On April 17^th, customers of BBC America and BBC Canada Shops will be the first to enjoy Last of the Summer Wine Vintage 1992, the next installment in the world’s longest running sitcom. Pre-order now to get the DVD as soon as it’s ready, if only to learn how Foggy, Clegg and Compo came by these extraordinary costumes.

This fifteenth season is almost halfway through the series that ran for 31 seasons between 1973 and 2010. Thanks to our quarterly release plan, we’re due to catch up to our original Vintage 1995 release before the year is through.

Last fall British audiences thrilled to the revelations of Frozen Planet. The seven-part series became such an instant classic that the BBC commissioned a special program of highlights, The Epic Journey, which was broadcast during the holidays. Frozen Planet is very much the heir to Planet Earth. Producer Alastair Fothergill decided to make the series as a direct result of the conditions he observed when the polar episode of Planet Earth was being filmed. Having produced Life in the Freezer a decade earlier, he was uniquely placed to see how much Antarctica had changed between the two series shoots.

Much of the wonder of Frozen Planet lies in the sheer scale of its icy, alien landscapes, as seen in the photo above of Mt. Erebus, the southernmost active volcano on Earth. It summons up visions not imagined since reading H.P. Lovecraft’s At the Mountains of Madness in our youth. Still, the heart of a BBC nature series is in the intimacies of animal behavior, such as this glimpse into the morality of penguins shown below.

Frozen Planet will premiere on March 18^th on Discovery in the US, and on Discovery World HD in Canada. The DVD and Blu-ray will follow the series finale in April. Extras include video diaries, behind the scenes, isolated music score option, a science featurette and the highlight program, Frozen: Planet: The Epic Journey.

We saw the end of this featurette about Highclere Castle on BBC World News through bleary eyes in the pre-dawn hour, and thought it was worth posting right away.

…for his well deserved Best Actor win at the Golden Globes for his performance in Luther 2. If you haven’t experienced the edgy thrills of Luther yet, BBC America is running an encore of the second miniseries this Sunday, January 22nd, at 11am ET.

BAFTA film awards were announced earlier this week, and we were gratified to see that Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy garnered eleven nominations, second only to twelve for The Artist. While a feature film cannot hope to match the 1979 BBC version for narrative detail, the BAFTA-nominated screenplay managed to keep the essentials, and the nifty addition of party scenes helped to reveal the habitually hidden emotions of characters who are taciturn by nature or vocation. There were no party scenes in the novel, but author John le Carré sanctioned the device and gave the screenwriters suggestions.

My Week with Marilyn, which received six nominations, is also chock-a-block with British talent — Zoe Wanamaker (Poirot), Emma Watson (Harry Potter), Derek Jacobi (I, Claudius), Michael Kitchen (Foyle’s War), Philip Jackson (Poirot), Jim Carter (Downton Abbey), Toby Jones (The Old Curiosity Shop, Christopher and his Kind), Dominic Cooper (Sense & Sensibility) and Dougray Scott (Desperate Housewives) — in small supporting roles, and in nominated supporting roles, Judi Dench as Dame Sybil Thorndike and Kenneth Branagh as Sir Laurence Olivier. The male lead is Eddie Redmayne, who will be seen in Birdsong later this season on Masterpiece.

This has also been quite a year for screenwriter Abi Morgan (The Hour), who wrote the screenplays for two current films, The Iron Lady and Shame.

One of the most talked about BBC series this fall was The Fades, which premieres on BBC America this Saturday, January 14, at 9pm ET. Created by Jack Thorne (Skins), The Fades is firmly in the horror genre, but with a strong thread of mystery surrounding who the Fades are and why they are appearing now. Within the mundane world of suburbia and school, the story unfolds with the heightened imagery of graphic novels. Iain De Caestecker stars as Paul– bewildered seventeen-year-old, reluctant hero and social pariah. Daniel Kaluuya (Skins S1 and S2) plays Paul’s best and only friend Mac, who applies everything he’s learned from the movies to the crisis at hand (with mixed results). The Fades producer Caroline Skinner is also one to watch. She’s the new executive producer for this year’s series of Doctor Who, replacing Piers Wenger and Beth Willis.

A brand new Nerdist special follows Episode One on BBC America at 10:15 pm ET. Devoted to the horror genre, the special features Lily Lovelace (Skins S3 and S4) talking about her role as Paul’s mortified sister, Anna. The cast of The Fades also includes Natalie Dormer (The Tudors, Captain America), Johnny Harris (Whitechapel) and Daniela Nardini (This Life, Reckless). In Canada The Fades premiered January 3^rd on BBC Canada, which will air it through Feb 7^th on Tuesdays at 8pm ET. The DVD and Blu-ray will be available on February 21^st, the Tuesday after the series finale airs on BBC America.

Dramaville Fan Alert: Remember that The Hour and Luther Season Two are in the running for Golden Globe Awards. The ceremony, hosted once more by the irrepressible Ricky Gervais (The Office, An Idiot Abroad) airs this Sunday, January 15^th, at 8pm ET on NBC. As we mentioned before, The Hour is up against Downton Abbey, which made its much anticipated return to Masterpiece last Sunday. Series Two is already available for pre-order, delivering February 7^th.

British audiences are already basking in the joy and excitement of the next batch of Sherlock films, which premiered on New Year’s Day with A Scandal in Belgravia. Based on “A Scandal in Bohemia,” this story features Andrew Scott (The Hour, Lennon Naked) as Moriarty and Lara Pulver (MI-5: Volume 10, Robin Hood, True Blood) as “The Woman” Irene Adler. For those of us who like to read ahead so we can recognize verbatim dialogue quotes and all the clever updating, the other two films are The Hounds of Baskerville and “The Reichenbach Fall,” the latter based on the “The Final Problem.” To assuage the chill that the word “Reichenbach” engenders in every Sherlock Holmes fan, we have this from a Radio Times interview with co-creator Steven Moffat:  “As for Holmes’ death, I don’t believe that Conan Doyle ever planned to kill him off. That’s faithfully reported, but I don’t believe it. The way he’s killed off in The Final Problem…well, there’s no body, is there? So Sherlock is obviously not dead. Conan Doyle was a mystery writer, for goodness’ sake! I’m sure the plan all along was to ‘resurrect’ him.”

While the game won’t be afoot for us until Season Two premieres May 6 on Masterpiece Mystery!, fans of Benedict Cumberbatch can catch him in two current films, Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy and War Horse. The DVD and Blu-ray will follow soon after the final season broadcast.

Over the past decade Steve Coogan has been steadily raising his profile in North America in films like Tropic Thunder, Night at the Museum and In the Loop, but we can’t help thinking that these supporting roles reveal only a small percent of his talent. This year’s The Trip, which made its mark on the indie circuit and Owen Gleiberman’s Ten Best list, is a more proper showcase for Coogan’s writing as well as acting gifts, but its audiences might still be surprised to learn that Coogan created one of most popular British comedy icons in the past two decades, Alan Partridge, and that his much anticipated concerts sell out all over Britain.

Steve Coogan Live brings together three of those concerts for the first time on North American video: Live ‘n’ Lewd from his pre-Partridge days in 1994; The Man Who Thinks He’s It (1998); and Steve Coogan as Alan Partridge and Other Less Successful Characters (2009). DVD extras include highlights from Coogan’s Australia tour, Paul and Pauline Calf animations and “Steve Coogan: An Inside Story.” The Trip is coming soon to the shop, and Steve Coogan Live will be available on February 7, 2012.

When we last mentioned this year’s Doctor Who Christmas Special, The Doctor, the Widow and the Wardrobe, the North American air date was still unconfirmed. We are happy to report that the much-anticipated special will air on December 25th at 9pm Eastern / 8pm Central on BBC America and in Canada on Space. But that’s not all, in both countries the lead-in at 8pm Eastern / 7pm Central will be Doctor Who: The Best of the Christmas Specials. This will be the first time the Specials have reached back to cover the David Tennant years, and we hear that the Tenth Doctor has quite a few fans among the regular commentators.

Speaking of the Best of Specials, the first three (shown last summer on BBC America) will be DVD extras when The Doctor, the Widow and the Wardrobe comes out on DVD and Blu-ray on February 14.

Fan Alert: On December 24th at , BBC America will air a Year in Review special of The Nerdist, with exclusive pieces filmed in London with David Tennant and Simon Pegg (Spaced).

Congratulations to Romola Garai and Dominic West for their Golden Globe nominations for the BBC miniseries, The Hour, which also received a nomination in the Best Mini-Series or Motion Picture Made for Television category. We concede that they’ll have tough competition from Downton Abbey, also nominated in the same category with Elizabeth McGovern and Hugh Bonneville taking acting nods as well. Idris Elba of Luther makes the Best Actor in a Miniseries contest even more interesting this year, while Maggie Smith’s nomination in the Supporting Actress category pushes Downton Abbey’s total to four.

Whatever the outcome, we’re happy to anticipate the return of these series, Downton Abbey premiering on Masterpiece January 8, and The Hour expected on BBC America later in 2012.  In Canada, Netflix will run Season One of The Hour beginning in January.  Romola Garai, Dominic West, and Ben Whishaw will return to pick up The Hour one year later in 1957. Peter Capaldi (Torchwood: Children of Earth, The Thick of It) joins the cast as the Head of News, along with returning Anna Chancellor and Julian Rhind-Tutt. Keep your eye on Oona Chaplin this season as her character seizes a place of her own under the television lights.

The essential Absolutely Fabulous ensemble – Jennifer Saunders, Joanna Lumley, Julia Sawalha, June Whitfield and Jane Horrocks – is reuniting for three 20^th Anniversary specials. These are the first new episodes since “White Box” aired seven years ago, and we can hardly wait to see which of the world’s latest obsessions will spawn the next classic one-liners from Jennifer Saunders. Most of all, we’re looking forward to more of Patsy and Edina. As Jennifer described their special chemistry in a Radio Times interview: “When I’m being Edina and Joanna [Lumley, of course] becomes Patsy, I think there’s no happier place to be, because it’s total escape. It must be, for us, like meditation is for other people.”

BBC America will run the first special on Sunday, January 8. (Canadian broadcast details are not yet known.) The DVD will have to wait until after the summer to include the third special, which is inspired by the 2012 Olympics hosted in London. Until then, the next best thing is Absolutely Fabulous: Absolutely Everything, whether you’re catching up on the whole hilarious saga, or snagging the perfect gift for the fashionista or fashion victim on your list.

Thanks to all of you who have posted holiday memories and greetings on our Facebook page!