Typically, a shorter season run (6-8 episodes = "series" in UK-speak) and one writer or a partnership does the whole show, from conception to completion.

This is where being UK-based reveals itself, I suppose.

I wonder whether this is a problem which naturally arises from shows which follow the "showrunner + writing team" model? At the start of the season, you sit down and lay out all the things that are going to happen, and then you go off and write actions and dialogue along that path. Certain things need to occur, and…

Yeah, I get the theme thing…

I know what you're getting at. For myself, I don't see it as "the show" punishing them; it's that "the world" is such that it's not a good idea to be getting sentimental. So long as the deaths are consistent with the world, and its events follow logically from circumstances, then I'm okay with it. Sometimes, I think,…

Did you find the Glenn death scene "defeatist"? If indeed he is dead, then that was a good scene I think. The Walking Dead isn't about the individual characters so much as it is about "the world". And it's a violent world with arbitrary deaths. Given the felling of the Alexandrians, I think it would have been jarring…

I don't know that Glenn's death is "defeatist" - it's just, how it would be. People… just die.

"Unfinished" is a good way to describe it. Being into my synthesisers at the time, I remember being disappointed at what seemed to be "placeholder" sounds - the presets you'd use just to sketch things out - especially at a time where dance music was really pushing this for the first time.

At 60 Miles an Hour!

And actually, the production on those albums is better than Republic, which has all the edges removed, and has generic sounds throughout (probably due to the rush and the cash). Really, Regret is the only great track on it. I'd put Get Ready and even half of Sirens on before Republic.

Nonsense - I say we go All The Way!

It has similar plot points, redistributed amongst the characters. It's a much more focused take, less "soap opera" and camp, more thriller. I think both versions justify their existence.

Yeah, he's great. Actor Neil Maskell's always good; just like Michael Smiley is (he played the policeman who Arby stabbed). Maskell is also in the recent series UK C4 series Humans, which is worth a look.

Great - I really agree with all of this. I'd say that the Utopia rewatch issue is also because its scenes are often quite bound to the story in a way that the ones in Mr Robot aren't. It also exists in "its world" rather than a version of "the world", so it's actually quite like a stage play in some ways or… a graphic…

I think Utopia was one of the few TV shows to blend its story, characters, style, cinematography, music together into one seamless package. It's not "realistic", but it was it's own coherent thing.

How many bankers killed themselves in 2008?

Great analysis.

I still think picking That Song™ was a bit too much of a sledge hammer.

I think they are acknowledging it because… it doesn't matter. This is the penultimate episode, meaning they've dispensed with it by even telling you that you knew all along. "You thought this was all about the identity of Mr Robot, but really that was the hook and you've been drawn into this world, so that it's not…

That's my point: people were interpreting that line as meaning he was a savvy guy, but really it was (potentially) more of a "I'm down with the kids" moment.