An occasional series of dramas inspired by real events, in which the story is contained within a continuous 43 minutes 59 seconds.

City worker Grant, a compulsive talker, knocks over a young woman, apparently on the run from a sex trafficking ring. He offers her a lift, but as their progress through London is halted by traffic grid-lock, he discovers she is not what she seems – and that he is centre-stage in an unfolding catastrophe in which many will die if he doesn’t act decisively.

If you get a chance, catch it on the BBC iPlayer. It’ll be available until Friday afternoon (the BBC’s web services would be so much better without that annoying expiry of content).

Reaper is an hour-long drama-comedy-fantasy thing about a guy whose parents sold his soul to the devil in return for a favour (!). I’m hazy on the detail. As payback, he works as Satan’s hitman-type, hunting down rogue bad-guy souls who’ve escaped their due torment and are wreaking havoc in the world. It’s a nice idea, but aside from a couple of high quality comedy sidekicks, the episode I watched (about a nasty toxic-waste dumping dead businessman killing off the lawyers pestering his heir-to-the-family-ick son) didn’t really excite. Great premise, doesn’t live up to its promise.

The Big Bang Theory, on the other hand, was great fun. It’s another light-hearted sitcom in the vein of Two And A Half Men (without turning into a Charlie Sheen vehicle) or 8 Simple Rules (a favourite of mine). A pair of shy and nerdy physics PhDs share a flat. When a pretty girl moves in across the hall, hilarity ensues. The humour is of a properly geeky (even internet-y) tone:

“If you don’t have any other plans, do you want to join us for Thai food and a Superman movie marathon?”

“A marathon? Wow, how many Superman movies are there?”

“You’re kidding, right?”

Or even better:

“Now we’ve got an inclined plane. The force required to lift is reduced by the sine of the angle of the stairs. Call it 30°, so about half.”

“Exactly half.”

Maybe you had to be there, but hey, I loved it.

It’s in my nature to be sympathetic to this strike, enthusiastic as I am about many American drama and comedy shows. Independent of that, though, the essays on the site that I’ve had a chance to read yet are fascinating and fun.

So check the sidebar over there for a new link, and I suggest you plug it inot your reader.

Anyway. Clicking around the web (as you do), not writing the bits I should be writing (as you don’t), I stumbled across this unusual yet compelling little tale of romance and hero-worship. Warms the cockles, doesn’t it.

While I’m here and feeling ‘literary’, I was in the car on Monday and heard a short story by Michael Morpurgo. I would recommend going and listening to it, but you’ll only be able to find it on that link until Monday, so don’t wait.

And tonight’s episode on the BBC was a real stunner. Tense, clever, neat… It was nigh on perfect as mild SF/horror TV. The baddies were properly menacing, in a kind of inverted Bugblatter Beast of Traal-way: harmless when you look at them, nasty when you don’t. And according to the currently-playing behind-the-scenes show, they were done with guys in makeup – even though they never move on-screen. Which would be how they managed the menacing not-just-a-mockup feel.

Clever.

But even I must admit a few guilty pleasures, tendencies the revelation of which risks my reputation, such as it is. These three have been recently recognised:

Last weekend I was at my mother-in-law’s birthday bash (’tis the season for barbecuing), and somebody stuck a particular Garth Brooks album in the CD player. It may be the only Garth Brooks CD I own (if you will accept that fact as mitigation), but the next day I had to hunt through a stack of boxes (six months after we moved house, the CD collection is still only half-unpacked) until I found it. The car stereo has been turned up loud ever since…

I have posted before on the influence my parents’ satellite television service has on me. A new-ish discovery (to me, anyway) found there is Las Vegas. Flashy, a little trashy, hugely entertaining brainless TV. Amazon (here’s me wishing for an affiliate link, but I’m a long way from being dragged into the ‘blog monetization’ trend) are currently selling the first two seasons in DVD boxed sets cheaply. They landed on my doorstep this morning. Now, if I can convert my wife, all will be well.

The Archers is a British (English?) radio institution. I had a short-ish run of days when I happened to be in the car while it was on. This is associated with my turning to Radio 4 in the absence of Radio Scotland on this side of the water. But during this spell of exposure to the denizens of Ambridge I got slightly hooked. Not hooked to the point of losing sleep if I miss it, but if I’m by the radio (which generally means in the car) at the appropriate time of day, I will tune towards Radio 4 rather than away from Radio 4 — which is what would (perhaps should?) have happened. A bothersome development indeed.

The bizarre thing about The Archers is that after months of on-and-off listening I’ve only got a handle on who a couple of the characters are supposed to be, but I still enjoy it. Freaky.

There you have it. Comments are open :-o

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We never actually missed it. When the rugby was on I would go and visit a friend, but otherwise just lots of DVDs.

But now my parents have satellite. ’57 channels…’ my backside. Hundreds of the things, and hardly anything worth spending your time on.

Except SG-1. With no TV I’d not discovered it, but now I’m hooked. I remember loving the film when it was out (’94, I think?), but this is better, actually doing something worthwhile with the universe. Quite thoughtful questions about faith and its outworkings, as well.

There, you like that rationalization, don’t you?

:-)

Good TV. Shame I only found it ten years in, but hey, that’s ten years of DVDs to find before I get stuck in the release-date waiting cycle. W00t.

…we will be expecting witty and informative writing everyday for a month…

Heh. Now there’s a laugh.

My favourite advantage right now is the Edinburgh International Film Festival, which offered me the chance to see Serenity last night (if you’re not in the know, it’s the big screen follow-up to Joss Whedon’s tragically short-lived Firefly).

Without spoiling (however much I’d love to), the movie holds a full measure, pressed down and overflowing, of main arc goodness. You get the feeling that Whedon is trying to get as much of his story out there as he possibly can, in case it ends here. There probably would have been a couple of movies’ worth, but you can see why it was done this way. Yet it hints at a whole lot more still to be told, with the scope to expand into something properly epic. Maybe it helps that I’m reading Iain M Banks at the minute – that man does epic right.

Serenity jumps straight in, and doesn’t let up for a whole two hours (although I suspect it might shed a few seconds before it goes on general release, if they want a 15). Some of the action is beautiful, and it has an intensity on the big screen that isn’t often there in Firefly.

If you liked the show, you’ll like the film. The good bits are all present and correct – heart, humour, quirky dialogue – with some extra darkness. Firefly ranks among my favourite TV shows, and Serenity lives up to it.

No, it’s not perfect. The first five or ten minutes feel a little self-conscious until it gets into the swing of things (although there are some very nice visual touches to connect with the series), and some of the exposition for the benefit of anyone who isn’t familiar with Firefly is quite clumsy. Actually, I wonder how well it’ll work if you don’t know the show; it just relies too much on previous knowledge. Fine for me, but maybe not for you. I also wonder if too many loose ends have been tied up. Is there anywhere left that it will really go? Perhaps something to fill in the narrative between the series and the film, but probably not. This feels like it will probably be the last shout of a great universe. There is wisdom in that – go out while it’s still good.

And it’s great. As Firefly writ big, it does the job and does it well. I love it.

Yes, I am such a fanboy. But then, I don’t have a ‘Joss Whedon is my master now’ t-shirt. Yet.

A few days visiting my parents, which I spent being ill, became an introduction to Firefly – space opera from Joss Whedon, the dude behind Buffy and Angel. I’m sure I’m coming a bit late to this, but it’s brilliant.

And it got cancelled. There’s only fourteen episodes. And that’s just wrong.

Hit Amazon. Hit Play. Go to Tesco and buy a copy. I can recommend taking a day and watching it in one go. Trust me. You’ll thank me for it.