Just Watched

Er some small screen stuff this time around. Well watched the Damages season two finale the other night and it didn't disappoint. I'd never have thought such a over-dramatic, convoluted legal drama could hook me in but by the end of the episode I was hankering for the first episode of next season. Guess it's the excellent performances from Close, Byrne and Donovan.

Mos Def is on House! Don't mind his early music but I'm not really convinced about Mos as an actor. I'm surprised I'm still watching this show given I'm fairly squemish but Hugh Laurie is always worth a watch. Anyways I amost turned this off after 5 mins as I aint too keen on the whole P.O.V set up but in the end it turned into quite a good episode. At least they kept clear of the tedious bi-sexual-with-Huntingdons character who should be fired out of a cannon next week cause she's guff.

Oh lordy South Park's last episode Eat, Pray, Queef was somehow really funny and really crap. After a string of excellent episodes they seem to have coasted through this one relying on the same gag throughout the entire ep - nevertheless I it still made me laugh. Girlfriend wasn't impressed though.

I'm a big fan of Charlie Brooker ever since his crazy book TV Go Home came out. His weekly column in the Guardian Guide magazine has in the past made me choke, spurt and snort with laughter on more than one occasion. The unfairly derided Nathan Barley TV show was brutal but a pitch perfect satire of London idiots and their wiley ways. Anyways now Brooker is back with a spinoff from his Screenwipe show called Newswipe. It's about time someone started slinging the muck at the increasingly rubbish TV news we have in this country: endlessly repeating the same 5 news stories all day, cutting to live feeds with nothing to show, prattling on about vacous celebrities for days on end, promoting their own shows and products under the thin veil of news and frankly just not reporting what's actually happening across the world. It's a shame but now I'm forced to flick betweeen CNN International, Sky News and BBC24 to keep abreast of world events and even then I need topping up with stuff like this. Anyways Brooker's show is very good so far and I hope he can build it into something bigger maybe even put him on BBC1? As it's the Beeb you can watch it yourself here

I'm about halfway through the classic documnetary series World At War - this really should be made compulsory viewing for our schoolkids. With some truly astonishing archive footage and plenty of important talking heads contributing this is one you should really make an effort to watch. In a similar vein I'd recommend the slightly nutty Ascent of Man - an ambitious history of mankinds intellectual development this 1970's British documentary series covers pretty much every important scientific discovery and is beautifully narrated by the idiosyncratic Jacob Bronowski. I've referred to it as nutty as there are sequences of footage interspersed throughout that are indulgent, trippy and kinda poetic i guess - ah if only documentarians were given the freedom these days. Up next for me will be Jazz.