I'm finally convinced that Peter Capaldi is the Doctor

For a long time, I wasn't convinced by the twelfth Doctor. It wasn't that there was anything wrong with Peter Capaldi's performance, it was just that he didn't seem very Doctorly. There was Ecclestone for a bit, then I got used to David Tennant, and then I got used to Matt Smith, and Capaldi seemed like too much of a change. He was too grumpy, too cold, too Scottish, and I didn't see the same character in him. It's not like I could compare him to any of the pre-my-birth Doctors, because I'm just not going to watch any of that (sorry). I can only judge these modern-era Doctors, in the new version of the show that's not that new anymore. And the good news is that at the end of a season that's been sometimes quite good but too often meh, there are two episodes that have completely and utterly convinced me that Capaldi is the Doctor. And he might be more the Doctor than any others I've seen.

The problem with this season has been its strange addiction to two-parters. These days the idea of a two-parter can seem strange, when there's so much good stuff with running storylines. Doctor Who is the rare show that can pull off doing a different thing every week. It can do anything it wants, and if you don't like one story, there's another one next week. Except this year there wasn't, and if you didn't like something you were kind of stuck with it for a bit longer. There were Zygons doing a world invasion thing, which is difficult to do on a small budget. There was an immortal girl who never really seemed immortal (Maisie Williams is very good in Game of Thrones, though). And there was some other stuff that isn't really relevant to the point I'm trying to make: the penultimate episode 'Heaven Sent' is amazing. I don't know what pure Doctor Who is, but this is where it is for me.

There's just him, the Doctor, trapped in a puzzle box, chased by death, choosing to punch through a diamond wall and die over and over again for billions of years instead of giving in. In this episode time is weighty and terrible, and the Doctor is the master of it. I don't think it would have been as good with Smith or Tennant. Here Peter Capaldi really looks, and sounds, like an intergalactic wizard. He is dark and powerful and seems to belong in a never-ending castle of doom. The whole episode was very clever, but not in the overly complicated way that sometimes causes problems. Its simplicity allowed it to focus on the things that really work: hunting for clues in a Gothic space prison, a creepy death monster chasing him, and punching through a diamond wall for billions of years.

Maybe it's all down to the coat. In this episode he is wearing a red velvet coat that is self-consciously more Doctory than what he normally wears. If he is the minimalist Doctor, that coat is what completes the picture. They even make a point of him not wearing it in the next episode. In the finale, he takes it off and becomes even more of a badass by taking over his home planet from a hut. It seems that he would rip the universe apart to get his companion back. It's something he's probably done before, but he's never taken such a long, long road to do it. These two closing episodes are season-saving stuff for me, and it helps that they're unusually well directed. I'm not saying that Doctor Who isn't well directed, just that I don't usually notice. Here I didn't have to try to believe it and forgive the cheap bits or the parts that are obviously in Cardiff. I was there, I was on Gallifrey, and I didn't question it. And I was also, for the first time in a while, back with the Doctor.

The last few bullets of Boardwalk Empire

(Spoilers.) I've always thought that Boardwalk Empire was too much of a big, sprawling history lesson. It always seemed half great, and half a meeting of violent men in hats that I hardly recognised. But in the closing minute one bullet snapped the whole thing into focus. Five seasons of conspiracies and killings given symmetry with a final closing punch. Nucky is shot by Tommy Darmody, the son of the man he killed all those years ago. Now it seems obvious that the show was always operating from the aftermath of that event. Characters were left behind, straggling and aimless without Jimmy to anchor them. Sad Richard didn't know what to do with himself for a long while, except going on an occasional rampage. And I wondered, why is Gillian even still in this show? Now it all has consequence. Even the Young Nucky flashbacks that we've been dragged through this season proved their worth. By putting Nucky's final moments against his decision, many years ago, to give Gillian to the Commodore, we can see that his whole life hinged on one terrible act. On the one hand his job as the Sheriff set him on the path to take over Atlantic City, but it also set the wheels in motion for his death. In an earlier episode, Young Nucky walked into the Commodore's foreboding new palace after the old Sheriff refused to enter. He raised his eyebrows at the rows of hellish artwork and kept going. The writers wanted us to see that, in his ambition, Nucky made a deal with the devil and it eventually cost him. Knowing that Boardwalk Empire rests on this one point gives it a focus that I never thought it had. It was this lack of clarity that I believed was holding it back from greatness. If I rewatched it (which I'm not going to do), the earlier seasons in particular would be far more enjoyable.

Maybe it's an illusion. Maybe it really is a long, confusing history lesson full of loose ends. After all, my favourite character didn't have much to do with Nucky at all. Nelson Van Alden, also known as "George Mueller", also known (by me) as "Old Mad Eyes", was a show all by himself. After one season as an FBI agent the writers sent him off on his own dark comedy, seemingly designed to put Michael Shannon in situations where'd he'd be the most fun to watch. He was a disgruntled salesman, going to door with the maddest face in America, until his colleagues poked and prodded him and he fried a man's head with an iron. Then they sent him to work for Al Capone, just to watch him squirm. He turned simple statements into twisted, bleak jokes. In his final moments, before trying to steal from Capone, he goes through the hopeless plan, realises he is probably going to be killed, and simply says 'This has not been thought through.' Boardwalk Empire would have been emptier without him.

I wonder how it's going to be remembered. In a time when so much great television is being produced, Boardwalk Empire almost seemed like an underdog, something that was always just there being quietly brilliant. It was the odd sort of show that was never compulsive but always captivating; I never hurried to watch the next episode but I was always impressed when I did. It was slow and meandering and whether or not it lives up to the sum of its parts can only really be discovered with a rewatch. We shouldn't take it for granted though, because it's an example of how far modern television has come. This is a real crime epic, surpassing the old film classics in size and scope. It's a different language to film, and has to be judged differently, except to say that it matches them in terms of production quality and performances. This didn't used to be done, and these days we're getting used to it.

The mystery of whether I enjoy Mad Men or not

I want to like Mad Men. It seems like the right thing to do. It seems logical to like Mad Men. But I don't. Not much, anyway. Maybe not at all. I've only seen one season, which doesn't seem like much, but is still thirteen hours long. If I had done anything else for thirteen hours, I would probably know if I liked it or not. I will watch more of Mad Men. One more season. Maybe two. Because I really, really want to like Mad Men. It's an important television show. It's part of discussions about important television shows. I am not having these discussions about Mad Men, but one day, when somebody asks me what I think of it, I will have an intelligent answer. And maybe I'll be able to say I enjoy it. Or maybe not. The problem is that I admire it rather than enjoy it. It is an extremely well-made, well-written, well-acted series, and it has literary things to say about American society. Long articles can be written about the themes that run through each episode, and how they show up through metaphor and plot. Identity, racism, sexism, outdated social attitudes. All very interesting. But I don't want to write an essay. I want to be entertained.

I want to enjoy it. And that will only happen if there's a story I care about. From what I've seen of it so far, there isn't. I understand that it's a toned down, not-much-happens sort of show. I'm not against that. There just needs to be something going on that I can engage with. I don't really like the characters, but characters don't have to be likable. When the characters aren't likable, I look for something in the story. And when there's not much going on in the story, I watch something else. Don is a mope, who is full of little mysteries I think I'm meant to care about, but don't. His wife is bored. Peggy's alright. Joan reminds me of those really good Firefly episodes. There's lots of advertising meetings that all seem to involve the staff coming up with silly ideas, then Don saying 'No, that's not right. You have to consider the truth of the human condition, which I will now explain to you.'

His relationship with his family seems to be the main focus, but I have no sympathy for him. He looks constantly depressed at all the nicest family gatherings, then goes and sleeps with someone who's not his wife, and I'm meant to feel sorry that he feels so disconnected. Why is he doing this? He doesn't really say, but I think it has something to do with the themes. Those themes that need analysing. All the answers will be in there, not in the scenes where he sits in his office and stares at the wall, looking perplexed about this materialistic society and his existence in it, and the themes that are ruining his life. The episodes go by like this and I end up feeling different - not uplifted, not tense or excited, but interested, and a bit glum.

The reason I'm writing this, after only seeing one season, is that I want to make a record of how wrong I was. I want to have a revelation and realise that I love Mad Men, and I want to watch all of it, then watch it again and again. I'll appreciate it in all its deep and nuanced and brilliant complexity. I was wrong back then, when I hadn't really gotten into it. I'll own boxsets because I love it so much. It'll be wonderful. I will be a fan of one of the best TV shows ever made and I will write about it here. I really want to like Mad Men.

Firefly gets cancelled every time I watch it

Rewatching Firefly has reminded me why it was so good in the first place. Where other television sci-fi fills its episodes with cosmic sorrow or grumpy aliens, this is about family. A bunch of characters on an old ship, floating around in space. It's just them. There's no vast fleet to think about. Only nine characters, and you care about them all. That's why it's so hard to see it end every time. The mythology of the expanded world is nice, and the space cowboy thing is so good it's seamless, but it's the characters that make it. It's hard to think of any other cast that fit together so well. When Mal says 'You're on my crew' to Simon, you really believe he means it. I'd choose this over Galactica's army any day. On one of Adama's moody days, there isn't much fun to be had with the thousands of people in the fleet. On the other hand, I'd watch a whole episode of the Serenity crew just having dinner. They wouldn't even have to nearly die or anything, they could just sit at the dinner table eating noodles and having a chat. I'll never get to see that episode because inevitably, every time, every single time I watch it, it gets cancelled. I pretend it won't. On episode six I think it'll go on forever. On episode twelve I start to get worried. Then I'll watch Serenity and pretend that nothing bad is going to happen.

At the same time, I wonder how its shortness changes our perception of it. These characters are preserved in one short season. It's easy to think they'll never change. That they'll go on like this forever, and we just won't see it. But they would have changed, obviously. By season three the crew might have looked completely different. The family would have been lost, people would have been replaced. There are unfortunate events in Serenity that prove that. Except, in my imagination, it would have always been the same nine. And there also isn't room for it to be bad. In every long series, there are times when the quality dips. The 'boring middle part of Firefly Season Four' can never happen, even though that sounds quite good. It might have been saved from all the criticism that happens to normal, not-cancelled shows. It sits above all that as something perfect and shiny, with an imagined legacy that isn't ruined by being real. It's easy to forget that this all happened ten years ago. It's still being talked about because it was ripped away from us, it's only half there, maybe inspiring more love than a proper run would have. When somebody awful decided to cancel it, to dismantle this whole world, they probably didn't know what they were starting.

Some thoughts on some television

The advantage of having a blog is that I can write down random, half-formed thoughts and keep them forever, as if they were important. So here's some words on two things that have no connection other than being here on the same page.

Boardwalk Empire
This show is still a mystery to me. It's on its fourth season now, and it's pretty good, but I completely forget about it when it's not on. Completely, like I hadn't been watching it for thirty hours. And then there's new episodes, and I'll watch them and enjoy them and be reminded of all these men in hats. I still don't know some of their names, but a lot of them want to murder each other. Often in very stylish, violent ways. The problem is, I wouldn't mind if I never saw another episode, even though it's impressive. I don't know what it's doing wrong. It has some of the best performances on television (Michael Shannon, in particular, always looks like he's about to burst) and some of the most intelligent, thoughtful writing. Maybe I'd enjoy it more if it was focused on one tight group of characters. Having a vast and separate cast can work brilliantly, like in The Wire or Game of Thrones, but here it might be too big for its own good. I want more of Richard's story, and Nucky's relationship with his brother and Margaret, not more conversations with gangsters I'm not sure I recognise, who mention other gangsters I don't think I know. I will watch every episode and enjoy them, I just wonder if, outside of a few brilliant characters, Boardwalk Empire will be remembered as one of the greats.
  
The Newsroom

I liked the first season of The Newsroom. I wrote a long defence of it, which usually happens when I'm annoyed that other people have different opinions to me. It was a show that had problems, but I thought it would be better in the second season, when it could really settle in. Now, after nine new episodes, there's good news and bad news. The good news is that the second season is a huge improvement over the first, and one of the most enjoyable pieces of television this year. The bad news is that I have to praise it rather than rant about it, which is less fun for me, and makes shorter blog posts. So this time there was a proper running storyline, less focus on real news, and no silly love stories. We've spent time with these people now, and they're still a family. Don and Sloan, who weren't much of anything before, become two of the most likable characters. And that's it, the whole thing is likable. It would be easy, and boring, to over-analyse the politics of it, and miss how much fun it is to spend time in Sorkin's fantasy newsroom. There needs to be more.

The end of Dexter still bothers me

(Spoilers. For Dexter) After watching Dexter for eight seasons, I was expecting big things for the last few episodes. I wanted to see what they had been building towards the whole time. Would Dexter finally be revealed and be hunted by his friends? Would he lose his grip and descend into nasty madness, and still nobody would notice? Whatever it was, they'd been promising big things for years, and it would be worth the wait. Except, as it turned out, they didn't really have anything.

The problem is, I thought it was a different show. It's not adventurous. At least, it hasn't been for a long time. The writers were taking it season by season, making important things up as they went along. The decision they made, in the end, was to make Dexter nicer. So nice that it turned out he didn't have to kill anybody, even though he always told us he did. And an irrelevant villain appeared in the last few episodes. And everyone hung around cooking lovely dinners until Dexter could get on a plane. There were new characters, new developments, and other things that didn't matter at all, because all I wanted was the insane explosion of a season I'd been promised. It didn't happen, and then poor Debra, who had put up with a lot, died, and it was even sadder that by that point I didn't seem to mind. The last episode was strangely boring, being mainly focused on whether Dexter's girlfriend could catch a bus. If I was ever really promised something, I didn't get it.

And what would Dexter do? Would he get away with it? Would he be killed? No, he... did something irrelevant. It wouldn't have seemed so bad if he had ever mentioned lumberjacks, or said something about logs, or beards, but he didn't. It came out of nowhere. I understand that he wanted to live alone, but this isn't how television is meant to work. You can't introduce something random in the last minute. Eight seasons, I was watching this. Ninety-six episodes. Ninety-five hours, fifty-eight minutes, then lumberjack. He could have given us at a hint. He explained everything else to the ghost of his father inside his head, but not this. After all the murder and lies, the close escapes and near misses, the drama and the tragedy and the psychopaths, it finally comes to an end and then, lumberjack. I still don't understand.*

This was a good show, for at least the first four seasons. And the seventh. And even when it was bad it did a good job of pretending it wasn't. It's a shame, then, that I'll always remember that the end was nonsense.

* After reading this, it might not be the writer's fault.

Why everyone hates The Newsroom but I like it anyway

Almost everyone on the internet hates The Newsroom. Reviews of each episode range from 'this is the worst thing ever', to 'at least it's not as bad as last week'. All the commenters join in and soon everyone's agreed that it's Not a Very Good Show. I watch an episode and enjoy it, then go on the internet to learn why I didn't really enjoy it after all. The argument is that it only looks and feels like good television if you let it wash over you, but if you think about it it all falls apart. The obvious thing to say here is that feeling like you enjoyed something is the same as enjoying it. But no, it's actually bad for you, apparently.

So is it just a lot of idealistic lecturing that goes nowhere? Sort of. It's Sorkin's view of the world, and that gets on most people's nerves. It's like The West Wing was how he wants things to be, and The Newsroom is him complaining that it's not. These aren't politicians who we watch doing something to fix the problem, they are journalists with Powerpoint presentations giving actual lectures. And because HBO gives him big long episodes, he's not forced to reign it in. This seems like a good enough reason to take against the show from the start, and if you do you're definitely not going to like the rest of it. It's true that not much has changed from the first episode of the season to the last, but if you like the characters it'll be a lot more fun. And I do like them. I feel like I have to apologise for that, but I do like them. Even the ones who don't seem to do much. Sorkin has never been very good at planning a whole season, so most of the narrative thrust and character moments are in individual episodes. I think 'Bullies' and 'Amen' are some of the best things he's written, even if they don't have much impact on the overall story. Maybe I just enjoy watching people fall over.

The Newsroom is, basically, about the successes and failures of making this news show, and the changes in Will's confidence and attitude towards it. That's a familiar idea. Replace 'news show' with 'comedy show' or 'government', and you've got the first seasons of other things. If you're looking for something else you're going to be disappointed, but it still works for me. It's about the staff coming together as a family, and the parents looking after the children. It's not the The West Wing, there's no characters that compare to Josh or CJ or Toby, but it's different. It's younger and a bit unsure of itself. Some of the characters need more time and some of them need less - it's more about the group as a whole. When Will defends one of his guys, or Charlie comes down to tell them off, you can see how this family works. It's got potential.

I'm not pretending that these romantic storylines aren't hopeless, or that they don't drag on. The whole Jim and Maggie thing has become toxic. In every episode it pretends to make some progress, then goes right back to where it was before. Jim must have broken up and got back together with Lisa about three times. Three times. The end of the ninth episode looked like a natural breaking point, but then it turns out to be two months later and nothing has changed. And then it goes through the whole thing again, picking up extra characters along the way. Sorkin must have decided to prolong this, so he must think we care. I used to, but it's been played so badly that I've lost interest. Though somehow, and I'm not sure how it happened, the Will and Mac thing eventually ground me down into caring. Eventually.

Ignore all that and look for the good stuff. Like everyone lining up outside Will's office to give him a cheque. Or the dialogue that is still as good as it ever was. Or most scenes with Charlie in them. There's something in this show that's good. Not great, but promising. It's somewhere underneath the lectures, doing its best to hide. It'll be easier to see in the second season, when most of the problems will have been ironed out, and it can really settle in.

I missed Doctor Who

Looks exciting, doesn't it?

I missed the last episode of Doctor Who. The one at the end of the last season. Everyone was wearing eye patches and the Doctor had long hair. I'm not sure why. I wanted to see it, but I couldn't. I don't know when it'll be shown again. The problem is, I don't feel too bad about it. I mean, I'll see it eventually, right? Maybe I'll watch the next season first.

I know this isn't the attitude. My nerd credentials have been revoked. I've been thrown out. Even when I do finally see it, in about seven months, I won't be allowed back in. I will be looked at with contempt. It was earlier in this very year that I called Doctor Who the Best Thing Ever, and now look at me. I've let it slip. There's a hole where my obsessiveness should be. It's too late for me now. Go on without me. I haven't even played the new Zelda yet. I'm hopeless.

This is my way of looking in from the outside and asking what I missed. Was it any good? I'm looking forward to the Christmas special though. Honest.

Stuff and stuff

There's Stuff and there's stuff. The things you've accumulated throughout your life deserve a capital letter. Boring and plain objects that you don't care about is just stuff. Because if you think about it, every object in your collection of Stuff has memories attached to it. Usually not very exciting memories, but you might remember unwrapping a film, or reading a book for the first time, or listening to music in a certain place. Some things might have come in on your birthday or Christmas, and the rest you bought or found. All of it together is arranged in order somewhere, in rows and piles and boxes.

So, I decided to count all my Stuff:

94 books
28 films/tv seasons
88 CDs
128 games

The most noticeable thing there is how many films I don't have. I usually rent them, and I only really feel compelled to own a few of them. And still, that list isn't right. A lot of Stuff has been given away, or sold, or lost. Stuff that isn't relevant anymore. I seem to keep books, even though they take up a lot of space. And games. You can't get rid of games.The other noticeable thing is that I have many objects. 338 things.

Does your collection of Stuff fill rooms? Or do you burn everything every few years?

The owls are not what they seem

What is it about Twin Peaks that makes it seem like one long dream? First there's the bits that really are dreams, with giants and red rooms and backwards talking. But then the reality is just as strange. The town is 'a long way from everything else', surrounded by woods and mountains. It's as if, far away from the loud city, something else takes over. Where the Log Lady isn't entirely mad, and psychic visions can be held as evidence in a murder investigation. It's a surreal place, trapped in its own bubble of wrong. The music makes up half the effect. You can listen to this while you're doing anything to turn yourself Lynchian. The almost constant music can change an ordinary scene. It becomes hypnotic. And even without the beat it has a good variety of ominous humming. Everywhere is horrible and sinister with the right humming. This is what Lynch does so well - turn ordinary things deeply odd. The Sheriff says that there's a 'darkness' in Twin Peaks, 'something very, very strange in these old woods.' The back-end of the dream is the nightmare, and that's where Lynch comes in. You can spot the episodes that he directed. The ones that build to a crescendo of surreal horror. Broken records and lots of screaming.

By way of explaining what we're about to do, I am first going to tell you a little bit about the country called Tibet.

Twin Peaks becomes a necessity. The sort of story where it's always 'one more episode'. It was probably too strange to live. There's no easy way to describe it. It doesn't fit with anything else on television. I've never seen anything else that can mix casual drama with all this darkness and insanity. It tries everything at once. It's remarkable. And really, Agent Cooper could investigate anything and I'd watch it. 

The box of Thrones

If ever I wanted a nice big boxset of something, it's of Game of Thrones. And it doesn't even exist yet. The final episode of the first season showed that they're playing the long game. They plan to film all four books and they want us to watch one after the other. HBO would be mad to cancel it. They love big boxsets as much as anyone. In five years time this thing will exist. Seasons one, two, three, and four. Maybe coming with a fold-out map. It needs to happen. The first season finale was like a prelude to everything else. The Watch rides out beyond the wall, the Starks gear up for a big fight, the dragon princess gets some real dragons, and Joffrey proves himself to be the evil bastard you always thought he was. He was just slapping children before. Now he's got heads on spikes. Put him in a room with Arya and a sword and he won't last long. Or Tyrion can sort him out. Tyrion, who's the cleverest person in the Seven Kingdoms - clever enough to want to stay away from all this war and nonsense. If the last episode seems uneventful, think back to the start of the season, and how much has happened since. Little things turn into wars and major characters die without warning. Game of Thrones is The Wire in Middle Earth, literature on screen.

Which makes me wonder if I should read the books. I could read the whole story right now. But the show is so good I'll wait for it to come back. The books seem like spoilers at this point. They can stay in their own boxset. Unless the show gets cancelled of course, then I'll read them in a week.

If it doesn't fly through time and space

The first half of the new season of Doctor Who really shows the difference between the best and rest. Moffat and Gaiman wrote such good episodes that the others seem average, even dull in comparison. It all has to start with interesting ideas, and the 'The Doctor's Wife' has that. The Tardis becoming a person is something entirely for the fans. And it still works if the nerdy significance is lost on you. Because it's an episode crafted out of creative energy, and it makes special writing look easy. It's hard to describe, but it comes through dialogue that's better than the usual, or the ideas that nobody else could invent - the sense that something important is happening, that you shouldn't look away. There's this sort of episode, and then there's the type that don't seem to matter. 'The Rebel Flesh' is an unspectacular episode stretched out over two parts. The ethics of killing clones has been done before, and more entertaining than this. Running around a damp castle does not make a good hour and a half. At worst, the whole thing was unconvincing. The scientists die, as they always do, and I couldn't care less. Some characters can turn up for twenty minutes and have emotional deaths (the Girl in the Fireplace wasn't even on screen at the time). This lot were dull and irritating from the start, and then they got a second episode.

I'll always be here, but this is when we talked.

It all picked up in the last three minutes though, with an ending that almost justifies the amount of time spent on this 'flesh' business. And now there's a promising last episode before the mid-season break (mid-season break? What?). The problem is, that when I come to expect magic, only the best will do. A script that doesn't fly through time and space doesn't deserve to be here. If it's average, if it's just a bit ordinary, get rid of it.

Seven Kingdoms Scale of Evil

Game of Thrones is the most ambitious television I've ever seen. It's constructing a world. Where fantasy films have to end somewhere around the three-hour mark, this can go on for (hopefully) years. It gives the context in bits so it's not overwhelming, building up like the chapters of a book (or maybe just the book it's based on). We know that there's scary wild things behind The Wall, but nobody really believes it; we know that there used to be dragons; and we know that there's a network of dead kings and girlfriends that everyone's upset about. It's traditional fantasy stuff, but it seems like a fresh commitment to putting literature on screen. Like somebody put Lord of the Rings into episodes. If it lives up to it's promise it could become monumental. This is what HBO have decided to do now that everyone else is starting to catch up, they're taking things up a notch. Enough of this real-world business, start a new land from scratch and you might get true escapism.

And here you know who the evil people are. They kill dogs. That's really evil. Cute dogs that never did any harm apart from mauling their master's enemies. The butcher's boy got killed as well but nobody cares so much about that. Nobody's supposed to kill the direwolves. They even make Sean Bean a bit soft. There's another bad sort who sold his sister to a horse-tribe. You can tell he wants to kill dogs too. The bad news for all of them is that 'winter is coming'. Seasons last for years in this place, and it's been summer for a while. Ominous.

Edit: I just found this staggeringly good post that includes diagrams of the houses, relationships and maps. It will make your nerdy mind do a little dance.

Bottom four TV titles

Top fives are fun aren't they? Top fours are even more fun (what do you mean I just couldn't think of a fifth thing?). Anyway, this is a bottom four. So it's an entirely different thing. These are not the worse opening credits in television. They're bad titles attached to good shows. Which makes them worse.

4. Battlestar Galactica  I feel bad about this. The music is excellent. Ethereal singing and bang-bang drums that really put you into that 'end of the human race' mood. But it's ethically dubious. When the banging starts they start showing you little highlights from the episode, before it's even begun. 'Oh, this a nice opening sequence. I'm really enjoying the singing. Spoiler. What? What was that? Spoiler. It happened again. Why are they doing this?' Little moments maybe, but I don't want to know someone's going to get punched in the face until it happens. Really nerdy people (not me) learn to look away during this bit. Not me. No.

3. Dexter It's a nice tune, and it's very well shot, but nobody's watching this anymore. It's two minutes of him making breakfast. Once you've got all the subtle hints about his psychosis it just becomes a long, boring bit before the show starts. By the third season it's just best to fast forward this. Maybe stop in time for the wink at the end. Ding. You know he's mad because nobody has the energy or will power to make breakfast like this. I can't even be bothered to put this much effort into lunch.


2. The X-Files Good wibbly-wobbly sci-fi music. Shame about the stretchy faces. And what's that? Some sort of novelty rotating lamp? No, it's 'Paranormal Activity'. Is it? I don't think it is. No wait, there's more stuff. 'Government denies knowledge', shadow man walking down a corridor, highlighted section of finger. This is a sketchy, jerky, blurry mess of everything they could think of. And if you're lucky you might get a secret message at the end. What could it possibly mean? I could let this off easy for being really old, but I won't.

1. Alias J.J. Abrams himself composed this, so presumably everyone was too afraid to tell him it was rubbish. Did this take half an hour on a computer? If the music wasn't bad enough, the Powerpoint presentation that plays on the screen makes it twice as bad. It's like somebody just discovered flashing letters and lens flare. I mean, they really like lens flare. Alias looks like an expensive show, why didn't somebody notice they hadn't finished the titles?

Top five TV titles

A good show needs something good to kick it off. A familiar tune, the cast and crew's names appearing in order, maybe shots of the characters turning round to face the camera. That sort of thing.

5. The Wire Five different versions of one song. Nobody's really sure which one is the best (it's season four though isn't it?). It gives each season a unique identity - the gravelly Tom Waits for the ports, the children for the schools, the, er, jazz for the politicians. Politicians like jazz. And the editors have combed though the episodes to find bits of nothing to put on the screen. It's paper, badges, and cameras, but it works. Nothing so mainstream as having the character's faces on there.


4. The West Wing Presumably this is the sort of thing David Simon was trying to avoid. But why? It's majestic. W. G. "Snuffy" Walden composed a thing of patriotic wonderment. A big waving American flag is imposed on everything, just so you're not confused, and the characters turn up one by one in various thoughtful poses. It got messed around with in the later seasons, but back when everything was in its place it was a nice sturdy way to start the show. I should also mention the closing credits, played to the jaunty theme, a.k.a. The Jaunty Theme. Nothing is more jaunty than The Jaunty Theme.

3. The Simpsons This should probably be number one, but I'm mean like that. Each one is full of individual jokes and references. The music is iconic. You already know this. I think they changed it recently though and nobody was very keen. The version I've got here seems to be the one YouTube wants you to see. It's a bit subversive. I didn't even realise it was all still going. What are the new episodes like? Everything I've seen is from at least ten years ago.


2. The Sopranos This earns points for just being really, really cool. Riding along with Tony Soprano with his big cigars in his big car. He's not committing any crimes but he's still cool. Maybe it would be rubbish without the song. If the Mafia didn't listen to this before, they do now. They have this on repeat in their cars. This and Journey for when they're ordering onion rings. Opening credits are designed to not get old by the hundredth time you've seen them. This gets better.


1. Firefly Joss Whedon's Ballad of Serenity performed by Sonny Rhodes. It's enough to make you want to become a space cowboy, if such a thing were possible.  It's sad and uplifting at the same time. More than any other Whedon show these characters look like a family, flying around in their rusting tub. He's always had malicious fun with his credits, so who knows what characters would have briefly made it into this sequence in the future. 'There's no place, I can be, since I found Serenity'. It makes you want to watch the whole thing again doesn't it? Go on. Do it. It won't take long.

The Doctor

Is it just me, or is Doctor Who the best thing the BBC has ever made? When other shows are stuck in pubs and living rooms the Doctor is flying around time and space. The new season opener has all the insanity of its best episodes. Possessed astronaut suits, a crazy orphanage, aliens in suits. Sometimes it's like they throw a pile of ideas into a box and pick a few out at random. It's full of foreshadowing, symbolism, and parallel timelines that don't entirely make sense, but that's the brilliance of it. You've just got to go with it. It's unrestrained. If anything it's trying to appeal more and more to the hardcore fans. So much so that even I don't really follow all of it. Here the Doctor is killed in the first ten minutes, before a past (or present) version of him turns up to help, with a woman from his future who knows his past, and a man who used to be a robot Roman but came back to life in a new timeline.

But it can also be simple. This new season has introduced the show's scariest monsters. They're not old robots, they're freaky aliens who look they've escaped from a melted Edvard Munch painting. Standing and staring like all the best aliens do. And because they're one of Moffat's creations, they're based on a clever idea instead of big lasers. Look away and you forget them, resulting in all sorts of new ways to go mad. This is a show that keeps getting better, and nerdier, and more imaginative. If it was brand new, if it wasn't already a fifty-year old institution, would something this good be allowed to exist?

The rest of the universe explained in pictures and words

A few days ago I briefly explained the workings of the universe, since the television has been teaching me these things. I didn't go into much detail, but it had something to do with a rabbit. There's a bit more to the universe than that, though. A few paragraphs more. For instance, I didn't mention black holes. They're bad. Really bad. I know this because the scientific description is ominous - 'a region of space from which nothing, not even light, can escape'. That's right, not even light. The forces of evil are at work here. When a star collapses at the end of its life it turns inside out and becomes this whirlpool of doom. Some scientists think that there's one at the centre of most galaxies, including our own. If you went near it you'd be sucked into it and then something will happen. Nobody knows what's at the centre of a black hole, not even Brian Cox. Probably all the rubbish that gets hoovered up; a massive bin in the middle of the galaxy. Chuck that planet in there, we don't need it anymore.

I'd guess they were warp zones to other parts of the universe. But it's probably theories like this that got me laughed out of the scientific community. I don't think they've got very far in my absence anyway. They still haven't worked out what's beyond the universe. They try to baffle you with numbers and diagrams but they don't know really. They say 'what if the universe is everything that exists, then there can't be anything outside it.' I say 'there might be other universes'. They say 'the universe is often visualised as a three-dimensional sphere embedded in four-dimensional space'. I say 'what if you go out one end and come in the other like in Pac-Man.'

Because the universe is big. Really, really big. No, not quite that big. But big. The most distant stars we can see are only visible in the past, because the light takes so long to get to us. The light from the furthest stars started travelling when there weren't even any humans on Earth. It wasn't even called Earth then. Just a mound in space. When the light started travelling there were just little squidgy things flopping around straining to evolve.

Then one of the them strained hard enough to get legs and arms, and all the others decided they wanted some too. Others couldn't be bothered and flopped in the sea to learn how to swim. We didn't talk to them again, but after a while we produced some fingers, and thumbs, and started calling each other names. Then we started speaking in words that we made up and learned how to be sarcastic all the time. Somebody called the mound Earth (who was this?) and people drew lines and divided the place up into turf. Some of the countries don't like each other very much. Somebody invented money and convinced everyone else that they need it. We got iPods, then iPhones, and eventually iPads. We evolved. And then we saw the light from the distant star. It took a while.

The universe explained in pictures and words

Astronomy would be really fun if it wasn't for all the hard science and stuff. What could be more interesting than trying to unravel the mysteries of the cosmos? Not much, but when I start looking into it I only come across equations the size of houses. All the good stuff is hidden behind impenetrable physics and words that come in five or six parts. But now Professor Brian Cox has been explaining these things to me, and I might be starting to understand. We're in the solar system, which is in a galaxy, and there's lots of galaxies in the universe. Right? Right? Good. Because it's best not to ask any more questions after that. What's outside the universe? And outside that? Maybe nothing, because it has to stop somewhere. Or maybe it repeats itself. Or maybe Men in Black was way ahead of its time. To summarise, let's look at the effect this sort of thinking has on the mind of a rabbit.

 
Wonders of the Universe is the only show on television that makes your mind actually break. That alone is worth the license fee. The Professor does a good job of explaining the fabric of existence to us. Everything's expanding, see. Expanding and getting messy. And when things reach their ultimate messy-ness, there won't be time any more, because nothing will change.

He doesn't have all the answers though. Which is probably a good thing. Ratings would go straight down. Like watching Lost, we don't really want to know why they're there or where the polar bear came from. The question is always more interesting than the answer. It's best to drag it out. When we find out, it's always the same reaction.

Treme: Sometimes they cross paths and play a song together

David Simon's Treme might look like it's going to be one long rant about the state of post-Katrina New Orleans. And there's a bit of that, but it's mostly a laidback look at the people within the community. It's full of music. Full of it. Almost every character is a musician; they play music in the street, in clubs, in hospital waiting rooms - anywhere they can find. Sometimes they don't stop and whole scenes go by with nothing but trombones, violins, and pianos. These people are as keenly observed as anything from The Wire, but everyone's a lot gentler. Some are actually lighthearted. These are not the streets of Baltimore. The first four episodes border on uneventful but, in that way that few shows manage, are just an interesting place to be. The characters have musical difficulties instead of debilitating drug addictions. Nobody has a gun. It's a tight community rather than a sprawling city, even though they don't seem to know each other. In the way of these things, they occasionally cross paths and sometimes play a song together. There isn't a bad note among them.

 

The highlight is Davis McAlary, a loud-mouthed radio DJ who is fired for letting a guest sacrifice a chicken on air, and then thrown off a hotel reception desk for sending Christians to the wrong end of town. He's got a childlike enthusiasm for music that gets him by, occasionally composing a song or two and adding a welcome chunk of comedy. Elsewhere, Sonny and Annie busk for spare change, John Goodman screams at YouTube, and Antoine 'The Bunk' Baptiste plays trombone all day. I'm sure these people will develop large, dramatic problems, but for now they're just quite nice to watch. Some might be annoyed by its quest for authenticity, or dislike the characters when they arrogantly proclaim New Orleans to be the centre of the world. Though any show with this amount of social commentary is bound to make people take sides. I like that the characters are faintly fanatical about their city. Without that, Treme wouldn't exist.

Boardwalk Empire: I ain't building no bookcase

After watching the fourth episode of Boardwalk Empire, I think it's starting to take shape. It's set in America's Prohibition era, where criminals and political figures still control the flow of alcohol. 'Nucky' Thompson is at the head of it, a political 'boss' who controls Atlantic City through all sorts of criminal activities. It's part gangster show and part political drama - there's no line between the two. And Nucky's brother is Sheriff of the county, so they can pretty much get away with anything. Thankfully they seem to be fairly decent gangsters, more helpful than destructive. In the most recent episode they handed the leader of a Ku Klux Klan group over to Chalky White, the head of the black community in the city. Played by Michael K Williams, this character is the centre of any scene he's in, of which there aren't nearly enough. Here he tells the Klan member a story about his father, a gifted carpenter who was killed by 'six white men'. He gets out his father's tools, and when asked what he intends to do with them, says 'I ain't building no bookcase'. But in a threatening, Omar Little sort of way. In fact, sometimes he just seems like Omar in a red coat. Maybe an ancestor, or evidence of time travel, he's still the coolest thing in an entirely different show.

Elsewhere the show is really going for the 'old society' thing. Racism and sexism are a big part of it. We look in from the outside, with a bunch of sympathetic characters around to stop us going mad. There's the bad gangsters, who are okay really, then the really bad gangsters who say mean things about everyone. Though, in the case of some of these women, they may have a point. The majority of the female characters are completely pathetic, sitting around on their husband's laps being apocalyptically stupid. It's there for a point, to show a contrast to the pleasant Mrs Schroeder, but it's overdoing it a bit. The fact that Margaret actually has opinions on things impresses Nucky, when she puts forward some thoughts on women's right to vote. It might not sound like much, but his current girlfriend can hardly string two words together.

And there's a thing going on with Jimmy, who always looks like he's about to start singing Arcade Fire songs. Gangsters have meetings in big coats and hats. I'm not really sure who most of them are, but it'll become clear eventually. It's going for the slow build-up approach, and I'm more than happy to see where it goes. There are moments of brilliance here. Moments that are getting more frequent as the series goes on.