Exactly - there is a fun show in there if it was just Duchovny as a snarky older cop in late-60s SF, but the show grinds to a halt every time it switches to Manson.

When you something in their pool eat it

Remember me? When I ruined your childhood I talked just. Like. This!

Is this supposed to be some kind of ironic doom?

The Empire was a cancer on the world

The British Empire can fill a list of atrocities on its own…

Could be she remembered where it came from? hat's the optimistic answer, at least.

Judging from the picture they're giving Jonathan Franzen a comedy special too?

Nah, she had a fantastic role in Show Me a Hero last year.

To be fair Wuthering Heights is a dark as heck gothic drama about the destructive power of obsession, definitely not supposed to be the model of an relationship you should want.

Well now way back in the Bible
Temptations always come along
There's always somebody tempting
Somebody into doing something they know is wrong
Well they tempt you, man, with silver
And they tempt you, sir, with gold
And they tempt you with the pleasure
That the flesh does surely hold
They say Eve tempted Adam with an apple
But…

I loved The Passage, my only issue being that after the fantastic opening third (the story up to the time jump) it takes a while for it to regain momentum. That's not to say the rest of the book is weak, it's just the first section is so good.

That doesn't come out here until November, but it's at the top of my to-read already. Which of his other books would you recommend?

Just finished John Henry Days by Colson Whitehead which is absolutely fantastic. It's probably the greatest contender for contemporary 'Great American Novel' I've read.

Cripes, I've seen defences of Khmer Rouge, Stalin, and the Cultural Revolution, but I just assumed that was because of the historical distance. But people defend current atrocities too?

I haven't used it since I realised my PC uninstalled the scrobbler for some reason and so that it hadn't taken in a couple of years worth of music

And in the original novella the character is not a stereotype at all, as far as I recall. They added that all for the movie…

I appreciate 'Glory Days' more when I realised it was a sad song dressed up to seem happy.

Which is fitting, seeing as a lot of Bruce's songs about shitty working-class life were about his dad…

He closed the show I saw him at this year with an acoustic 'Thunder Road', and by the end he had tears in his eyes (as did the crowd…). Stripped back, all the wistfulness is at the forefront.