For openers...

... A new year, and olf flat, a new blog. Named after a collection of magazine articles by unjustly forgotten (in Britain, at least) Canadian novelist Mordecai Richler.

And, true to previous blog form, we open with a list. I like lists. They make me happy.


Five TV Series To Die For

1. Twin Peaks
Now the second series is available on Region 1, my life is complete. Fire Walk With Me is Lynch's finest hour. I have spent weeks pretending to be sick, only to be perfectly well, nursing a bottle of wine and watching hour after hilariously terrifying hour of TP. One day, I will go there.

2. Homicide: Life On The Streets
Despite having dated a little - laboured exposition, occasional staginess, and in season seven suffering from lack of Pembleton - H:LOTS remains the moment crime drama grew up. Intelligent writing, uniformly excellent performances and innovative camerawork and editing. What more do you want? You want seven seasons? Done. You want a final tv movie to wrap up all of your loose ends and reunite the cast. It's yours. You want Yaphet Kotto as the meanest black Italian in your dvd collection. Deal. Turn your name from red to black, and watch Homicide.

3. GBH
The acronym stands not for Grievous Bodily Harm, but instead for Great British Holiday, an oblique reference at best - wait for Michael Angelis' performance as a perpetually stoned university lecturer and poet, then you'll understand - but this obliqueness fairly sums up one the finest tv series ever made. Writer Alan Bleasdale's output was never the same after this tour de force - by turns angrily political, lyrically elegaic, and blackly funny, this is the decline and rise and fall of a man whose twisted ambition and crippling hubris is manifested in an abusrdly exaggerated series of ever more explosive physical tics. Robert Lyndsay buys our forgiveness for the awful My Family, Jericho and a multitude of other sins by delivering a career best performace as Michael Murray, flawed socialist, flawed Catholic and flawed husband who sets himself at odds with gentle teacher, true socialist and agoraphobe Jim, played with dignified vulnerability by globe-trotting ex-python Michael Palin. Awesome.

4. Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy & Smiley's People
These tw series listed as one because I say so. Those who don't watch these back to back (on consecutive evenings, of course) should be turned, burnt and sold for stock. Guinness is excellent as Le Carre's "troubled man of infinite compassion" and the supporting cast is superlative, particularly Hywel Bennett as Circus bad boy Ricki Tarr, Ian Bannen as Jim Prideaux, and the late Ian Richardson as charming operator Bill Haydon.

5. The Wire
Anything I write about this series will be redundant. And, very possibly, will sound like the rantings of an overzealous proseltyzer. So just watch it. It is the Best Thing Ever.