John Walker's Electronic House

I’m obliged to tell the story of how I explained to Leo Tan PR Man that Byron had slept with his sister.

Tom F celebrated his hatefully youthful birthday last Friday by hosting a Pizza Party, where a select group of the very finest writers, and some other people Tom knows, gathered together for an evening of making pizzas and playing Guitar Hero in black and white. Said party hosted said moment.

So it seems the problem was, I was talking about the poet Byron. Leo wasn’t.

It’s remarkable how sincere you can sound when you’re telling the truth. Just, not the truth the other person is hearing.

“Byron slept with his sister?”

“Yes!”

“He REALLY slept with his sister.”

“YES! He’s famous for it!”

“Well, she is hot.”

At that point the twig snapped.

“Oh God! No! You’re thinking of Simon Byron! HE hasn’t slept with his sister!”

“Well, she is really hot.”

Something’s been holding me back from writing about Studio 60. I’m a bit scared to. I’ve become like some sort of crazed Pharisee, unwilling to say the name of their God as it can only demean him.

I don’t care if you think this is hyperbole. I do care if you pronounce that “hyper-bowl”. It is the most exceptional writing I have ever seen.

So, a thousand people tell me at once, that’s because I’ve not seen The West Wing. Well, I’ve started watching it, and it’s phenomenal. The West Wing is, without question, one of the best written television programmes ever. I care about politics, but I’m in love with comedy. So you’re going to have to forgive me for picking Studio 60 over it.

Three episodes in, and I don’t know what to do with the emotional response I have to it. Not to the story, because the story hasn’t attempted any huge emotional waves. But the quality. It’s more good than I realised television could be. It’s pure television drama, embracing the rules. Rather than the naturalism that’s necessary for a British drama to not sound like pantomime, here everyone takes their turn to say their perfect line, in a manner which cannot happen in real life. And that’s what television is for. And their lines are perfect.

Set in a parallel version of NBC (the channel on which the programme is shown), called NBS, Studio 60 On The Sunset Strip is their flagship live sketch show, shown on Friday nights. It’s Saturday Night Live. And Saturday Night Live hasn’t been funny for a very long time. It’s a cold, flat, soulless mess of corporate drivel, lacking any balls, bite or comment. And so is Studio 60 in episode 1, until the producer walks on set during the live broadcast to decry the state of a programme that once mattered.

He’s fired, and a producer and lead writer who had previously worked on the show, until some unrevealed falling out, are brought back by the new president of the station. And they care. As does the new president.

And then comes the finest acting and dialogue I’ve ever seen, as the process of making television good again, against the pressures of sponsors, right-wing Christian groups, executives, ratings, focus groups and people’s pasts.

Writer Aaron Sorkin sets himself a challenge that few could ever achieve. Because not only does he have to write a brand new show in the shadow of The West Wing’s massive success, and one that must face all the pressures of sponsors, right-wing Christian groups, executives, ratings, focus groups and people’s pasts, but he has to write a sketch show inside it that’s consistently extremely funny. Three episodes in, he’s outdone anything I could have hoped for.

The Larry Sanders Show, certainly a close second when it comes to finest television writing ever, got out of it cleverly – they deliberately had the sketches be poor, the writers weak. Sorkin can’t do that, and thankfully doesn’t need to. The lines, in the hands of the biggest and finest cast I can think of, blossom, the sketches outstandingly funny. Anyone who sees the end of the second episode, the song, and doesn’t laugh until their face aches, is an empty human. (“We’ll happily do the favour of an intellectual reach-around.”) Forget your prejudices against Matthew Perry – he’s fucking incredible here. The only person better than him is Bradley Whitford (West Wing), who makes me gasp out loud with his delivery. Sarah Paulson (American Gothic) is so wonderful, so incredibly believeable, and the only bearable Christian character in anything (since Firefly got cancelled). Amanda Peet, who you would assume would be the weak link, is superb. Everyone. Everyone is brilliant. There’s no weak link.

I have never, in my life, watched a programme twice in a row. I tend to never watch anything twice, unless in the company of someone who hasn’t seen it before, so I can absorb their enjoyment like some sort of entertainment vampire. The second time I watched the Studio 60 pilot, I started it again the moment it ended, and watched enraptured for a third time.

This is the sort of thing that makes me feel like I’m a useless writer, and want to write. It overwhelms me with its quality. It’s the best thing on TV right now, and certainly one of the best things on TV in the last few million years.

I feel proud of being slightly ahead of the curve when it comes to blogging Olbermann’s Special Reports. Now I’m just one of the tens of thousands doing it. Which makes me feel proud too.

Yes, the pilots keep on piling in.

It’s funny, people saying, “You watch a LOT of TV.” Actually, no. I don’t watch any straight-to-air TV, and never, ever watch whatever’s on. Bear in mind that this all equates to about two programmes a day, and that’s only in the opening weeks of the new season, and it’s a fairly average amount of television, minus any drivel that one might sit through at the end of the day. It’s refined viewing, overwhelmed at the moment as the process of discovering what’s worth watching is performed. And it’s all in the interests of Science, and letting you – no, not you – you, know what might be worth watching. I AM LIKE JESUS.

How I Met Your Mothers – Season 2 – NBC

Not a pilot, I admit. The new season picks up splendidly, running with the same energy that saw the previous finish so well. The programme does some important things very well.

First, it doesn’t frustrate with the ‘will they won’t they?’. It’s more ‘they will they won’t’, which works an awful lot better. Season 1 finished with a defininte ‘they will’ (of course, HIMYM’s secret is that you never need to invest yourself into hoping the relationship survives – the narrator constantly reminds us that this is “Aunt Robyn”, and not the wife-to-be) and continues without feeling the need to mess around with that. The focus is moved over to the other couple, and not ludicrously tied up, even after the first two episodes. But of course with these two we know, they will.

The second secret to its success is still not having succumbed to giving Barney (Neil Patrick Harris) any redeeming features. It’s hard to think of another network sitcom that’s had the good sense and stamina to keep a major character such an arse. Season 1 had its excellent tease when he was found working for the homeless shelter on Sundays, and hopefully they’ll remember how much fun ruining it was, and keep teasing. It’s a lovely running joke to have Barney appear altruistic, and then reveal, and episode 2 of the new season does a splendid job.

The programme still deserves no special awards or accolades. It simply fills a very worthwhile position: a decent sitcom worth watching.

Runaway – CW

At last the newly formed CW reveals a new drama. But uh-oh. Runaway is going to have to do something, and it’s going to have to make it explode when it does it. The opening episode’s story of a family on the run, new names, new city, new school, new friends, new jobs… It’s hard to imagine how it could have been more dull. Of course the downside of Lost Syndrome is it means every new programme is going to try and create what it must imagine to be intrigue by just being woefully vague. This is ideal for the likes of Jericho (episode 2 revealed what the programme is going to be – hilariously bad. But hilariously, so well worth sticking with – the gurning escaped criminals dressed as cops were definitely the highlight) and Kidnapped (suddenly dropping in ridiculous suggestions that Mr GRRRR might have had his brain or body meddled with by scientists in the desert – hooray!) but disastrous for what is otherwise a remarkably boring soap. Why are they on the run? Who is leaving the threatening messages? Will the local diner get its window fixed? Will anyone find the energy to care?

You can’t just be vague to elicit interest. You have to be intriguing. Runaway was certainly not, and it gets one more episode to either write an incredibly interesting story, or start blowing shit up.

Help Me Help You – ABC

What a wonderful surprise. Ted Danson’s looked a bit lost since the end of Cheers, and while Becker had some beautifully written rants, it was always sitcom-lite, clearly written for the sake of existing, rather than because of any burning passion to tell a story. Help Me Help You looks like it might be somewhere he can stretch out and enjoy himself.

It’s another one camera sitcom shot on film, but wonderfully without the needless studio laughtrack. Freed from this restriction it opens itself up to much more subtlety and lets people speak in sentences rather than one-liners. Ted Danson is Bill, a genius psychotherapist (his twelve degree certificates hang on his wall) who runs a weekly group therapy session. Programme = following the lives of him and his patients. The pilot does a really splendid job of introducing each character, wasting no time on laboriously cramming exposition into the dialogue, but takes the much more sensible route of just blitzing through clips of each character’s prefered neuroses in a superbly funny extended montage sequence before the opening titles.

Jonathan is gay, gay as can be. But in denial. Sounds like it should be a crappy idea, but somehow works brilliantly. Perhaps it’s because Jonathan is by far the most likeable character, and perhaps because, let’s just be honest, it’s funny to laugh at super-camp people trying to act straight. Inger has no social skills at her disposal, unable to speak anything other than that which is on her mind, which is always beautifully honest. And therefore offensive. Darlene has a list of issues as long as the screen, including an addiction to addiction support groups, and an obession with father-figures. Michael is a bastard, businessman forced to attend by a court order, and with what one might consider anger difficulties. And then, because these writers know how to write, there’s the new guy, our doorway into the group, Dave. Dave’s problems are still more obscure, but he does throw himself out a window when caught playing Solitaire on his work computer.

All the above sounds far too stereotypical, far too cartoonish. And it only gets worse when you say: Of course, Bill has more problems than anyone else in the group. And yet Help Me Help You (which I’ve decided to believe is named after one of Scrubs’ funniest moments) embraces them all in a convincing and engaging way. This is a huge part due to the vastly high calibre of acting, and some of the finest timing I’ve ever seen, both spoken and visually. If each episode is as good as this pilot, it will be without question one of the best comedies in years.

It also has the best theme tune ever.

Smith – CBS

It’s hard to pin Smith down. The pilot presented itself as a super-serious heist drama, following a group of really quite horrific high class criminals, who think nothing of murder. The second episode suddenly became a dramatisation of the GTA games. Hopefully it will settle to something between the two.

It’s a good job no one but me watched this summer’s FX six-part drama, Thief, or there’d be some serious court cases. Smith is Thief with the black people removed. Ray Liotta plays the leader of the criminal gang, who’s also a dedicated family man, father of two. He has to juggle both! But perhaps it’s not quite as cliched as the pilot suggests. His wife is far more canny than you first imagine, the relationship far more complex. Thief took a much bolder move, killing the wife in the first episode and creating a terrifyingly volatile relationship between father and daughter. It also had Andre Braugher, one of the finest actors in the world. Sadly it stretched one heist out over five of its six episodes, and lost momentum. Smith looks like it might make the same mistake.

After the flashback structure of the pilot’s introductory museum job, episode 2 only featured discussion of the next big job – the same mistake Thief made. Thankfully it somewhat balanced this with a smaller job by half of the crew, which gave it all the excuses it needed to suddenly go batshit crazy and Rockstar things up. When Jeff (Simon Baker) sees a motorbike he wants, he walks over, throws the rider off it, and drives off. When his clothes stink, he walks into a store and changes. When he prepares for the job, he walks into a carpark, picks the car he wants, and drives off in it.

The complete lack of morals in the crew is peculiarly uncomfortable. Thief went to some ends to make the characters both believeable criminals and likeable people. Smith’s cast appear to be cold-blooded murderers driven only by greed. This may well be more realistic, but it’s quite hard to see how the programme will keep you on their side, rather than rooting for them to be arrested and the show finished after the first few episodes. Although it could be argued that Amy Smart being one of them does make it a bit easier.

Ugly Betty – ABC

I knew nothing about Ugly Betty before watching it, other than the episode code was S01E01. What I know now is that I adored it.

It’s not really possible to identify what Ugly Betty is. It’s not a sitcom, nor a drama. It’s a 42 minute show, but behaves like a movie. And it doesn’t appear to be bothered with pesky notions of reality. In fact, I’m so happy to say, Ugly Betty is a fairytale. And wow, it’s about time someone started making fairytales for TV.

At first it’s impossible to shrug off the annoyance that Betty’s ugliness is a product of bad glasses, bushy eyebrows and traintrack braces. It’s clear she’s rather pretty, if slightly overweight (by TV standards), and surely we’re past this disgusting Disney version of ugliness, that can always be fixed by a five minute makeover at the end of the movie, right before the big dance. Of course, this is on Disney’s TV channel, so perhaps that’s what it is… But then it seems, no. Betty’s not ugly. She’s got terrible dress sense, and indeed bad glasses and traintracks on her teeth, sure. But Betty’s normal. Her new job, however, is at a fashion magazine, and there, Betty is ugly.

Betty is Latino, mid-20s, living in a small, dingy house with her father, older sister and nephew. She adores magazines – the process of their creation – and goes for a job at a large publishing company. Laughed away by the snobbish staff, she’s surprised when she’s given a job as an editorial assistant for one of the leading fashion rags by the owner of the company. (Jim from Neighbours!) It is, in fact, a punishment for his son, editor as a result of nepotism, and prone to sleeping with all his staff. He won’t want to sleep with Betty, see?

The result is a cross between Cinderella and Zoolander. The fashion world in which Betty finds herself is a ludicrous parody of fashion’s idiocy (a photoshoot has wrecked cars in piles, with large crepe flames fluttering all around, the models draped awkwardly across the bonnets and in front of the wheels – even better than Zoolander’s Derilict shoot – I laughed so hard). The staff are outlandish cartoon extremes, faces rigid with collagen, or in one case, lips taking over a face. The building is impossibly chic, the magazine achingly pompous. But what makes it all so perfect is the dead-straight face with which it’s all played. It’s a pantomime world, but believes itself to be perfectly sensible.

Betty’s role is to both reveal the lunacy, and attempt to fit into it. This is made all the more convincing by the presence of Ashley Jensen, Ricky Gervais’ friend in Extras. She is the best thing about Extras, and she’s the second best thing here. Her character, Christina, works in “the closet” – where all the clothes are stored for the magazine’s shoots. And where the company normally hides girls of the likes of Betty. Betty may have friends there. “It’s the bizarro version of Sex And The City,” snipes one of the super-camp assistants upon seeing them to a “Chico” (Closet’s nickname for the “bitches” who work in editorial).

And so the lines are drawn, Betty on the wrong side of them, working for an editor intent on forcing her to quit so he can have an assistant he’d like to pork. And it all merrily tumbles along, daft and beautiful. And a fairytale. Any left in any doubt about this will have to give it up after the impossibly perfect ending, and appearance of a mysterious, evil witch.

What a fanatastic thing.

Seems only appropriate to post this one too:

The Fall season in the Americas is now well under way, and most of the new shows have either aired their pilot, or been so careless as to distribute it widely across the internet, and so, as mentioned before, I think I’ll tell you what to think about them.

Brothers And Sisters – ABC

Hatefully vapid ‘drama’ featuring a slightly less skeletal Calista Flockhart as one of a number of siblings, parented by wheel-em-out stalwarts Sally Field and Tom Skerritt. Two-thirds of the way through and it was still not clear why anyone should be in the least bit interested in this upper-middle class family and their soapish relationship cliches. Would you believe it – one of the sons is a young and carefree dude who brings random girls home! Another is conservative and withdrawn and never brings girls home. There’s a couple with their marriage under strain, and Flockhart’s genius twist is that she’s a right-wing radio host, while her parents are passionate liberals! But of course unlike every right-wing radio host, Flockhart is sweet and friendly, but gosh-darn it, she will have those Republican views… Ann Coulter she is not, and clearly should have been were this show to have had any balls. It so desperately begs you to like everyone despite their Distinctive Character Trait(tm) that every character is hollow and vile. The other thing that happens two-thirds of the way in, nano-seconds after the adult siblings discuss how their parents are these impossibly wonderful role models, is Skerritt answering the phone and then angrily whispering, “How dare you call me here at home!” Two-thirds of the way through I turned it off.

The Class – CBS

Like Happy Hour below, The Class is a post-How I Met Your Mother Sitcom, using the one-camera-on-film device, rather than open-fronted sets in front of a live studio audience. Which is a bit odd, since all the open-fronted sets seem designed to accomodate a live studio audience. The gimmick, because you have to have a gimmick to survive a pitch meeting, is a junior high class getting back together for a reunion party now they’re in their mid 20s. Gosh, how everyone’s changed! Into a series of awkward personality stereotypes. But their sanitised Network TV versions, of course. So there’s the suicidal guy, about to overdose on pills, but wouldjabelieveit, the phone rings just in time – wacky old suicide, eh? There’s the goth girl, but, you know, not that goth because that wouldn’t be all family fun.

It’s not too horrific, but it really needs to kick into gear to survive a single season’s run. It’s a sad sign of this year’s sitcom set, failing to innovate or do anything brave, but rather find an excuse to be yet another 20-something aimless relationship comedy that we’ve seen so many times before.

Faceless – Fox

I’ll have to get back to you on this. I’m not sure if it was the painkillers, or if it is utterly impossible to follow, but it was extremely boring GRR MAN ANGRY rubbish starring idiotic Sean Bean.

Happy Hour – Fox

Oh dear, it’s not starting out very well. It does get better. It’s not often that I’ll give up on a 22 minute sitcom before at least the end of the second episode. The Class is getting another chance based on this. But despite having two episodes of Happy Hour to watch, I couldn’t suffer through all of the first. The most blatent attempt by Fox to mimic NBC’s surprise success of last year, the sweet How I Met Your Mother, it’s a spitefully cynical soulless clone. There’s a category of sitcom I choose to call “Unlocked Front Door Sitcoms”. While not necessarily a sign of poor quality, it is always a warning. We could forgive Friends (yes, I know you couldn’t, because you’re a pompous arse who never watched it in the first five years) as they were all intimately close. But when complete strangers feel perfectly happy to march in and out of each others ludicrously huge appartments without knocking, you know the writers aren’t thinking. Nor indeed are they trying in Happy Hour, which cobbles together a kooky cast by a seemingly random series of events, none of whom are vaguely likeable, and all of whom are awful misunderstandings of what makes the How I Met Your Mother cast so fun. (Which is in no small part the names Alyson Hannigan and Neil Patrick Harris).

As is now the trend, it’s a one camera show, shot on film, with the worryingly more common addition of laughter afterwards, and this merits further comment. It’s painful to realise how network execs have completely missed what the recent successful film-shot sitcoms did so well: they removed the audience. Both the consistently wonderful Scrubs, and the always funny My Name Is Earl, go without guiding laughter in order to be able to do a lot more with their camera work. Wanting the latter, but too afraid to do the former, networks have resorted to laying the audience on afterward, whether by screenings or canned. The result is disjointed and artificial. HIMYM just gets away with this by the surprising technique of having the audience volume set remarkably low. Happy Hour does not, and it’s a constant, offensive assault, especially considering the audience has nothing to laugh about.

Heroes – NBC

Hurrah! A good one! Premise: regular people start discovering they have super powers. It could have gone so very wrong. It doesn’t, and I think mostly thanks to the deeply dark and morose tone.

While some have accused it of being slow to start, I’d completely disagree and observe that it’s careful and doesn’t need to rush. It would have been very tempting to start throwing amazing powers at the audience, presented by beautiful people with puffed chests and American flags on their socks. Instead you have a miserable heroin addict unwillingly painting apocolyptic psychic visions, a popular girl at highschool terrified that her discovered invincibility might make her stand out from the crowd, the single mother in debt to the mob whose reflection has a different personality to hers… a very bad one. There’s some slightly more positive emotions related to the flying man, but it’s impossible to discuss the situation without ruining the pilot. The only really happy character is the cubicle worker in Hong Kong who realises the desired power of every trapped and bored worker – by focusing on the clock as hard as he can, he can rewind time. With an abundance of sci-fi geekery, he realises that controlling time means he’s on the way to controlling space, and that leads to exciting times.

Thanks to Lost, which I’ve never seen and don’t intend to – the few minutes I saw seemed like a cross between The O.C. and Celebrity Love Island – networks are finally allowing new shows to leave questions unanswered at the end of episodes. This was always a sure sign that a programme would get cancelled in the past, but now there seems, at last, to be room for mystery. Heroes asks lots of bleak questions, and foretells of awful times to come. It stars reluctant or unwilling heroes, whose powers do not endow them with greatness, but hinder their lives. And yes, those who have been reading such post-Moore anti-hero comics for decades will sneer down their pretentious noses at television’s finally noticing a long-established idea. But lose the attitude, idiots. It’s not going to be as smart, or as dark, or as shocking as your established comic. But it’s trying, and achieving a great deal, and it merits the credit for that.

Jericho – CBS

Another result of the post-Lost/Desperate Housewives schedules is Jericho – a show that would have died of disinterest halfway through its run on the Sci-Fi Channel in 1999. Now the major networks are willing to present mystery drama, so with bigger budgets, more established casts, and swamping promotion, such ideas may have the energy to run. For Heroes I think such advantages are deserved. Jericho needs to prove itself pretty quickly.

A small desert town, a few dozen miles from Kansas City, sees a mushroom cloud go up on the horizon. No one knows what it is, or why it happened. All communications from the town go down, phones stop working, and then eventually the electricity cuts out. The townspeople become unsettled, there’s a missing school bus, and the mayor’s estranged son, after a brief and mysterious visit for the first time in years, was driving away as the cloud went up.

The result is a slightly cloying, slightly heavy-handed, Stephen King-esque apocalyptic drama. The town is big enough to present a constant variation of perspective, the lead characters reasonably well defined and interesting enough to wonder about. And why, if there’s no radiation, is the road covered in dead crows? The worry is these questions are far too vague to remain gripping, and if the dialogue remains as corny, it might become too much to wait to find out. It needs tightening up in almost every area, but if that can be done, there’s a fair amount of potential.

Kidnapped – NBC

Certainly there are no shortage of kidnapping movies and TV shows, and so Kidnapped has some hefty work to do to justify itself above every other Harrison Ford movie. The first episode takes a meandering route to achieving this. The most significant issue is the confusion over who exactly the programme is about. The super-rich upper class New York family are certainly utterly unappealing, and if we’re supposed to care less that their spoiled son has been kidnapped by unidentified assailants, then something’s very wrong. Introduce the maverick, Knapp – a man who makes a living recovering kidnapped children OUTSIDE THE LAW! In an astonishingly poor piece of storytelling, the character is established by a completely daft extended montage of a previous successful rescue which he single-handedly executed. Including executing all the people in the remote building guarding the teenage girl, which is, if he’s not a cop, surely 1st degree multiple homicide? We really are back in those 80s movies where killing someone who is bad doesn’t count.

So he’s hired by the family who are doing what all good victims do and obeying the threatening note not to call the police. Despite a lovely line,

Husband: No no, we’re not going to call the police. The note said NOT to do that.
Wife: I would think the note always says that.

they then proceed to not think about the decision any further. Surely everyone calls the police? Anyhow, through various confusions the police get wind of the kidnapping too, and the programme shifts its focus onto our heroic rescuer who Plays By His Own Rules. Cue much shouting at the cops about how they just don’t know what they’re doing, and battles for control of the situation, and it begins to feel like this is going to be a programme about the weekly adventures of Knapp as he outwits evil kidnappers with his hot British girlfriend and cabinet-tall computer that “traces phonecalls”. But by the end it appears that this isn’t the case either, and this kidnapping is at least lasting two episodes, and worryingly maybe more.

Knapp is ludicrously gruff and sullen, tired eyes that have seen it all, wiser than the FBI, but able to throw out a wry joke. And that’s quite fun, really. If only the programme were about him and his breezy partner, the families he helps on the periphery, as the rest of the clunky cast are far too robotic to engender empathy. At the end of 42 minutes of angry growling and pained looks from all involved, it’s hard to care less if the rich kid gets his face shot off.

Raines – NBC

What a breath of fresh air. It’s Jeff! Jeff Goldblum, and long bloody last, getting to front a TV series. A homicide detective series. A homicide detective series with a twist! The programme was promoted by people who clearly hadn’t seen it, with an idea that sounded kind of fun, a bit Monk meets The Ghost Whisperer, but, er, different and not rubbish: An uneasy detective who is haunted by the victim until the case is solved. However, it’s far better than that. Raines is crazy. The ‘ghosts’ aren’t realy. They have no independent thought, no insight to offer him, no secrets to reveal – they can only know what he already knows, because they are a product of his own broken imagination.

The pilot’s plot follows the seemingly random murder of a young, pretty woman. Easy start. But it soon becomes apparent that her line of business was not quite so straight. Upon discovering that she was a call girl, the haunting vision appears with big hair, slutty clothes and trowled on make up. Until she indignantly protests at Raines that nothing in her apartment could give him the impression she might dress this way, and this was the result of his prejudices. The hair, clothes and make up return to normal. Finding out she’s from Texas means his companion’s accent develops a Southern drawl.

The result is Jeff being Jeff, constrained mumbling and stammering with bulged eyes, before sudden brilliant thinking. And weird imagination-o-ghosts to make it even more fun. There’s a surrounding cast of police chums and colleagues, and a best friend (the always brilliant Luis Guzmán) whom Raines trusts enough to share his madness.

What could have been the same level of disappointing frippery that Monk immediately descended into looks likely to be kept at bay by some really sharp writing. Raines speaks his mind, but it’s an intelligent one worth hearing. He trusts instincts that deserve his trust. It’s really solid detective fiction, just noirish enough without falling into cliche, and with a concept that never needs to become repulsive as ghosts inevitably would. Go Jeff!

Shark – CBS

It’s far too easy to describe Shark as “House with lawyers”. Wait, no, not far too easy. Right. It’s right to describe Shark as “House with lawyers”.

But who cares, because it’s HOUSE WITH LAWYERS! House, now in its third year, continues to be joyful daftness, and it needs to be copied. And James Woods is just perfect for the Hugh Laurie role. The only problem is, CBS doesn’t quite get what makes Fox’s House work. (Fox doesn’t either, for that matter, but enough poweful executive producers seem to be keeping Earth’s most useless network from ruining it). Despite Stark’s shark-like reputation as a defense attorney for the over-privileged, and his ruthless, and somewhat immoral, tactics for winning cases, we have to like him too! Quick, give him an adoring daughter! Quick, make him all lovely sometimes too! But of course the reason we want to like Start is because he’s ruthless and somewhat immoral. We love House because he’s always right, not because he has hidden redeeming features.

The schtick is due to something blah taxes mumble quick think of something writers mumble something, he’s forced to become a prosecution attorney, fighting back for the victims against the OJs of the world, who would otherwise buy their way to freedom. Along with a ragtag group of brilliant-but-naughty young lawyers, jowly Stark must beat all the odds and use his grumpy brilliance to inevitably never lose a case ever.

I can see it working if they don’t overplay the teenage daughter crap. If there’s an episode in the first season where Stark has to choose the case over attending his daughter’s highschool science fair, I’m going to burn CBS to the ground. If there isn’t, then this might be very fun.

Six Degrees – ABC

This one took me by surprise. I feared it was to be another Men In Trees or Brothers And Sisters, but instead something far more interesting is happening inside.

The premise – everyone in the world is connected by six other people, so here’s six people in New York who are connected to each other in myriad ways – doesn’t make sense. But nevermind that it should have been called Two Degrees, let’s get over that.

The cast is very strong, especially with Hope Davis (who was incredible as Joyce Brabner in American Splendor) looking permanently on the verge of tears as the recently widowed wife of a foreign correspondent killed in Iraq, Laura. There’s Bridget Moynahan (Natasha in Sex And The City) as Whitney, who meets Laura at a salon and they become friends. She’s about to get engaged to a suave Brit, and works high up in an advertising agency that hopes to hire the work of depressed artist, Steven Caseman (Campbell Scott – remember, from Singles?! Woo!). He has lost his muse, until he takes a photograph of a woman crying on some steps. That would be Laura. He’s driven across town in a limo driven by a young black man called Damien (newcomer Dorian Missick). Damien is a gambler, in quite some debt, with a brother offering to help him out, but perhaps not in the most positive ways. One evening a man asks him for some help getting into a club. A man called Carlos (Jay Hernandez – star of, er, Hostel), a NYC public defender who falls for a girl arrested for a public nudity misdemeanor. She is Mae (Erika Christensen – many rubbish movies), who after leaving the jail makes a strange phonecall, and a voice tells her she must leave the city. She chooses to disguise herself instead, and protects the mysterious wooden box that must not fall into anyone else’s hands. She needs a job, and starts working for a single mom in a large house. That would be Laura again…

And then things get going.

What threatens overbearing romantic comedy, sort of Desperate Unmarrieds, soon starts taking some turns you aren’t expecting. There’s guns, there’s scary phonecalls, there’s murder, and there’s that mystery box. There’s affairs and new relationships, but none too simple. And there’s the constantly intriguing criss-crossing of these six people’s lives, by what has to be more than sheer coincidence.

Despite almost nothing too huge happening in the first episode, I can’t wait to see more, which is a pleasant surprise. Of course, there’s the niggling fear that this is simply my imagination at work, rather than there’s, and it might be all very ordinary after all. But I’m hopeful.

There’s one more to go, but I’m not ready yet. Let it be said that Studio 60 On The Sunset Strip – NBCis, without question, the finest writing I’ve seen in a television programme since (and the matching theme is purely coincidental) Larry Sanders. It is astonishing, better than I know what to do with, and do everything in your power to watch it.

It’s the weekth anniversary since I assploded, and now, to celebrate my newfound ability to sit upright, I shall tell the story of my internal combustion. It’s over-long, so I’ve divided it into sections. This makes them easier to skip. It’s a series of anecdotes of varying ludicrous detail. I warned you.

Pain – where I tell the pre-hospital story

It’s odd to try and remember how much pain I was in. I distinctly remember thinking it must be trapped wind and that it would go away soon enough. And I remember crawling around on my bedroom floor in sheer mad agony, and then biting my finger as hard as I could in a wrong-brained attempt to distract myself from the stomach pain. Oddly enough it resulted in my stomach and my finger hurting a great deal. The finger pain was soon swamped and forgotten. But for some reason, at the same time, I remained convinced that it couldn’t be that bad and that I was being a wimp.

By 3am, with no sleep at all (having gone to bed at 5pm in pain) something inside me clearly realised that this was more serious than I was believing, and I called NHS Direct. The way NHSD works is an operator answers your call and triages you, then arranges for a nurse to call you back. But it’s all by the computer in front of them, so they have to ask all the most serious, emergency questions. “Are you impaled upon a rusty length of rebar?” “Is blood pouring forth from your eyes in what you might describe as a ‘torrent’?” “Is there a cloaked figure at the door menacingly brandishing a scythe?” All of which make you feel like you’re making an enormous fuss with your measly tummy ache. Eventually you’re told a nurse will call you back within an hour.

About half an hour later the nurse calls back and asks me the exact same questions all over again, which is a little odd. Then she decided I needed to speak to a doctor, so he would ring me back within two hours. About an hour later and a local GP rings me, and decides I probably have gastritis. I had that once before, about ten years back while at uni, and I remember being in some considerable pain then. The doc at the time told me the best thing to do was to not eat for 24 hours, and let the stomach rage calm. This doc told me I should eat something, as it would “soak up the acidic juices irritating my stomach”. It seemed… strange. But he was a doctor, and so as much as I didn’t want to I made myself a 5.30am sandwich. That made it hurt a whole lot worse. There is no possible circumstance with gastritis that I can find where eating something would be helpful. Silly doctor.

By 7.30am, still no sleep, still crazy pain (for some reason I had taken to walking around my room in circles, clutching at pieces of furniture before moving on with my aimless journey), I decided to do as NHSD are required to tell me, and called back if it got any worse. This time the nurse who eventually rang me back told me to get a heating pad, hot water bottle, etc and put it on my stomach, as well as to take paracetamol. Not owning a hot water bottle, or any form of heating pad, the other suggestion she had was to make a towel hot and wet. It turns out that it’s a good job that our useless letting agents hadn’t bothered to fix our lack of hot water for a month, as it prevented my doing this with any ease, and thus prevented my aiding my appendix along with its forthcoming poisoning, potentially deadly rupture. The other piece of advice was to call my GP surgery, and then the emergency number their machine would proffer.

Now I was stuck again, because, hey, I have stomach ache. How serious can this really be? And I am a massive wimp with pain. So I did the only sensible thing a 29 year old (almost) can do, and phoned my parents. Who told me to just call the doctor. So I did, and was given an 11am appointment, at the emergency surgery at the Bath RUH.

Hospital – where I tell the interesting bit about being in hospital

My incredibly excellent flatmate drove me to the hospital. The GP prodded around a bit, and ummed and ahhed. I’m not a big fan of GPs, generally prefering to cut out the needless middleman and describe any symptoms to the pharmacist, but this guy won me over. He noticed there was complete silence from my bowels, and some “guarding” from the muscles in my stomach, and on a hunch argued with a surgeon to admit me for closer scrutiny. So a quick walk to A&E, then through a secret Staff Only door, and a wait in a corridor. My main concern was still that I was going to get yelled at for wasting everyone’s time with a stomach ache. Poor Jonty was still waiting with me, until I was called through by a nurse, ushered into a curtained area, and told to take off my clothes and put on a hospital gown. Now it was out of control. I have stomach ache, and I’m being made to wear one of those open-at-the-back gowns, patterned with the words “hospital use only” ten thousand times to prevent the fashion conscious from stealing them and flaunting the hospital’s exclusive design in a local night club.

At a certain point (read: a certain amount of morphine) I completely forgot about Jonty, who had no idea what was going on. Apparently after reading every scrap of paper in the hospital he gave up and made his way home.

I found morphine horrible. It gave me the sensation that I was at once both lying down, and also not lying down. I’m not sure where I was rather than lying down, but I definitely wasn’t lying down, even though I was. I wanted to stand up because that would feel more definite, but I never quite managed to orchestrate such a move. The pain, which had been concentrated squarely in the middle of my stomach, immediately below my ribcage, had now drifted very definitely over to the right side. Again, this convinced me it was trapped wind, making its way around, and this had become completely ridiculous what with nudity, hospitals, class A drugs and oh my goodness the prettiest doctor ever in the whole world.

As alluded to previously, she had the great misfortune of having to check out all the worst areas, requiring the sitcom-favourite of clutching my poor, scared testicles as I coughed, and then, yes, a finger up my bottom. This all done, my dignity long gone, I awaited the “You have stomach ache. Why are you here?”, but instead heard, “Well, I’m 99% sure it’s your appendix.”

My reply was, “Blimey”. I was properly ill. But oh no – like, operation ill. She said the blood results would confirm what she already knew, and it would have to come out. Then there’s quite a morphine blur as I was shifted from ward to ward, waiting in the pre-op area, and then on the way to the surgery by about 6pm. It was remarkably quick. I did all my best comedy material along the way, and was lucky to have some really funny doctors and nurses too. And a splendidly wry anaethetist. Then the excellent moment of anaesthetic, where you get to fall asleep in the space of five seconds, which is such a great feeling. One minute you’re wide awake, and then all these black swirls blur in front of you and you think, “Oh, I’m of…” and then one second later your appendix is gone and you’re awake in another ward.

A Victorian Ward – where I start mostly moaning about horrid nurses

Talking of wards. I was put into a ward called the Victoria Annex. Named after the era in which it was equipped. The nurses on the first night bitched in front me about how it should not be open, how there was no equipment, how it wasn’t suitable for patients. Good times! The bed I was on did not feature the fancy remote-controlled bendy magic of the one I had been on pre-op. I also didn’t feature the ability to bend at all. In fact, the way to prop yourself up was to lean the cold metal bars at an angle at the head of the bed, and then smother it in pillows until they no longer pressed cruelly into your head. There were also no stands for the IV bags. At one point I began to bleed back into my antibiotic drip because it was hung so low. The miserable bitch of a nurse eventually found time to stop serving dinner to other patients and reply to my calls for “help”. “WAIT A MINUTE!” she barked, before forgetting about me and moving onto the next bed, and then later, when I tried again, angrily snapping,”WHAT?!” The bag was gradually filling with blood I had been planning to keep inside my arm, which I found to be enough of a concern to seek some attention. She was forced to climb on the side of my bed and hang my IV bag from the curtain rail. I am not lying.

That delightful, caring nurse was the same who, at 4am, refused to free me from my drip so I could walk to the toilet, and instead blanked me and grumpily put a pisspot out of my reach, and then walked off without pulling the curtains around my bed. Thanks nurse! I then had to stand up and pee in front of the entire ward, who also had not had their curtains pulled for nighttime privacy.

The shift change brough new surprises. The lovely Jo came in to visit me that morning, and as I got up to go to the toilet we noticed that my sheet was stained with a horrible brown mess (no, not poo, but the operation goo they smear all over you). Jo asked a nurse if she could change the sheet, and she gladly removed it. I made my slow, shuffling way to the toilet down the corridor, dragging my new-found IV stand alongside me like every mental patient in every 1970s movie. I returned to find the bed still stripped, and so sat in the chair, which was very painful to do. After ten minutes Jo asked the nurse if she could replace the sheet, and had “THERE ARE PRIORITIES” shouted at her. These were to move some pieces of paper on a table, I’m told. She eventually returned, and then performed the most incredibly bizarre routine of putting the bedsheets she’d just removed onto the bed, the new ones in a pile at the side, then swapping them over, and then, for some very odd reason, swapping them back. Then swapped them again, and announced, “I don’t know how to do this! I haven’t made a bed in years!”

Nurse Madman – where I go on in such detail about one person that you really should skip ahead

All of the nurses were as nothing when compared to Nurse Madman. He was, and remains, a mystery. Perhaps the most immediately confusing factor was his lifestyle choice to not pronounce the “n’t” on the end of words. “You did want this, did you?” is a tricky question to answer. Because, you know, it could be either way. Then there was his peculiar form of communication where he announces what you’ve said, despite anything you might have said, in such a way that can never be changed. Monday afternoon he brought me my collection of painkillers. I wasn’t feeling any pain, and so asked him, “Should I take these even though I’m not in pain?” He said, “You don’t want them?” I said, “No, I’m just not in any pain, and so don’t know if I need to keep taking them to stay that way, or if they’re only for when I’m hurting.” “You don’t want them.” And so on. I didn’t take them in the end, because, like I say, there was no pain.

He came back later, while Ross was visiting, and told me that I don’t like painkillers. I called him back over because I wanted it to be clear. I told him that if I’m in pain, I’ll gladly take painkillers, and that I have no problem with them. He smiled at me as if I were an 90 year old telling him that my late grandfather would be back from the funfair soon.

Later that day I was in some pain above where the appendix would have been, and I was super-paranoid as seems fair. Nurse Madman was cross with me for this, and told me I should take painkillers and not worry about it (hours later than the previous attempt). I explained that I would rather know the cause of this new pain, before covering it up. Again, I agree this was an over-reaction, but it felt like the start of the pain that had got me here, and that was enough really. He arranged for a doctor to pop by, and again I felt guilty for making a fuss. I said so, and he said, “Oh no, every pain must be checked out. Which was, er, the opposite of what he’d said ten minutes before. A doctor came to check on me, who before she could speak to me was told, “He does(n’t) like painkillers.”

At the shift change, handing over to the next set of nurses, they were informed, “He does(n’t) like painkillers.” Now bemused I said, “I have no problem with painkillers” to all present. He turned to them and repeated, shaking his head, “He doesn’t like painkillers”.

The inability to communicate with him was so odd, and I’m quite certain ensured he really didn’t like me. I was as painstakingly polite to everyone as I could be, and seemed to get on well with most of the staff. But not Nurse Madman, as hard as I tried. I went to such lengths to show him how much I appreciated everything he did. But there was some sort of barrier that meant we could never understand each other.

When the docs said I could go Tuesday morning, he was most perturbed. He, apparently, had already told my mum (who had phoned the ward that morning) that it would be very unlikely that I’d be able to leave before Wednesday. He’d also muttered at me that there was no chance of my being released. The docs said of course I could go straight away, no problems – I was all done, no reason to stay. As a punishment he refused to free me from my IV drip lodged in the back of my hand for over an hour. It was now plugged through a machine plugged into the wall because I needed potassium or something. This remains a mystery, as the really incredibly pretty doctor told me I was only meant to be on the drip while I couldn’t drink water, which I’d been doing from the first morning, and shouldn’t have needed it. It was all a bit Coma-esque freaky. I packed my bags while rotating on a central point, until I had to really firmly ask him to pull the needle out my hand. He kindly arranged for my meds to be brought to the ward in my absense, so I could collect them that afternoon rather than needlessly wait around. I thanked him for everything he’d done for me, shook him by the hand, and wished him goodbye.

Nurse Madman Part 2 – where I unbelievably carry on, and again, really, skip it

That afternoon for various reasons I had to go to the GP, who noticed that my operation wounds (it was done laproscopically, so there’s no major scar, but three holes in my belly. The surgeon so delicately told me, “When there’s… more of someone in this area, it’s easier to do the keyhole surgery.”) would need redressing soon, and then told me I should have received all these instructions before leaving, along with a discharge slip. When I called about the meds I asked about this, and Nurse Madman said the very strangest thing I could imagine.

“You have very high expectations of people.”

Thrown I asked him what he meant. He repeated it a couple of times. I asked, perhaps pointedly, if it was a high expectation to be told what to do with operation wounds after surgery. He said, “No. But you have very high expectations of people.” I said I found that a very strange thing to be told, and that I would be in either today or in the morning to collect the medication.

Stu kindly drove me in that evening to collect the pills. Nurse Madman laughed in surprise when he saw me. “I was just thinking about you!” he exclaimed, before laughing again. “Thinking what about me?” I asked, a bit afraid. “Oh, nothing. I was just preparing your medication. AND HERE YOU ARE! That’s SO funny!” More afraid. I began to realise where I’d be going wrong throughout my two days with this man. He simply doesn’t make sense at any time.

I asked about the wounds and one of the bandages was loose, so he offered to put a big sticky thing over it, which I gratefully accepted. He then said, “Here, have a few more of these to take home with you,” fishing a collection out the drawer for me like a grandfather slipping his grandkids a tenner while their parents weren’t looking. I said, “Oh, thank you so much. That’s really kind of you,” genuinely appreciative. He looked at me, stunned, and then finally said, “You’re VERY polite.”

I told him I was merely grateful for his generosity, and he added, “Most people aren’t polite.” Then, “Most people want to slap me ’round the face!” I smiled as politely as I could. Turning to leave I added, “Well, thank you. See you again… Well, I hope I don’t see your here again!” He looked down at the floor like a scolded puppy. I quickly added, “Here, in hospital. I hope I don’t have to come to hospital again!”

“You did like it here, did you?”

“Pardon?”

“You did like it here, did you?”

Ah yes, the silent n’ts. “No,” I said honestly. “The ward wasn’t properly equipped and it was very uncomfortable.”

“Why do you say that?!”

“Well, many nurses said so. They frequently complained in front of me about how awful it was.”

“They should have done that.” Much sorrowful head shaking. “That’s very unprofesh-nol. They should have done that.”

“Well, no, it was fine. It was fairly obvious when they were climbing on things and hanging drips from curtain rails,” I said brightly, you know, joking about how silly it all was. There was a pause.

“You do have very high expectations of people, don’t you?”

And then it got really weird. Nothing he said after that point made a moment of sense, and then as a finale he covered his face with a folder that pressed against his mouth as he carried on talking unintelligibly into it. I performed that sitcom move of backing away slowly while making panicky excuses for having to go, smiling.

The End – where I finally shut up

And so that’s me. I can sit up without hurting now, so that’s excellent. And I’m feeling up for walking around outside too, so that’s next week’s new adventure. Thanks to everyone who visited me, in hospital and in the flat this week. And thanks to my parents and sister who were excellently sensible and caring at the end of a phone throughout. It was hugely appreciated. And especially big thanks to Jonty, Stu and my mum, who ferried me about, and to Jo who came over and moved heavy things for me.

I have exactly one less appendix.

I’m not supposed to be sitting up much, so briefly, I spent Saturday night with excruciating stomach ache, what I assumed to be trapped wind. NHS Direct, at 4am, assumed it to be stomach ache, but if it got worse to call my GP. It got worse, and the out of hours GP was at the local hospital. Which turns out to be quite good, as he refered me onto a surgeon after becoming suspicious of the silence in my bowels (aren’t we all?), and I was stripped to a gown, the most incredibly pretty doctor stuck her finger up my bum, and then I was whisked to surgery and had an inflamed, angry and ripe-to-explode appendix removed. Two nights of hateful boredom and nurses who I assume were hired wholesale from Morrison’s check-outs, and I’m back, with holes.

I’m a bit sore, and brilliantly, as a GP diagnosed this afternoon I has have my sciatic nerve pinched at the base of my spine, ensuring that it hurts down the front and the back. So I’m off to lie down and watch downloaded TV.

Anyone who wants to come visit me this week, so long as you’re someone who already knows where I live without means of stalking, is extremely welcome, as I shall die of concrete boredom probably by tomorrow afternoon. Oh, and if anyone has the West Wing on DVD and wants to drop it round for me, I’ll kiss them anywhere they ask (which is most likely to be on my own arm, I realise).

What have I learned from all this? Nothing. Victory!

Edit: If anyone readng this works at the RUH in Bath, could they email me? it’s for the best of worst reasons.

This is a reminder to watch Northern Exposure.

Because it is September, this means it’s time to watch the pilots of every new series starting in the US Fall schedule. Graham’s written splendid reviews of them on his blog, and I think I’m probably going to do something similar because I’m a lame-o copycat. There’s good words to be said about Heroes, Shark and Raines, some good words for Jericho, and ridiculously jubilant cheers of joy for Studio 60 On The Sunset Strip.

But to start with, I’d like to express my blinking-eyed horror at Men In Trees. There’s no reason to have thought it would be any good. It’s created by a lead writer from Sex And The City, so obviously I didn’t expect anything. But included in that list of anything I didn’t expect was for it to be almost a scene-for-scene rip-off of Northern Exposure.

Anne Heche plays a relationship coach who’s about to get married, BUT YOU’LL NEVER GUESS WHAT?! He’s cheating on her! Get back on your chair. She learns this while on a press trip to a backwoods small town in the wilds of Alaska. Where she is greeted by an enthusiastic young man who has a radio show on the town’s small radio station. She then finds the local bar is filled with local crazy characters and odd drinks, where she meets a guy who she assumes is flirting with her, but he claims he’s not interested at all, but they clearly both fancy each other. After discovering that people here have never heard of a soy latte!!!, she finds that where she’s staying does not feature all the big city creature comforts she’s used to, and then there’s a raccoon in her closet! Who should come along to sort the situation out, but the guy from the bar!

And then there’s no flight out of there, and… oh god what are they doing?

Except, of course, it has absolutely no charm whatsoever. It’s a miserably unfunny mess that so brazenly rips off the pilot of Northern Exposure that you can only think the writers have hoped that everyone has forgotten it by now and wouldn’t notice. Now imagine the vapid men-writing-how-they-think-women-think drivel of Sex And The City’s relationship whine-fests, before then stealing yet another character or scene from one of the best television programmes to have existed. Full of lines like, “The truest thing I know about relationships is, sometimes we don’t know anything at all,” it’s about as big of an insult as you could imagine.

So in conclusion, don’t forget to watch Northern Exposure.