It’s a misnomer, of course. Water. It’s not even a prissy misnomer as in “when did you last pass water?” It’s more categorical than that: solids rather than liquids are our subject here. This is essentially a show about shit. Shit and all who sail in her.

Hang about with estate agents (for the only reason that anyone would) and you notice the men among them often stand with their hands clasped pliantly in front of them, with their shoulders bent slightly inwards. The pose semaphores trustworthiness, humility and the morals of a choirboy. Uriah Heep, ever so ‘umble, would have made a fine addition to the trade.

The title of Sebastian Junger’s documentary comes from a casual remark made as a group of journalists set off towards conflict in the outskirts of the Libyan town of Misrata: it may sound like a standard question from a battle-hardened war correspondent, but the film that follows shows that Tim Hetherington, whose off-camera voice it is, was anything but that. It was April 11 2011, and that journey would prove fatal for the British photographer and filmmaker.

In the same week that ITV was rounding up Britain's dangerous dogs, the Beeb aired Louis Theroux's report [****] on the unwanted canines roaming the streets of gang-infested South Los Angeles. LA has six dog pounds (we learned), through which 35,000 ownerless dogs pass annually. A lot of them, even healthy ones, end up being euthanised because it's impossible to find homes for them all.

Hassan Ismail Konyi is not the first young man to see football as a meal ticket. The twist is that he has rather more dependents riding on his dream that most. Hassan has 26 sisters and 35 brothers. He comes from South Sudan, the youngest country on earth and one of the more benighted. But a young man can dream, and his dreams are given fuel by his national coach.

Britain’s last castle, Drogo, may be only just over a century old, but repair work is going on in a big way – it’s currently the National Trust’s largest-scale restoration project. That provided the excuse for the Time Team special The Edwardian Grand Designer about Drogo's architect, Sir Edwin Lutyens, though attention would surely have come round to him anyway this year, as the designer of World War One cemeteries and monuments, from London’s Cenotaph to the Memorial to the Missing of the Somme at Thiepval (pictured, below right).

Back in the 1950s the Zurich underground club Der Kreis was a rare beacon of tolerance of homosexuality in Europe. Fitting then that Swiss director Stefan Haupt’s drama-documentary of the same name, The Circle (****), won this year’s Teddy award at the Berlinale, in the documentary category: the Teddies have been going since 1987, making them no less of a pioneer in the gay world, their brief to acknowledge and support LGBT cinema from around the world.

Back at the Venice Biennale in 2010, the German film director Wim Wenders showed a 3D video installation titled “If Buildings Could Talk”.

It’s a brave comic who steps into the spandex zucchini-stuffed loon pants of Spinal Tap. The – if you will – rockumentary will never be done better. But it is 30 years since Marty DiBergi went in search of the sights, the sounds, the smells of a hard-working rock band on the road. So the time is no doubt right for another set of industry jokes to be put into circulation. For the three parts of The Life of Rock, Peter Gabriel and Brian Eno should probably have their lawyers on speed dial.

Three years ago this month, the first protests against the brutal dictatorship of Colonel Muammar Gaddafi broke out. On October 20 2011, the tyrant was finally caught, and mobile phone footage of his bloody and abused last minutes went viral. His regime, in power since 1969, was no more. For a while, the streets of Tripoli were filled with optimism and hope. All thought peace and change had come.