iainjclark's Mysterious World

Oh god, Bones is doing a two-part season opener set in the UK, aka the famous bits of London. This is not something US TV is noted for doing well, and Bones is not blessed with what we like to call "subtlety". I'm expecting this to be full of Scotland Yard officers wearing tweed and bowler hats. (I wasn't sure what to make of the previous season finale either, which featured a major twist in which one regular cast member acted completely out of character for the sake of the plot.)

Torchwood Season 3 will be a five part miniseries, and it'll air on BBC One, stripped across one week at 9 p.m. in the same vein as the disappointing BBC1 drama Criminal Justice. BBC1, eh? The continued success of Torchwood is as meteoric as it is inexplicable.

Ronald D. Moore has another pilot TV Movie on the go, Virtuality, which sounds a) exactly like a holodeck-goes-wrong episode of The Next Generation and b) completely uninteresting. Virtual reality almost never makes for good TV because it has no consequences, meaning that consequences have to be unconvincingly slapped on: "If you die in the game you die out here too" / "If you unplug her she'll die".

I do seem to remember having a sneaking fondness for the short-lived VR.5, but that's probably because it had Anthony Head and David McCallum in it. (Alternatively it may be because it's "without doubt the best, most entertaining and thought provoking and compelling sci fi TV series I have ever seen, or can ever envisage being made" as someone on IMDB hilariously claims.)

I'm enjoying HBO's seven-part Generation Kill miniseries at the moment. It took a little while to get to grips with the characters, and I'm still not entirely sure I know who everyone is, but over the first few episodes the series has deepened and become more absorbing. It's esentially a cross between Band of Brothers and Jarhead, but based on a real journalistic account of the early days of the Iraq war. The production values are impressive, and the series looks for all the world like it was shot in Iraq during the invasion. It has the same sense of verité that David Simon and Ed Burns brought to The Wire, and a lot of clear parallels in showing flawed people at the mercy of petty and incompetent leaders. What's remarkable is the sense of complete aimlessless and confusion in what should be a co-ordinated military campaign.

David Simon was interviewed about The Wire on tonight's Culture Show. It was very much a primer for the show for UK types so there were no specific spoilers. Nothing he hasn't said many times before, but it was still nice to see the show getting some exposure on UK television. This edition of The Culture Show is repeated at about 11.20 p.m. on Thursday on BBC2 if you're interested.

They also premiered this highly amusing animated cat cartoon, from Simon Toefield, the man who brought you the equally amusing animated short of the cat trying to wake up its owner.

EDIT: ajr beat me to it.

EDIT EDIT: In fact, don't wait, watch extra bits from the David Simon interview on the BBC website right now. So much extra stuff it must clock in about the same length as the actual interview.

EDIT EDIT EDIT: And here's the aired interview to watch online too.

Ed Burns and David Simon of The Wire have adapted the book Generation Kill into a seven part HBO mini-series. There's a review on AICN here which is full of the usual typos, spelling and grammatical errors you'd expect from an AICN review but is generally very positive about it. The mini-series is a matter-of-fact account of the lives of an elite group of U.S. marines in the early days of the Iraq War. May or may not be interesting, but with Burns and Simon behind it and being based on true events at least it won't be sensationalist.

Speaking of The Wire: here's Season 5!

The fifth and final season of HBO's "The Wire" begins in January, this time focusing on layoffs at The Sun — where Simon once worked — and how newspapers fail to capture certain complex truths. Previous seasons of the acclaimed drama have featured drug dealers, struggling longshoremen, city politicians and inner-city students.

The drama is actually about "the decline of the American empire" and the failure of postmodern institutions, Simon said.

Meanwhile David Simon's next HBO show will be about "musicians reconstituting their lives in New Orleans", which sounds suitably unusual and interesting.

Deadwood looks like it'll get a pair of two hour TV Movies to wrap up the story after Season 3. It's such a good series that I'd hate to see it trail off into cancellation without a proper ending, so that's a relief.

The article also mentions The Wire, another obsure-but-excellent show that's been salvaged from limbo for a fourth season. Nominally it's yet another crime drama (from journalist David Simon whose book inspired the TV show Homicide) but in execution it's about as far from Law & Order or CSI as you're ever likely to get. It's a believable, sprawling take on crime and urban living; totally unglamorised and paced like a slow-burning novel. Like Deadwood it's stuffed full of thematic material but so naturalistic that it seems like pure unfiltered reality unfolding in front of you. If you get a chance to watch it from the start of Season 1 I highly recommend it.