You win some, you lose some...

Brit TV is currently showing its usual mix of populist trash, but hidden away in there are some real gems. Spooks, sadly in its final series, continues to show that Brit writers can do complex thrillers without coming across as hackneyed or laughably cheap. The big question is will Harry and Ruth finally get it on, after tip-toeing round each other for years? Probably not - my guess is one or other will get to meet their maker, just as lips are about to touch. Why is it that in the US any old bollocks, and most of it is, gets season runs of twenty plus episodes, and if even slightly successful go on for ever and a day, while over here, a series (never have liked "season", a word that should only apply to the weather, cooking, or sports) is rarely more than six episodes? Bit of a rhetorical one that, it's money of course!

Warning - very minor spoiler alert...

Last night we caught up with episode one of The Fades which shows promise as BBC Three's next Being Human. All kinds of weird shit going down here, including a teenage schoolboy hero (it is BBC Three after all) Paul (the suitably angsty Iain De Caestecker) who can see the dead, and has nightmares of impending apocalypse, his mate, who is not troubled by those social hang-ups, zombie-like creatures (SFX - very good) who can move lightning fast (I've always wondered why zombies have to move sooooo slooowwwwlllyy, which in reality renders their threat negligible), gun toting female clergy, unfortunately killed off. Female interest is supplied Natalie Dormer who played Ann Boelyn in The Tudors, who although she dies, can of course be seen by our hero and his older mentor figure. She is (was) married to a history teacher who plys his trade at our hero's school, and will obviously get involved in the shenanigans at some point soon. The shenanigans appear to involve the impending apocalypse as seen in hero's nightmare (SFX - dodgy) which obviously the unresolved dead have something to do with. You see, some of the dead disappear, not "go to heaven", merely disappear when their soul-light envelops them, others stay on earth when instead that light merely goes out, the selection being purely random in a fitting dystopian fashion.

An interesting premise, with a fair bit of gore. Marvellous!

I was going to go on about Dr Who but Phill has said it all here. The sooner the modern DW is put back in his Tardis the better in my opinion. Utter bollocks enlivened by the occasional joke, and the luvvly River Song, who everyone else seems to hate - all the more for me then!

"Knit for me, or die..."

As for foreign TV, we await the new series of Forbrydelsen with mucho anticipation. The chunky sweaters! The constant gloom! The Scandinavian introspection! The minute detail! And Sofie Gråbøl's perfect jean clad bottom is always a joy!