Ranking Clive Barker's Books of Blood stories

I'm not a big fan of modern horror. I prefer my spooky stories cobwebbed and prudish, where tentacles are just tentacles and everyone's far too busy tracking down old manuscripts and losing their minds to have time for that sort of thing.

But after Hellraiser successfully creeped and grossed me out as an adult, I was intrigued to read more from Clive Barker in a way I'd never felt after watching the TV movies of Stephen King. Sorry, Langoliers.

That dark voyage has been going on for a decade now and hasn't all been smooth sailing, but the perverse peaks were worth the tedious troughs. For reasons unknown, I persevered with unpalatable bloated sagas but barely touched the appetising short stuff before now. Here are The Top 30 Tales Of Books Of Blood.

Ranking the Murder Most Horrid mortality tales

I never watched The Vicar of Dibley, I preferred the darker side of Dawn French's '90s output. Except when it was rubbish.

Here are some unhelpfully brief thoughts illustrated by below-par VHS-to-MP4 screencaps.

Ranking the Jonathan Creek cases

David Renwick's duffel-clad mysteries were the peak of '90s Saturday evening programming, and they're still intermittently making them 20 years later. But do any of the modern puzzles hold up to the classics? And is it a good idea to rewatch something you considered the height of flabbergasting genius in your youth, now that you're grown up and can spot when it's a bit ramshackle and convenient sometimes?

Here's what I thought when I watched them all again the last time they made some new ones. Newly arranged into an unreliable ranking for the sake of convenience and arguments.

Ranking the Blackadder episodes

No special occasion this time (we just passed the 30th anniversary of the underdog-favourite third series?) Here's what I could be bothered to write about The Top 27 Blackadder Episodes (plus extras) when I watched through them all again a few years back. (When my wife isn't interested in watching something with me, I like to talk to an imaginary penpal).

Newly shuffled into an approximate ranking of best to worst, because that took minimal extra effort and it's an unhealthy preoccupation.

A bunch of time travel films

Thirty half-arsed "reviews" of films featuring varying degrees of time travel, salvaged from my old blog since Photobucket's ransom demand made wading through that site even more irritating than it was already. In alphabetical order, not chronological. That would just get confusing.

Ranking Robert Jordan's Conan novels

My Robert E. Howard read-through was hardly comprehensive, only covering the 30-odd Conan stories and fragments he wrote in his short lifetime. So it seemed likely I'd take another swing and hack through more of the bibliography at some point.

I didn't expect it would involve reading another writer's expanded universe fan fiction from 50 years later, but here I am. Clearly couldn't get enough of the rugged brute. I could have read some proper novels in the time this took me. Just as I could have spent my late teen years getting to grips with Bach rather than Manowar, but never mind.

Ranking the Red Dwarf episodes

This list of The Top 73 Red Dwarf Episodes (1988–2017) was prepared for Ganymede & Titan's 30th anniversary Pearl Poll.

Since compiling the original list from literally rose-tinted memories, I've actually bothered to rewatch my favourite childhood programme with as close to as an objective lens as possible, and the ranking has mildly altered.

Have any of the younger entries risen up the ranks when watched alongside the old "classics" on shuffle? They've slid down, if anything. Red Dwarf is mint.