Looking back over the last few months, I note I have watched heroic amounts of TV. I am, in fact, addicted to television drama, which has many advantages over the live version: free (well, factor in the license and the LoveFilm sub, and it's still nearly free), often brilliantly acted, sometimes brilliantly written and you can watch it at a time of your choosing with pause facility and no one there to annoy you. Yes yes I know you don't get the chemistry, but then there's a special chemistry too between me and Jack Bauer two feet away on the laptop, soundtrack of pulsing music and CTU's myriad of gadgets pounding into my ears. As well as an accessible alternative to theatre, TV drama is just as absorbing and stimulating as many novels.
So, yes, all of 24 Season 7 and now halfway through 8 and realizing with joy that I have completely forgotten the disposable plotlines of all the others so can watch them again. Seem to remember the first was actually a taut thriller about protecting a presidential candidate with no nuclear bombs or imminent threats to a whole seaboard in sight. I love the intense talk of protocols and schematics, the data analyst as hero, the guilty feeling of being absorbed in right-wing apologetics (not so bad when a corporate nutcase steps forward as top baddy), the glorious predictability (it's not one plot but a series of them: as soon as baddie no.1 is dealt with, we learn there's someone EVEN BIGGER behind them, in a kind of reverse Russian doll sequence), the way an English actor (in 6, I think) has to breathe life into lines like 'I'm not going anywhere without you'.
But 24, and indeed most things in this dull sublunary sphere, wilt and fade before the majesty of Breaking Bad. Walter White, the teacher I should have been (never good enough at Chemistry, alas; and it's hard to break bad armed only with the skills of close reading of poetry and a smattering of Stanislavski). My thoughts on this are not yet beyond the visceral exclamatory stage. Gus Fring! Tuco! Hank! The season where every episode starts with shots of the pool (copied from, or by, House? I haven't checked the dates)! There are episodes (Grilled, Phoenix, Fly, Dead Freight, Ozymandias) that stand on their own as amazing dramas, taking you to emotional areas that linger in the mind long afterwards. There is a sense throughout that this is modern capitalism, scrabbling and killing for medical insurance money, right on the edge of civilisation; the parched desert becomes the image of the contemporary, atrophying soul. But for close reading of this, best to go to the careful reviews on Den of Geek (oddly banned from our filter as a gaming site). From the desert to the snowscapes of Minnesota, and Fargo was a recent pleasure. There are no rules, as great villain Lorn Malvo patiently explained to Martin Freeman. Though didn't he turn from something extra-human into a normal mortal at the end? True Detective was brilliant at the start, turning into something more regulation buddy-cop thriller at the end, but as with BB and Fargo making a whole landscape - in this case the swamplands of Louisiana - the main character. J and I ended our long-term project of watching all eight seasons of House, enjoyable right to the end despite the diminishing circles solely because of the central character, brilliantly portrayed by Hugh Laurie, though Wilson provided a fine comic foil. And going back almost a year, time to mention the enjoyable, atmospheric oddity of Jane Campion's Top of the Lakes, the ultra-miserablisim of Southcliffe (comparable to David Greig's The Events as a response to inexplicable mass killing) and the historical portraits of life in The Village and The Mill.
For other British TV, much enjoyed watching The White Queen and having it explained to me by nJ who was studying The Wars of the Roses at the time. I gave up on the first In the Line of Duty (bolt-cutters are my limit) but watched the second series through, held by one genuine shock moment and the compelling Keeley Hawes, right up until the messy ending, where tying ends together just created a big knot. Serial killer series The Falls (our answer to The Killing and The Bridge) was, added to those, too many young women being tormented and killed for our televisual entertainment. My diet of Euro TV, aside from Scandinoir, has included Braquo - like Spiral, a French equivalent to The Shield only the subtitles make you feel clever - and (just started) Isabel from Spain.
So - good to get away from the grimness with some comedy, and have loved the Office-style psuedo-docu of Parks and Recreation and W1A (following 2012 - but why are British comedies so pathetically short compared to US ones, by the way?), the crazy fun of Brooklyn Nine Nine, the love and pain of Rev (the Easter episode incredibly moving). Coogan and Brydon's The Trip to Italy became steadily less interesting: I wanted to hear more about the food and less of their admittedly accomplished impressions.
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