hope they'll stick it on BBC Three again.

You've also had a great response for Fresh Meat – has that been a different experience for you?

Yes, completely different. There's no pressure on me other than as a performer, as an actor. Because the scripts were so brilliant that was a total joy. Gary's loads of fun but it was great to play someone at the other end of the spectrum, in terms of Gary being quite sociable and Howard being… just a bit weird, really. It was great.

As much as you enjoyed playing Howard, was it refreshing to get back to being Gary?

It's always a challenge, I suppose. I've got to come up with new ideas for the series. I'm tweeting a lot as Gary [@GARYTANK] at the moment and trying to get Gary into my head, so it's a change. I don't know how refreshing it is because I've done so many years as Gary, but I'm really looking forward to doing another series. It is fun at the moment but I've just started the process so if you ask me again in a few months I might be tearing my hair out.

Can you give us any teasers for Series Three?

As I've just started writing it I couldn't really tell you much to be honest. I think we may go for a different setting – the boys might have been in Germany on the previous 6 months, post-Iraq or Afghanistan. That might be a change, but I've still got another 5 or 6 months' worth of writing still to go so who knows where we'll end up at the end of it. But I think there'll be more dances, and there has been a lot going on in the world this year so Gary's got a good platform to talk about things. We'll wait and see what happens.

The monologues are always very relevant to what's going on at the time. How do you make sure that will work a year down the line when the DVD is released?

I suppose you just try to pick events that people will remember. Osama being captured and killed, or Gaddafi and the uprise in the Middle East, The Royal Wedding – you know, these are all things that have happened this year, so even in a year or two's time, people will still remember the landmark events. So you either choose a big thing or, for Gary, you choose to have him talking about everyday things like Gregg's the bakers. That way, hopefully, it doesn't age too much.

But I think the point of what we've always tried to do with Gary is to talk about things that have happened around that time frame. It's about covering world events, really.

What's your favourite episode in Series Two?

Probably the missing tank episode. It's the most sitcom-y episode and it moves quickly – I think that's what people respond to. Gary keeps causing more problems for himself but he thinks he's doing really well.

He always seems to make a friend, as well…

You're right, he's quite a sociable guy. He's a confident soul, really, that's his underlying character trait. I think the more confidence you give Gary in every situation in that sitcom world the worse things are going to get. That's something I've certainly learned over the years – give him so much confidence in whatever it is and see where he ends up. He's a bit childlike too, a bit naive and obsessive, so once he gets one idea in his head he'll run with it no matter how badly things are crumbling around him. That's a good thing to have for writing comedy.

You mentioned enjoying the sitcom feel – is that something you might expand upon in Series Three?

I think we'll keep the characters and the writing in that style. I think we'll keep the balance between the story and the monologues and dances as it is just now for Series Three.

I wanted to mention how great the boys are, too. They're all very good dancers…

Yes, they're all scarily good dancers. I would like to say that I dance as Gary, but actually that's me trying my hardest. They're all really good, and Paul Corrigan who plays Adam is a brilliant dancer and has loads of experience, so he helps choreograph some of the dances as well. He's a shit-hot dancer indeed.

Gary: Tank Commander Series 2 is .