I gave up on Black Sails, despite the eye candy. Was that an ill-considered decision?

Absolutely one of my favourite movies ever.

Ireland. Which is close enough to Westeros to not matter.

Highly regarded catwalk and cover model, Caitriona Balfe, to be accurate. She's walked, and done campaigns, for a lot of the big names, including Victoria's Secret (of import to the Yanks, but not the Euros, where she's done work for most of the important houses).

By this logic, hipsters = Islamic extremists. Which explains a lot. ;)

We should have a club.

This is where a tertiary education in journalism and English Lit, and a 20 year career in comms and tech, has left me - correcting spelling on the internet as the resident grammarian pedant.

"discreet", not "discrete". I am that guy.

Yup. I too will be surrendering my manliness at the door. Our whole house has read the book and Carrie Mathison ugly-cried over it.

Familiar with Australian version. Hell yes! One of the best things on TV over here, and about to start S3. Roxborough is a class unto himself, and yes, it's sweary, with occasional nudity, but that's standard for Australian adult drama.

Watch the original Australian series. Roxburgh is a messy, messy, delight.

To your second-last question; yes, major parties will steal ideas and claim them for their own utterly shamelessly in order to marginalise smaller parties, especially those likely to hold balance-of-power in upper houses (which is what we get in Australia) or be needed in coalitions (as is more likely in unicameral…

Indeed. This show has such a ridiculous premise, and ongoing ridiculousness on a per-episode basis, that it has no right to be as good as it is.

The unelected leader outside parliament is rare, but it's happened in Australia in reality (on the other side of politics to the ND, cf. Campbell Newman in Queensland). If the media and parliament thought the leader was never going to run for office again, there'd be an uproar, and there'd certainly be interest in any…

If Rowling's Potter world can have prisons, a raft of schools, and an entire shadow/magic government, there's no reason Lost Girl can't. :)

Not quite. Palmer himself is now a Member of the House of Representatives, making him "The Honorable Clive Palmer, Member for Fairfax". He also has three party members in the Senate, who will hold the balance of power come 1 July 2014, but they very much dance to his tune. Palmer himself is one of the most…

Palmer is a fucking national embarrassment. And he and his weirdo-cross-between-facist-businesspeople-and-agrarian-socialists just got elected to Parliament as well.

Watching this episode, I wasn't surprised Birgitte gave back the DKK 1.5M. If Danish political donation disclosure laws are anything like those in Australia, where I am, the funds would need to be publicly documented. It'd also be simply impossible for a single donation of that size to be given without massive outcry.

I, for one, welcome Lana Parilla exploring her "tendencies".

I've been binge watching to get up to date.