With a head full of books I don't get much time to watch TV, apart from the football, but I am tempted by a good arts documentary.
I have enjoyed Alan Yentob's Imagine programme in the past, so I was delighted when I read in the listings that he was turning his attention to the Japanese author, Haruki Murakami.
Murakami's The Wind-up Bird Chronicle is one of my favourite novels and I have also enjoyed Norwegian Wood, South of the Border, Sputnik Sweetheart and After Dark.
The author's characters always end up on surreal quests which never fail to entertain me, so I was looking forward to Mr Yentob giving Murakami a gentle grilling.
And that is more or less what happened. The author refused to be interviewed on camera but did agree to speak to producer Rupert Edwards off screen.
The programme was billed as a search for the author and Yentob knows how to use pictures to illustrate a story, so there was plenty of footage replicating imagery taken from the novels, including Japanese teenagers in Jazz bars and white cats strolling along dark alleyways.
Perhaps Yentob took things a bit too far when he mimicked the role of the 15-year-old hero in Kafka on the Shore, but I think the film struck the right note and should serve as a good introduction for readers who have not come across the writer's work.
Why are Murakami's stories special? It's the way he tells them rather than the plots, which are all quite similar and, as one critic noted, the books contain an intriguing down-to-earth spirituality,
I'm looking forward to the author's latest book about his marathon running, which is clumsily titled What I Talk About When I Talk About Running.
In the meantime, I will revisit The Wind-up Bird Chronicle to see if I can work out what it all means.