"laughably shamelessly gratuitous" is a perfect way to describe it.

Fry and Laurie had an insanely high hit-rate on their show too, and both guys are well-known enough in the USA that there's no real excuse for a pop-culture-0bsessed person to have missed it.

I really enjoyed Louis Barfe's "Where Have All The Good Times Gone?" for a history of the recording industry. Out of print now, I think, but still available at all the usual places.

PC war etc.
I just don't think any "movement" killed off Dice Clay's career - it's that he was a shit comedian who relied on cheap racism to get a laugh out of his idiot audiences. The only backlash was that people finally realised he wasn't all that funny.

Anyone wanting to listen to an entire album with him narrating should check out Rhapsody's album "Symphony of Enchanted Lands 2". It's surprisingly great.

Anti-drugs message
I would think being told how utterly evil pot is, then discovering after trying it that it isn't, would be far worse when it comes to possibly trying the harder stuff than a normal, sensible, discussion with your kids about drugs. So, I'm not sure the first part of your review is correct.

I'd rather have a Kevin Federline app, or that of someone I dislike whose surname is Smith.

He's a director who's not made a decent film in a very long time, and NPH's comments about Mewes seem, if anything, a little tame. I remember some reviews of …Strike Back being less than positive, and Smith's response to them was basically to say "I have a hot wife, you don't, therefore I win".

I don't think it's slipped out of the public consciousness, particularly. But there's only so much you can say about a film like that.

That would be maybe the greatest series ever.

Oh, and mentioned below (but it bears repeating):

Ultraviolet was great, and it's a shame there's so few episodes of it. The DVD is regularly watched though.

Jekyll was written by Steven Moffat, soon to be showrunner of Doctor Who, and was great.

Or Honeysuckle Weeks, provided she's of a legal age. It's got good treats for the eyes.

Primeval was decent when they still had Douglas Henshall and Lucy Brown in it. When they left it became rapidly pointless.

Great shows from Britain?
Well, Todd, did you ever pick a bad example of TV made in Britain to start with. It was awful, and pretty much every reviewer agreed on that to begin with. From the end of the first episode, it had cancelled-after-one-series written all over it, for all the reasons you mentioned. Mackenzie…

It would be like NBC UK showing an ABC show, or something.

Triffids was awful. This managed to be even worse.

Henry Silva's the best joke commenter on the site, bar none.

Best : Highlander blu-ray