Category Archives: Television
David Simon, creator of The Wire, says new US drug laws help only ‘white, middle-class kids’
The award-winning creator of The Wire, David Simon, has emerged as a critic of the ‘racial bias’ in the US debate on the war on drugs
David Simon surged into the American mainstream with a bleak vision of the devastation wrought by drugs on his home town of Baltimore – The Wire, hailed by many as the greatest television drama of all time. But what keeps him there is his apocalyptic and unrelenting heresy over the failed “war on drugs”, the multibillion-dollar worldwide crusade launched by President Richard Nixon in 1971.
When Simon brought that heresy to London last week – to take part in a debate hosted by the Observer – he was inevitably asked about what reformers celebrate as recent “successes” – votes in Colorado and Washington to legalise marijuana.
“I’m against it,” Simon told his stunned audience at the Royal Institution on Thursday night. “The last thing I want to do is rationalise the easiest, the most benign end of this. The whole concept needs to be changed, the debate reframed.
“I want the thing to fall as one complete edifice. If they manage to let a few white middle-class people off the hook, that’s very dangerous. If they can find a way for white kids in middle-class suburbia to get high without them going to jail,” he continued, “and getting them to think that what they do is a million miles away from black kids taking crack, that is what politicians would do.”
If marijuana were exempted from the war on drugs, he insisted, “it’d be another 10 or 40 years of assigning people of colour to this dystopia.”
Simon joined two film directors for a discussion onstage: Eugene Jarecki, in whose movie The House I Live In – on the toll of America’s war on drugs – he features prominently, and Rachel Seifert, whose Cocaine Unwrapped charts the drug’s progress from blighted “producer” countries to the addicts in Europe and the US.
The occasion was staged by the Observer and chaired by its editor, John Mulholland, as part of its campaign to address the global drugs crisis.
Simon took no prisoners. In his vision, the war on – and the curse of – drugs are inseparable from what he called, in his book, The Death of Working Class America, the de-industrialisation and ravaging of cities that were once the engine-rooms and, in Baltimore’s case, the seaboard of an industrial superpower.
The war is about the disposal of what Simon called, in his most unforgiving but cogent term, “excess Americans”: once a labour force, but no longer of use to capitalism. He went so far as to call the war on drugs “a holocaust in slow motion”.
Simon said he “begins with the assumption that drugs are bad”, but also that the war on drugs has “always proceeded along racial lines”, since the banning of opium.
It is waged “not against dangerous substances but against the poor, the excess Americans,” he said, and with striking and subversive originality, posited the crisis in stark economic terms: “We do not need 10-12% of our population; they’ve been abandoned. They don’t have barbed wire around them, but they might as well.”
As a result, “drugs are the only industry left in places such as Baltimore and east St Louis” – an industry that employs “children, old people, people who’ve been shooting drugs for 20 years, it doesn’t matter. It’s the only factory that’s still open. The doors are open.”
While his co-panellists sipped their water, Simon poured himself another glass of red wine as he continued. A bull of a man, a presence in any room – even one as large as the packed theatre in the colonnaded heart of Britain’s scientific establishment.
“Capitalism,” Simon said, “has tried to jail its way out of the problem” with the result that “the prison industry has been given over to capitalism. If we need to get rid of these people, we might as well make some money out of getting rid of them.”
Jarecki, in a scathing portrayal of the American prison system in both his film and at Thursday’s event, cited some statistics: “We have ravaged our poor communities,” he said, some of which, African-American, counted “4,000 per 100,000 in jail, as compared with an average dose of around 300″. Meanwhile, Simon said the police in some cities had “become an army of occupation that sends brothers and fathers to jail”.
He described a logic to policing in Baltimore whereby “street-rips” in drug-infested areas make for easy arrests to achieve “cost-efficient” policing, while criminal activity other than drugs was ignored because prosecutions were laborious.
Simon said he had seen a decrease in arrests for non-drug offences from 70-90% to 20-40%, while drug-related arrests increased on some beats from 5,000 to 30,000 because, as Jarecki put it, “it’s like shooting fish in a barrel”.
“So the drug war,” concluded Simon, “makes the city unsafe.” But has it worked? “The drugs in my city are more powerful, cheaper and more available than ever before,” replied Simon.
Simon said he had “no faith in our political leadership to ever address the problem. There is no incentive to walk away from law and order as a political currency.” He said change would come, if it does, from jurors simply “refusing to send husbands, sons and fathers from their communities to jail … That is how prohibition [of alcohol] ended. They couldn’t find 12 Americans who would send a 13th to jail for selling bathtub gin.”
Simon regarded “legalisation” of drugs as “a word invented by advocates of the drug war to make the other side look goofy, saying ‘everything should be legalised’. The issue is: how do we get out of here? And I say: decriminalisation. As with other controlled substances – taxed and regulated.” He later said he did not think change would come of any moral decision, but because “someone just figures out: this is costing too much money”.
From the audience, the Colombian ambassador to London, Mauricio Rodríguez, drew attention to his government’s leadership of initiatives from Latin America to “completely redraw” a global strategy on drugs, with co-responsibility assumed by consuming countries, focusing on social and economic issues, and money laundering by banks. “Basta!” he said, “the Latin American countries have had enough.” Such thinking had driven a recent report, which Rodríguez brandished, by the Organisation of American States, of which, he pointed out, the US is a member.
Simon replied that America had fought “proxy wars” across the world for decades, and the war on drugs in Latin America was among them. On the carnage in neighbouring Mexico, he said: “If 40,000 Mexicans are dead, we don’t give a damn as long as it stays that side of the border – turn northern Mexico into an abattoir, so long as it doesn’t get to Tucson. If we can fight to the last Mexican, for a suburban American to send their kid safely to junior high school, we will.”
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The hottest French TV of 2013: The Returned
The Returned confirms that the French are ready to challenge the Scandinavians as the powerhouse of new TV drama
It’s four years since a coach taking local teenagers on a school trip plunged down a French mountain, killing several students. But, just as final plans for a much-debated memorial are being passed round the weekly bereavement support group, the children start to come home, acting as if nothing has happened, followed by the ghosts (presumably) of others who died horribly in the region.
The Returned, an eight-part French TV drama, is based on a 2004 movie called Les Revenants, but now inevitably seems also to draw on the trend for populist-metaphysical TV dramas, which generally turn out to be set in purgatory, including Life On Mars/Ashes To Ashes in the UK and Lost in the US. It shares with the latter the use of flashbacks to establish what happened to the characters before they became whatever they are now. The ABC network is remaking The Returned, but the French original confirms, after Spiral, the nation’s challenge to Scandinavia as the new powerhouse of small-screen drama.
The Returned satisfyingly combines a variety of genres, most obviously including zombie horror but also crime drama, because a serial killer seems to be at loose in the mourning community, raising the question of whether those who are already dead can be killed or, indeed, kill. However, the series also explores deeper questions of grief and faith. When one terrified local comments that such resurrections are “unprecedented”, another mutters, “Except once.” But, while the believers in the town have apparently had their prayers answered, we suspect they will almost certainly conclude that they should have been careful what they prayed for.
These subtler undercurrents – and the murder investigation – prevent the show from becoming a standard yarn about the undead. And there are numerous sharp touches in writing, acting and direction. When one bereaved mother excitedly tells the support group that she is pregnant, a fleeting cutaway catches the pain on the face of an older woman who is denied that option of continuation. The “Is this really happening?” scenes between the mourning and the dead are also beautifully done, including a moment when a mother struggles not to favour her resurrected daughter over the living one.
There are perhaps moments when it gets a little… well, French, such as identical twin sisters who experience each other’s orgasms, but otherwise this tense and thoughtful ghost and crime story – Channel 4′s first foreign drama for 20 years – seems set to be this year’s smart subtitled import.
• The Returned starts on Channel 4 in June.
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BBC sorry for IRA gaffe on Question Time
Broadcaster apologises for ‘insensitive’ production error that saw Stormont minister labelled as member of Sinn Féin/IRA
The BBC has apologised for a Question Time production gaffe that saw a Stormont minister labelled as a member of “Sinn Fein/IRA”.
Sinn Féin education minister John O’Dowd, who was a panellist on last night’s show in Belfast, was referred to by the term in a seating plan.
The title directly linking the republican party to the paramilitary organisation has long been used in a pejorative way by members of the loyalist community in Northern Ireland.
Sinn Féin was closely associated with the Provisional IRA during the Troubles but has always maintained it was a separate and solely political organisation and says the tag was created to justify attacks on its members in the conflict.
The BBC said the seating plan, which was attached to a camera in the studio, was written by a “technical staff” member. It was not broadcast during the transmission but an audience member took a picture of the plan and tweeted it.
The BBC admitted the wording was “insensitive and naive” and apologised for any offence caused. It said in a statement: “The note was written by one of the technical staff on the programme for his own use. It was not authorised or endorsed by anyone on Question Time. The person responsible has been left in no doubt that it was inappropriate, insensitive and extremely naive.
“We are sure viewers of last night’s programme will be clear that this note had absolutely no bearing on the content of the show.”
Question Time is produced by independent company Mentorn. O’Dowd had earlier demanded an explanation.
“Last night I had agreed to take part in the Question Time programme on the basis of respect and equality,” he said. “After the programme was finished I was made aware of the floor plan pinned to a camera branding me a member of ‘SF/IRA!’.
“This was not on the floor plan previously shown to me before filming. This is a serious issue. The SF/IRA tag was one created at the height of the unionist murder campaign against my party colleagues in the late 1980s and early 1990s. It was an attempt to justify attacks on Sinn Fein members and our families. For the BBC to adopt the tag 20 years into a peace process is beyond belief.
“Last night we lodged a formal complaint with the BBC in Belfast seeking an immediate explanation for the sign and what action is to be taken against those behind it.”
O’Dowd said he would not let the corporation sweep the issue under the carpet. But Ulster Unionist Assembly member Tom Elliott questioned his stance.
“For a Sinn Fein representative to ask why that party would be linked to the IRA is utterly laughable,” he said. “If this is evidence of Sinn Fein wishing to distance itself from the murderous activities of the IRA then that is of course to be welcomed.
“The trail of death and destruction wreaked across Northern Ireland, into the UK mainland, the Republic of Ireland and even further afield is something which any right thinking person or political party should be ashamed of.”
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Steve Forrest obituary
Hollywood actor best known for his starring role as Lieutenant Dan ‘Hondo’ Harrelson in the 70s cop series S.W.A.T.
Steve Forrest, who has died aged 87, was a product of the Hollywood studio system, then at its tail end in the 1950s. Although MGM had the handsome, rugged 6ft 3in actor under contract for five years, from 1952 to 1957, they gave him few chances to shine. It was only when he left the studio that Forrest got bigger and better parts in feature films – one of his best performances was as the white brother of Elvis Presley, who plays the son of a Native American mother and a Texas rancher father, in Don Siegel’s excellent western Flaming Star (1960) – and he was able to start a long and busy career on television.
In fact, it was on the small screen that Forrest would build his fame, notably in S.W.A.T. (1975-76), a cop series set in Los Angeles, the acronym referring to the police department’s special weapons and tactics team. It ran for 37 episodes, with Forrest as a stern, level-headed Lieutenant Dan “Hondo” Harrelson, who would cry out “Let’s roll” as he climbed into a van to go on another mission to catch villains.
Forrest was born in Huntsville, Texas, the youngest of 13 children of a Baptist minister. One of his brothers, 15 years his senior, was the more famous Dana Andrews, who was to become a leading man in films during the 1940s and 50s. It was through this older brother that Forrest got his first taste of the movie business when, aged 18, he had a bit part as a young sailor in Crash Dive (1943), which starred Andrews and Tyrone Power.
After serving as a sergeant in the army during the second world war, Forrest moved to Los Angeles to study at UCLA. He graduated in 1950 with a bachelor’s degree in theatre arts and became a stagehand at La Jolla Playhouse, gradually getting roles. He resumed his postwar movie career with a small role in another of Andrews’s pictures, Sealed Cargo (1951).
But the following year, Forrest was able to distance himself from Andrews when he landed the MGM contract. At first he only had small parts, such as playing the actor in Lana Turner’s screen test in The Bad and the Beautiful (1952). He was glimpsed as a soldier in Battle Circus (1953), starring Humphrey Bogart and June Allyson, and played an army recruit under tough training sergeant Richard Widmark in Take the High Ground! (1953).
His first real parts came when he was loaned out to Warner Bros for two pictures. In So Big (1953), based on a sprawling novel by Edna Ferber, Forrest plays long-suffering Jane Wyman’s selfish son, for which he won a Golden Globe for most promising male newcomer. He was hardly able to fulfil his promise in the role of a scientist suspected of being a serial killer in Phantom of the Rue Morgue (1954), a feeble adaptation of Edgar Allan Poe.
Back at MGM, Forrest was given more substantial roles than previously. In Prisoner of War (1954), a simplistic “Red Scare” movie, Forrest was one of a group of brave American PoWs, including Ronald Reagan, being subjected to torture and brainwashing in a North Korean camp. When a brutal Soviet officer asks Forrest where his family lives, he replies: “In Hollywood with my brothers Clark Gable and Spencer Tracy and my sisters Esther Williams and Janey Powell.”
Much better was Rogue Cop (1954), in which a poker-faced Forrest plays a policeman who is honest, unlike his detective brother played by Robert Taylor in the title role. Forrest was finally given rare top billing as a young man studying for the priesthood in Bedevilled (1955), a quasi-religious thriller, and as the writer hero in Mexico in The Living Idol (1957), a risible synthesis of exotic romance and mysticism. According to the New York Times, “a pretty young man named Steve Forrest plays the reporter chap. He is purely ornamental until he goes into a bare-handed battle with a jaguar.”
Freed from his MGM contract, Forrest portrayed a New York reporter falling for a rural Doris Day in It Happened to Jane (1959), and in Heller in Pink Tights (1960) he played a gunfighter who wins blonde dancer Sophia Loren in a poker game, but loses her to Anthony Quinn. The latter role gave the often stolid Forrest an opportunity to show more ebullience.
In the meantime, he had established a parallel career on television, appearing notably in westerns such as Bonanza, Death Valley Days, The Virginian and Rawhide. In 1965, he and his family moved to London, where he starred in 30 episodes of the ATV series The Baron. Forrest was rugged and charming in the title role, the nickname given to John Mannering, a Texas-born, London-based antique dealer who is really a secret agent.
On the big screen, Forrest would have a key role as the lawyer boyfriend of Joan Crawford (Faye Dunaway) in Mommie Dearest (1981), a rather trashy melodrama in which he looked plainly uncomfortable, nor was he in his element as a heavy in the unfunny spoof Spies Like Us (1985).
He then returned to television, notably with 15 episodes of Dallas in 1986, playing Wes Parmalee, an impostor pretending to be Jock Ewing, and in several episodes of Murder She Wrote.
He is survived by his wife, Christine, and sons, Michael, Forrest and Stephen.
• Steve Forrest (William Forrest Andrews), actor, born 29 September 1925; died 18 May 2013
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America is stuck in a state of Arrested Development | Alan Yuhas
We adore the Bluth family because they are such a bizarre mess, much like our own relatives – and our country
America has finally admitted it made a huge mistake, and demanded that Arrested Development return from whence it came. Fans have swarmed the banana stand and writers heaped praise on the show’s creator, Mitch Hurwitz, its writers, cast, and producer Ron Howard: it was brilliant, subversive, before its time, etc.
That’s all true, but there’s something else that accounts for the fervor over the show’s resurrection: Americans should relate to nothing more than the story of an insane, self-absorbed family who thought they had it all, fell into a sinkhole of their own making, and now are working more than to dig themselves out by tooth and claw. The Bluth family is a portrait of modern America: fractured, more than a little delusional, and bound together by a whole lot of love.
As the Guardian has pointed out, times have changed since the Bluths went to Iraq to look for evidence of “light treason“, but retrospect has only made the show’s satire poignant. Take the Bluth Company, for instance, founded on an immigrant’s stolen dream and transformed into a real estate corporation whose financial scheming and lack of foundation leads to total collapse. Shoddy mini-mansions built on shaky land are almost too-perfect a symbol for a country with a wildly misplaced sense of worth and wealth, especially in the lead up to 2008. The Bluths don’t know how good they have it, and though their egos are deflated time and time again, they never see disaster until it hits them. Even then, they’d rather forget it now than confront it later.
Self-medication is the Bluth family’s preferred solution, and America’s – the land of rampant prescription drug abuse. The writers pull no punches on the pharmaceutical industry among any number of American institutions, ranging from the legal system to corporations to reality TV. The Bluths know drugs don’t provide real happiness, but they insist it’s better than what they’ve got.
So the Bluths love a good illusion, which they always distinguish from a trick, those being what they play on each other. Never has a more impotently devious family graced television: they scheme and meddle in each other’s lives for fun, profit and spite. The patriarch and matriarch (if you will) circumvent the law, exploit the business and their kids, and leave the family in financial ruin. What’s more, they do everything possible to escape with as much money as they can muster. By constantly conspiring, they prevent anyone else from accomplishing anything, causing dysfunction and paralysis. Congress is stuck in arrested development.
Only one of their children even tries to fix their problems, and he’s stymied at every turn by the antics of his family members, each fumbling after the American dream as they see it. Gob‘s quest for fame stems from his need to feel loved, which overrides even his minor victories. Lindsay tries to buy happiness. Buster wants freedom (from his mother) but is terrified of its consequences. Michael is so intent on saving his family that he loses sight of his son. Tobias thinks being an actor – reinventing himself as something he’s not – will save his marriage. Second chances and the quest for family, fame and fortune make up the basics of American mythology – but with the Bluths, it’s an endless cycle of hope and disillusionment, and life lessons all over the place.
Because the Bluths are such a bizarre mess, much of the comedy seems to exist only within their closed universe. In a way, this is perfectly appropriate: how better to satirize self-centered Americans than a self-referential, almost hermetic show? These are people, after all, who can’t name Britain’s houses of parliament even when they’re correcting each other, and whose impression of Iraq is skewed, to say the least.
But the show isn’t closed off. The real world constantly juts in, making Arrested as political as The Daily Show, if much more subtle. The economy, politics and world events will suddenly interfere in characters’ lives, yet like most Americans, the Bluths can’t be bothered to read the Patriot Act or to pay attention enough to know there’s a war on (I mean, come on).
No matter how vain any character is, however, they’re forced to deal with each other, Orange County, America and the larger world. They thwart each other’s plans, get called to the army, prison, court, and even a few auditions. It’s a world where every small detail can have huge consequences, and a throwaway joke in one season could result in a beloved character and plot point in another (Steve Holt!). Repercussions might not be apparent till you’ve almost forgotten their causes, but that’s how the world works.
The humor tends towards dark, but it’s buoyed by the Bluths’ greatest attribute: they are incorrigible. No matter how many times their dreams are dashed, the Bluths are pathologically incapable of giving up hope. For every disappointed walk to tune of Charlie Brown, there’s a moment of manic joy in which a Bluth devises a half-baked plot. For every defeated scheme, there is a sacrifice, an unlikely alliance or one of the family’s better parties. They’re somewhere between the solipsists of Seinfeld, the absurdity of The Simpsons and the generous friends of Cheers – juiced with a weirdness those shows lacked. They’re a family, whether they like it or not, and they have fun even as they frustrate each other. And with all the irony and sincerity it can muster, Arrested Development insists there’s nothing more important than family (except maybe breakfast).
The fans, of course, have also become a family, with friendships born of obscure references (“Flashes of Quincy!“) and bonded by love for wordplay, quirky details and meta-jokes and the recognition that a comment is no trick – it’s an allusion!
Americans are together whether they like it or not, too, and Arrested is a fitting reflection of life in the 2000s. Old boundaries fell faster than the walls of Gob’s hastily built model home: war, financial crises, political paralysis, the internet and the nation’s new confusion about its place in the world, a problem it has tried to ignore, desperately. The show is at once a scathing satire and a self-sustaining engine of happy and absurd wit.
Like the Bluths, Americans never quite give up hope, and it turns out that not all our dreams are as impossible as they seem. That season four has arrived after almost seven long years is proof enough.
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America is stuck in a state of Arrested Development | Alan Yuhas
We adore the Bluth family because they are such a bizarre mess, much like our own relatives – and our country
America has finally admitted it made a huge mistake, and demanded that Arrested Development return from whence it came. Fans have swarmed the banana stand and writers heaped praise on the show’s creator, Mitch Hurwitz, its writers, cast, and producer Ron Howard: it was brilliant, subversive, before its time, etc.
That’s all true, but there’s something else that accounts for the fervor over the show’s resurrection: Americans should relate to nothing more than the story of an insane, self-absorbed family who thought they had it all, fell into a sinkhole of their own making, and now are working more than to dig themselves out by tooth and claw. The Bluth family is a portrait of modern America: fractured, more than a little delusional, and bound together by a whole lot of love.
As the Guardian has pointed out, times have changed since the Bluths went to Iraq to look for evidence of “light treason“, but retrospect has only made the show’s satire poignant. Take the Bluth Company, for instance, founded on an immigrant’s stolen dream and transformed into a real estate corporation whose financial scheming and lack of foundation leads to total collapse. Shoddy mini-mansions built on shaky land are almost too-perfect a symbol for a country with a wildly misplaced sense of worth and wealth, especially in the lead up to 2008. The Bluths don’t know how good they have it, and though their egos are deflated time and time again, they never see disaster until it hits them. Even then, they’d rather forget it now than confront it later.
Self-medication is the Bluth family’s preferred solution, and America’s – the land of rampant prescription drug abuse. The writers pull no punches on the pharmaceutical industry among any number of American institutions, ranging from the legal system to corporations to reality TV. The Bluths know drugs don’t provide real happiness, but they insist it’s better than what they’ve got.
So the Bluths love a good illusion, which they always distinguish from a trick, those being what they play on each other. Never has a more impotently devious family graced television: they scheme and meddle in each other’s lives for fun, profit and spite. The patriarch and matriarch (if you will) circumvent the law, exploit the business and their kids, and leave the family in financial ruin. What’s more, they do everything possible to escape with as much money as they can muster. By constantly conspiring, they prevent anyone else from accomplishing anything, causing dysfunction and paralysis. Congress is stuck in arrested development.
Only one of their children even tries to fix their problems, and he’s stymied at every turn by the antics of his family members, each fumbling after the American dream as they see it. Gob‘s quest for fame stems from his need to feel loved, which overrides even his minor victories. Lindsay tries to buy happiness. Buster wants freedom (from his mother) but is terrified of its consequences. Michael is so intent on saving his family that he loses sight of his son. Tobias thinks being an actor – reinventing himself as something he’s not – will save his marriage. Second chances and the quest for family, fame and fortune make up the basics of American mythology – but with the Bluths, it’s an endless cycle of hope and disillusionment, and life lessons all over the place.
Because the Bluths are such a bizarre mess, much of the comedy seems to exist only within their closed universe. In a way, this is perfectly appropriate: how better to satirize self-centered Americans than a self-referential, almost hermetic show? These are people, after all, who can’t name Britain’s houses of parliament even when they’re correcting each other, and whose impression of Iraq is skewed, to say the least.
But the show isn’t closed off. The real world constantly juts in, making Arrested as political as The Daily Show, if much more subtle. The economy, politics and world events will suddenly interfere in characters’ lives, yet like most Americans, the Bluths can’t be bothered to read the Patriot Act or to pay attention enough to know there’s a war on (I mean, come on).
No matter how vain any character is, however, they’re forced to deal with each other, Orange County, America and the larger world. They thwart each other’s plans, get called to the army, prison, court, and even a few auditions. It’s a world where every small detail can have huge consequences, and a throwaway joke in one season could result in a beloved character and plot point in another (Steve Holt!). Repercussions might not be apparent till you’ve almost forgotten their causes, but that’s how the world works.
The humor tends towards dark, but it’s buoyed by the Bluths’ greatest attribute: they are incorrigible. No matter how many times their dreams are dashed, the Bluths are pathologically incapable of giving up hope. For every disappointed walk to tune of Charlie Brown, there’s a moment of manic joy in which a Bluth devises a half-baked plot. For every defeated scheme, there is a sacrifice, an unlikely alliance or one of the family’s better parties. They’re somewhere between the solipsists of Seinfeld, the absurdity of The Simpsons and the generous friends of Cheers – juiced with a weirdness those shows lacked. They’re a family, whether they like it or not, and they have fun even as they frustrate each other. And with all the irony and sincerity it can muster, Arrested Development insists there’s nothing more important than family (except maybe breakfast).
The fans, of course, have also become a family, with friendships born of obscure references (“Flashes of Quincy!“) and bonded by love for wordplay, quirky details and meta-jokes and the recognition that a comment is no trick – it’s an allusion!
Americans are together whether they like it or not, too, and Arrested is a fitting reflection of life in the 2000s. Old boundaries fell faster than the walls of Gob’s hastily built model home: war, financial crises, political paralysis, the internet and the nation’s new confusion about its place in the world, a problem it has tried to ignore, desperately. The show is at once a scathing satire and a self-sustaining engine of happy and absurd wit.
Like the Bluths, Americans never quite give up hope, and it turns out that not all our dreams are as impossible as they seem. That season four has arrived after almost seven long years is proof enough.
Related posts:
Steven Soderbergh switches to TV with period medical drama The Knick
Ten-episode drama series starring Clive Owen will focus on staff at New York’s Knickerbocker hospital in 1900
Steven Soderbergh will make his long-heralded move into TV with a period medical drama series starring Britain’s Clive Owen for HBO sister channel Cinemax, Deadline reports.
The Knick will comprise 10 episodes, all set in New York in 1900 and all directed personally by the Oscar-winner, who has declared himself disinterested in continuing his feature film-making career. Soderbergh has already built a relationship with HBO after the US pay-TV network funded his Liberace biopic Behind the Candelabra, which stars Michael Douglas and Matt Damon and is currently screening in competition at Cannes. Observers had expected his first small-screen ventures to emerge via the channel, but this arrangement will instead help boost the profile of Cinemax, which has often languished in the shadow of its better-known Time Warner stablemate.
The Knick will centre around the pioneering surgeons, nurses and staff at Knickerbocker hospital as they push the boundaries of medicine during a time of horrifically high mortality rates, prior to the proliferation of antibiotics.
Meanwhile, there is still a chance for European audiences to experience the old Soderbergh magic in cinemas one last time before the 50-year-old director retires from the big screen for good. Behind the Candelabra, about the tempestuous six-year relationship between the flamboyant piano player and his much younger lover, Scott Thorson, is getting a UK release from 7 June.
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Media Talk podcast: Woolwich attack coverage and Boris ban lifted
On this week’s programme, John Plunkett and Roy Greenslade discuss the graphic front pages of the national press in the aftermath of the Woolwich killings – were they justified in printing the photo? Did ITV handle their exclusive footage in the right way?
Also in the podcast, Helen Zaltzman and Paul Robinson discuss the Competition Commission’s disastrous ruling for Global Radio –- should heads roll?
Former – and founder – editor of Loaded magazine James Brown discusses how the Sabotage Times is run (more also available in this video).
And on the small screen, Rebecca Nicholson reviews Love & Death in City Hall, Channel 4′s Skint and a particularly bizarre episode of Mad Men.
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C’mon! Arrested Development’s best moments – interactive
The beloved show is heading Netflix for another season – maybe you’ve heard? We asked Guardian readers to share their favourite inside jokes and videos of the Bluth clan so far
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Is ‘binge-watching’ the best way to view TV shows? | Poll
Netflix’s unorthodox release of an entire TV series at once has helped popularize marathon sessions of watching. Do you prefer your shows in one sitting?
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