Saw the new Clint Eastwood movie Invictus on Friday. He directed and produced it, which is usually cause for celebration these days. It stars Matt Damon as actual South African rugby captain Francoise Pienaar and Morgan Freeman as actual South African president Nelson Mandela. Because I can't stand rugby - to me, it's a team sport seemingly entirely free of grace and mainly packed with big fellas running into one another - I had no idea South Africa won the rugby World Cup in 1995, but they did, and it was clearly a big deal on two levels: one, they were a bit shit, and two, they were mostly white, a fact that became conspicuous when Apartheid ended and Mandela launched his vision of a rainbow nation. Thanks to Invictus, I now know this. I also know that Pienaar is a man without a personality but with a wife, a mum and a dad, and that Mandela was a bit lonely and a workaholic and liked to have a bracing walk at 4am every day without fail. There's not a tremendous amount more to learn.

I thought Invictus was underwhelming and dramatically thin. It is handicapped by being a sports movie. Sport movies don't usually work - certainly not team sports anyway. Boxing has a cinematic quality, so does running, albeit only in slow motion. Football simply cannot be captured in drama, and nor, it seems, can rugby. (I love This Sporting Life, but then again, there's not that much rugby in it.) Beyond the sport, it's sort of about Nelson Mandela getting on with taking the reins of power, which involves making black and white security men work together, and attending some meetings, and making some speeches in his iconically slow, measured English. Freeman, who looks nothing like him, makes a decent stab of doing the voice. Damon, who looks nothing like Pienaar, does the same. It's not so much acting, as impressionism.

Anthony Peckham, the screenwriter, seems so enamoured and dazzled by the iconic celebrity of his two main characters, he doesn't bother to fill in any of the other ones, and yet, one of the characters speaks very slowly and the other one says nothing of any consequence on or off the field. In order to be swept up by the film's broad-brushstroke drama you have to be very easily pleased by the fact that post-Apartheid South Africa was nicer than Apartheid South Africa, which in a fundamental sense it was, but don't expect any subtlety or surprise. The initially awkward white rugby players sit young black kids from a township on their shoulders in a sequence that feels authentically like a bank advert. The white security guards learn to like the black security guards, united not by anything dramatic - as, sadly, nothing dramatic happened to Mandela in 1995, despite the fear of incident at his public appearances and a hokey low-flying aircraft that we know posed no threat - but by, well, getting on with their largely boring work in small offices. I think you are expected to admire and forgive Pienaar's white family when they take their black maid to the Cup Final, but this presupposes you see it as redemptive rather than patronising, which is how it comes across.

Clint Eastwood is a monumentally competent director and that's not faint praise. He is not showy or pretentious or tricksy, he does not grandstand, and he famously shoots as little film as he can, but you cannot argue with his best work. I thought Letters From Iwo Jima was brilliant, for instance, as was Unforgiven, obviously: two seriously good genre movies. Invictus proves that he is not scared of big stadium scenes. But he fails to make the rugby matches exciting, resorting to slow motion, naturally, when in a corner, and the obligatory scenes of people watching the telly. Too late he decides to show us the scrum from underneath and turns up the volume on the animalistic grunting, but this seems tokenistic, and what's he trying to say? That it's a brute, primal sport? Where has this observation been hiding? This Sporting Life begins under a scrum; its first thought is of the violence and the machismo of rugby. Invictus wants us to buy rugby not as a contact sport, but as a metaphor for community. See how the little black boy is eyed suspiciously by white security guards outside the stadium but ends up celebrating with them when the Springboks win the Cup - this is no more profound than when the grey ash descends across Los Angeles at the climax of Volcano, and, hey, black and white people are turned one colour.

This film's heart is in the right place, but it's deadly dull, its 12A certificate earned only because of strong but infrequent language. And, next to District 9, a science-fiction film made in South Africa by South Africans and starring South Africans, it has nothing to say about South Africa beyond facts, figures and cliche. And its two key South African roles are taken by North Americans. Meanwhile, both of these North Americans have been ludicrously Oscar nominated for their work. I admire them both, but this is not their best work, and nominations seem to be forthcoming because a) it's Clint Eastwood, and b) it's Nelson Mandela.

Everybody else seems to like it, however, so I must be missing something.

... on the Friday night of December's Godless run, all of these talented comedians, musicians and curators would have been killed or injured, while I was hanging around with them. This fantastic, historic group shot, taken by Des Willie (left to right: Jim Bob, Jo Neary, Stewart Lee, Robin Ince, Richard Herring, Peter Buckley Hill, Waen Shepherd and me) is part of an official New Humanist set which can now be accessed on Flickr. This picture represents the culmination of all those years I've spent hanging around and ingratiating myself with talented comedians and musicians. Look how they let me be in their photographs and appear at their gigs! I am a monument to persistence.

Had a nice time at this year's Radio Times Covers Party at Claridge's on Tuesday. As usual, I told famous people that I liked them - this year, David Morrissey - and engineered having my picture taken by the official photographer while standing next to people I know quite well - this year, Rob Brydon and Ben Miller. Oh, and James Nesbitt, who turns out to be as friendly and gregarious and, well, merry, as they all say he is, said to me, "Write me a sitcom!" More than once, and with a lot of emphasis. I suggested he could co-star with that other great Northern Irishman Michael Legge, and he agreed. So, that's a commission, then, right? That's how TV works, yes?

OK, it's time to round up the television that's currently not just occupying my evenings and weekends, but owning me. And when I say television, I mean drama, and when I say drama I mean American drama, as American drama is all that matters. (For balance, and to prove that I am not being racist, I watched a double-episode of Silent Witness last night, and it was excellent in every way, written by Andrew Holden and directed by Sue Tully, so let's bear that in mind.)

Sons Of Anarchy has just started on FiveUSA. (I sometimes wonder where I'd be without FiveUSA, FX, Sky1, More4, E4 and Hallmark. Oh, occasionally the BBC will buy something in, but they usually mistreat it, and us.) I had this recommended to me way in advance - it's two seasons in, on FX, over there, with a third already booked - and I must say it's filled the horrible vaccuum left by Breaking Bad: yet another British actor, this time Queer As Folk's Charlie Hunnam, essaying what sounds to my ears like an impeccable American accent as the heir apparent of a rough, tough Hell's Angels chapter operating out of the Californian town of Charming. The pilot episode pushed all the right buttons, setting up the Sopranos-like business, run by ailing old bear Ron Perlman. It's a soap opera that allows a peek in on another world, in this case, hairy bikers fighting internecine battles with other gangs, running guns, keeping meth off their patch (oh yes!) and being secretly sweet to their wives and in one case, being an Elvis impersonator. Created by Kurt Sutter, who did The Shield, it's hard as nails and yet its underbelly is soft. ("Soft", in fact, is what the gang think Hunnam's character, Jackson, is - and "soft" is what got his legendary dad killed.) So, just one episode in, and I'm in.

House continues to be my current favourite. Although we're up to date with Season Six on Sky1, FiveUSA have shown Season One and are now almost through Season Two, which is handy, as Season Three is on Hallmark (we're saving it up until Two is finished, for fear of losing the plot.) In many ways, I'm blessed to have discovered it so late, and to have so much back catalogue to enjoy. Yes, yes, every episode is the same, but only in the sense that House and his mutating team have to solve a medical mystery and along the way make it worse, then make it better, then make it even worse, then make it better, running up what must be an extortionate bill with all those tests and treatments that don't work, and yes they always discount lupus, but that's part of the fun. The hook is not the mystery, it's the relationships - between House and Wilson, House and Cuddy, House and Cameron, Chase and Cameron, Wilson and whoever his girlfriend/wife is, and so on. In the ep we watched last night, House vs. God, it was House and God. Brilliant stuff. Dazzling. One episode is never enough in one sitting. Always the mark of a truly magnificent drama (see: The Wire, The Sopranos, Battlestar Galactica, West Wing, Breaking Bad). I can't believe I watched the first episode when it first aired, years ago, and didn't like it. I didn't buy Hugh Laurie's accent. How ironic is that? Mind you, I didn't like Curb on first viewing either, so I can't be trusted. And let's face it, Laurie has improved so much with time. In the current run, he's skyscraping.

Is Nurse Jackie a drama or a comedy? It's half an hour long, which in network TV terms means it is a comedy, and yet there's no laughter. I say it's best viewed as a drama, just like Up In The Air, was was mis-sold as a comedy, I think. Jackie seems to be the first big commission for creators Liz Brixius, Linda Wallem and Evan Dunsky, which makes its ease and sass and grit even more astonishing. Edie Falco is, of course, strong in the title role, and the action revolves around her double life and nursey skills, but once again, and this is a recurring aspect of great US drama, the supporting characters obviously receive an equal amount of attention in the writing and the casting and the directing. (I saw some of a quite lame-looking, and very squealy, romantic comedy called Bride Wars yesterday and it was clear that once they'd case Kate Hudson and Anne Hathaway, with a bit of Sex & The City cameo heft from Candice Bergen, they'd almost deliberately cast forgettable actors in the other parts, as if to highlight the talent of the two leads. You don't get that feeling from great TV drama.) I won't list the actors who bring so much to Jackie, but Merritt Weaver, who plays a flappy student, can steal a scene just by walking into a room and walking out again. Oh, and Eve Best, a British stage actress, actually plays a British doctor. That's a novelty. What a shame BBC2 felt so excited about their new acquisition they ran it every night for the first week, and are now running it every Monday night. Isn't that a form of sadistic cruelty?

And Glee, airing on E4 - even though it's created by Ryan Murphy, who gave the world the gloriously preposterous Nip/Tuck (currently showing on FX), I had my doubts that this would tickle me. I was wrong to have those doubts. It's arch and clever and camp and deeper than I expected, and manages to be sneery about the high school caste system while at the same time finding actual joy in the corridors. It's not the pisstake I mistakenly took it to be. And there's nothing ironic about the musical numbers - which are actually deftly staged - unless modern high school kids singing old songs that the grown-ups who write it remember from their childhoods is ironic. I sort of don't give a fuck that it's spawning hits in America - that's something for the Fox accountants to rub their hands together about. Thanks to Jane Lynch, who is fast becoming the most reliable actress in anything, I fell for this pretty quickly, and if it really did hate High School Musical, it probably wouldn't work. But it doesn't. And it does.

For the record, I'm also watching Season Two of Prison Break on box set and still enjoying that. It's not as if it's any more ridiculous than Season One. Looking forward to the return of Hung. Gave the new season of Heroes a go, on pretty much the sole proviso that T-Bag from Prison Break is now in it, but there simply aren't the hours in the day to get back into it, so that's been shelved after one episode. I fear I may have to give the final season of Lost a crack, too, even though, as I've stated, there aren't the hours in the day. Taped The Good Wife last night. High hopes for that. Uh-oh!

Oh, and I like Law & Order UK, unfashionably. And that's, like, British. Yuck!

Oh, and if you think I'm not supernaturally excited about True Blood, returning soon to the mighty FX, you'd be wrong. I have been sent the first two episodes of Season Two, but I don't want to watch them yet, for fear of being all frustrated at having to wait for the third, and the fourth, and the fifth. I may have to stop working and go bankrupt in order to fit all this in. Oh, and don't moan at me for prioritising US drama over British drama, especially when I work in British TV and have written British drama and would love to write some more: I know we get the cream of their telly, and it's not all The Sopranos and Breaking Bad, but enough of it is to make us feel ashamed of ourselves.

And I forgot to mention Mad Men in all the excitment, which has a lot to beat with Season Three this week on BBC4, as Season Two was sublime. *sighs*

Today we officially launch the Collings & Herrin blog. Please bookmark it and sign up to the feed, as it will from now on become the indulgent home of all C&H news, and I can post up as many pics as I like without testing the patience of people who visit this blog but get fed up of all the C&H plugs and news. I may occasionally post things on both, but by and large, if you follow us, go here.

So, Richard is back from Mauritius, jet-lagged, with a small put poignant avian gift for me (pictured) and the rich tan of a vain Giorgio Armani footballer. Having been apart for two weeks, during which Richard developed an unhealthy hatred for a nine-year-old girl in his hotel and saw four films on a plane, and I worked really hard, in our 98th podcast we have plenty to catch up on, including: the snow, Peter Kay's autobiography, Richard's autobiography and the Ronnie Corbett Scandal. We also find time to discuss what Beyonce will do for money, whether Wales counts as a proper country or not, the rubbish threats of Daffy from N-Dubz, the solecisms of poorly educated people and Lenny Henry's big hands.

"Film of the year", says one newspaper's quote at the top of the praise-plastered posters for Un Prophete, or A Prophet. It's released next Friday, January 22. Can it be the film of the year yet? I suspect the critic was hailing the film as such after seeing it at a festival last year. Certainly, Sight & Sound's collected critics named Un Prophete as their film of 2009. For those of us who don't attend festivals, however, it's going to have to be film of 2010, and it has a long way to go. Mind you, I've seen it now, and it is astonishingly good. Film of the month, for sure.

It's the French prison movie. Directed by Jacques Audiard, who made The Beat That My Heart Skipped, it is not strictly a prison movie, rather a tale of manhood (or "self-education" to use Audiard's words), forced upon a young offender who spends six years in jail. It is also a film about ethnic tribalism, in this case, to reduce it down: Arabs versus Corsicans, the main groups in this French clink, with the Muslim contingent growing all the time. Malik El Djebena (Tahar Rahim) hopes to keep himself to himself and his nose clean, but is sucked into the prison's subculture of racial violence in a truly shocking first-act incident that will cause even the most immunised to wince and instinctively cover their eyes when it happens. Needless to say, we see an immediate change in Malik and over the six years that unfold over the film's two and a half hours, it's not just facial hair that marks out the passage of time and the maturing of a young man. Audiard is fascinated by the rituals and routines of prison life, and the way that men are when left with other men; he's also adept at running a workable thriller element into a more meditative, even impressionistic whole - when Malik eventually earns 12-hour passes for good behaviour, you'll be amazed at what he gets up to!

All hail Niels Aristrup, who was in The Beat That My Heart Skipped, and plays the banged-up Corsican Godfather Cesar Luciani with the perfect blend of Genial Harry Grout and Frank Booth (although he looks disconcertingly like Anthony Worrall Thompson). The actual cons who take on roles as extras in the film - and the seemingly authentic setting - root the occasional esoteric touches and fantasy elements in cold, hard reality. There are rare moments of beauty in this prison, as there were in Steve McQueen's Maze in Hunger (both, interestingly, have snowflakes coming down outside a barred window). If you can handle the occasional bursts of unyielding violence and the inevitable atmosphere of threat and menace, Un Prophete is a film that's really worth seeing. You will learn certain techniques of defence and offence that you didn't know you'd ever need. Keep that [removed due to accidental spoiler].

The people have spoken: I should not take over from Jonathan Ross on Film 2010. Fair enough. (I understand the BBC will be basing their decision on the results of this mail-order DVD rental shop poll.)

Even though Rich is on holiday in Mauritius and I am hard at work on the radio, we present a special 97th Podcast Review Of The Decade. Using only the Guardian's Icons Of The Decade supplement as a guide, we look back over the last ten years and try to make sense of it all, by not making sense at all, which seems appropriate. There's talk of 9/11 conspiracy theories, David Beckham's vanity or lack thereof, and a bit about Tony Blairs. It's a bit like Newsnight, really. We hope to be back, in person, before the end of next week, when Richard gets back all tanned and tropical and full of insects.