Sure. I'm more a fan of occasionally slapdash, zippy nonsense than ornate, labourious nonsense so the show is more my thing than the books.

My problem with Martin's prose isn't that the language isn't sufficiently complex (it's simple but that's fine); it's that it's fairly uninterested in interrupting its own hum. The pool of imagery he draws from is limited; the rhythms he uses to establish certain effects become very familiar very fast; he hardly ever…

If it makes it any better, the country of Australia doesn't double as a continent either.

Those recaps read like she was an unhappy person.

Man, what a joke.

That's an elegant way of putting it. I've tried to articulate why I find Girls so disingenuous several times to friends and I always get twisted in rhetorical loops. It's a show that is utterly fascinated by the milieu it depicts, is aware that the milieu is ripe for criticism from others, ridicules it as a strategy…

Yung is as great in the role as someone who probably isn't a great actor can be. Her chemistry with Cox is like a zippy breeze from a much less tortured show.

I occasionally get flashes of the old showrunner dropping 'The Wire' as a reference point for 'Daredevil' and quake with the irony of it given 90% of The Wire's worth was in understanding how various institutions worked.

Isn't their model to appeal to the broadest swathe of people because their utility is different to broadcast television? I mean, they had a hit with a video of a fire. I actually can't quite believe they don't have snappy 'shows' that are just bread recipes or ab exercises.

Nothing against Rodriguez and Thompson (the former of whom I've never seen act and the latter of whom I know from being really, really off-puttingly stiff on Veronica Mars a decade ago) but I'll be forever saddened that Tilda Swinton and Julianne Moore aren't going to be in this as originally touted. A lot of the…

It's the kind of advice that sustains abusive relationships and it was definitely coded by the show as worthwhile. The writers are way, way, way too ambivalent about the Punisher.

Exactly. Kass didn't spend round after round telling her targets that she was hungry to turn on her alliance mates, then not turning on them.

It's hard to analyse where his fundamental missteps were because he was so incapable: he was controlling, alienating, vacillating, obvious in his duplicity, loose in his talk and, when push came to shove, yellow. This is just not his game.

It's one of the best female new player casts they've done. Or perhaps, more accurately, it's one of the best female new player casts they've edited.

https://www.youtube.com/wat…

It's cruel if it's true and it's incoherent if it's not.

Lovely article, Noel. I've a three thousand word essay somewhere in me on 'We Love You Carol and Alison' that boils down to it being the perfect pop song which, of course, is the kind of banal assertion that needs three thousands words to justify making.

I've only watched New Who so maybe they did this for thirty years, then stopped, but: how about a companion whose motive for travelling in the Tardis isn't 'adventure'? Someone who becomes tethered to it somehow or is trying to achieve something? The same beats and dynamics assert themselves when the characters'…

I'm probably adding to this conversation in a different register but: Cox really did great work with a fairly rote character last season, especially given I would never ever have considered him for the grizzled and taciturn type.

Didn't Goddard leave after episode 2?