You were probably only aware of one music chart controversy last week, but another has been raging for nearly a month and shows no sign of reconciliation. This dispute has generated some equally poisonous words, but from a surprising source; the genteel listeners of Classic FM.

Every Easter, Classic FM compiles its ‘Hall of Fame’. With voting figures regularly surpassing 150,000, this annual list has a good claim to be Britain’s, if not the world’s, most authoritative poll on popular classical music tastes. Many listeners were, however, shocked this year to find that top five regulars Beethoven and Mozart had been dislodged, not by Verdi, Wagner, or Tchaikovsky, but by Nobuo Uematsu and Jeremy Soule, two men who respectively write the music for Final Fantasy and the Elder Scrolls series of video games.

The reaction to the poll has been astounding to say the least. Comments range from the dismissal of video game music as being “randomly generated” to lamentations that this represents “the end of Classic FM”. Even Classic FM itself could be accused of stigmatising the vote, with John Suchet , the host of the weekday morning show, actively urging listeners to vote next year to change the rankings if they’re not happy, which is somewhat more direct than the language used to describe the works of Rachmaninov and Vaughan-Williams which have haunted the top three since the chart’s inception.

The pieces selected are also somewhat troubling. Whilst all other composers have their works divided into symphonies, concertos and so in a bid to get multiple entries in, Uematsu and Soule have had their entire bodies of work summed up in one entry; for Uematsu, that means hundreds of hours, spanning thirteen separate games is equated to the 14 minutes of The Lark Ascending, its nearest rival. It is the same case for films. Howard Shore’s collaboration with Peter Jackson in The Lord of the Rings, the highest charting film score at Number 20, is lumped together, as if such dissonant pieces as “Concerning Hobbits” and “Minas Morgul” were the same.

Of course, the “outraged listeners” are correctly pointing to the fact that this has only happened because of a Facebook campaign to raise the profile of modern composers in the gaming industry. However, this isn’t an outright aberration; whilst Soule’s work jumped over 200 places from the previous chart, Uematsu has frequently appeared within the top 20. Whilst the campaign seems to have caused the opposite of its intended objective, with some of the more extreme critics calling for a separate chart for “lesser music” next year, the issue of perception that it raises is significant.

Most of the attacks on Uematsu and Soule revolve around the suggestion that scores composed for modern entertainment, be it for films or games, are somehow less worthy of recognition than “the classics”. This sort of statement requires one to look at the past with the most rose-tinted of glasses, ignoring the simple fact that music has always been composed for mass entertainment and money.

If any of the composers placed on a pedestal by the “purists” of Classic FM lived in the modern age, they too would be composing music for new media. Spielberg himself acknowledged this when asking John Williams to compose the score for Schindler’s List; he turned to Williams because all the composers he wanted were dead.

The critics also forget that the next generation of classical listeners often first experiences the music through film or television; Silence of the Lambs gave a boost to Bach through a grisly take on his Goldberg Variations, and The Apprentice regularly pairs Prokofiev with Hans Zimmer. Music written for games shouldn’t have a stigma attached to it because of its provenance, and, as a great fan of both Soule and Uematsu, I can only hope that this affair can give these men the accolades they deserve. Give some of their work a listen. You never know, you might just enjoy it!

I may as well come clean before we begin: I hate 3D. So when I read that Fitch Ratings had forecast 3D box office takings to fall in 2013, I was positively gleeful. Sure, I conceded, the decline would start off slowly. But soon enough 3D would be out of our lives, once more consigned to bad B-movies and novelty screenings at theme parks. 

3D films are certainly not new – there’s been a fairly steady stream of them since the man-eating lions of Bwana Devil in 1952. From 2000 onwards, most 3D films being made were kids’ flicks, horrors and IMAX educational movies. But then came 2009, and the phenomenon that was Avatar. I tried to like Avatar,really I did. But warmongering, sentimentality and stilted acting aside, the 3D just got in the way for me. Audiences disagreed, and it became the first film to gross over two billion dollars.

The runaway success of Avatar prompted many production companies to retrofit their upcoming 2D films into 3D. In many cases, this resulted in the slapdash addition of a few ‘ooh’ moments which did little to justify the increased ticket price. But now, filmmakers are consciously choosing to make their movies in three dimensions. In recent years we’ve seen The Avengers, Life of Pi, Brave, The Hobbit and even Werner Herzog’s Cave of Forgotten Dreams through the little red and blue windows. Not forgetting, of course, the artistic triumph of Piranha 3 Double D, which as far as I could glean consisted of David Hasselhoff, CGI killer fish and a hefty dose of sexual objectification.

If anything, 3D makes films more one-dimensional. Our eyes are drawn to the object popping out of the screen instead of considering the depth and composition of the shot as a whole. Flying daggers, pointing fingers, trees which loom high above you – no more than flashy gimmicks with all the nuance and subtlety of Mega Shark Versus Giant Octopus.Most cinemagoers are perfectly capable of enduring a two-hour feature without losing interest. If you feel it necessary to hurtle lethal objects towards the audience’s retinas every three minutes, it’s probably because your dialogue and plot are lacking. 3D is not a substitute for a quality script.

The shift towards 3D really got going when TV providers jumped on the bandwagon. Samsung, Panasonic, Toshiba and LG amongst others now sell 3D television sets, and Sky has its own dedicated 3D channel. 3D was being treated as more than just a fad: it was billed as the future of entertainment. The thought of every TV show being made in 3D filled me with dread. When I come home and kick back in front of the telly, the last thing I want to do is have to put those naff little plastic glasses over the top of the ones I already wear. The lurching shifts in perspective are so headache-inducing that I think I’d have to give up on watching things altogether.

But now, a glimmer of hope. Perhaps 3D is finally starting to die. The report by Fitch Ratings highlights that despite an overall rise, US box office takings for 3D films have not increased in the past two years. They suggest that this may be due to its higher ticket prices putting off consumers. Despite this news, the novelty has not yet worn off for directors, as a string of new high-profile releases will be shown in 3D this year. You can get your fix of action in the form of Star Trek: Into Darkness; frippery from The Great Gatsby;fun from Monsters University and god knows what from One Direction: This is Us. 

It is reassuring to know that 3D isn’t invincible. As it stands, I don’t think its popularity is robust enough to warrant a full-scale conversion in every living room in the land. But I doubt it will disappear from the silver screen for a while yet. And why should it? If people enjoy the experience and are willing to pay the extra money for it, who am I to deny them? I only hope (naïvely) that we’ll see an end to films being made in 3D for the sake of commercial success alone. Litter your film with protruding space missiles if you so desire. But don’t neglect the understated beauty of two dimensions. There’s still plenty of people who prefer it.

It’s 5pm. You have a dilemma. Tea’s not ready yet and you need something to occupy your time. Something exciting. Something stimulating. Fear not! There is a plethora of programmes just waiting to satiate your burning desire for quizzing!

You’re too late to catch Noel Edmonds’s pseudo-spiritual cosmic rapture on Deal or No Deal. Sorry about that. But what about ITV’s The Chase, in which Bradley Walsh, lorded over by knowledge-hoggers ‘The Chasers’, tries to stop sniggering for long enough to read the question. Or there’s Pointless, where Alexander Armstrong tries to pretend he doesn’t know all the answers while his ‘pointless friend’ Richard Osman bequeathes us with facts from a pretend laptop (Richard, I love you, you’re so tall and wisdomous). Mercifully, I have yet to find a quiz show as painful to endure as Eggheads, in which five trivia ‘experts’ look smug for half an hour. Yes, especially you, Daphne.

But hey, there’s a new kid on the block. It’s called Five Minutes to a Fortune! There are five rounds! The contestants only have five minutes! It’s on at 5pm! Bad luck Channel Five. It’s blue-sky thinking like that which makes Channel 4 such a groundbreaking broadcaster. What you got, BBC? A ‘pointless’ trophy? Pah!

Despite its terrible name, Channel 4’s latest venture into this saturated pool of general knowledge isn’t all that bad. The premise of the show is fairly simple, yet somehow manages to appear inordinately complicated on first viewing. Essentially, there is a huge hourglass with 50,000 pound coins inside. If the contestant doesn’t manage to answer questions quickly enough, the prize money starts to drain away. So far, so cacophonous.

The confusion arises due to the role of ‘timekeeper’. Contestants come in pairs. One answers all the questions. The other chooses five topics for their partner and gives them a time limit for each round. They then proceed to a small podium where they sit and watch their mate get things wrong, fingers poised on an ‘emergency stop’ button to halt the flow of money if they’re failing particularly miserably. I’m not entirely sure why there needs to be a timekeeper at all. They’re mostly redundant until the finale, when they answer the final question, deciding if the pair take any cash home at all. I pity them, rolling their thumbs as their partner cocks it all up, watching their precious pound coins tumble into oblivion.

On Sundays, celebrities take on the mutant eggtimer. Anne Widdecombe and Anton du Beke were predictably ghastly, although not quite as downright disastrous as Gok Wan and his brother Kwoklyn. We saw Gok desperately struggle through wrong answer after wrong answer, as thousands of pounds drained away in the corner of his eye. It was mortifying. It was heartwrenching. It was gripping to watch.

Davina is excellent as always in her role of empathetic and masterful host. She is unswerving in her ability to make contestants feel interesting and worthy, even when they’ve just made themselves look incredibly stupid on national TV. I feel like she’s genuinely enjoying it too, although she must know in her heart it’s exactly 19/20ths less exciting than The Million Pound Drop. She yells “Stop the drain!” with boundless enthusiasm when the contestant has achieved their quota of five correct answers per round, despite it being one of the worst catchphrases I’ve ever heard.

Five Minutes to a Fortune is significantly improved by its interesting take on run-of-the-mill general knowledge questions. The games are original and fun, with contestants having to spell answers backwards or guess which fictional character would have tweeted what. The combination of high-octane pressure and an alluringly large sum of money make me suspect it could hold its own in a Saturday primetime slot. If you ever fancied a bit of a thrill before your spag bol, you could do worse than this.

BBC4 has long been my favourite channel, not only because I can be pretentious about it by saying that I’m into foreign dramas, but also because it genuinely shows intriguing crime thrillers and top-quality shows about art and travel. After watching anything foreign with subtitles you can’t help but feel cultured, with an elevated IQ of at least ten points. This love affair began with a terrifically Italian detective series called Inspector Montalbano (lots of hand gestures, macho manliness, spaghetti and sexy brunettes) and proceeded to cover an expanse of European dramas with Spiral (French), The Bridge (Danish & Swedish) and Wallander (Swedish). Note the absence of The Killing – I entered the series half way through and was so confused by the thick political twists and the symbolic importance of the jumper that I gave up. Suffice to say, I felt like I had been thoroughly educated on the psyches of serial killers and would absolutely be the last survivor if ever a situation arose where there was one stalking the corridors of my college. 

Recently, the new rage in Swedish crime thrillers has been adapting novels written by Arne Dahl, the pen name of literary critic and journalist Jan Arnald. Now acquired by the BBC, the series features what I feel are the characteristic Scandanavian TV traits of an Instagram-like filter and an indie soundtrack, combined with a conflicted protagonist whose family struggles are often woven into the tensions of the narrative. There is also a lot of facial hair involved, and most of the actors seem to have eyes so blue that their tears could produce enough clean water for Africa.

The first instalment of the series tried to reflect the animosity felt for the bonus culture, with what appeared to be a professional killer targeting bankers and prominent financial players. The plotline (which probably acted as a satisfying creative outlet for Swedish frustrations) made it quite evident who the writers sided with, as the bankers were all depicted as immoral individuals with sordid pasts of attempted rape, adultery and links to the Eastern European mafia. The portrayal of these murders offered viewers a strange sort of detachment from emotion. The lack of empathy created a disjunctive and almost uncomfortable juxtaposition of guilt and fear, which acted as a compelling force for the series. What I really like about these Swedish crime thrillers is the clear, distinctive notions of emotion and detachment, almost as if their lives were specifically compartmentalised: work life emanates a sense of urgency and efficiency, while the disintegration of family life tweaks the heartstrings with its relatable nature. The protagonists are made out to be flawed both morally and emotionally, adding a refreshing aspect of realism to the plot.

Overall, although it is not the best crime thriller I’ve ever seen, Arne Dahl is an interesting depiction of human mentality in times of duress. It has a narrative that sustains the viewer’s attention long enough not to become bored, and contains plenty of the compulsory dead-ends and twists that define the genre. A good start to what I hope will induce another round of my Swedish obsession. And if crime dramas aren’t your thing, at least you can learn how to say to ‘hey’ in another language.

Stop all the clocks, cut off the telephone. JLS are no more.

In a heartfelt message on their website, Aston, Oritsé, Marvin and JB announced that after six years together, they would be going their separate ways. The news prompted a nation to drop to their knees, raise their arms to the sky and curse the mysterious powers of pop. Take The Saturdays instead, we cried. For the children.

Sure, JLSters doesn’t roll off the tongue as smoothly as Beliebers or Directioners. And maybe Oritsé never could quite pull off a hat with the panache of Ne-Yo. But who among us can honestly say they will ever again be able to wear red, yellow, blue (or indeed green) without thinking of these cheeky songsters? It is surely just a matter of time before the limited edition condom range adorned with their faces begins to fetch hundreds of pounds on eBay.

Since the heady days of coming second to Alexandra Burke on X Factor, JLS have never failed to inspire our awe and admiration at their catchy hooks and lyrical artistry. Lines such as ‘I need you back in my arms/I need love CPR/‘Cause it’s getting so cold/Ooh,’ and ‘You could be the DJ/I could be the dancefloor/You could get up on me (on me, on me)’ demonstrated not only their flair for unique imagery, but also their appetite for the audacious. Never ones to shy away from the avant-garde, their classic refrain ‘She makes me wanna oh oh oh oh oh oh’ is testament to their bold disregard for conventional syntax. I only fear that now we may never know what she makes them wanna.

In an attempt to curb an epidemic of withdrawal symptoms, JLS will kindly bestow upon their adoring fans a farewell tour and an accompanying album: Goodbye; The Greatest Hits. It is difficult to say just how the record label will manage to condense their stellar repertoire into a single disc, but I would hazard a guess that classics like ‘Beat Again’, ‘Everybody in Love’ and Sound of Music-inspired ‘The Club is Alive’ will not be omitted.

On this sad day for music enthusiasts everywhere, I leave you with a message of hope. Do not stand at JLS’s grave and weep. Instead, buy their greatest hits album. It’s what they would have wanted.

These are songs to lose yourself in. As we went through ‘Candles’, ‘Love’, ‘Still’, I could see people around closing their eyes and drifting away with the band. On the occasions I myself had them open, a long channel of short people afford us a clear view of the stage, to see soft synth beats crossing with guitarist Igor Haefeli taking a bow to his instrument. “By the morning/I will have grown back” begs the chorus of ‘Amsterdam’, a highlight for me, and by that fifth song the town hall was taken by the band.

I find it wonderful that such an invocation of one young woman’s grief can touch so many people personally. The music will find sadness in everyone somewhere, whether it’s “Cause this is torturous electricity/Between both of us and this is/Dangerous ’cause I want you so much/But I hate your guts/I hate you” swaying through the chorus of ‘Landfill’ or simply the pain shot through the vibrating vocals on ‘Smother’. The set took a clear move towards songs off the album as the evening grew older, rising to meet ‘Youth’, a perfect high point for me and a perfect conclusion to the themes of the show for its stricken comments on the omnipresent touch of loss in youth.

‘Home’, the encore from Liverpool on Monday night, concluded the main set, and the band re-emerged to play their stunning mash-up of Bon Iver’s Perth with Hot Chip’s Ready for the Floor to rapturous applause. An unforgettable end to an unforgettable show.

Soft, crafted melodies on the depths of grief may not be everyone’s ideal gig, but not a soul in the hall could avoid being taken up by, at the very least, the honesty of Elena Tonra. Musically, she ripped her heart out in front of us all, but was almost unbearably shy in between songs, nervously offering thanks and giggling at declarations of love cried from the crowd. Even the more confident Igor Haefeli seemed overwhelmed by the end of the encore. I may not, as one woman cried, love them “like my actual daughter”, but I definitely love them.