You were still getting Victoria-era coins in circulation until then, indeed.

• Stranger Things - Fifth and final season due in 2024, spin-off planned
• Star Trek: Discovery - Renewed for fifth season
• The Grand Tour - has aired the first episode of what is deemed Season 5 by Amazon with a Central European-located one in the can.

They are also applying a rather ruthless viewership vs. cost approach - they know how many people actually complete a series once they're started it and how long it takes them to do.

For dramas, you're not actually wrong, at least for the BBC, where 56-57 minutes is the norm.

A big name here incidentally: Claudia is the number 2 presenter on Strictly Come Dancing; when Bruce Forsyth retired, Tess Daly was bumped up to lead and Claudia took her place, moving from the weekday companion show It Takes Two.

There is an American version coming; same castle with Alan Cumming as the host.

Not just any double agent - Kim Philby. The biggest of the Cambridge Five.

Ben Macintyre writes his stuff like a novel, but they're non-fiction books; he's also the guy behind the original book for SAS: Rogue Heroes.

The Volkspolizei ("People's Police") went with the GDR. You now have policing mostly done by the state police forces.

Lee was in the Special Operations Executive. Rather a different beast.

Not Mark Hamill:

https://thedirect.com/article/marvel-mark-hamill-guardians-holiday-special-cameo

Dockery is the daughter of a care home assistant and grew up in Romford, a not exactly massively wealthy part of Greater London/Essex.

Originally it was the Secret Service Bureau. MI6 became a "flag of convenience" at the start of the Secret World War:

https://www.sis.gov.uk/our-history.html#section-1920

Back in the Concorde days, you could do that in three and a half hours - and arrive "before" you left. Phil Collins was able to play both the London and Philadelphia concerts at Live Aid because of it.

If the various new supersonic projects get off the ground, that might well be doable again.

The movie edition of the current British run had the song "We Don't Talk About Bruno" turn up. They ended up making clear that they do still talk about Bruno.

To be honest, so does much of Europe in one form or another. They all have their own national myths about it. The French, for example, play up the resistance and downplay the collaboration.

The 2014-16 BBC series had Howard James (black) and a pre-Picard Santiago Cabrera (Latino) in it.

Yep - the reload process of any firearm at that point in time (powder, wad, bullet) was time-consuming enough that at close range you'd fire off your weapon and then switch to melee. From my own experience playing stuff like Pirates, Vikings and Knights or Holdfast, you only get one shot, so do not miss your chance to blow. That opportunity might come only once in a lifetime... before you're hacked to death and end up on the respawn screen.

Muskets tended to be used in mass formations, often with one rank firing while the other reloaded.

Don't feel obligated to watch something just for the actor.

Believe that's already been done?